human
Why, _you_ will pitch your camp here for the night, instead of marching on to Touggourt, he said.
gpt
I camp here, too. My expedition is delayed for one day more, but what does that matter after a hundred delays? Heavens! I've had to wait for tents a beast of a Jew contracted to give me and didn't. I've waited to test water-skins. I've waited for new camel-men when old ones failed me. Haven't I a right to wait a few hours for a companion--a wife? The first thing in the morning we'll have the priest out from Touggourt. Sanda's Catholic. He'll marry us and we'll start on together.
human
Couldn't we, the girl rather timidly ventured the suggestion,
gpt
My darling child! The priest shall consecrate a tent, or a bit of the desert, Stanton answered with decision, which, she must have realized, would be useless to combat.
human
He'll do it all right! Marriage ceremonies are performed by Catholic priests in houses, you know, if the man or the woman is ill; deathbed marriages, and--but don't let us talk of such things! I know I can make him do this when I show him how impossible it would be for us to go back to Touggourt. Why, the men I've got together, mostly blacks, would take it for a bad omen if I left the escort stranded here in the desert the first day out! Half of them would bolt. I'd have the whole work to do over again. You see that, don't you?