"I wish that to me came the same certainty of liking," growled Franz Braun, "but, you see, the Herr papa ails, and the verlobte wishes him to the Homeland to take, and I would also go if I could."
A vague alarm showed on Alexander Blooker's face. "And leave me here alone? I'm glad you can't."
The idea, however, stuck in his brain. Supposing he were left alone, what would he do?
After he had arranged everything to his liking for the morrow, this idea of perfect solitude kept him from sleep and he strolled out with a pipe to quiet his nerves in the desert.
What would he do if he were left alone? A curious elation mixed with his natural dread. He walked, and walked, scarcely thinking out the question, only feeling it in that big heart of his. He had instinctively followed the telegraph line himself so as to be sure of not losing his way, but now he started at the sight of a solitary figure before him, visible in the moonlight, advancing to him, and keeping the same bee-line swiftly yet stumblingly, with a pause as for a few seconds' rest at each post. It was someone who was ill, or very, very tired.
A woman, a native woman! He could hear her voice now in her pauses. Always the same words mumbled mechanically over and over again:
"Save me, Queen-of-the-handkerchief.... Save me...."
He knew enough of the language now to understand so much, and he waited, watching her curiously.
Across the last gap she stumbled towards him, gave one surprised look at him, and--with a vague effort at the same words as if he had been a telegraph post--sank down in a dead faint.
She was quite a slip of a girl, and, after a time, she came to herself; but she was so exhausted that it was past grey dawn when Alexander Blooker managed to get her back to the telegraph post in the corner of his compound. And to this she clung pertinaciously, much to his annoyance, for he wanted to get her out of the way, and find who she was, and what she wanted, before the native traders began to turn up.