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In an hour all the stars shine brightly from the velvety, blue-black sky, the soft-scented air wafts in through open tent-flaps, lights are out, and all is quiet in the camp, except for the periodical changing of pickets and the occasional roar of a passing train in the distance.
A bugler, however, riding into the middle of the settlement, sounded a trumpet call, and at the unwonted notes frowsy, ill-shaped heads appeared at various shanty doors and tent-flaps to see what was doing. Stanley sent one man from door to door to notify the inmates of each shelter to pack up their effects and make ready to move without delay.
Late that night Del arrived in camp on Eldorado exhausted but jubilant. "Didn't do a thing to him," he cried before he was half inside the tent-flaps. Then he collapsed upon the blankets and fell to rubbing his stiff leg-muscles while Corliss fried bacon and dished up the beans. "What about 'm?" he exulted between mouthfuls.
You watch the sky with a lover's look, eager to know whether it will smile or frown. When you lie at night upon your bed of boughs and hear the rain pattering on the canvas close above your head, you wonder whether it is a long storm or only a shower. The rising wind shakes the tent-flaps. Are the pegs well driven down and the cords firmly fastened?
The tent-flaps of Brown Mink's lodge were lifted. He was caught in a mad onrush; he was howled at; spat upon. Finally, a bruised, exiled traitor, more despised, if possible, than before, he fled skulking away. And here was no hope for his honour!
And they look upon all men, bold-eyed and shameless, and their tongues are unclean, and their hearts bad. Wherefore are thy women without honor among us. As for the boys, they are but boys. And the men; how should they know?" The tent-flaps were poked aside and an old man came in. He grunted to Frona and sat down. Only a certain eager alertness showed the delight he took in her presence.
At Carlton and at Fort Pitt the fur-traders' 'string band' husky-dogs in wolfish packs surrounded the camp of the Overlanders and stole pemmican from under the tent-flaps. From Fort Pitt westward the trail crossed a rough, wooded country, and there were no more scows to take the ox-carts across the rivers.
They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise.
The Fallaheen having taken their families home, our tent-flaps were up, and only the stars looked in stars swarming like fireflies in the blue cup of a hanging flower; but Anthony would speak of nothing more intimate than the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, or his tiresome sheikh's tomb.
Day after day I sought him soon after dawn when they were rolling up the tent-flaps. I shared the curry and chapatties that a trooper brought to him at noon, and I fetched water for him to drink from time to time. It was dusk each day before I left him, so that, what with his patience and my diligence, I have been able to set down the story as he told it, nearly in his own words.
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