This delighted the Legion, who hate the townsfolk for various and substantial reasons. Raboustel became a hero. He had undoubtedly made his way across the frontier into Morocco. The thing had been done once or twice before by deserters.
After a month had passed this supposition became an assured fact and Raboustel began to suffer the fate of the heroes, kings and captains who had vanished. People began to forget him.
"And you never saw him again?" I said.
"There you are wrong, Monsieur," replied Jacques. "I saw them both. It was this way. Three months or so after he had made his escape, taking the girl with him, an Arab tribe down south began to light matches. That sort of thing spreads and must be put out quickly, or you would soon have the whole of the south on fire, so, one night we got our orders to march. The whole regiment went.
"It was really not much of an affair and we soon dealt with it; what made us swear was not the fighting, for there was scarcely enough fighting to go round, but the distance. The place was very far south, in the region of the sand dunes.
"Does Monsieur know the desert? Many people when they talk of the desert think of sand and nothing but sand, whereas the desert is rock and nothing but rock, till, of course, you reach the sandy patches.
"Well, it was down there, the main fighting was over and we were sending out patrol parties to clean up and hunt for fugitives. I was with one of these parties. One day, about ten kilometres from camp, we sighted a palm tree, and knowing there was water there, we made for it, thinking also to find fugitives.
"It was a dead tree, Monsieur; it had been dead, maybe, six months, and the well source that had fed it was dried up, but we found fugitives.
"Under the withered tree, Monsieur, lay two skeletons, the bones all mixed together, and some rags of cloth; the birds had torn the clothing to get at the bodies that now were skeletons.
"There were also some buttons from a légionnaire's uniform, his belt and buckle, and a woman's comb. I said at once: 'There's Raboustel and his girl, look,' I said; 'it is a légionnaire's bones, and the little bones are those of a girl.'