Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/341

 away, and they came into a more broken country, winding and twisting between bald and rocky hills, past coffee-farms from which early awakened dogs barked out at them. But the ragged-hooded car raced and pounded forward, taking the sharp curves with a scream of protest, striking with malignant heels at every passing switch-point. Then the light grew stronger; they could see a more orderly and level country studded with rancho and hacienda, and a crooked, sun-baked road, white with dust, and broken walls, and clumps of stunted trees.

Then the girl gave a cry and caught at his arm.

"Guariqui!" she said, pointing toward the northwest. He had no time to look, for at the same moment his own eyes had caught sight of something which filled him with an even more compelling emotion.

Before the rocky hill-crests toward which they were sweeping, he caught sight of a row of smoke columns and the serried white splashes of tent walls against the yellow-gray of the parched fields. He leaped to his feet as he saw it. He surrendered the lever recklessly, and turned and struggled with one of the cartridge-boxes on the row behind them. He pulled and tugged and worked it quickly forward, to heighten the barricade on the right-hand side