Chapter XI: A Sacred Trust

His eyes had grown accustomed to the glare of the beautiful sands, but his sense of beauty was never satisfied with looking at the desert picture and drinking in the glory and the loveliness of the melancholy waste. Standing in the door of his tent in fatigue uniform, he said to Pitchouné:

"I could be perfectly happy here if I were not alone."

Pitchouné barked. He had not grown accustomed to the desert. He hated it. It slipped away from under his little feet; he could not run on it with any comfort. He spent his days idly in his master's tent or royally perched on a camel, crouching close to Sabron's man servant when they went on caravan explorations.

"Yes," said Sabron, "if I were not alone. I don't mean you, _mon vieux_. You are a great deal, but you really don't count, you know."

Before his eyes the sands were as pink as countless rose leaves. To Sabron they were as fragrant as flowers. The peculiar incense-like odor that hovers above the desert when the sun declines was to him the most delicious thing he had ever inhaled. All the west was as red as fire. The day had been hot and there came up the cool breeze that would give them a delicious night. Overhead, one by one, he watched the blossoming out of the great stars; each one hung above his lonely tent like a bridal flower in a veil of blue. On all sides, like white petals on the desert face, were the tents of his men and his officers, and from the encampment came the hum of military life, yet the silence to him was profound. He had only to order his stallion saddled and to ride away for a little distance in order to be alone with the absolute stillness.

This he often did and took his thoughts with him and came back to his tent more conscious of his solitude every night of his life.

There had been much looting of caravans in the region by brigands, and his business was that of sentinel for the commerce of the plains. Thieving and rapacious tribes were under his eye and his care. To-night, as he stood looking toward the west into the glow, shading his eyes with his hand, he saw coming toward them what he knew to be a caravan from Algiers. His _ordonnance_ was a native soldier, one of the desert tribes, black as ink, and scarcely more child-like than Brunet and presumably as devoted.

"Mustapha," Sabron ordered, "fetch me out a lounge chair." He spoke in French and pointed, for the man understood imperfectly and Sabron did not yet speak Arabic.

He threw himself down, lighted a fresh cigarette, dragged Pitchouné by the nape of his neck up to his lap, and the two sat watching the caravan slowly grow into individuals of camels and riders and finally mass itself in shadow within some four or five hundred yards of the encampment.

The sentinels and the soldiers began to gather and Sabron saw a single footman making his way toward the camp.

"Go," he said to Mustapha, "and see what message the fellow brings to the regiment."

Mustapha went, and after a little returned, followed by the man himself, a black-bearded, half-naked Bedouin, swathed in dust-colored burnoose and carrying a bag.

He bowed to Captain de Sabron and extended the leather bag. On the outside of the leather there was a ticket pasted, which read:

"The Post for the ---- Squadron of Cavalry--"

Sabron added mentally:

"--_wherever it may happen to be!_"

He ordered bakshish given to the man and sent him off. Then he opened the French mail. He was not more than three hundred miles from Algiers. It had taken him a long time to work down to Dirbal, however, and they had had some hardships. He felt a million miles away. The look of the primitive mail-bag and the knowledge of how far it had traveled to find the people to whom these letters were addressed made his hands reverent as he unfastened the sealed labels. He looked the letters through, returned the bag to Mustapha and sent him off to distribute the post.

Then, for the light was bad, brilliant though the night might be, he went into his tent with his own mail. On his dressing-table was a small illumination consisting of a fat candle set in a glass case. The mosquitoes and flies were thick around it. Pitchouné followed him and lay down on a rush mat by the side of Sabron's military bed, while the soldier read his letter.

"Monsieur:--

"I regret more than ever that I can not write your language perfectly. But even in my own I could not find any word to express how badly I feel over something which has happened.

"I took the best of care of Pitchouné. I thought I did, but I could not make him happy. He mourned terribly. He refused to eat, and one day I was so careless as to open the door for him and we have never seen him since. As far as I know he has not been found. Your man, Brunet, comes sometimes to see my maid, and he thinks he has been hurt and died in the woods."

Sabron glanced over to the mat where Pitchouné, stretched on his side, his forelegs wide, was breathing tranquilly in the heat.

"We have heard rumors of a little dog who was seen running along the highway, miles from Tarascon, but of course that could not have been Pitchouné."

Sabron nodded. "It was, however, _mon brave_," he said to the terrier.

"Not but what I think his little heart was brave enough and valiant enough to have followed you, but no dog could go so far without a better scent."

Sabron said: "It is one of the regrets of my life that you can not tell us about it. How did you get the scent? How did you follow me?" Pitchouné did not stir, and Sabron's eyes returned to the page.

"I do not think you will ever forgive us. You left us a trust and we did not guard it."

He put the letter down a moment, brushed some of the flies away from the candle and made the wick brighter. Mustapha came in, black as ebony, his woolly head bare. He stood as stiff as a ramrod and as black. In his child-like French he said:

"Monsieur le Lieutenant asks if Monsieur le Capitaine will come to play a game of _carté_ in the mess tent?"

"No," said Sabron, without turning. "Not to-night." He went on with his letter:

"... a sacred trust."

Half aloud he murmured: "I left a very sacred trust at the Château d'Esclignac, Mademoiselle; but as no one knew anything about it there will be no question of guarding it, I dare say."

"... So I write you this letter to tell you about darling Pitchouné. I had grown to love him though he did not like me. I miss him terribly.... My aunt asks me to say that she hopes you had a fine crossing and that you will send us a tiger skin; but I am sure there are no tigers near Algiers. _I_ say..."

And Sabron did not know how long Miss Redmond's pen had hesitated in writing the closing lines:

"... I say I hope you will be successful and that although nothing can take the place of Pitchouné, you will find some one to make the desert less solitary.

"Sincerely yours,
"JULIA REDMOND."

When Sabron had read the letter several times he kissed it fervently and put it in his pocket next his heart.

"That," he said to Pitchouné, making the dog an unusual confidence, "that will keep me less lonely. At the same time it makes me more so. This is a paradox, _mon vieux_, which you can not understand."