Anxious, panting, exhausted, she made her way back to camp, hastening with feverish step over the hot sand, and carrying on her back her still-sleeping baby, wrapped in a piece of blue cloth.
The first person she met was the Mussulman, Nyaor-fall, the black spahi, who, as she approached, looked at her gravely, telling the beads of his long Maghreb rosary.
In the language of the country, she jerked out the words,
“Where is he?”
With a restrained gesture, Nyaor stretched his arm towards the south of Diambour, the open plains of Dialakar.
“Yonder!” ... said he. “He has gained Paradise.” ...
XXVIII
All day long Fatou-gaye traversed with feverish step thickets and sand, still carrying her sleeping baby on her back. She went to and fro, sometimes breaking into a run, with the distracted movements of a pantheress that has lost her young. Ever she pursued her search under the burning sun, exploring the thickets, groping in the thorny brushwood.
About three in the afternoon, as she was crossing an arid plain, she caught sight of a dead horse, then of a red jacket, then another, and yet another.... It was the scene of the defeat. It was there that the spahis had fallen....