thus from the stores.

Cigarette uncovered her head with a certain serious grace very rare in
her.

"Biribi had made a good end."

Her assailants grew very quiet.

"Shot?" they asked briefly. Biribi was a Tringlo well beloved in all the
battalions.

Cigarette nodded, with a gesture outward to the solitary country. She
was accustomed to these incidents of war; she thought of them no more
than a girl of civilized life thinks of the grouse or the partridges
that are killed by her lovers and brothers.

"I was out yonder, two leagues or more away. I was riding; I was on my
own horse; Etoile-Filante. Well I heard shots; of course I made for the
place by my ear. Before I got up I saw what was the mischief. There
were the mules in a gorge, and Biribi in front of them, fighting, mon
Dieu!--fighting like the devil--with three Arbis on him. They were
trying to stop the convoys, and Biribi was beating them back with all
his might. I was too far off to do much good; but I shouted and dashed
down to them. The Arbis heard, Biribi heard; he flew on to them like a
tiger, that little Tringlo. It was wonderful! Two fell dead under him;
the third took fright and fled. When I got up, Biribi lay above the dead
brutes with a dozen wounds in him, if there were one. He looked up, and
knew me. 'Is it thee, Cigarette?' he asked; and he could hardly speak
for the blood in his throat. 'Do not wait with me; I am dead already.
Drive the mules into camp as quick as thou canst; the men will be
thinking me late.'"

"Biribi was always bon enfant," muttered the listening throng; they
forgot their hunger as they heard.

"Ah! he thought more of you than you deserve, you jackals! I drew him
aside into a hole in the rocks out of the heat. He was dead; he was
right. No man could live, slashed about like that. The Arbicos had set
on him as he went singing along; if he would have given up the brutes
and the stores, they would not have harmed him; but that was not Biribi.
I did all I could for him. Dame! It was no good. He lay very still
for some minutes with his head on my lap; then he moved restlessly and
tossed about. 'They will think me so late--so late,' he muttered; 'and
they are famished by this. There is that letter, too, from his mother
for Petit-Pot-de-Terre; there is all that news from France; I have so
much for them, and I shall be so late--so late!' All he thought was that
he should be so late into camp. Well, it was all over very soon. I d