Page:Post--Dwellers in the hills.djvu/284

268 Jud and the Cardinal went by in the middle of the long line and passed out of sight behind a turn of the hill below. The giant rode slowly, lolling in his saddle and swinging his big legs free of the stirrups.

Then the lagging rear of the drove trailed up, and the hunchback followed on the Bay Eagle. He was buttoned to the chin in Roy's blue coat and looked for all the world like some shrivelled old marshal of the empire, a hundred days out of Paris, covering the retreat of the imperial army.

El Mahdi stood on the high bank by the roadside, in among the dead blackberry briers, and I sat with the rein under my legs and my hands in my pockets.

The hunchback stopped his horse in the road below me, squared himself in his saddle, and looked up with a great supercilious grin.

"Well," he said, "I 'll be damn!"

"What 's the trouble?" said I.

"Humph!" he snorted, "are them britches I see on your legs?"

"That 's what they call them," said I.

"Well," said he, "when you git home,