Fighting stock were Payindah’s folk. Of the five brothers three were buried on different fronts. Another--crippled from a shell wound--helped the old white-bearded grandfather, with the string of early frontier campaign ribbons, to run the family acres in the Salt Range that their folk had held since time immemorial. However, I was really talking about Firoz. After we had finished our meal, and Payindah was clearing away, Firoz came and started on the subject of the cook. He lamented that he had not had the presence of mind to tie the low-born, self-styled Mussulman--might his face be blackened for all time--to a camel-saddle that night after he had drawn his money. After a lot of talk he got down to the real business--namely, that, until we could get a decent cook, he would feed us, and appealed to Payindah for support in the suggestion. “Without doubt, sahibs,” said Payindah, “Firoz is a cook of the best after the manner of our folk. It is better that the sahibs should eat decent Punjabi food cleanly cooked by a person of repute than shorten their days by that which one of these half heathen--such as might be got for a price in the bazaars--would prepare.” “Even so,” chorused Firoz; “and although I know not the ‘side dishes’ and the ‘first-carses’ of the sahibs, still I can cook good _pillaus_ and _kababs_ such as the sahibs have in mess sometimes. Also my _chupattis_ will be far better than the bread that son of perdition used to make, such that Wrexham sahib once broke a knife cutting it.” This last remark was true, and the resultant disturbance may have been one of the causes of the cook’s going. Anyway, we heartily agreed that a turn of Punjabi cuisine by Firoz could not be worse and might be far better than what we had suffered at our late cook’s hands. And so it proved once we had broken him of the habit of smothering things in oil. This disappearance of the cook was in one way a blessing, as it was one less mouth for our expedition across the desert. We were anxious not to take any of the local people with us, since, if we found anything worth having, we wished rather to keep the knowledge to ourselves. We had bought our own camels at Yarkand so as to render us independent. The only local man we kept on continuously was a Turki camel-driver. Since the country we were going into was quite unknown, there was nothing to be gained from the knowledge the local people possessed. Hence we had simply hired extra men for a few stages at a time, replacing them by others as we went along.