Sunday, October 28, 2012

Discount Louis Vuitton his face scratched and bleeding

Bones, his face scratched and bleeding, his uniform torn in a dozen places, came swiftly after him.
"My bird, I think," said Bones, and caught the child unscientifically.
Picture Bones with a baby under his arm--a baby indignant, outraged, infernally uncomfortable, and grimacing a yell into being.
"Lord," said M'bisibi, breathing quickly, "what do you seek?"
"That which I have," said Bones, waving him off with the black muzzle of his automatic Colt. "Tomorrow you shall answer for many crimes."
He backed quickly to the cover of the woods, scenting the trouble that was coming.
He heard the old man's roar.
"O people ... this white man will loose devils upon the land!"
Then a throwing spear snicked the trunk of a tree, and another, for there were no soldiers, and this congregation of exorcisers were mad with wrath at the thought of the evil which Tibbetti was preparing for them.
"Snick!"
A spear struck Bones' boot.
"Shut your eyes, baby," said Bones, and fired into the brown. Then he ran for his life. Over roots and fallen trees he fell and stumbled, his tiny passenger yelling desperately.
"Oh, shut up!" snarled Bones, "what the dickens are you shouting about--hey? Haven't I saved your young life, you ungrateful little devil?"
Now and again he would stop to consult his illuminated compass. That the pursuit continued he knew, but he had the dubious satisfaction of knowing, too, that he had left the path and was in the forest.
Then he heard a faint shot, and another, and another, and grinned.
His pursuers had stumbled upon a party of Houssas.
From sheer exhaustion the baby had fallen asleep. Babies were confoundedly heavy--Bones had never observed the fact before, but with the strap of his sword belt he fashioned a sling that relieved him of some of the weight.
He took it easier now, for he knew M'bisibi's men would be frightened off. He rested for half an hour on the ground, and then came a snuffling leopard walking silently through the forest, betraying his presence only by the two green danger-lamps of his eyes.
Bones sat up and flourished his lamp upon the startled beast, which growled in fright, and went scampering through the forest like the great cat that he was.
The growl woke Bones' charge, and he awoke hungry and disinclined to further sleep without that inducement and comfort which his nurse was in no position to offer, whereupon Bones snuggled the whimpering child.
"He's a wicked old leopard!" he said, "to come and wake a child at this time of the night."
The knuckle of Bones' little finger soothed the baby, though it was a poor substitute for the nutriment it had every right to expect, and it whimpered itself to sleep.
Lieutenant Tibbetts looked at his compass again. He had located the shots to eastward, but he did not care to make a bee-line in that direction for fear of falling upon some of the enemy, whom he knew would be, at this time, making their way to the river.
For two hours before dawn he snatched a little sleep, and was awakened by a fierce tugging at his nose. He got up, laid the baby on the soft ground, and stood with arms akimbo, and his monocle firmly fixed, surveying his noisy companion.

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