When they heard this they were frightened, and went away, saying 'Oh! No! No! We do not want that.' They were soon back, and said they wanted four dollars on their food money (four annas a day), 'but not at all unless we wished.' They then acknowledged, before the soldiers, that the _siyar_ was fully paid up, and that Talib had made a mistake about those two dollars that he had obtained for the camels. In the meantime we had been planning to get our most urgently needed things ready to load on the horses and to walk to Sheher, only sixty-five miles--but such miles! However, we knew our enemies had the advantage of knowing the way and the water-places, which we did not, and could climb like monkeys over places where we could not take horses. I am sure we should never have found the way over such mountains, where camels sat down and slid, and we did much the same, sometimes quite involuntarily. Saleh at this time seemed disposed to do his duty. The money (thirty dollars) that had been extorted the day before for _siyar_ to the Hamoumi, who had not yet turned up, and given to the soldiers, was by them put into Saleh's keeping, as he had a box that could be locked. In the night Talib came to Saleh and said: 'Six Hamoumi are here; give me the money for them.' 'Wait till morning,' said Saleh, 'and I will give it you before Mr. Bent, Imam Sharif, and everybody,' but when he offered it to him then, he said, 'No, keep it.' We had gone a little ahead next morning, February 21, Talib, Imam Sharif, and I, with the needful escort, my husband having to ride a camel as his horse's back was sore, and had proceeded an hour on our road when--'Bang!' went a gun high up in the rocks, to our left, near the village of Kouna or Koutna, and 'bang!' went another; so we stopped, and with some hesitation five of the soldiers and some of the Jabberi went forward, getting round behind the shelter of some trees. There were seven men up in the rocks, and a tower in the village was crowded. They constantly fired from both places. The camels soon came up, and we all dismounted and stood together with our animals, Basha, Zubda, and Mahsoud close by. This shooting and parleying went on for half an hour. We thought at first that they would only fire over our heads, but a bullet struck the ground very near us. We could not make out what it was all about. There were so many different suggestions made as to the cause; some said the people of the village wanted to come with us as _siyara_, and some that they wanted to fight the Hamoumi, who had lately taken their camels. Our men shouted, '_Siyara! Siyara!_' and the men on the tower, 'Come no nearer!' 'By my God you shall not come on!' 'We are fighting and we will slay him who dares to stir a step!' Talib said, 'Now we can go neither backward nor forward,' and amazed us by asking for no money.