Cabbages and Kings by O. Henry
page 48 of 237 (20%)
page 48 of 237 (20%)
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burned, a sickly yellow, at random corners, had been extinguished
by some economical civic agent. Coralio lay sleeping calmly between toppling mountains and encroaching sea like a stolen babe in the arms of its abductors. Somewhere over in that tropical darkness--perhaps already threading the profundities of the alluvial lowlands--the high adventurer and his mate were moving toward land's end. The game of Fox-in-the-Morning should be coming soon to its close. Goodwin, at his deliberate gait, passed the long, low ~cuartel~ where Coralio's contingent of Anchuria's military force slumbered, with its bare toes pointed heavenward. There was a law that no civilian might come so near the headquarters of that citadel of war after nine o'clock, but Goodwin was always forgetting the minor statutes. "~Quien vive,~" shrieked the sentinel, wrestling prodigiously with his lengthy musket. "~Americano,~" growled Goodwin, without turning his head, and passed on, unhalted. To the right he turned, and to the left up the street that ultimately reached the Plaza Nacional. When within the toss of a cigar stump from the intersecting Street of the Holy Sepulchre, he stopped suddenly in the pathway. He saw the form of a tall man, clothed in black and carrying a large valise, hurry down the cross-street in the direction of the beach. And Goodwin's second glance made him aware of a woman at the man's elbow on the farther side, who seemed to urge forward, if not even to assist, her companion in their swift but silent progress. They |
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