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There was nothing we could do at that late hour to overcome the inertia produced by centuries, and we rode on, ourselves infected to the verge of misery. Only our Zeitoonli, striding along like men on holiday, retained their good spirits, and they tried to keep up ours by singing their extraordinary songs.
You've no call to force our band in this way." "Name a better way," said Monty. None of us could. The proposal was perfectly logical. Three of us, even supposing Kagig should care to lend us some of his Zeitoonli horsemen, would be all too few for the rescue work. Certainly we could not leave a lady unprotected in these hills, with the threat of plundering Kurds overhanging.
Suddenly Fred began to shout for help then, and we rode back, the gipsies following and Rustum Khan remaining on guard between them and their camp with his upbrushed black beard bristling defiance of Asia Minor. Our Turkish muleteers had decided to make a final bolt for it, and were using their whips on the Zeitoonli, who clung gamely to the reins.
The path by which we had turned our backs on Monty and Kagig went winding away and away below, here and there an infinitesimal thin line of slightly lighter color, but more often suggested by the contour of the hills. Our Zeitoonli in their zeal to return to their leader had been evidently cutting corners.
"What countryman are you?" I asked him. "Zeitoonli," he answered, as if the word were honor itself and explanation bound in one. Yet he looked hardly like an honorable man. "The chilabi are staying here?" he asked. Chilabi means gentleman. "We wait on the weather," said I, not caring to have him turn the tables on me and become interrogator. He laughed with a sort of hard good humor.
We began to meet dogs as big as Newfoundlands, that attacked our unmounted Zeitoonli, refusing to be driven off with sticks and stones, and only retreating a little way when we rode down on them. "Shoot the brutes!" Will suggested cheerfully, and I made ready to act on it.
She screamed defiance burst through the ranks of the nearest Zeitoonli set her stallion straight at us burst between Fred and me beat Fred savagely across the face with her sap-softened branch and wheeled on her beast's haunches to make much of Will. He laughed at her, and tried to take the whip away.
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