"I could be perfectly happy here if I were not alone."
Pitchouné barked. He had not grown accustomed to the desert. He hated it. It slipped away from under his little feet; he could not run on it with any comfort. He spent his days idly in his master's tent or royally perched on a camel, crouching close to Sabron's man servant when they went on caravan explorations.
"Yes," said Sabron, "if I were not alone. I don't mean you, mon vieux. You are a great deal, but you really don't count, you know."
Before his eyes the sands were as pink as countless rose leaves. To Sabron they were as fragrant as flowers. The peculiar incense-like odor that hovers above the desert when the sun declines was to him the most delicious thing he had ever inhaled. All the west was as red as fire. The day had been hot and there came up the cool breeze that would give them a delicious night. Overhead, one by one, he watched the blossoming out of the great stars; each one hung above his lonely tent like a bridal flower in a veil of blue. On all sides, like white petals on the desert face, were the tents of his men and his officers, and from the encampment came the hum of military life, yet the silence to him was profound. He had only to order his stallion saddled and to ride away for a little distance in order to be alone with the absolute stillness.
This he often did and took his thoughts with him and came back to his tent more conscious of his solitude every night of his life.
There had been much looting of caravans in the region by brigands, and his business was that of sentinel for the commerce of the plains. Thieving and rapacious tribes were under his eye and his care. To-night, as he stood looking toward the west into the glow, shading his eyes with his hand, he saw coming toward them what he knew to be a caravan from Algiers. His ordonnance was a native soldier, one of the desert tribes, black as ink, and scarcely more child-like than Brunet and presumably as devoted.
"Mustapha," Sabron ordered, "fetch me out a lounge chair." He spoke in French and pointed, for the man understood imperfectly and Sabron did not yet speak Arabic.
He threw himself down, lighted a fresh cigarette, dragged Pitchouné by the nape of his neck up to his lap, and the two sat watching the caravan slowly grow into individuals of camels and riders and finally mass itself in shadow within some four or five hundred yards of the encampment.
The sentinels and the soldiers began to gather and Sabron saw a single footman making his way toward the camp.
"Go," he said to Mustapha, "and see what message the fellow brings to the regiment."