'THIM DAYS IS GONE' [‎89r] (177/248)

90
The howling of wolves, meanwhile, was very close and we had to
put a guard on the horses tethered outside.
The next morning at first light we saw two figures
in the distance, but showing up well against the
concluded that they must be Turks, crossing the
their village to the south, and Ahmed, the Kurdish
and looked at the B.B. for all the world like a
B B. nodded, and Ahmed and one other grabbed
rifles and took off after the Turks. In a
disappeared from view and we heard two shots,
we went after them, but we found that one of
plunged over a precipice and. landing in deep
escape. The other had been stripped of his charuqs (heavy
leather mocassins excellent for travelling in snow) any clothes
worth having, his knife, and about a kilo of opium. I made them
give the wretch back his footgear, but the B.B. said
knife! What does a Turk want with a knife? And
his opium. That's against the law!"
looking small
snow. It was
mountain from
outlaw, sat up
dog begging . The
their horses and
few moments they
My heart sank as
the victims h ad
snow, made good his
"Not his
cert ain1y not
A few weeks 1 at er. wh en t h e snow had gone, I made a prolonged
expedition to Gullidaghi, and Ahmed and I shot three of the
Bujnurd sheep - excellent for the pot but none of them carrying
the good head I wanted. Shortly afterwards we made out two
shadowy figures riding down the mountain out of the mist. They
were wearing long leather boots, Turkoman gowns, and the high
black sheepskin hats known as t a 1 p e k s , and were, of course
carrying rifles. Ahmed beckoned me " f r antic a 1ly into a thicket
and whispered "We'll crawl forward to the edge of these bushes
and when they reach those rocks over there we'll shoot them!"
When I insisted that such behaviour would be unbecoming to a
British Consul, he said "What else can we do? They're Turkomans'"
However I insisted, and we walked up to them, appearing more
confident than we felt, and greeted them. Although there were a
few tense moments and some fingering of triggers, no shots were
fired and we all four breathed again, sat down and made tea.
We then discovered that one of them was a Persian merchant,
eleven thousand of whose sheep had been rustled by the Turkomans
and the other was his Turkoman escort. They had crossed the
mountain to negotiate the return of the sheep with the rustlers
and we should undoubtedly have felt rather foolish had we done as
Ahmed suggested .
The next day we managed to identify a group of 4 or 5 old rams on
a high mountain pasture. (Outside the breeding season the rams
separate themselves from the ewes and young). We were unable to
approach within shot, and Ahmed and I had to keep them under
observation from a distance for no less than three days, before
we were able to approach them up wind and over dead ground, until
I was in a position to shoot the one which we judged to be the
biggest head. In fact, it turned out to be within one inch of