If there were none, the horse must drop down to die,
and with his life the other life would perish as surely as the sun would
rise.
Her gaze, straining through the darkness, broken here and there by
fitful gleams of moonlight, caught sight in the distance of some yet
darker thing, moving rapidly--a large cloud skimming the earth. She let
the horse, which had paused the instant the bridle had touched his neck,
stand still a while, and kept her eyes fixed on the advancing cloud
till, with the marvelous surety of her desert-trained vision, she
disentangled it from the floating mists and wavering shadows and
recognized it, as it was, a band of Arabs.
If she turned eastward out of her route, the failing strength of her
horse would be fully enough to take her into safety from their pursuit,
or even from their perception, for they were coming straightly and
swiftly across the plain. If she were seen by them, she was certain
of her fate; they could only be the desperate remnant of the decimated
tribes, the foraging raiders of starving and desperate men, hunted
from refuge to refuge, and carrying fire and sword in their vengeance
wherever an unprotected caravan or a defenseless settlement gave them
the power of plunder and of slaughter, that spared neither age nor sex.
She was known throughout the length and the breadth of the land to the
Arabs; she was neither child nor woman to them; she was but the soldier
who had brought up the French reserve at Zaraila; she was but the foe
who had seen them defeated, and ridden down with her comrades in their
pursuit in twice a score of vanquished, bitter, intolerably shameful
days.
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