I think those brigands are now somewhere near the old hovel
where you see that smoke."
"Good!" cried Gudin. "You," he added to Beau-Pied and his men, "fall
back towards the rocks through the fields, and join the line of
sentinels you'll find there. You can't go with us, because you are in
uniform. We mean to make an end of those curs now; the Gars is with
them. I can't stop to tell you more. To the right, march! and don't
administer any more shots to our own goatskins; you'll know ours by
their cravats, which they twist round their necks and don't tie."
Gudin left his two wounded men under the apple-tree, and marched
towards Galope-Chopine's cottage, which Beau-Pied had pointed out to
him, the smoke from the chimney serving as a guide.
While the young officer was thus closing in upon the Chouans, the
little detachment under Hulot had reached a point still parallel with
that at which Gudin had arrived. The old soldier, at the head of his
men, was silently gliding along the hedges with the ardor of a young
man; he jumped them from time to time actively enough, casting his
wary eyes to the heights and listening with the ear of a hunter to
every noise. In the third field to which he came he found a woman
about thirty years old, with bent back, hoeing the ground vigorously,
while a small boy with a sickle in his hand was knocking the hoarfrost
from the rushes, which he cut and laid in a heap.
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