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Page 101
"A man--a hand----" Arlee gasped incoherently.
"Good Lord, what is it?" said a voice so near at hand that both were
startled.
"Burroughs!" ejaculated Billy. "Is it you--Burroughs?"
"Yes, it's I, Burroughs," the owner of the voice retorted irritably.
"And who the deuce are you?"
"Hill--Billy B. Hill," came the jubilant answer, and "Billy be
damned!" said the astonished voice, with sudden joviality, and a
dark shape strode up to them. "What on earth are you doing here? And
what about that firing? Think I was a robber bold?"
"Well, there are three robber sneaks outside that we are hiding
from, so I wasn't sure.... Great C�sar, old scout, but I'm glad to
see you! That puts us out of the woods at last.... It's the
excavator friend," he added, turning to Arlee. "Burroughs, I present
you to Miss Beecher. She and I have been having a thoroughly
impossible adventure."
"Let's have a little light upon these introductions," returned the
excavator, and a click was heard, and a light jumped out overhead,
flooding the tunnel-like place with brightness. In its beams the
three stood staring queerly at each other.
Arlee saw a slim, wiry young American, in rough khaki clothes
stained with work, a browned, unshaven young man with sleepy looking
eyes and a mouth like a steel trap.
What the excavator saw was more surprising. There was his friend
Billy, whom two weeks before he had seen off on a Nile steamer
returning to Cairo, in tropic splendor of white serge and Panama
hat, now a scarlet spectacle of sunburn and dirt, in most
disgraceful tweeds, and beside him what Burroughs took to be a child
in tatterdemalion white, a silky, fluttering white, which even his
untrained observation knew was hardly elected for desert wear. The
little girl's hair was hanging tangled over her shoulders, and was
much the color of the sand with which her face was coated, and
underneath that coating he saw that she was red as a peony with sun
and wind. They were a startling pair.
Gravely, with unchanging eyes, he acknowledged the introduction, and
then, "What's this about robbers?" he went on. "What kind of a yarn
are you putting over?"
"Nothing I want put over on the general public." Billy was thinking
very hard. "You're going to be our salvation, Burroughs, but even to
you--well, I'll put it briefly. We were having a desert ride and
some Turkish fellows who have annoyed her before chased us. There
are our camels, just outside. And you can see one of the fellows on
horseback keeping watch. The others are somewhere about.... And now,
for heaven's sake, get us a drink of water."
Burroughs walked to the door of the tomb and looked out an instant,
then he turned and went toward the back, returning with a small
native jar full of water.
"I've no glass, but if you can manage this----?" he said to Arlee,
and she clutched the cool pottery with two hot little hands and,
murmuring a quick affirmative, she put it to her lips.
Then she held it out to Billy.
"I suppose--we mustn't---drink as much as we want."
"I couldn't," said Billy, after a grateful swallowing. "I'd drain
the Nile.... Got a camp here?"
"Yes. You'd have seen my men any other time of day, but we knocked
off a while out of the sun," Burroughs explained. "I've rigged up
this tomb as living quarters while I'm here. Now what do you want me
to do? Would you like a guard?"
"We'd like a guard and a bath and cold cream," said Billy joyfully.
"And then we'd like dinner and donkeys."
Burroughs grunted.
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