And what, said we, was to prevent the Germans in Stamboul from signaling whatever lies they could invent to this party in Afghanistan, supposing they should ever reach the country?
Yet when we argued thus with Ranjoor Singh, he laughed.
And then, after about a week of marching, came Tugendheim back to us, ragged and thirsty and nearly dead, on a horse more dead than he.

He had bought himself free from the Kurds with the gold Ranjoor Singh gave him; but because he had no more gold the Persians had refused to feed him.

"How should he find his way alone to meet the Russians," he said, "whose scouts would probably shoot him on sight in any case ?" So we laughed, and let him rest among our wounded and be one of us,--aye, one of us; for who were we to turn him away to starve?
He had served us well, and he served us well again.
Has the sahib heard of Bakhtiari Khans?
They are people as fierce as Kurds, who live like the Kurds by plundering.

The Germans ahead of us, doubtless because Persia is neutral in this war and therefore they had no conceivable right to be crossing the country, chose a route that avoided all towns and cities of considerable size.

And Persia seems to have no army any more, so that there was no official opposition.