The Hidden Treasure

and respect. His son, who was obviously a charming and
kind man, listened with great deference while the old sheikh
apologized for the poverty of our meal and begged us to use
all the tribe could afford as if it were our own. They brought
a mess of pumpkins and a small chicken floating in a syrup of
melted butter, a food which after a week or so of hard riding
in the Luristan air becomes more appetizing than one would
think. This winter, they said, there would be nothing but
acorns to eat, as the harvest was poor for want of rain.

We hurried our leave-taking so as to have time for more
digging among the Lard. I had promised the old man of
yesterday to return and see what he had been able to find
during my absence, and resisted all efforts of Shah Riza to
miss the rendezvous and take the more direct route home.
"We accordingly hit the Larti ravine some little distance be-
low the city, and made our way into it by a path among trees
and boulders. A foxy-faced old man came walking down
behind me. He was the headman of Larti, the kadkhuda.
u You walk well in the hills,55 said he after a greeting.
" But I am a hill woman," I explained.
" You run as lightly as a partridge," he said. " Is not
England a city?"

Sa'id Ja5far, who had left the horses and was also walking
down, interposed.

" Perhaps you come from Scotland?" he said. " When
I was in Baghdad, soldiers came marching through: I saw at
once that they were different from the others. I said to
myself: * These people surely come from the hills. They walk
better and they are dressed like us of the Pusht-i-Kuh. Perhaps
they are our cousins/ And when I asked, I was told that they
were Scotchmen of the mountains."

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