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Rung Ho! by Talbot Mundy
page 82 of 344 (23%)
"Are you tired yet, Joanna?"

"Uh-uh!" the woman answered, shaking her head violently and pointing
at the sun that mounted every minute higher. The argument was obvious;
in less than twenty minutes the whole horizon would be shimmering
again like shaken plates of brass; wherever the other end might be, a
rest would be better there than here! Her mistress nodded, and rode on
again, faster yet; she had learned long ago that Joanna could show a
dusty pair of heels to almost anything that ran, and she had never yet
known distance tire her; it had been the thought of distance and speed
combined that made her pause and ask.

She did not stop again until they had cantered up through the awakening
bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out
their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started
nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had
shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the
advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies,
and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch
of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga's boots and spurs had caught
her eye once.

"Now, Joanna!" She leaned back from the saddle and spoke low, but with
a certain thrill. "Go in there, find me Mahommed Gunga-sahib's man,
and bring him out here!"

"And if he will not come?" The old woman seemed half-afraid to enter.

"Go in, and don't come out without him--unless you want to see me go
in by myself!"
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