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Updated: May 12, 2025
All around was stone and scrub, rising in terraces to the foot of sheer cliffs which opened up here and there in nullahs and gave a glimpse of great snow hills behind them. On one of the flat ridge-tops a little village of stunted, slaty houses squatted like an ape, with a vigilant eye on twenty gorges.
Here Norton's Abyssinian tubes, sunk in the bed after it has been carefully worked by the steam-navvy for the rich alluvium underlying the surface, would act like pumps, and dams would form huge tanks. Nor would there be any difficulty in making reservoirs upon the ridge-tops, with launders, or gutters, to collect the rain.
As evening came, brushing a glory of red from the sky, the wind quickened, instead of lulling, and fetched up clouds that rested on the ridge-tops and roofed the wide valley. Through these not a star showed. But now and then, for an instant, the post sprang into sight out of the blackness to the weird play of the heat-lightning.
Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable.
"Don't be so plumb fancy," advised Alfred, "but turn in and help." He was satisfied with the present state of affairs, and was hacking at the frozen ground with his knife. The light snow on the ridge-tops had been almost entirely drifted away. The stranger obeyed. On seeing the men thus employed, the Indians turned their horses directly toward the group and charged in.
The white men knew it perfectly well, so they set conscientiously to work with their handful of cartridges to convince the reds that it is not healthy to crawl along ridge-tops on an autumn day. Sundry outlying Indians, with ammunition to waste, took belly and knee rests and strengthened the thesis to the contrary. The brisk fighting had warmed the contestants' blood.
Prussian Guards were on the ridge-tops across the valley, and behind the Germans ran the Decauville Railroad the artery for supplies to a salient still further to the north which the Germans were striving desperately to hold. The second phase of the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne was on.
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