A WANDERING POWDER-PUFF
"That's Iver! Oh! no distance, nor trench, could prevent my recognizing
him."
The cry of rapt identification came from Iver Davenport's
seventeen-year-old sister, Sara.
"Yes, one can single out his shoulders at a glance--an inch higher than
those of any other man in his company--Lieutenant O. Pips!"
It was Colonel Deering who amusedly spoke, president of the Board of
Directors of the Craig Steel Works, retired colonel of a national guard
regiment, and father of two very attractive daughters, Olive and Sybil,
Camp Fire Girls, of whom only one was present here, on the sear skirts
of Gas Valley, the outskirts of the great military training-camp, where
the army chemists of the Gas Defense Division were again holding their
so-called "classes" initiating soldiers into an experience with poison
gas.
"Oh! I'm so glad that we'll have a chance to see him again--Iver--before
he goes over. I didn't let him know that we were coming to-day; 'twill
be quite a surprise when he stalks up out of the trenches--and unmasks."
Again the eager exclamation burst from Sara, a kindling flame of
excitement, as standing on the edge of the camp trenches, behind the
skirting sand-bags, she craned her young neck over, to gaze along a
narrow earth-cut, six feet deep, to a curving trench-bay in which her
brother was stationed with a few other officers--all still without their
masks--to undergo an initiation on his own account.
"He said, last week, that if we happened to be visiting camp to-day, we
might see him getting his medicine at the hands of the young chemists of
the Gas Defense Division, who have a witch's imagination when it comes
to horrors." Olive smiled. "I don't suppose that this is his first
initiation, though, by any manner of means."
"No, they keep 'putting them through gas'--or some substitute for poison
gas--right along here, so that they may be able to get their masks
adjusted inside of six seconds," remarked her father. "I believe it
isn't really going to be gas and sulphur smoke to-day--simply
powder-puffs."
"Powder-puffs! Pelt--pelt them with powder-puffs!" Sesooā nipped off a
comic little shriek.
"Oh! not of the vanity-box order." Colonel Deering's smooth-shaven lip
twitched. "These puffs are just tiny brown-paper sacks, containing,
each, a tablespoonful of black powder with three or four inches of
red-capped fuse sticking up out of it. They explode when they strike in
the trenches, near a man's feet, throwing up, each, its own little
spitting, venomous spurt of flame, so that if he should be slow about
getting into his mask his eyesight might suffer."
"O dear! To-day I hope it won't be a case of:
"'The gas came down and caught the blighter slow!'"
murmured Olive, shuddering with a recollection of last week's smoky
Inferno, with its shaking roar of dynamite, its bright flash of bursting
"tear-shells," its popping of monster fire-crackers in the yellow
cloud--and of what that cloud gave forth.
"Oh, no, it won't! This seems quite tame compared with the real
'Fritzie's show' last week!" Sara's voice was an echo of her
soldier-brother's. "But who wants to see another smoky spectacle? Not
me! To-day, by craning our necks over and looking along the traverse, we
can _see things_--see the boys scrambling into their masks in a blessed
hurry! Oh! here come the chemists now, with their bundles of
powder-puffs. Funny-looking things those puffs are--like pert snails
with their long red necks thrust up, peering around them."
She laughed, that little Camp Fire Flame, of the shading hair and
eyelashes, as the members of the Gas Defense Division, four young
privates and a corporal, took up their stations at intervals along the
edge of the trenches, near.
Suddenly a gong gave out its loud-tongued signal.
"There! that gives the warning this time," proclaimed the colonel,
almost as eager in his interest as the two girls. "Six seconds and over
go the puffs! See the officers and men are all at Gas Alert! See their
hands go diving into their breast-satchels, snatching out their
masks--adjusting them!"
"Iver had his on the soonest of any," gloated Iver's sister. "He--he's
just as quick's a flash about everything--from temper to task!" the last
words half under her breath, in a low chuckle of intense excitement, as
she leaned forth over the pale, lumpy sand-bags, on which soldiers
rested their weapons in rifle-practice, gazing along the narrow brown
traverse beneath.
Over floated breezily the red-necked puffs--a few into one rounded
trench-bay, a few into another.
Pop, pop, pop! went their snappy explosions, within a foot or two of
an officer's feet--the men not being stationed very close
together--throwing up the prettiest little spitting foam of rose-red
flame, lively to look upon against the brown earth of the trench-bay.
But what! All in one petrified instant the pale sand-bag became an
ice-bag under the girls' feet--to which their trembling, curdling soles
froze!
Two low, pinched cries of startled fright rang out over that brown
trench traverse.
Even Colonel Deering gave way to a hectic exclamation and hung,
horrified, over the trench-brim! For--was it only a wild freak of the
April gust, intent on the sham-battle, too, or a young chemist's
blundering aim?--one of those pelting powder-puffs drifted astray.
Wildly--wildly astray!
It lit _not_ on the ground at an officer's feet, but close and warm
against his khaki breast--as if it would fire his heart--between his
braided blouse and the respirator-satchel upon that heaving breast.
With his bare left hand he grasped it--nestling like a red-necked
snail--to toss it to earth. But in the very act it exploded and wrapped
those bare wrists of his in golden bracelets of flame;--a fierce,
fledgling flamelet, just hatched out, which, winging upward, pecked
greedily at the mask over his face, trying to peck through to his eyes!
A stinging, searing flame that twined itself brilliantly about his
stretched neck, his ears, the sides of his face, the roots of his
hair--wherever it could find a sentient inch that the mask did not
cover--with the pitting, piercing burn that only black powder can
inflict.
"Oh-h--_Iver!_" Sara Davenport felt as if the earth were seamed with one
great brown trench, all flame-lined, swallowing her.
But before her piteous exclamation died away, her brother--that young
lieutenant--had plucked the fiery scorpion from his breast, shaken
himself free of the hissing, spitting powder, was stamping fiercely up
the beaten sod-steps of the trench, removing his mask with fingers that
shook--some of them--like charred twigs, in a withering tempest of pain.
"Thank God! I was into my mask pretty quickly. Otherwise--otherwise I'd
have been blinded for life!"
He shuddered, that Boy-Officer, who had prematurely "bawled out" a
sergeant, as the words broke from him, seeming to make their way out
through a great smoking hole upon his breast, where the tight khaki
blouse was burned away.
"Iver! Oh--_Iver!_" From a distance his young sister started towards
him.
Blistered within by pain and rising anger--as without by powder--he did
not see her. Nor yet the other visitors back of her--one of them the
girl with whom he had exchanged twilight confidences a week before!
His eye, a lurid lightning-flash above the bitten, twisted lips, had
instantly singled out the face of a young chemist--a penitent
private--nearer, as the latter, in an agony of apology, started towards
him.
"I--I didn't mean it, sir," stammered the youth, feeble in his
confusion. "It--'twas an accident----"
For just one-half minute Lieutenant Davenport's tall figure loomed,
rigid, in the sunlight, that powder-hole smoking upon his breast.
His breath smoked, too--the smoke of his agonizing burns.
The lightning of his eye withered the blunderer before him.
Then, suddenly, with masterful grip, the soldier seized the red-eyed
powder-puff of temper exploding within him, tossed it deep into the
trenches of his soul, and set his foot upon it.
"_What!_ Are you the young rascal who potted me?"
Above his bitten, pain-wrung lips, above the storm of blue powder
blisters puffing out around his wrists, his neck, the edges of his face,
the explosive lightnings of the eye melted--wavered--towards the mellow
sunlight of a smile--a humorous smile.
"Well! take a better aim next time. Pshaw! it might not have been your
fault at all--boy.... A puff--a puff may have caught the _puff_--and
landed it on me!"
Moved by a sudden impulse, the lieutenant held out the fingers of his
less injured right hand to the blanching private--who touched but did
not grasp them!
Silence almost confounded reigned among the three guests, now drawn
near!
A voice--a voice broke it, that of Colonel Deering:
"Onward, Christian Soldiers!"
he chanted in a low, exultant sing-song. "That Boy--that officer--will
go over the top smiling, master of himself, gassed by no blinding
smoke-cloud of anger or hate! And his father was always telling me that
he had a brute of a temper."
"So he has! Had! Mine's like it--somewhat! Oh-h, quite often my flame's
a powder-puff!" Sara Davenport was quivering from neck to heel now, with
the purest, proudest flame that can crown a young heart, that of a
seventeen-year-old girl's pride in her hero-brother.
"But, oh! there'll be no excuse for its--ever--being a spitfire
in future; if Iver could--master.... _Hif-f!_ He must be
suffering--ter-ri-bly!"
The other, older, dark-eyed girl was silent. But perhaps, at that
moment, as she drew her breath sharply through closed teeth, even the
romance of looking through a periscope's eye, with a Junior Aide, having
a fascinating gold epaulet cord drooping from his left shoulder, paled
beside the romance of that victor's eye, humorously smiling, triumphant
alike over pain and passion.