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After passing the adobe building, garrisoned last night, but now empty, we advanced with great care, our leader taking often the precaution to dismount and peer with bared head over the cactus-hedge which crowned the right-hand bank of the road and shut us in on that side completely.
A couple of jackals slunk furtively across the road ahead of us in the dusk. A kafila of long-necked camels undulated over the plain. The shadows fell more heavily over cactus-hedge and olive-orchard as we turned down the hill. In the valley night had come.
The same thought crossed their minds the abandoned mine at the roadside! Bananas, oranges, and prickly-pears growing within the cactus-hedge of the chapel partly mollified their thirst and hunger, and they turned their steps towards the long, rambling, barrack-looking building, with its low windows and red-tiled roof, which they had first noticed.
Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens' house to borrow last week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house from the back. As she passed through the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying,
We found the riflemen drawn up in the road, protected by the raised side-bank and cactus-hedge from an enemy concealed amongst some trees and bushes, a little distance to the right of the road in front. Above the trees, within pistol-shot, was visible the red roof of a church which stood on the plaza of Obraja, where were barricaded, as they said, over a thousand greaser soldiers.
They told it thus: A detached party, of about thirty of them, were seated on the roadside drinking aguardiente, preparatory to advancing. On one side was a cactus-hedge, and a grove of plantain a little in front.
On his way to the hotel he saw the daughter of Mîtri throwing crumbs to the church pigeons, and blew a kiss to her with words of love, only to laugh loud when, picking up a stone, she cursed his father. At the entering-in of the town he was accosted by Elias, who sprang suddenly from the shade of a cactus-hedge. Yuhanna followed, yawning. It was clear that they had been lying in wait.
Not that she had waited to attain her present age before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of a family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a crowded bathing tent.
At every turn of the road he repeated his reconnoissance, so that our advance was very slow, giving a watchful enemy almost time to place an ambush, if they had none ready prepared. It was as sweet a place for a trap as greaser's heart could wish. On our right was the impenetrable cactus-hedge, with an open space beyond, terminated at the distance of a few yards by a wood or plantain-patch.
God, I think sometimes, has planted about you and me, my child, a cactus-hedge of ugliness, that we might be so near and so lonely as to learn love as few have learned it in this world love without fear, or doubt, or pain, or anxiety with constant satisfaction in presence, and calm content in absence.
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