He was right, so we behaved ourselves, and within an hour we had
trouble enough of another sort. 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.

"For the lord's sake, don't!" warned Monty, riding at a huge black
mongrel that was tearing strips from the smock of one of our men.
The owner of the dog, seeing its victim was Armenian, rather encouraged
it than otherwise, leaning on a long pole and grinning in an unfenced
field near by.

"The consul warned me they think more of a dog's life hereabouts
than a man's. In half an hour there'd be a mob on our trail. Take
the Zeitoonli up behind us."

Rustum Khan was bitter about what he called our squeamishness. But
we each took up a man on his horse's rump, and the dogs decided the
fun was no longer worth the effort, especially as we had riding whips.
But skirmishing with the dogs and picking up the Armenians took time,
so that our muleteers were all alone half a mile ahead of us, and
had disappeared where the road dipped between two hillocks, when
they met with the scare they looked for.

They came thundering back up the road, flogging and flopping on top
of the loads like the wooden monkeys-on-a-stick the fakers used to