TOM SAWYER ABROAD

the men had long guns and some hadn’t, and some

was riding and some was walking. And the weatherJ–

well, it was just roasting. And how slow they did

creep along! We swooped down now, all of a

sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their

heads.

The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat

on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us,

and the rest broke and scampered every which way,

and so did the camels.

We see that we was making trouble, so we went up

again about a mile, to the cool weather, and watched

them from there. It took them an hour to get together

and form the procession again; then they started along,

but we could see by the glasses that they wasn’t pay-

ing much attention to anything but us. We poked

along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by

and by we see a big sand mound, and something like

people the other side of it, and there was something

like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his

head up every now and then, and seemed to be watch-

ing the caravan or us, we didn’t know which. As the

caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side

and rushed to the other men and horses — for that is

what they was — and we see them mount in a hurry;

and next, here they come, like a house afire, some with

lances and some with long guns, and all of them yell-

ing the best they could.

They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the

next minute both sides crashed together and was all

mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns

as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke

you could only catch glimpses of them struggling

together. There must ‘a’ been six hundred men in

that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they

broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and

nail, and scurrying and scampering around, and laying

into each other like everything; and whenever the

smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded

people and camels scattered far and wide and all about,

and camels racing off in every direction.

At last the robbers see they couldn’t win, so their

chief sounded a signal, and all that was left of them

broke away and went scampering across the plain.

The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it

off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run

screaming and begging after him, and followed him

away off across the plain till she was separated a long

ways from her people; but it warn’t no use, and she

had to give it up, and we see her sink down on the

sand and cover her face with her hands. Then Tom

took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and we

come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked

him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarred

considerable, but the child wasn’t hurt, but laid there

working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug

that’s on its back and can’t turn over. The man went

staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn’t know

what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred

yards up in the air by this time.

We judged the woman would go and get the child

now; but she didn’t. We could see her, through the

glass, still setting there, with her head bowed down on

her knees; so of course she hadn’t seen the perform-

ance, and thought her child was clean gone with the

man. She was nearly a half a mile from her people,

so we thought we might go down to the child, which

was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake

it to her before the caravan people could git to us to

do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned they had

enough business on their hands for one while, anyway,

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