“By jiminy, I hit him,” cried the lad, as he saw the little creature roll over and over in the sand.
He ran up to it. The shot had been well placed and the gazelle had died without pain and without a struggle.
“Yes, yes, good shooting,” said Antoine, as he came up. “Good horns, too.”
There was regret as well as triumph in the boy’s glance as he looked down at the graceful, slender creature, which a moment before had been full of life. But he was no sentimentalist and recognized the difference between shooting for a definite purpose and wanton slaughter.
Short though the digression had been, it had led Antoine and Perry a little distance from their course, and had taken up time. Perry’s camel, too, had gone on walking without his rider and had to be overtaken and turned. The ground skirting the edge of the lake, was rougher, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon.
“We’d better hurry,” said Antoine, after he had helped Perry to secure the little gazelle on the camel saddle beside him, “I don’t know this country well enough to travel in the dark.”
“But it doesn’t really get dark,” said the boy, remembering his night before the Sphinx with the artist, “one could almost read by the stars here, they’re so bright.”
“You think so,” was the other’s reply. “But I’ve tried finding desert trails before. How about it, Perry; are you feeling all right?”
“Fine,” answered the boy, “if my back didn’t hurt so. You know, Antoine, when I fired, the kick of the rifle made me think I’d got the bullet in my own spine, it gave such a jolt.”
“You’ve only got one more day’s riding,” his friend assured him, as he walked over to his kneeling camel, “and on the way home you’ll be toughened up a bit.”