She, the waif and
stray of a dissolute camp, knew better than the scion of his own race
how the doomed man would choose the vindication of his honor before the
rescue of his life. He laid his hand on her as she moved.
"Stay!--stay! One word----"
She flung him off her again.
"This is no time for words. Go to him--coward!--and let the balls that
kill him reach you too, if you have one trait of manhood left in you!"
Then, swiftly as a swallow darts, she quitted him and flew on her
headlong way, down through the pressure of the people, and the throngs
of the marts, and the noise, and the color, and the movement of the
streets.
The sun was scarce declined from its noon before she rode out of the
city, on a half-bred horse of the Spahis, swift as the antelope and as
wild, with her only equipment some pistols in her holsters, and a bag of
rice and a skin of water slung at her saddle-bow.
They asked her where she went; she never answered. The hoofs struck
sharp echoes out of the rugged stones, and the people were scattered
like chaff as she went at full gallop down through Algiers. Her
comrades, used to see her ever with some song in the air and some laugh
on the lips as she went, looked after her with wonder as she passed
them, silent, and with her face white and stern as though the bright,
brown loveliness of it had been changed to alabaster.
"What is it with the Cigarette?" they asked each other. None could tell;
the desert horse and his rider flew by them as a swallow flies.
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