"Good-by, Scamp!" groaned Byng, estimating rapidly.
"Not yet it ain't!" said Crothers, grabbing Byng's arm and nearly
tearing out the muscles.
It was a crude way of rousing Byng's latent speed, both of thought
and movement, but it worked. Before Joe could swear, even, Crothers
was off like the wind, with Joe after him, using the string of oaths
he had meant for Crothers on the sand that gave under him and made
him stumble at every other stride.
Adra turned out, as a colony of prairie dogs might from planless burrows;
only these had more venom in their bite than prairie dogs and came
from structural instead of natural, from flea-bepeppered instead of
grass-grown dirt. Man, woman and child--the grown men armed, the
women veiled in dirt-brown, some of them, and some (mostly the better-
looking) unveiled and unashamed, the little children mostly naked
and colored with all the human hues there are--raced, yelling, through
a swarm of flies in hot pursuit. Never since Shem's great-grandson
gat the Arab race was there a procession like it.
Pages:
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312