"If Bill were here," she kept on grumbling, "Bill'd find a way!"
And in the darkness that surrounded her she felt that she could see
Bill's face, as she remembered it--red-cheeked and clean-shaven--six
years or more ago.
IX.
The blazing roof of the guardroom lit up even the crossroads for a
while, and Brown and his men could see that for the present there
was a good wide open space between them and the enemy. The firelight
showed a tree not far from the crossroads, and since anything is cover
to men who are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree
with one accord, and without a word from Brown.
"We've all the luck," said Brown. "There's not a detachment of any
other army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!"
He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around
the tree-trunk. Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.
"Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging! Anybody
see the connection?"
There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the
unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him
to the tree-trunk.
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