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Then I rode at a gallop, disregarding the venomous dervishes hanging about, up the slopes of Surgham, where, spread like a picture, the scene lay before me. Prompt in execution, the Sirdar rapidly issued orders for the artillery and Maxims to open fire upon the Khalifa's big column. Eagerly he watched the batteries coming into action.
At first she was more than content to be so isolated. Her practical life occupied little of her time; only a daily, and always unexpected, dash up the slopes to see that her men were not shirking their duties, and a weekly trip to Rosewater with her produce: she used her own incubators in bad weather.
"Lots of deer under the rim," declared Copple, his eyes gleaming. "They're feedin' on acorns. Here's where you'll get your big buck." After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush. Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes toward a great level bench covered with pines.
For some miles past the hills had grown higher and higher upon either side, the valley floor narrower, the torrent less abundant; there now stood up before me the marshy slopes and the enormous forests of pine that forbid a passage south.
The mountains wall it in, and you don't get the fierce winds off the Columbia desert. The snow never drifts; it lies flat as a carpet all winter. And we don't have late frosts; never have to stay up all night watching smudge pots to keep the trees warm. And those steep slopes catch the early spring sun and cast it off like big reflectors; things start to grow before winter is gone.
Ned no longer had his patient burro, but walked on foot among the Tlascalans. Often he saw General Cos riding ahead on a magnificent white horse. Sometimes the peons stood on the slopes and looked at them but generally they kept far from the marching army. Ned surmised that they had no love of military service. The way was not easy for one on foot. Clouds of dust arose, and stung nose and throat.
He made a field-glass of his hands and looked long and steadily. "You are quite right," he said coolly. "It's my foundry. Can you get back to the hotel alone? If you can, I'll take the short cut down through the woods. Good night, and good-by." And before she could reply, he had lowered himself over the cliff's edge and was crashing through the underbrush on the slopes below.
Far out to the east and west the flankers moved steadily northward, keenly watching the slopes beyond them and scanning the crooked line of the arroyo ahead. Not a sign at the moment could be seen of the painted foe, yet every man in the troop well knew they swarmed by dozens behind the buttes and ridges ahead.
It is based on rows of arches, eighty in number, and rises in four different orders of architecture to a height of about one hundred and sixty feet. The outside of this great edifice was encrusted with marble and decorated with statues. Interiorly its vast slopes presented sixty or eighty rows of marble seats, covered with cushions, and capable of seating more than eighty thousand spectators.
He went through the wood, stumbling and feeling his way to the Mill. Birkin was away. Good he was half glad. He turned up the hill, and stumbled blindly over the wild slopes, having lost the path in the complete darkness. It was boring. Where was he going? No matter. He stumbled on till he came to a path again. Then he went on through another wood. His mind became dark, he went on automatically.
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