Jelaleddin
A Picture of His Invasion
From the Armenian of Raffi
VI.
Half an hour later they found themselves upon the edge of a towering mountain height from which they could discern, in the valley below, a moving caravan. It was too far off to be seen clearly, but its strange appearance and shape looked very suspicious.
"We can overtake the caravan and pass it if we go right down here," said Musdo, pointing with his finger to the scarcely perceptible path, accessible only to deer -hunters. "But I do not want them to see us," said Sarhad.
"They could not see us, even if they had each a thousand eyes. I know these mountains like the five fingers of my right hand. Let us go!"
Although the path was extremely difficult, leading over precipitous steeps and bottomless crevasses, yet it cut so directly across the distance which the main road had to wind round the whole mountain to traverse that in less than an hour they came out far ahead of the caravan, and hiding among the bushes began to watch it closely. One long, searching look at it convinced Sarhad that it was a large band of Kurdish robbers carrying plunder and slaves. He turned to his companion.
"Can you somehow mix with this caravan, Musdo, and find out where they are bringing the slaves from and where they mean to take them, and learn the place where they intend to stop for the night, and to what tribe the Kurds. themselves belong?"
"I can find out all that."
