“What for? To shake his head? Get no one, or if––for boyish days!––you want to serve me, lend me your canteen.”
Saint-Prosper held it to his lips, and he drank thirstily.
“That was a draught in an oasis. I had the desert in my throat––the desert, the wild desert! What a place to meet! But they caught Abd-el-Kader, and there was nothing for it but to flee! Besides, I am a rolling stone.”
To hear him who had betrayed his country and shed the blood of his comrades, characterize himself by no harsher term was an amazing revelation of the man’s character.
The space around them had become almost deserted; here and there lay figures on the ground among 458 which might be distinguished a sub-lieutenant and other students of the military college, the castle having been both academy and garrison. Their tuition barely over, so early had they given up their lives beneath the classic walls of their alma mater! The exhilarating cheering and shouting had subsided; the sad after-flavor succeeded the lust of conquest.
“Yes,” continued the gunner, though the words came with an effort. “First, it was the desert. What a place to roll and rove! I couldn’t help it for the life of me! When I was a boy I ran away from school; a lad, I ran away from college! If I had been a sailor I would have deserted the ship. After they captured the prophet, I deserted the desert. So, hey for Mexico, a hilly place for a rolling stone!”
He gasped, held his hand to his shoulder and brought it away covered with red. But that Saint-Prosper knelt swiftly, sustaining and supporting him, he would have slid to the ground. He smiled––sweetly enough––on the stern soldier and placed his moist and stained hand caressingly on that of his companion. Seeing them thus, it was not difficult to trace a family likeness––a similarity in their very dissimilarity. The older was younger; the younger, older. The gunner’s hair was light, his face wild as a gerfalcon beneath; the other’s dark, with a countenance, habitually repressed, but now, at the touch of that dishonored hand, grown cold and harsh; yet despite the total difference of expression, the hereditary resemblance could not be stamped out. Even the 459 smile of the wounded man was singularly like that of his brother––a rare transformation that seldom failed to charm.
“That’s my story,” he said, smiling now, as though all the problems of life and death could be thus dismissed. “As the prophet said: ‘I have urged my camel through every desert!’ You see I know my Koran well. But how came you here, Ernest? I thought you were in Africa, colonizing––us!”
“It was impossible to stay there long,” replied Saint-Prosper, slowly.
“There’s that cloud of smoke again,” muttered the wounded man, apparently oblivious to the other’s response. As he spoke he withdrew his hand from that of his brother. At that moment the tropic sun was bathing him in its light and the white walls shone with luster. “No; it’s like the desert; the dark hour before the sand-storm.” Upon his brow the perspiration gathered, but his lip curled half-scornfully, half-defiantly. “Turn me toward the valley, Ernest. There’s more space; more light!”