When I put that question they all dried up and nobody would speak again for several minutes.
It turned out afterward that there had been a sort of armistice proclaimed, and all the local chiefs had undertaken to observe it and cease from blood-feuds for three days, provided that each chief should prove peaceful intention by bringing with him only two men.

Three men in a party, and not more than three, had right of way.

The engagement may have been a simple protest against breach of the terms of the armistice, but I suspect there was more than that in it.
At any rate, we were not attacked again on the road, although there were men who showed themselves now and then on inaccessible-looking crags, who eyed us suspiciously and made no answer to the shouted challenge of Anazeh's men.

When the track passed over a spur, or swung round the shoulder of a cliff, we could sometimes catch sight of other parties--always, though of three, before and behind us, proceeding in the same direction.
We sighted the stone walls of El-Kerak at about midafternoon, and rode up to the place through a savage gorge that must have been impregnable in the old days of bows and arrows.

It would take a determined army today to force itself through the wadys and winding water-courses that guard that old citadel of Romans and crusaders.
We approached from the Northwest corner, where a tower stands that they call Burj-ez-Zahir.