230 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



get a drink of water, some Turkoman came up, 

 and when D. returned he found his shikari shiver- 

 ing in their midst. The Turkoman, however, 

 placated by the meat, showed themselves friendly, 

 and allowed D. and his man to depart in peace 

 with the skull and skin. The latter was the 

 shikari's perquisite, and he must have felt him- 

 self in luck's way that night, as he had certainly 

 not expected to escape with his own skin, let 

 alone the stag's. 



D. had by now shot three very good stags, while 

 the only really good beast I had seen had escaped 

 me as already related ; so as D. wanted more 

 sheep and also a gazelle or two from the plain 

 below Karatikan, we temporarily separated, and 

 I went on to some forest the other side of the 

 Gurgan gorge. Here I was glad to pick up two 

 shikaris from Husseinabad I met them while 

 still hunting in the forest, and they nearly shot 

 me in mistake for Turkoman ! These men were 

 better hunters than the Kurds from Zard. One 

 of them, a little wizened old chap in a tattered 

 blue robe and a skull-cap made from the spotted 

 hide of a roebuck that looked like nature's own 

 covering, was a proficient on the instrument known 

 as a gaokal, a bit of ibex horn used to call 

 stags with. A maral's roar, by the way, is really 

 much more like the bellow of a domestic ox than 



