Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-07-30
AFFAIR IN THE DESERT.

other days, during the attempts of q
laborious conquest, every moment held
danger. Skirmishes were incessant,
real combats were frequent, and each
post of the extreme vanguard had its
romantic episodes, to be related later.
Here Is one of them.
Soft and wavering the wind blew up
off the scorched desert, the air freshened
suddenly, and suddenly the night fell
Like barrier upon the horizon the as
.cending hills gradually took on tints of
gray or lilac; to the right and to the
left stretched the plain of reddish sand,
traversed irregularly by ravines of less
or greater darkness, according to their
depth, and by strange palm groves,
dusty, yellow, sunburned. Twilight is
unknown in Africa: darkness falls there
with a push, Ike curtain, and this
swiftness of change of setting is accent
1lated correspondingly as the dry country
IS reached, in the heart of the desert, in
the unexplored lands. Here, past the
High Plains, beyond Saida, Ain-Seffra,
almost into Morocco, on the borders of
the mysterious Fighig, at the farthest
point whittier the exploring columns
have penetrated, this natural phenom-
enon Is profoundly noticeable; the shades
invade the earth in the briefest moment,
and change and darken it with their
clouds as ink darkens water.
A bugie sounded within the circle of
tents; the horses of the picke5lifted their
heads, and the chas6eurs, Id their wide
Eblouses and trousers of linen, went to
form in line slowly for the evening roll
call. The bugie call, loud and shrill, was
prolonged infinitely, carried by the sono-
roa,s S,rells to the foot of the tranquil
mountains, where the sound died out.
The squadron was formed on the right.
Cabarousse, captain commanding, and
his two heutenants, Peyralte and Vau.
dras, lldrosysy, regarded the maneuver
carelessiy, without uttering a word, with
their arms dropping, and all about, far,
near, above, everywhere, there reigned
silence so great that it seemed religious,
sacred, full of august mysteries.
The roll call was begun. After each
name followed the same brief, monoto-
nous answers, as each day at that hour,
with the apathetic indifference of me-
chanical exertion. The adjutant did not
even pause before passing from one name
10 another.
Present. -esenti -esent!'
"Hanrion?'
No e answered. The adiutant. sur
prised, lifted his gaze from his roll book
and repeated:
"Hanrion?'
Nothing.
"Well! are you deaf, you Hanrion?'
No answer.
A soldier was missing. His compan-
ions of the ranks spread their hands and
gesticulated IN token that they knew
nothing, comprehended nothing. Caba-
rousse came forward.
! LET us seeI Who was the last man
to see Hanrion? Where was it? When
was it2 Speak up now!"
In the morning, at roll call; none had
seen him since.
"Finish the roll call! Break-ranks!'
| So there was soldier missing. In the
neighborhood of city, Cabarousse would
have shrugged his shoulders, saying sim
ply: "a hair thrown to the winds!7 but
here In this complete solitude, twenty
leagues from the last advanced post, an
absent man might IS well be counted
dead at once. And in a squadron alone
there, isolated, lost, and entirely depen-
dent upon itself, call without response
was enough to chill the boldest. In the
desert, ranks are inevitably narrowed, |
and individualities are allied; no one is
unknown, all are comrades, and one of /
these comrades had disappeared. In
every group, whether the sleeves were |
blank or braided, that disappearance was
discussed passionately, with the instinc- |
tive horror of the Thoughtful it were |
II For human selfishness is never lost |
completely; all solidarity rests on per-
sonal considerations.
The country here was not. however,
openly dangerous, not avowedly hostile;
the bands OF nomad Arabs had been re-
pulsed, driven back to the mountains,
and only Kabyle village had its nuts a
short distance away, But the Kabyles
are sedentary, of lazy habits, and they
regard with indifference the foreign
troops detiling past them in clouds of
golden dust, and strike not, unless they
are attacked i'll their own dwellings, IN
der their roofs of mud and stone.
And yet. nevertheless. Cabarousse, sus-
picious, twisting his mustacheS, looked
obs;inately to that side where lay the
Kabyle village. There, he was con-
WINGED. lay the solution of the mystery.
Suddenly he strobe toward the groups
of soldiers.
"Here! LET US see about this! no more
trihing! Does any one know ANYTHING?
there must be q woman in this business
"a Kabyle woman, eh? Answer-one
or another, or all at once! But answer!
Or else"-
"a woman-or moro than onei it is
the same thing" let slip a soldier, shak-
ing his head knowingly.
''Here, you! come forward, and tell
what you know"
The soldier advanced and spoke out,
finally. He was a barracks gossip, a
Bwaggerer, and he spoke after his kind.
s'Well, this is about it, my captain; one
Is not made of wood, you see, and the
desert is wide, and six months is long
time. 1t is very hard-not TO see a
woman for that long" Then he went
on to say that the Kabyie girls were
wont to go to wash their bright colored |
-, 49, ,,n Of -r,,,,. /