The Redwood gazette., 1901-06-12
Cigarette blew a scontemptuous pun

Cigarette blew q scontemptuous pun
OF smoke.
here vas never one vet that did
not growl! If they don't use their
tusks, they sit and suIk An. English
man is always boxing or grumbling.
| The two make up his life
Which view she had derived from q
profound study of various vaudevilles,
and. having delivered it, she sprang
down from her wall, strapped on her
little barrel, nodded to her big babies,
where they lounged full length in the
shadow of the stone wall, and left
them to resume their game at Doc
while she started on her way singing.
Hers was flashing. dauntless, viva
cious life, just in its youth, loving plum.
der and mischief and mirth, caring
for nothing and always ready with a
laugh, song, a slang repartee or
shot from the dainty pistols thrust in
her sash that general of division had
given her. whichever best suited the
moment.
Her mother camp follower, her fa-
ther nobody knew who, spoiled child
OF the army from her birth, with
heart as bronZed as her cheek. yet with
odd, stray, nature sown instincts here
and there OF devil may care nobility
and Of wild grace that nothing could
kill, Cigarette was the pet ef the army
of Africa and was as lawless as most
of her patrons.
She would eat succulent duck,
thinking it all the spicier because it
had been soldiers loot; she would
wear the gold plunder off dead Arabs
dress and never have pang of con-
science with it; she would dance all
night long, when she had chance, like
little Bacchante; she would shoot
man. if need be, with all the noncha-
lance in the world. She had had
thousand lovers, from handsome mar
quises of the guides to tawny, black
broWed scoundrels in the zouaves, and
she had never loved anything except
the roll of the drum and the sight of
her own arch, defiant face, with its
scarlet lips and its short jetty hair.
when she saw it by chance in some
FURNISHED cuirass that served her for a
mirror.
Away she went, now singing down
the crooked windings and over the
ruined gardens of the old Moorish quar-
ter Of the Cashbah the hilts of the tiny
pistols glancing in the sun and the
fierce fire of the burning sunlight pour
ing down unheeded on the brave. bright
hawk eyes that had never since they
first opened to the world dropped or
dimmed for the rays of. the sun or the
gaze Of a lover, for the menace of death
or the presence of war. s.~-s-1sE-::Fsss -:ssss~-
OF course she was a little amazon:
of course she was little guerrilla; of
course she did not know what blush
meant; of course her thoughts were as
riotous as her mutinous mischief was
dier, as she was given to say. with a
toss of her curly head. and she had
some of the virtues of soldiers. Sol
diers had been about her ever since
she first remembered having a wooden
casserole for a cradle and sucking
down red wine through pipestem.
Soldiers had been her books. her teach
ers. her models. her guardians and.
later on, her lovers, all the days Of
her life. She had no guiding star ex-
cept the eagles on the standards; she
had no cradle song except the rata
| plan and the reveille: she had no sense
of duty taught her except to face fire
L 1u& f,0 do
| to worship two deities. Glory and
| France"
Yet there were tales told in the bar
| rack yards and under canvas of the
little Friend of the Flag that had a
gentler side; of how softly she would
touch the wounded: of how deftly she
would cure them: of how carelessly
| she would dash through under raking
! fire to take draft of water to a
dying man: of how she had sat by an
! old grenadier's death couch to sing to
him. refusing to stir although it was a
fete at Chalons and she loves fetes as
only a French girl can: of how she
! her mother. so long as that mother
lived. a brutal, drunken, vile tongued
old woman who had beaten her often
times as the sole maternal attention,
| when she was but an. infant Her
own sex would have seen no good in
| her but her comrades at arms could
and did. OF a surety. she missed vir-
tues that women prize: but not less
| OF a surety had she caught some that
| they miss.
| Singing her refrain. on she dashed
| now. and. like a chamois. she Ieaped
down over the great masses of Turkish
| ruins. cleared the channel of a dry
water course and alighted just in front
| of a Chasseur d'Afrique who was sit
! ting alone on broken fragment of
| white marble. relic of some. Moorish
| mosque. He was bronzed. but scarcely
looked SO after the red. brown and
black OF the zouaves and the turco.
for his skin was naturally very fair,
u a