I am not at all sure some accidents of that nature did not happen.
So when we had fired at the Kurds enough to make them face about and so expose their rear to Ranjoor Singh, we would get to horse again and send the Kurdish horses galloping up the pass in front of us.
Finally, we lost sight of most of the Kurdish horses, although we captured one apiece--which is all a man can manage besides his own and a rifle.
By that time it was three in the afternoon already and the pass forked about a dozen different ways, so that we lost the Kurds at last, they scattering to right and left and shooting at us at long range from the crags higher up.

We were all dead beat, and the horses, too, so we rested, the Kurds continuing to fire at us, but doing no damage.

They fired until dusk.
Our own three hundred Kurdish friends were not very far behind Ranjoor Singh, and I observed when they came up with us presently that he took up position down the pass behind them.

They were too fond of loot to be trusted between us and that gold! They were so burdened with plunder that some of them could scarcely ride their horses.

Several had as many as three rifles each, and they had found great bundles of food and blankets where the enemy's horses had been tethered.