"`Bon,' I say, `me, I make my excuse to retire.'
"Then Henri Beck he laugh and he say, `Hop it, frog!' And that is all he has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it — tenez, mon capitaine — here, over the left eye! … Like a beef surprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his big lungs——"
Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in sort of weary compassion for such stupidity.
"— So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull. … me, I roll him in there. … Je ne sais pas pourquoi. … Then I put out the fire and leave."
Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the head a moment, and his thin lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.
Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
Fry boy.
"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien'
Beck. Bien."
He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his ammunition belt en bandouliere, carelessly.
Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Done — I shall no go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."
Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.