“For God’s sake, Red, wake up!”
“Dances at the—”
“Red! Red Roane! I’m here, boy!”
Out from the way, whence we had come, faintly I heard a cry. Who wept thus for the soul departing, sang paean for the dead? Was it wind over the stagnant grasses? Frail in the solitude, rose that wail again. The whimper of new-born life! In the squatter’s hut the child had found its soul!
“Dolores!” whispered Red Roane. Beneath that brazen sky he whispered the name of love. “Dolores!”
Past a hundred miles of swamp, past a hundred miles of sea, did Dolores, the dancer, hear him calling her?
“Dolores!”
I hope she heard, for he was a lad, though wild.
With a throat strangling in sobs, I sang to Red Roane. His eyes were closed, yet he heard me. Old campaign songs, songs of the march and the bivouac. Marchers’ tunes.
Then he whispered for a lullaby, and, last of all, for a drinking song.