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In two hours they reached the town, and Tonty gazed at it with astonishment. He had seen nothing like it in America; large square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest.
His trousers bagged everywhere at knees, seat, and waist. On his stockingless feet were a pair of sun-baked, brick-colored shoes. His ankles were as dark as mahogany. His throat and chest were bare, the skin tanned to leather wherever the sun could work its way through the holes in his garments. From out of this combination of dust and rags shone a pair of piercing black eyes, snapping with fun.
In summer, Long Lake has no great beauty and shrinks, leaving a white saline crust on its wide margin of sun-baked mud, but it is a picturesque stretch of water when the snow melts in spring and the reflections of the birches quiver on the smooth belt along its windward edge. Farther out, the shadows of flying clouds chase each other across the flashing surface.
The Kaffirs had been searched and had returned to their kraal. Pipes were being lit after the evening meal, and a picturesque assembly was grouping itself in an expectant semicircle on the sun-baked turf in front of Miss Musgrave's dwelling. She was usually outside to welcome the first comers, and her absence naturally formed the staple topic of conversation.
His father was dying. John Gallant paced the narrow sun-baked lawn between the porch of his home and the street. Soon, he knew, the door would open and he would be called inside. That would be the end. A sickening feeling of terror gripped him and his heart pounded in his chest. He took a step toward the door, which was really an involuntary movement. No, he couldn't go in there.
"Twenty miles," she said thoughtfully; "twenty miles." And turned the marks under. Sun-baked, deep of rut and straight as the flight of a crow, lay the road that led northeast from the swift, shoally ford of the Missouri to the cattle-camp at Clark's.
How far is it, by the way?" "Ten miles," said Jack, leading the way toward the automobile with its dozing Mexican at the wheel. "Come on." The others followed and were about to climb into the automobile when the rapid hoofbeats of a galloping horse ringing on the sun-baked clay of the street drew their attention, and they paused.
As they descended into the prettily lit-up hall and went out into the garden among the palm trees, the scene was attractive enough to fix any newcomer's eyes; but Frank could see nothing but a long wide stretch of desert country, at the horizon of which were a few palms overshadowing dingy, sun-baked mud buildings, houses formed of the brick made of straw now as in the days when the taskmaster-beaten Israelitish bondmen put up such pitiful plaint.
The beautiful old house looked the same as usual; there were no shutters up, no blinds drawn, in any of the windows, nothing indicated absence on the part of the reigning mistress of the fair domain; and even the dog Plato was comfortably snoozing according to daily custom, on the sun-baked flag-stones in the Tudor court.
I found that we were on what might be termed the right front of the village, which was a tolerably important place, consisting of some two hundred roomy huts, constructed of wattles and sun-baked clay, and thatched with palm leaves. The huts, however, had no interest for me now; it was the scene that was being enacted in the wide, open space in front of the village that riveted my attention.
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