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"All right!" said he; "will ten o'clock do?" "Could not be better!" "Very good! So at ten the next morning we looked in at the Palazzo Ximenes, and in about ten minutes the business was done! Of Mr. Robbins, who was as kind and good a little man as could be, I may note, since I have been led to speak of him, the following rather singular circumstance.
It happened that the very next day Kit decided that it was high time to garner in the crabapple crop and start making jelly. The best trees around Greenacres were up on the old Cynthy Allen place. While the house had burned down the year before, still Cynthy's fruit trees were famous all over Gilead and Mr. Robbins had bought up the crop in advance from her.
"We're in fo' a siege," Kid Wolf told the elder Robbins. "Maybe we'd better give in to 'em," said the other. Kid Wolf smiled and shook his head. "That wouldn't save us. They'd butchah us, anyway. Nevah yuh worry. Before they get us, they'll find that The Wolf, from Texas, has teeth!" "Then we'll play out the hand," agreed Robbins. "To the last cahd," Kid Wolf drawled.
"Call me 'Kid," said the Texan, flashing him a smile. "We'll save yo' fathah and the men in the stage if we can. Anyway, we'll make it hot fo' those Apaches." After a few minutes of fast going, they could hear the faint crackling of gunfire ahead of them, carried on the torrid wind. Robbins brightened, for this meant that some survivors still remained on their feet.
Thither went Robbins and Dumars, and were admitted through the narrow doorway in the blank stone wall that frowned upon Bonhomme Street. An old woman was sweeping the chapel. She told them that Sister Félicité, the head of the order, was then at prayer at the altar in the alcove. In a few moments she would emerge. Heavy, black curtains screened the alcove. They waited.
Robbins looked down at the eager, troubled face, and there was a note of understanding sympathy in her voice, as she said: "You're my only restless spirit, Kit, always reaching out after the mighty, real things of life, where Jean and Helen follow hopes and dreams. Realities are very hard to face sometimes even when we find them." "Yes, I know," Kit said, shortly.
"They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a carriage and be drawn by prominent citizens and some of the city aldermen to the armory, but he stuck to his company and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with flags and audiences, and everybody hollered 'Robbins! or 'Hello, Willie! as we marched up in files of fours.
"Here I am, sir," answered Robbins for my words had thrilled through the little craft like an electric shock, and already the watch below were scrambling up through the hatchway, carrying their clothing in their hands, in their eagerness to get a glimpse of the newly discovered boat.
Robbins nodded to each other imperceptibly. The cake was not iced with those fine devices which usually make a wedding-loaf, it was rather dry, and not particularly rich; but Mrs. Maxwell's perfect manner as she cut and served it, her acting on her own little histrionic stage, had swayed them to her will. Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Robbins both thought she knew.
Captain Robbins and Kite, both athletic, active men, resembled spectres, their eyes standing out of their heads as if thrust from their sockets by some internal foe; and when we spoke to them, they all seemed unable to answer. It was not fasting, or want of food, that had reduced them to this state, so much as want of water.
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