Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/155

Rh imagine a few hours before. The little dun mule munched dry millet-stalks, and squealed when You Han fetched him water from the temple well.

"I ain't got as much sand left in me as that sawed-off apology fer a mule," groaned the corporal; "an' he's a good deal more of a man than meself."

You Han resumed the march without consulting his lord, which made the deserter writhe anew, but he could say nothing. The cart trailed along the foot of an ancient military wall for several miles, while the man sullenly chewed the cud of bitterness and the boy revolved great things in his unruffled mind. You Han was about to venture on some fragmentary consolation, when the deserter, who was walking a little in advance, balked in his tracks and stood crouched as if he had seen a rattlesnake. The dun mule snorted and fanned his ears like an agitated jack-rabbit. A furlong beyond, the steel ribbons of a railway track cut across the road and vanished in sandy cuttings. Corporal Sweeney looked instinctively for a telegraph line and saw one wire