Part 23 (1/2)
The Turks e had recently defeated gave Kurds the credit for it, and after the survivors had crawled back horaph to hunt for raiding Kurds, not us! We cut all the wires we could find uncut, real Kurds having attended to the business already in h the land we began to leave our signature, and do deliberate daed across the breadth of Asiatic Turkey, and none could beat Ranjoor Singh as leader of it We could outride the Turks, outwit the advanced the weather ian to take the offensive h until there h was too conscious of his own faults to dare let matters be He was ever on the watch for a chance to ood enough soldier when sointo very excellent troop corew the ood reason that Ranjoor Singh scorned to take notice of his hate and only praised him for efficiency Whereas he watched all the tie of theht, and used discretion, and chose twelve troopers whoh's co By ones and twos and threes I took the much the saer?” And because I had chosen them well they each made the same answer ”Nay,” said they, ”ere fools He was always truer than any of us He surrendered in that trench that we ht live for some such work as this!”
”If he were to be slain,” said I, ”ould now become of us?”
”He must not be slain!” said they
”But what if he IS slain?” I answered ”Who knows his plans for the future?”
”Ask him to tell his plans,” said they ”He trusts you more than any of us Ask and he will tell”
”Nay,” said I, ”I have asked and he will not tell He knows, as well as you or I, that not all the iment have always believed in him He knows that none dare kill him unless they know his plans first, for until they have his plans how can they dispense with his leadershi+p?”
”Who are these ish to kill hi!”
”Nay,” said I, ”let there be a silence and forgetting, lest toowell that not one man of us all would escape condeh
”Let there be much watchfulness!” said I
”Who shall watch Ranjoor Singh?” said they ”He is here, there and everywhere! He is gone before dawn, and perhaps we see hiht And half the night he spends in the saddle as often as not Who shall watch hiht, and decided who ht-perhaps-most desire to kill hiht watch and prevent the deed”
”Aye!” said they, and they understood So I arranged with Ranjoor Singh to have the this excuse and that and telling everything except the truth about it If I had told hihed andlied I was able to ride on with easierthe case
We had little trouble in keeping on the horizon whenever we sighted Turks in force; and then probably the distance deceived the us Turks, too, for we rode noith no less than five Turkish officers as well as a Gere bodies of Turks there was generally a defenseless town or village whose Armenians had all been butchered, and whose other inhabitants were ht We helped ourselves to food, clothing, horses, saddlery, horse-feed, and anything else that Ranjoor Singh considered wetheof personal value to himself, and none of us wished to die by that an to need ht-and-twentyof those Ar the Kurdish mountains, and once we had more than forty wounded at one time But finally we captured a Greek doctor, attached to the Turkish ar with hih promised him seven deaths for every one of our wounded an to recover very quickly
If we had tried merely to plunder; or had raided the same place twice; or, if we had rested ht have been expected of us, I should not now sit beneath this tree talking to you, sahib, because -wise, very often doubling on our tracks, Ranjoor Singh often keeping half a day'sinfore we used to tie our Turkish officers hand and foot and cover them up in a cart, for ished them to be mistaken for Kurds, not Turks And in ale hats such as Kurds wear, that gave us ore them in the dark the appearance, perhaps, of Kurds who had stolen strange garments (for the Kurds wear quite distinctive clothes, of which we did not succeed in plundering sufficient to disguise us all)
In ht for e took, for there were Turkish soldiers that we did not know about, for all Ranjoor Singh's good scouting Sometimes we beat theh fighting to warm our hearts and terrify the inhabitants But in one toere caught plundering the bazaar by several hundred Turkish infantry who entered from the far side unexpectedly; and if we had not burned the bazaar I doubt that we should have won clear of that trap But the sot to the rear of the Turks and killed a nu off into the dark
But who shall tell in a day what took weeks in the doing? I do not remember the tenth part of it! We rode, and we skir dailywe had ever doubted him Once we rode for ten miles side by side in the darkness with a Turkish column that had been sent to hunt for us! Perhaps they mistook our squeaky old carts for their cannon; that had caht unknown to them! Next day we told some Kurds where to find the cannon, and doubtless the Kurdsfor us-about two regiht, and we rode on
We gave our horses all the care we could, but that was none too much, and we had to procure new mounts very frequently Often we picked up a dozen at a ti those we left behind lest they be of use to the ene nearly at a standstill froiments sent out to cut us off We raided the horse-lines of a Turkish regi all the horses we needed and staap that regiot aith their baked bread, too, enough to last us at least three days! That was not far froris and crossed it near Diarbekr ere happy men; for ere not in search of idleness; alltrouble for the Turks was surely service! One way and another we made more trouble than ten times our number could have h was happy
We crossed the Tigris in the dark, and sohtened We had to abandon our carts, so we burned thereat mounds of Turkish supplies that they intended to float down the river to Bagdad on strange raftsthe stores put up a little fight, and five more of us ounded, but finally we burned the stores, and the flaallop for two ain in darkness So we crossed at a rather bad place, and there was soot over safely in the end, wounded and all We floated the wounded men and ammunition and rations for oatskin rafts that go round and round and any way but forward We found therass by the river-bank
At a town on the far side we seized new carts, far better than our old ones And then, because we ht have been expected to continue eastward, we turned to the south and followed the course of the Tigris, straight into Kurdish country, where it did us no good to resemble either Turks or Kurds; for we could not hope to deceive the Kurds into thinking ere of their tribe, and Turks and Kurds are open eneh to overawe They were all Kurds in these parts, and no Turks at all, so that our proble over as little else than wilderness, Ranjoor Singh ear in our knapsacks