He saw swiftly enough when explanations came.
"I have three hundred mounted men!" the Kurd said at last.
"And I near as many!" answered Ranjoor Singh.

"I crave no favors! I come with an offer, as one leader to another!" The Kurd frowned and hesitated, but sent at last for bread and salt, for all our party, except that he ordered his men to give none to our prisoners and none to the Syrians, whom he mistook for Turkish soldiers.

If Ranjoor Singh had told him they were Syrians he would have refused the more, for Kurds regard Syrians as wolves regard sheep.
"Let the prisoners be," said Ranjoor Singh, "but feed those others! They must help put through the plan!" So the Kurd ordered our Syrians, whom he thought Turks, fed too, and we dipped the flat bread (something like our Indian chapatties) into salt and ate, facing one another.
"Now speak, and we listen," said the Kurd when we had finished.

Some of his men had come back, clustering around him, and we were quite a party, filling all the shadow of the great rock.
"How much of that gold was to have been yours ?" asked Ranjoor Singh, and the Kurd's eyes blazed.

"Wassmuss promised me so-and-so much," he answered, "if I with three hundred men wait here for the convoy and escort it to where he waits." "But why do ye serve Wassmuss ?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"Because he buys friendship, as other men buy ghee, or a horse, or ammunition," said the Kurd.