Gregor Jhaere, presumably father of the girl appeared to have lost
his anger at her doings and turned his back.

Fred, smiling mischief, started toward them to horn in, as Will would
have described it, but at that moment about a dozen of the gipsy
women came padding uproad, fostered watchfully by Rustum Khan, who
seemed convinced that murder was intended somehow, somewhere. They
brought along horses with them--very good horses--and Fred prefers
a horse trade to triangular flirtation on any day of any week.

The gipsies promptly fell to and off-saddled our loads under Gregor
Jhaere's eye, transferring them to the meaner-looking among the beasts
the women had brought, taking great care to drop nothing in the mud.
And at a word from Gregor two of the oldest hags came to lift us
from our saddles one by one, and hold us suspended in mid-air while
the saddles were transferred to better mounts. But there is an indignity
in being held out of the mud by women that goes fiercely against
the white man's grain, and I kicked until they set me back in
the saddle.

Monty solved the problem by riding to higher, clean ground near the
roadside, where we could stand on firm grass.

Seeing us dismounted, the gipsies underwent a subtle mental change
peculiar to all barbarous people. To the gipsy and the cossack,
and all people mainly dependent on the horse, to be mounted is to
signify participation in affairs. To be dismounted means to stand
aside and "let George do it."

Gregor Jhaere became a different man. He grew noisy and in response