The Hidden Treasure
uninhabited, for people were ploughing here and there. They
gave drinks from their water-skins to our police, who never
appeared to travel with so necessary an equipment as a water-
bottle in this arid land. As we came out into Garau by the
defile where we had first met the ill-omened wedding guests,
an old man came down with his plough on his shoulder;
it was made all of wood with a blunted wooden blade, shiny
and smooth with use. He, smiling up with shrewd peasant
eyes under his matted hair and felt skull cap, looked as ancient
as the instrument he carried.
"We met the first advance guards of the tribes moving to
winter quarters: a trail of tired people, donkeys and small
black oxen laden with cooking-pots, carpets, and tents, and
a few chicken on the top of all. Women, their long gowns
catching them at every step, walked half bent with small
children on their backs. The daily stage for a tribe on the
move must be a very slow one; and one can realize why, a
year or two ago, when some Lurs, settled by force in eastern
Persia, wanted to break their way home across the hostile
land, they eliminated the worst of the impedimenta by
massacring their own families before the march.
Shah Riza had of course forgotten the merely terrestrial
matter of lunch, though he had been reminded in good time.
"How wicked," said he, without a moment's hesitation
when I asked him; " how wicked is the wife of Mahmud to
let a guest depart without food for the wilderness."
" She forgot," said I, " but it is only once, and you forget
every day. Now what are you going to do 3"
" Khanum" said he, with an appearance of gentle reason-
ableness, ** by the Majesty of God, can I produce food in an
uninhabited lande"
I gave up the effort to cope with my Philosopher and turnec
to the police. They were taking me where I had never plannec