dark my good lads began to try to rescue my body. Four or five times
that one-twentieth of eye saw a wriggling form work through sand-bags
and start slowly, flat to the earth, toward me. But the ground was
snow-covered and the Germans saw too the dark uniform. Each time a
fusillade of shots broke out, and the moving figure dropped hastily
behind the sand-bags. And each time--" the colonel stopped to light a
cigarette, his face ruddy in the glare of the match. "Each time I
was--disappointed. I became disgusted with the management of that
theatre, till at last the affair seemed beyond hope, and I had about
determined to turn over and draw up my bad leg with my good hand for a
bit of easement and be shot comfortably, when I was aware that the
surface of the ground near by was heaving--the white, snowy ground
heaving. I was close enough to madness between cold and pain, and I
regarded the phenomenon as a dream. But with that hands came out of the
heaving ground, eyes gleamed. A rope was lashed about my middle and I
was drawn toward our trenches." The cigarette puffed vigorously at this
point. "M'sieur sees?"
I did not.
The colonel laughed. "One of my Hurons had the inspiration to run to a
farmhouse not far away and requisition a sheet. He wrapped himself in
it, head and all, and, being Indian, it was a bagatelle to him to crawl
out on his stomach. They were pleased enough, my good fellows, when they
found they had got not only my body but also me in it."
"I can imagine, knowing Hurons, how that Huron enjoyed his success," I
said. "It's in their blood to be swift and silent and adventurous. But
they're superstitious; they're afraid of anything supernatural." I
hesitated, with a laugh in my mind at a memory. "It's not fitting that I
should swap stories with a hero of the Great War, yet--I believe you
might be amused with an adventure of one of my guides." The Frenchman,
all civil interest, disclaimed his heroism with hands and shoulders, but
smiling too--for he had small chance at disclaiming with those two
crosses on his breast.
"I shall be enchanted to hear m'sieur's tale of his guide. For the rest
I am myself quite mad over the 'sport.' I love to insanity the out of
doors and shooting and fishing. It is a regret that the service has
given me no opportunity these four years for a breathing spell in the
woods. M'sieur will tell me the tale of his guide's superstition?"
A scheme began to form in my brain at that instant too delightful, it
seemed, to come true. I put it aside and went on with my story. "I have
one guide, a Huron half-breed," I said, "whom I particularly like. He's
an old fellow--sixty--but light and quick and powerful as a boy. More
interesting than a boy, because he's full of experiences. Two years ago
a bear swam across the lake where my camp is, and I went out in a canoe
with this Rafael and got him."
Colonel Raffré made of this fact an event larger than--I am sure--he
would have made of his winning of the war cross.
"You shame me, colonel," I said, and went on hurriedly. "Rafael, the
guide, was pleased about the bear. 'When gentlemens kill t'ings, guides
is more happy,' he explained to me, and he proceeded to tell an
anecdote. He prefaced it by informing me that one time he hunt bear and
he see devil. He had been hunting, it seemed, two or three winters
before with his brother-in-law at the headwaters of the St. Maurice
River, up north there," I elucidated, pointing through the window toward
the "long white street of Beauport," across the St. Lawrence. "It's very
lonely country, entirely wild, Indian hunting-ground yet. These two
Hurons, Rafael and his brother-in-law, were on a two months' trip to
hunt and trap, having their meagre belongings and provisions on sleds
which they dragged across the snow. They depended for food mostly on
what they could trap or shoot--moose, caribou, beaver, and small
animals. But they had bad luck. They set many traps but caught nothing,
and they saw no game to shoot. So that in a month they were hard
pressed. One cold day they went two miles to visit a beaver trap, where
they had seen signs. They hoped to find an animal caught and to feast on
beaver tail, which is good eating."
Here I had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of
beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new,
almost unheard-of beast. At length:
"Rafael and his brother-in-law were disappointed. A beaver had been
close and eaten the bark off a birch stick which the men had left, but
nothing was in the trap. They turned and began a weary walk through the
desolate country back to their little tent. Small comfort waited for
them there, as their provisions were low, only flour and bacon left.
And they dared not expend much of that. They were down-hearted, and to
add to it a snow-storm came on and they lost their way. Almost a
hopeless situation--an uninhabited country, winter, snow, hunger. And
they were lost. '_Egaré. Perdu_,' Rafael said. But the Huron was far
from giving up. He peered through the falling snow, not thick yet, and
spied a mountain across a valley. He knew that mountain. He had worked
near it for two years, logging--the '_chantier_,' they call it. He knew
there was a good camp on a river near the mountain, and he knew there
would be a stove in the camp and, as Rafael said, 'Mebbe we haf a luck
and somebody done gone and lef' somet'ing to eat,' Rafael prefers to
talk English to me. He told me all this in broken English.
"It was three miles to the hypothetical camp, but the two tired, hungry
men in their rather wretched clothes started hopefully. And after a hard
tramp through unbroken forest they came in sight of a log shanty and
their spirits rose. 'Pretty tired work,' Rafael said it was. When they
got close to the shanty they hoard a noise inside. They halted and
looked at each other. Rafael knew there were no loggers in these parts
now, and you'll remember it was absolutely wild country. Then something
came to the window and looked out."
"_Something_?" repeated the Frenchman in italics. His eyes were wide and
he was as intent on Rafael's story as heart could desire.
"They couldn't tell what it was," I went on. "A formless apparition, not
exactly white or black, and huge and unknown of likeness. The Indians
were frightened by a manner of unearthliness about the thing, and the
brother-in-law fell on his knees and began to pray. 'It is the devil,'
he murmured to Rafael. 'He will eat us, or carry us to hell.' And he
prayed more.
"But old Rafael, scared to death, too, because the thing seemed not to
be of this world, yet had his courage with him. 'Mebbe it devil,' he
said--such was his report to me--'anyhow I'm cold and hungry, me. I want
dat camp. I go shoot dat devil.'
"He crept up to the camp alone, the brother still praying in the bush.
Rafael was rather convinced, mind you, that he was going to face the
powers of darkness, but he had his rifle loaded and was ready for
business. The door was open and he stepped inside. Something--'great
beeg somet'ing' he put it--rose up and came at him, and he fired. And
down fell the devil."
"In the name of a sacred pig, what was it?" demanded my Frenchman.
"That was what I asked. It was a bear. The men who had been logging in
the camp two months back had left a keg of maple-syrup and a half barrel
of flour, and the bear broke into both--successively--and alternately.
He probably thought he was in bear-heaven for a while, but it must have
gotten irksome. For his head was eighteen inches wide when they found
him, white, with black touches. They soaked him in the river two days,
and sold his skin for twenty dollars. 'Pretty good for devil skin,'
Rafael said."
The Frenchman stared at me a moment and then leaned back in his chair
and shouted laughter. The greedy bear's finish had hit his funny-bone.
And the three others stopped talking and demanded the story told over,
which I did, condensing.
"I like zat Hurong for my soldier," Colonel Raffré stated heartily. "Ze
man what are not afraid of man _or_ of devil--zat is ze man to fight ze
Boches." He was talking English now because Colonel Chichely was
listening. He went on. "Zere is human devils--oh, but plentee--what we
fight in France. I haf not heard of ozzers. But I believe well ze man
who pull me out in sheet would be as your guide Rafael--he also would
crip up wiz his rifle on real devil out of hell. But yes. I haf not told
you how my Indian soldier bring in prisoners--no?"
We all agreed no, and put in a request.
"He brings zem in not one by one always--not always." The colonel
grinned. He went on to tell this tale, which I shift into the vernacular
from his laborious English.
It appears that he had discerned the aptitude of his Hurons for
reconnaissance work. If he needed information out of the dangerous
country lying in front, if he needed a prisoner to question, these men
were eager to go and get either, get anything. The more hazardous the
job the better, and for a long time they came out of it
untouched. In the group one man--nicknamed by the poilus, his
comrades--Hirondelle--the Swallow--supposedly because of his lightness
and swiftness, was easily chief. He had a fault, however, his dislike to
bring in prisoners alive. Four times he had haled a German corpse before
the colonel, seeming not rightly to understand that a dead enemy was
useless for information.
"The Boches are good killing," he had elucidated to his officer. And
finally: "It is well, m'sieur, the colonel. One failed to understand
that the colonel prefers a live Boche to a dead one. Me, I am otherwise.
It appears a pity to let live such vermin. Has the colonel, by chance,
heard the things these savages did in Belgium? Yes? But then--Yet I will
bring to m'sieur, the colonel, all there is to be desired of German
prisoners alive--_en vie_; fat ones; _en masse_."
That night Hirondelle was sent out with four of his fellow Hurons to
get, if possible, a prisoner. Pretty soon he was separated from the
others; all but himself returning empty-handed in a couple of hours. No
Germans seemed to be abroad. But Hirondelle did not return.
"He risks too far," grumbled his captain. "He has been captured at last.
I always knew they would get him, one night."
But that was not the night. At one o'clock there was suddenly a sound of
lamentation in the front trench of the French on that sector. The
soldiers who were sleeping crawled out of their holes in the sides of
the trench walls, and crowded around the zigzag, narrow way and rubbed
their eyes and listened to the laughter of officers and soldiers on
duty. There was Hirondelle, solemn as a church, yet with a dancing light
in his eyes. There, around him, crowded as sheep to a shepherd, twenty
figures in German uniform stood with hands up and wet tears running down
pasty cheeks. And they were fat, it was noticeable that all of them were
bulging of figure beyond even the German average. They wailed "Kamerad!
Gut Kamerad!" in a chorus that was sickening to the plucky poilu
make-up. Hirondelle, interrogated of many, kept his lips shut till the
first excitement quieted. Then: "I report to my colonel," he stated, and
finally he and his twenty were led back to the winding trench and the
colonel was waked to receive them. This was what had happened:
Hirondelle had wandered about, mostly on his stomach, through the
darkness and peril of No Man's Land, enjoying himself heartily; when
suddenly he missed his companions and realized that he had had no sign
of them for some time. That did not trouble him. He explained to the
colonel that he felt "more free." Also that if he pulled off a success
he would have "more glory." After two hours of this midnight amusement,
in deadly danger every second, Hirondelle heard steps. He froze to the
earth, as he had learned from wild things in North American forests. The
steps came nearer. A star-shell away down the line lighted the scene so
that Hirondelle, motionless on the ground, all keen eyes, saw two
Germans coming toward him. Instantly he had a scheme. In a subdued
growl, yet distinctly, he threw over his shoulder an order that eight
men should go to the right and eight to the left. Then, on his feet, he
sent into the darkness a stern "Halt!" Instantly there was a sputter,
arms thrown up, the inevitable "Kamerad!" and Hirondelle ordered the
first German to pass him, then a second. Out of the darkness emerged a
third. Hirondelle waved him on, and with that there was a fourth. And a
fifth. Behold a sixth. About then Hirondelle judged it wise to give more
orders to his imaginary squad of sixteen. But such a panic had seized
this German mob; that little acting was necessary. Dark figure followed
dark figure out of the darker night--arms up. They whimpered as they
came, and on and on they came out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he
began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last,
when the procession stopped, he--and his mythical sixteen--marched the
entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject obedience, to
the French trenches.
The colonel, with this whining crowd weeping about him, with
Hirondelle's erect figure confronting him, his black eyes regarding the
cowards with scorn as he made his report--the colonel simply could not
understand the situation. All these men! "What are you--soldiers?" he
flung at the wretched group. And one answered, "No, my officer. We are
not soldiers, we are the cooks." At that there was a wail. "Ach! Who,
then, will the breakfast cook for my general? He will _schrecklich_
angry be for his sausage and his sauerkraut."
By degrees the colonel got the story. A number of cooks had combined to
protest against new regulations, and the general, to punish this
astounding insubordination, had sent them out unarmed, petrified with,
terror, into No Man's Land for an hour. They had there encountered
Hirondelle. Hirondelle drew the attention of the colonel to the fact
that he had promised prisoners, fat ones. "Will my colonel regard the
shape of these pigs," suggested Hirondelle. "And also that they are
twenty in number. Enough _en masse_ for one man to take, is it not, my
colonel?"
The little dinner-party at the Frontenac discussed this episode. "Almost
too good to be true, colonel," I objected. "You're sure it _is_ true?
Bring out your Hirondelle. He ought to be home wounded, with a war cross
on his breast, by now."
The colonel smiled and shook his head. "It is that which I cannot
do--show you my Hirondelle. Not here, and not in France, by _malheur_.
For he ventured once too often and too far, as the captain prophesied,
and he is dead. God rest the brave! Also a Croix de Guerre is indeed
his, but no Hirondelle is there to claim it."
The silence of a moment was a salute to the soul of a warrior passed to
the happy hunting-grounds. And then I began on another story of my
Rafael's adventures which something in the colonel's tale suggested.
The colonel, his winning face all a smile, interrupted. "Does one
believe, then, in this Rafael of m'sieur who caps me each time my tales
of my Huron Hirondelle? It appears to me that m'sieur has the brain, of
a story-teller and hangs good stories on a figure which he has built and
named so--Rafael. Me, I cannot believe there exists this Rafael. I
believe there is only one such gallant d'Artagnan of the Hurons, and it
is--it was--my Hirondelle. Show me your Rafael, then!" demanded the
colonel.
At that challenge the scheme which had flashed into my mind an hour ago
gathered shape and power. "I will show him to you, colonel," I took up
the challenge, "if you will allow me." I turned to include the others.
"Isn't it possible for you all to call a truce and come up tomorrow to
my club to be my guests for as long or as short a time as you will? I
can't say how much pleasure it would give me, and I believe I could give
you something also--great fishing, shooting, a moose, likely, or at
least a caribou--and Rafael. I promise Rafael. It's not unlikely,
colonel, that he may have known the Hirondelle. The Hurons are few. Do
come," I threw at them.
They took it after their kind. The Englishman stared and murmured:
"Awfully kind, I'm sure, but quite impossible." The Canadian, our next
of kin, smiled, shaking his head like a brother. Fitzhugh put his arm of
brawn about me again till that glorious star gleamed almost on my own
shoulder, and patted me lovingly as he said: "Old son, I'd give my eyes
to go, if I wasn't up to my ears in job."
But the Frenchman's face shone, and he lifted a finger that was a
sentence. It embodied reflection and eagerness and suspense. The rest of
us gazed at that finger as if it were about to address us. And the
colonel spoke. "I t'ink," brought out the colonel emphatically, "I t'ink
I damn go."
And I snatched the finger and the hand of steel to which it grew, and
wrung both. This was a delightful Frenchman. "Good!" I cried out.
"Glorious! I want you all, but I'm mightily pleased to get one. Colonel,
you're a sport."
"But, yes," agreed the colonel happily, "I am sport. Why not? I haf four
days to wait till my sheep sail. Why not kip--how you say?--kip in my
hand for shooting--go kill moose? I may talk immensely of zat moose in
France--hein? Much more _chic_ as to kill Germans, _n'est çe pas_?
Everybody kill Germans."
At one o'clock next day the out-of-breath little train which had gasped
up mountains for five hours from Quebec uttered a relieved shriek and
stopped at a doll-house club station sitting by itself in the
wilderness. Four or five men in worn but clean clothes--they always
start clean--waited on the platform, and there was a rapid fire of "_Bon
jour_, m'sieur," as we alighted. Then ten quick eyes took in my colonel
in his horizon-blue uniform. I was aware of a throb of interest. At once
there was a scurry for luggage because the train must be held till it
was off, and the guides ran forward to the baggage-car to help. I
bundled the colonel down a sharp, short hill to the river, while
smiling, observant Hurons, missing not a line of braid or a glitter of
button, passed with bags and _pacquetons_ as we descended. The blue and
black and gold was loaded into a canoe with an Indian at bow and stern
for the three-mile paddle to the club-house. He was already a schoolboy
on a holiday with unashamed enthusiasm.
"But it is fun--fun, zis," he shouted to me from his canoe. "And
_lequel_, m'sieur, which is Rafael?"
Rafael, in the bow of my boat, missed a beat of his paddle. It seemed to
me he looked older than two years back, when I last saw him. His
shoulders were bent, and his merry and stately personality was less in
evidence. He appeared subdued. He did not turn with a smile or a grave
glance of inquiry at the question, as I had expected. I nodded toward
him.
"_Mais oui_," cried out the colonel. "One has heard of you, _mon ami_.
One will talk to you later of shooting."
Rafael, not lifting his head, answered quietly, "_C'est bien, m'sieur._"
Just then the canoes slipped past a sandy bar decorated with a fresh
moose track; the excitement of the colonel set us laughing. This man was
certainly a joy! And with that, after a long paddle down the winding
river and across two breezy lakes, we were at the club-house. We
lunched, and in short order--for we wanted to make camp that night--I
dug into my _pacquetons_ and transformed my officer into a sportsman,
his huge delight in Abernethy & Flitch's creations being a part of the
game. Then we were off.
One has small chance for associating with guides while travelling in the
woods. One sits in a canoe between two, but if there is a wind and the
boat is _chargé_ their hands are full with the small craft and its heavy
load; when the landing is made and the "messieurs" are _débarqués_,
instantly the men are busy lifting canoes on their heads and packs on
their backs in bizarre, piled-up masses to be carried from a leather
tump-line, a strap of two inches wide going around the forehead. The
whole length of the spine helps in the carrying. My colonel watched
Delphise, a husky specimen, load. With a grunt he swung up a canvas U.S.
mailbag stuffed with _butin_, which includes clothes and books and shoes
and tobacco and cartridges and more. With a half-syllable Delphise
indicated to Laurent a bag of potatoes weighing eighty pounds, a box of
tinned biscuit, a wooden package of cans of condensed milk, a rod case,
and a raincoat. These Laurent added to the spine of Delphise.
"How many pounds?" I asked, as the dark head bent forward to equalize
the strain.
Delphise shifted weight with another grunt to gauge the pull. "About a
hundred and eighty pounds, m'sieur--quite heavy--_assez pesant_." Off he
trotted uphill, head bent forward.
The colonel was entranced. "Hardy fellows--the making of fine soldiers,"
he commented, tossing his cigarette away to stare.
That night after dinner--but it was called supper--the colonel and I
went into the big, airy log kitchen with the lake looking in at three
windows and the forest at two doors. We gunned over with the men plans
for the next day, for the most must be made of every minute of this
precious military holiday. I explained how precious it was, and then I
spoke a few words about the honor of having as our guest a soldier who
had come from the front, and who was going back to the front. For the
life of me I could not resist a sentence more about the two crosses
they had seen on his uniform that day. The Cross of War, the Legion of
Honor! I could not let my men miss that! Rafael had been quiet and
colorless, and I was disappointed in the show qualities of my show
guide. But the colonel beamed with satisfaction, in everything and
everybody, and received my small introduction with a bow and a flourish
worthy of Carnegie Hall.
"I am happy to be in this so charming camp, in this forest magnificent,
on these ancient mountains," orated the colonel floridly. "I am most
pleased of all to have Huron Indians as my guides, because between
Hurons and me there are memories." The men were listening spell-bound.
"But yes. I had Huron soldiers serving in my regiment, just now at the
western front, of whom I thought highly. They were all that there is,
those Hurons of mine, of most fearless, most skilful. One among them was
pre-eminent. Some of you may have known him. I regret to say that I
never knew his real name, but among his comrades he went by the name of
l'Hirondelle. From that name one guesses his qualities--swift as a
swallow, untamable, gay, brave to foolishness, moving in dashes not to
be followed--such was my Hirondelle. And yet this swift bird was in the
end shot down."
At this point in the colonel's speech. I happened to look at Rafael,
back in the shadows of the half-lighted big room. His eyes glittered out
of the dimness like disks of fire, his face was strained, and his figure
bent forward. "He must have known this chap, the Swallow," I thought to
myself. "Just possibly a son or brother or nephew of his." The colonel
was going on, telling in fluent, beautiful French the story of how
Hirondelle, wrapped in a sheet, had rescued him. The men drank it in.
"When those guides are old, old fellows, they'll talk about this night
and the colonel's speech to their great-grandchildren," I considered,
and again the colonel went on.
"Have I m'sieur's permission to _raconter_ a short story of the most
amusing which was the last escapade of my Hirondelle before he was
killed?"
M'sieur gave permission eagerly, and the low murmur of the voices of the
hypnotized guides, standing in a group before the colonel, added to its
force and set him smiling.