When Bruce left the quiet peace of The Place for the hell of the
Western Front, it had been stipulated by the Mistress and the Master
that if ever he were disabled, he should be shipped back to The Place,
at their expense.
It was a stipulation made rather to soothe the Mistress's sorrow at
parting from her loved pet than in any hope that it could be fulfilled;
for the average life of a courierdog on the battle-front was tragically
short. And his fate was more than ordinarily certain. If the boche
bullets and shrapnel happened to miss him, there were countless
diseases--bred of trench and of hardship and of abominable food--to
kill him.
The Red Cross appeal raised countless millions of dollars and brought
rescue to innumerable human warriors. But in caring for humans, the
generosity of most givers reached its limit; and the Blue Cross--"for
the relief of dogs and horses injured in the service of the
Allies"--was forced to take what it could get. Yet many a man, and many
a body of men, owed life and safety to the heroism of some war-dog, a
dog which surely merited special care when its own certain hour of
agony struck.
Bruce's warmest overseas friends were to be found in the ranks of the
mixed Franco-American regiment, nicknamed the "Here-We-Comes." Right
gallantly, in more than one tight place, had Bruce been of use to the
"Here-We-Comes." On his official visits to the regiment, he was always
received with a joyous welcome that would have turned any head less
steady than a thoroughbred collie's.
Bruce enjoyed this treatment. He enjoyed, too, the food-dainties
wherewith the "Here-We-Comes" plied him. But to no man in the army
would he give the adoring personal loyalty he had left at The Place
with the Mistress and the Master. Those two were still his only gods.
And he missed them and his sweet life at The Place most bitterly. Yet
he was too good a soldier to mope.
* * * * *
For months the "Here-We-Comes" had been quartered in a "quiet"--or only
occasionally tumultuous--sector, near Chateau-Thierry. Then the
comparative quiet all at once turned to pandemonium.
A lanky and degenerate youth (who before the war had been unlovingly
known throughout Europe as the "White Rabbit" and who now was mentioned
in dispatches as the "Crown Prince") had succeeded in leading some
half-million fellow-Germans into a "pocket" that had lately been merely
a salient.
From the three lower sides of the pocket, the Allies ecstatically flung
themselves upon their trapped foes in a laudable effort to crush the
half-million boches and their rabbit-faced princeling into surrender
before the latter could get out of the snare, and to the shelter of the
high ground and the reenforcements that lay behind it. The Germans
objected most strenuously to this crushing process. And the three
beleaguered edges of the pocket became a triple-section of hell.
It was a period when no one's nerves were in any degree normal--least
of all the nerves of the eternally hammered Germans. Even the fiercely
advancing Franco-Americans, the "Here-We-Comes," had lost the grimly
humorous composure that had been theirs, and waxed sullen and ferocious
in their eagerness.
Thus it was that Bruce missed his wontedly uproarious welcome as he
cantered, at sunset one July day, into a smashed farmstead where his
friends, the "Here-We-Comes," were bivouacked for the night. By
instinct, the big dog seemed to know where to find the temporary
regimental headquarters.
He trotted past a sentry, into an unroofed cattle-shed where the
colonel was busily scribbling a detailed report of the work done by the
"Here-We-Comes" during that day's drive.
Coming to a halt by the colonel's side, Bruce stood expectantly wagging
his plumy tail and waiting for the folded message from division
headquarters to be taken off his collar.
Usually, on such visits, the colonel made much of the dog. To-day he
merely glanced up abstractedly from his writing, at sight of Bruce's
silken head at his side. He unfastened the message, read it, frowned
and went on with his report.
Bruce continued to wag his tail and to look up wistfully for the wonted
petting and word of commendation. But the colonel had forgotten his
existence. So presently the collie wearied of waiting for a caress from
a man whose caresses, at best, he did not greatly value. He turned and
strolled out of the shed. His message delivered, he knew he was at
liberty to amuse himself as he might choose to, until such time as he
must carry back to his general a reply to the dispatch he had brought.
From outside came the voices of tired and lounging soldiers. A
traveling kitchen had just been set up near by. From it arose a blend
of smells that were mighty tempting to a healthily hungry dog. Thither,
at a decorous but expectant pace, Bruce bent his steps.
Top-Sergeant Mahan was gazing with solicitous interest upon the toil of
the cooks at the wheeled kitchen. Beside him, sharing his concern in
the supper preparations, was Mahan's closest crony, old Sergeant
Vivier. The wizened little Frenchman, as a boy, had been in the
surrender of Sedan. Nightly, ever since, he had besought the saints to
give him, some day, a tiny share in the avenging of that black disgrace.
Mahan and Vivier were the warmest of Bruce's many admirers in the
"Here-We-Comes." Ordinarily a dual whoop of joy from them would have
greeted his advent. This afternoon they merely chirped abstractedly at
him, and Mahan patted him carelessly on the head before returning to
the inspection of the cooking food.
Since an hour before dawn, both men had been in hot action. The command
for the "Here-We-Comes" to turn aside and bivouac for the night had
been a sharp disappointment to them, as well as to every unwounded man
in the regiment.
When a gambler is in the middle of a winning streak, when an athlete
feels he has the race in his own hands, when a business man has all but
closed the deal that means fortune to him--at such crises it is
maddening to be halted at the very verge of triumph. But to soldiers
who, after months of reverses, at last have their hated foe on the run,
such a check does odd things to temper and to nerves.
In such plight were the men of the "Here-We-Comes," on this late
afternoon. Mahan and Vivier were too seasoned and too sane to give way
to the bursts of temper and the swirls of blasphemy that swayed so many
of their comrades. Nevertheless they were glum and silent and had no
heart for jolly welcomings,--even to so dear a friend as Bruce.
Experience told them that a square meal would work miracles in the way
of calming and bracing them. Hence, apart from stark hunger, their
interest in the cooking of supper.
Bruce was too much a philosopher--and not devoted enough to his soldier
friends--to be hurt at the lack of warmth in the greeting. With the air
of an epicure, he sniffed at the contents of one of the kitchen's
bubbling kettles. Then he walked off and curled himself comfortably on
a pile of bedding, there to rest until supper should be ready.
Several times, as he lay there, soldiers passed and repassed. One or
two of them snapped their fingers at the dog or even stooped, in
passing, to stroke his head. But on the faces of all of them was unrest
and a certain wolfish eagerness, which precluded playing with pets at
such a time. The hot zest of the man-hunt was upon them. It was gnawing
in the veins of the newest recruit, ever, as in the heart of the
usually self-contained colonel of the regiment.
The colonel, in fact, had been so carried away by the joy of seeing his
men drive the hated graycoats before them that day that he had
overstepped the spirit of his own orders from the division commander.
In brief, he had made no effort to "dress" his command, in the advance,
upon the regiments to either side of it. As a result, when the signal
to bivouac for the night was given, the "Here-We-Comes" were something
like a mile ahead of the regiment which should have been at their
immediate right, and nearly two miles in front of the brigade at their
left.
In other words, the "Here-We-Comes" now occupied a salient of their
own, ahead of the rest of the FrancoAmerican line. It was in rebuke for
this bit of good progress and bad tactics that the division commander
had written to the colonel, in the dispatch which Bruce had brought.
German airmen, sailing far above, and dodging as best they could the
charges of the Allied 'planes, had just noted that the "Here-We-Comes"
"salient" was really no salient at all. So far had it advanced that,
for the moment, it was out of touch with the rest of the division. It
was, indeed, in an excellent position to be cut off and demolished by a
dashing nightattack. And a report to this effect was delivered to a
fumingly distracted German major general, who yearned for a chance to
atone in some way for the day's shameful reverses.
"If they hadn't halted us and made us call it a day, just as we were
getting into our stride," loudly grumbled one Yankee private to another
as the two clumped up to the kitchen, "we'd have been in
Fere-en-Tardenois by now. What lazy guy is running this drive, anyhow?"
"The same lazy guy that will stick you into the hoosgow for
insubordination and leave you to do your bit there while the rest of us
stroll on to Berlin!" snapped Top-Sergeant Mahan, wheeling upon the
grumbler. "Till you learn how to obey orders without grouching, it
isn't up to you to knock wiser men. Shut up!"
Though Mahan's tone of reproof was professionally harsh, his spirit was
not in his words. And the silenced private knew it. He knew, too, that
the top-sergeant was as savage over the early halt as were the rest of
the men.
Bruce, as a rule, when he honored the "Here-We-Comes" with a visit,
spent the bulk of his time with Mahan and old Vivier. But to-day
neither of these friends was an inspiring companion. Nor were the rest
of Bruce's acquaintances disposed to friendliness. Wherefore, as soon
as supper was eaten, the dog returned to his heap of bedding, for the
hour or so of laziness which Nature teaches all her children to demand,
after a full meal,--and which the so-called "dumb" animals alone are
intelligent enough to take.
Dusk had merged into night when Bruce got to his feet again. Taps had
just sounded. The tired men gladly rolled themselves into their
blankets and fell into a dead sleep. A sentry-relief set forth to
replace the first batch of sentinels with the second.
Mahan was of the party. Though the top-sergeant had been a stupid
comrade, thus far to-day, he was now evidently going for a walk. And
even though it was a duty-walk, yet the idea of it appealed to the dog
after his long inaction.
So Bruce got up and followed. As he came alongside the stiffly marching
top-sergeant, the collie so far subverted discipline as to thrust his
nose, in friendly greeting, into Mahan's slightly cupped palm. And the
top-sergeant so far abetted the breach of discipline as to give the
collie's head a furtive pat. The night was dim, as the moon had not
risen; so the mutual contact of good-fellowship was not visible to the
marching men on either side of Mahan and the dog. And discipline,
therefore, did not suffer much, after all.
At one post after another, a sentinel was relieved and a fresh man took
his place. Farthest in front of the "Here-We-Comes" lines--and nearest
to the German--was posted a lanky Missourian whom Bruce liked, a man
who had a way of discovering in his deep pockets stray bits of food
which he had hoarded there for the collie and delighted to dole out to
him. The Missourian had a drawlingly soft voice the dog liked, and he
used to talk to Bruce as if the latter were another human.
For all these reasons--and because Mahan was too busy and too grumpy to
bother with him--Bruce elected to stay where he was, for a while, and
share the Missourian's vigil. So, when the rest of the party moved
along to the next sentry-go, the dog remained. The Missourian was only
too glad to have him do so. It is tedious and stupid to pace a desolate
beat, alone, at dead of night, after a day of hard fighting. And the
man welcomed the companionship of the dog.
For a time, as the Missourian paced his solitary stretch of broken and
shrub-grown ground, Bruce gravely paced to and fro at his side. But
presently this aimless promenade began to wax uninteresting. And, as
the two came to the far end of the beat, Bruce yawned and lay down. It
was pleasanter to lie there and to watch the sentinel do the walking.
Stretched out, in a little grass-hollow, the dog followed blinkingly
with his soft brown eyes the pendulumlike progress of his friend. And
always the dog's plumed tail would beat rhythmic welcome against the
ground as the sentry approached him.
Thus nearly an hour wore on. A fat moon butted its lazy way through the
smoke-mists of the eastern skyline.
Then something happened--something that Bruce could readily have
forestalled if the wind had been blowing from the other direction, and
if a dog's eyes were not as nearsighted as his nose is farsmelling.
The Missourian paused to run his hand caressingly over the collie's
rough mane, and moved on, down the lonely beat. Bruce watched his
receding figure, drowsily. At the end of ninety yards or more, the
Missourian passed by a bunch of low bushes which grew at the near side
of a stretch of hilly and shellpocked ground. He moved past the bushes,
still watched by the somewhat bored dog.
It was then that Bruce saw a patch of bushshadow detach itself from the
rest, under the glow of the rising moon. The shadow was humpy and
squat. Noiseless, it glided out from among the bushes, close at the
sentry's heels, and crept after him.
Bruce pricked his ears and started to get up. His curiosity was roused.
The direction of the wind prevented him from smelling out the nature of
the mystery. It also kept his keen hearing from supplying any clue. And
the distance would not permit him to see with any distinctness.
Still his curiosity was very mild. Surely, if danger threatened, the
sentinel would realize it. For by this time the Shadow was a bare three
feet behind him near enough, by Bruce's system of logic, for the
Missourian to have smelled and heard the pursuer. So Bruce got up, in
the most leisurely fashion, preparatory to strolling across to
investigate. But at almost his first step he saw something that changed
his gracefully slouching walk into a charging run.
The Shadow suddenly had merged with the sentinel. For an instant, in
stark silence, the two seemed to cling together. Then the Shadow fled,
and the lanky Missourian slumped to the earth in a sprawling heap, his
throat cut.
The slayer had been a deft hand at the job. No sound had escaped the
Missourian, from the moment the stranglingly tight left arm had been
thrown around his throat from behind until, a second later, he fell
bleeding and lifeless.
In twenty leaping strides, Bruce came up to the slain sentinel and bent
over him. Dog-instinct told the collie his friend had been done to
death. And the dog's power of scent told him it was a German who had
done the killing.
For many months, Bruce had been familiar with the scent of German
soldiers, so different from that of the army in which he toiled. And he
had learned to hate it, even as a dog hates the vague "crushed
cucumber" smell of a pitviper. But while every dog dreads the
viper-smell as much as he loathes it, Bruce had no fear at all of the
boche odor. Instead, it always awoke in him a blood-lust, as fierce as
any that had burned in his wolf-ancestors.
This same fury swept him now, as he stood, quivering, above the body of
the kindly man who so lately had petted him; this and a craving to
revenge the murder of his human friend.
For the briefest time, Bruce stood there, his dark eyes abrim with
unhappiness and bewilderment, as he gazed down on the huddled form in
the wet grass. Then an electric change came over him. The softness fled
from his eyes, leaving them bloodshot and blazing. His great tawny ruff
bristled like an angry cat's. The lazy gracefulness departed from his
mighty body. It became tense and terrible. In the growing moonlight his
teeth gleamed whitely from under his upcurled lip.
In a flash he turned and set off at a loping run, nose close to ground,
his long stride deceptively swift. The zest of the man-hunt had
obsessed him, as completely as, that day, it had spurred the advance of
the "Here-We-Comes."
The trail of the slayer was fresh, even over such broken ground. Fast
as the German had fled, Bruce was flying faster. Despite the murderer's
long start, the dog speedily cut down the distance between his quarry
and himself. Not trusting to sight, but solely to his unerring sense of
smell. Bruce sped on.
Then, in a moment or two, his hearing re-enforced his scent. He could
catch the pad-pad-pad of running feet. And the increasing of the sound
told him he was gaining fast.
But in another bound his ears told him something else--something he
would have heard much sooner, had not the night wind been setting so
strongly in the other direction. He heard not only the pounding of his
prey's heavy-shod feet, but the soft thud of hundreds--perhaps
thousands--of other army shoes. And now, despite the adverse wind, the
odor of innumerable soldiers came to his fiercely sniffing nostrils.
Not only was it the scent of soldiers, but of German soldiers.
For the first time, Bruce lifted his head from the ground, as he ran,
and peered in front of him. The moon had risen above the low-lying
horizon vapors into a clear sky, and the reach of country was sharply
visible.
Bruce saw the man he was chasing,--saw him plainly. The German was
still running, but not at all as one who flees from peril. He ran,
rather, as might the bearer of glad tidings. And he was even now
drawing up to a group of men who awaited eagerly his coming. There must
have been fifty men in the group. Behind them--in open formation and as
far as the dog's near-sighted eyes could see--were more men, and more,
and more--thousands of them, all moving stealthily forward.
Now, a collie (in brain, though never in heart) is much more wolf than
dog. A bullterrier, or an Airedale, would have charged on at his foe,
and would have let himself be hacked to pieces before loosing his hold
on the man.
But--even as a wolf checks his pursuit of a galloping sheep when the
latter dashes into the guarded fold--Bruce came to an abrupt halt, at
sight of these reenforcements. He stood irresolute, still mad with
vengeful anger, but not foolish enough to assail a whole brigade of
armed men.
It is quite impossible (though Mahan and Vivier used to swear it must
be true) that Bruce had the reasoning powers to figure out the whole
situation which confronted him. He could not have known that a German
brigade had been sent to take advantage of the "Here-We-Comes"
temporarily isolated position--that three sentries had been killed in
silence and that their deaths had left a wide gap through which the
brigade hoped to creep unobserved until they should be within striking
distance of their unsuspectingly slumbering victims.
Bruce could not have known this. He could not have grasped the
slightest fraction of the idea, being only a real-life dog and not a
fairytale animal. But what he could and did realize was that a mass of
detested Germans was moving toward him, and that he could not hope to
attack them, single-handed; also, that he was not minded to slink
peacefully away and leave his friend unavenged.
Thwarted rage dragged from his furry throat a deep growl; a growl that
resounded eerily through that silent place of stealthy moves. And he
stepped majestically forth from the surrounding long grass, into the
full glare of moonlight.
The deceptive glow made him loom gigantic and black, and tinged his
snowy chest with the phosphorous gleam of a snowfield. His eyes shone
like a wild beast's.
* * * * *
Corporal Rudolph Freund, of the Konigin Luise Regiment, had just
finished his three-word report to his superior. He had merely saluted
and announced
"He is dead!"
Corporal Freund did not thrill, as usual, to the colonel's grunt of
approval. The Corporal was worried. He was a Black Forest peasant; and,
while iron military life had dulled his native superstitions, it had
not dispelled them.
The night was mystic, in its odd blend of moon and shadows. However
hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep through long grass,
like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile sentinel. And every
German in the "Pocket" had been under frightful mental and physical
stress, for the past week.
Corporal Rudolph Freund was a brave man and a brute. But that week had
sapped his nerve. And the work of this night had been the climax. The
desolate ground, over which he had crawled to the killing, had suddenly
seemed peopled with evil gnomes and goblins, whose existence no true
Black Forest peasant can doubt. And, on the run back, he had been
certain he heard some unseen monster tearing through the underbrush in
hot pursuit of him. So certain had he been, that he had redoubled his
speed.
There were no wolves or other large wild animals in that region. When
he had wriggled toward the slow-pacing American sentinel, he had seen
and heard no creature of any sort. Yet he was sure that on the way back
he had been pursued by--by Something! And into his scared memory, as he
ran, had flashed the ofttold Black Forest tale of the Werewolf--the
devil--beast that is entered by the soul of a murdered man and which
tracks the murderer to his death.
Glad was the unnerved Corporal Freund when his run ceased and he stood
close to his grossly solid and rank-scented fellowmen once more. Almost
he was inclined to laugh at his fears of the fabled Werewolf--and
especially at the idea that he had been pursued. He drew a long breath
of relief. He drew the breath in. But he did not at once expel it. For
on his ears came the sound of a hideous menacing growl.
Corporal Freund spun about, in the direction of the mysterious threat.
And there, not thirty feet from him, in the ghostly moonlight, stood
the Werewolf!
This time there could be no question of overstrained nerves and of
imagination. The Thing was THERE!
Horribly visible in every detail, the Werewolf was glaring at him. He
could see the red glow of the gigantic devil-beast's eyes, the white
flash of its teeth, the ghostly shimmering of its snowy chest. The soul
of the man he had slain had taken this traditional form and was hunting
down the slayer! A thousand stories of Freund's childhood verified the
frightful truth. And overwrought human nature's endurance went to
pieces under the shock.
A maniac howl of terror split the midnight stillness. Shriek after
shriek rent the air. Freund tumbled convulsively to the ground at his
colonel's feet, gripping the officer's booted knees and screeching for
protection. The colonel, raging that the surprise attack should be
imperiled by such a racket, beat the frantic man over the mouth with
his heavy fist, kicking ferociously at his upturned writhing face, and
snarling to him to be silent.
The shower of blows brought Freund back to sanity, to the extent of
changing his craven terror into Fear's secondary phase--the impulse to
strike back at the thing that had caused the fright. Rolling over and
over on the ground, under the impact of his superior's fist blows and
kicks, Freund somehow regained his feet.
Reeling up to the nearest soldier, the panic-crazed corporal snatched
the private's rifle and fired three times, blindly, at Bruce. Then,
foaming at the mouth, Freund fell heavily to earth again, chattering
and twitching in a fit.
Bruce, at the second shot, leaped high in the air, and collapsed, in an
inert furry heap, among the bushes. There he lay,--his career as a
courier-dog forever ended.
Corporal Rudolph Freund was perhaps the best sniper in his regiment.
Wildly though he had fired, marksman-instinct had guided his bullets.
And at such close range there was no missing. Bruce went to earth with
one rifle ball through his body, and another in his leg. A third had
reached his skull.
Now, the complete element of surprise was all-needful for the attack
the Germans had planned against the "Here-We-Comes." Deprived of that
advantage the expedition was doomed to utter failure. For, given a
chance to wake and to rally, the regiment could not possibly be
"rushed," in vivid moonlight, before the nearest Allied forces could
move up to its support. And those forces were only a mile or so to the
rear. There can be no possible hope for a surprise attack upon a
well-appointed camp when the night's stillness has been shattered by a
series of maniac screams and by three echoing rifle-shots.
Already the guard was out. A bugle was blowing. In another minute, the
sentry-calls would locate the gap made by the three murdered sentinels.
A swift guttural conference among the leaders of the gray-clad
marauders was followed by the barking of equally guttural commands. And
the Germans withdrew as quietly and as rapidly as they had come.
* * * * *
It was the mouthing and jabbering of the fit-possessed Corporal Rudolph
Freund that drew to him the notice of a squad of Yankees led by
Top-Sergeant Mahan, ten minutes later. It was the shudder--accompanied
pointing of the delirious man's finger, toward the nearby clump of
undergrowth, that revealed to them the still warm body of Bruce.
Back to camp, carried lovingly in Mahan's strong arms, went all that
was left of the great courier-dog. Back to camp, propelled between two
none-too-gentle soldiers, staggered the fit-ridden Corporal Freund.
At the colonel's quarters, a compelling dose of stimulant cleared some
of the mists from the prisoner's brain. His nerve and his will-power
still gone to smash, he babbled eagerly enough of the night attack, of
the killing of the sentries and of his encounter with the Werewolf.
"I saw him fall!" he raved. "But he is not dead. The Werewolf can be
killed only by a silver bullet, marked with a cross and blessed by a
priest. He will live to track me down! Lock me where he cannot find me,
for the sake of sweet mercy!"
And in this way, the "Here-We-Comes" learned of Bruce's part in the
night's averted disaster.
Old Vivier wept unashamed over the body of the dog he had loved.
Top-Sergeant Mahan--the big tears splashing, unnoted, from his own red
eyes--besought the Frenchman to strive for better self-control and not
to set a cry-baby example to the men.
Then a group of grim-faced soldiers dug a grave. And, carried by Mahan
and Vivier, the beautiful dog's body was borne to its resting-place. A
throng of men in the gray dawn stood wordless around the grave. Some
one shamefacedly took off his hat. With equal shamefacedness, everybody
else followed the example.
Mahan laid the dog's body on the ground, at the grave's brink. Then,
looking about him, he cleared his throat noisily and spoke.
"Boys," he began, "when a human dies for other humans, there's a
Christian burial service read over him. I'd have asked the chaplain to
read one over Bruce, here, if I hadn't known he'd say no. But the Big
Dog isn't going to rest without a word said over his grave, for all
that."
Mahan cleared his throat noisily once more, winked fast, then went on:--
"You can laugh at me, if any of you feel like it. But there's some of
you here who wouldn't be alive to laugh, if Bruce hadn't done what he
did last night. He was only just a dog--with no soul, and with no life
after this one, I s'pose. So he went ahead and did his work and took
the risks, and asked no pay.
"And by and by he died, still doing his work and asking no pay.
"He didn't work with the idea of getting a cross or a ribbon or a
promotion or a pension or his name in the paper or to make the crowd
cheer him when he got back home, or to brag to the homefolks about how
he was a hero. He just went ahead and WAS a hero. That's because he was
only a dog, with no soul--and not a man.
"All of us humans are working for some reward, even if it's only for
our pay or for the fun of doing our share. But Bruce was a hero because
he was just a dog, and because he didn't know enough to be anything
else but a hero.
"I've heard about him, before he joined up with us. I guess most of us
have. He lived up in Jersey, somewhere. With folks that had bred him.
I'll bet a year's pay he was made a lot of by those folks; and that it
wrenched 'em to let him go. You could see he'd been brought up that
way. Life must 'a' been pretty happy for the old chap, back there. Then
he was picked up and slung into the middle of this hell.
"So was the rest of us, says you. But you're wrong. Those of us that
waited for the draft had our choice of going to the hoosgow, as
'conscientious objectors,' if we didn't want to fight. And every
mother's son of us knew we was fighting for the Right; and that we was
making the world a decenter and safer place for our grandchildren and
our womenfolks to live in. We didn't brag about God being on our side,
like the boches do. It was enough for us to know WE was on GOD'S side
and fighting His great fight for Him. We had patriotism and religion
and Right, behind us, to give us strength.
"Brucie hadn't a one of those things. He didn't know what he was here
for--and why he'd been pitched out of his nice home, into all this. He
didn't have a chance to say Yes or No. He didn't have any spellbinders
to tell him he was making the world safe for d'mocracy. He was MADE to
come.
"How would any of us humans have acted, if a deal like that had been
handed to us? We'd 'a' grouched and slacked and maybe deserted. That's
because we're lords of creation and have souls and brains and such.
What did Bruce do? He jumped into this game, with bells on. He risked
his life a hundred times; and he was just as ready to risk it again the
next day.
"Yes, and he knew he was risking it, too. There's blame little he
didn't know. He saw war-dogs, all around him, choking to death from
gas, or screaming their lives out, in No Man's Land, when a bit of
shell had disemboweled 'em or a bullet had cracked their backbones. He
saw 'em starve to death. He saw 'em one bloody mass of scars and sores.
He saw 'em die of pneumonia and mange and every rotten trench disease.
And he knew it might be his turn, any time at all, to die as they were
dying; and he knew the humans was too busy nursing other humans, to
have time to spare on caring for tortured dogs. (Though those same dogs
were dying for the humans, if it comes to that.)
"Yes, Bruce knew what the end was bound to be. He knew it. And he kept
on, as gay and as brave as if he was on a day's romp. He never
flinched. Not even that time the K.O. sent him up the hill for
reenforcements at Rache, when every sharpshooter in the boche trenches
was laying for him, and when the machine guns were trained on him, too.
Bruce knew he was running into death--, then and a dozen other times.
And he went at it like a white man.
"I'm--I'm getting longwinded. And I'll stop. But--maybe if you boys
will remember the Big Dog--and what he did for us,--when you get back
home,--if you'll remember him and what he did and what thousands of
other war-dogs have done,--then maybe you'll be men enough to punch the
jaw of any guy who gets to saying that dogs are nuisances and that
vivisection's a good thing, and all that. If you'll just do that much,
then--well, then Bruce hasn't lived and died for nothing!
"Brucie, old boy," bending to lift the tawny body and lower it into the
grave, "it's good-by. It's good-by to the cleanest, whitest pal that a
poor dub of a doughboy ever had. I--"
Mahan glowered across at the clump of silent men.
"If anybody thinks I'm crying," he continued thickly, "he's a liar. I
got a cold, and--"
"Sacre bon Dieu!" yelled old Vivier, insanely. "Regarde-donc! Nom d'une
pipe!"
He knelt quickly beside the body, in an ecstasy of excitement. The
others craned their necks to see. Then from a hundred throats went up a
gasp of amazement.
Bruce, slowly and dazedly, was lifting his magnificent head!
"Chase off for the surgeon!" bellowed Mahan, plumping down on his knees
beside Vivier and examining the wound in the dog's scalp. "The bullet
only creased his skull! It didn't go through! It's just put him out for
a few hours, like I've seen it do to men. Get the surgeon! If that
bullet in his body didn't hit something vital, we'll pull him around,
yet! GLORY BE!"
* * * * *
It was late summer again at The Place, late opulent summer, with the
peace of green earth and blue sky, the heavy droning of bees and the
promise of harvest. The long shadows of late afternoon stretched
lovingly across the lawn, from the great lakeside trees. Over
everything brooded a dreamy amber light. The war seemed a million miles
away.
The Mistress and the Master came down from the vine-shaded veranda for
their sunset walk through the grounds. At sound of their steps on the
gravel, a huge dark-brown-and-white collie emerged from his
resting-place under the wistaria-arbor.
He stretched himself lazily, fore and aft, in collie-fashion. Then he
trotted up to his two deities and thrust his muzzle playfully into the
Mistress's palm, as he fell into step with the promenaders.
He walked with a stiffness in one foreleg. His gait was not a limp. But
the leg's strength could no longer be relied on for a ten-mile gallop.
Along his forehead was a new-healed bullet-crease. And the fur on his
sides had scarcely yet grown over the mark of the high-powered ball
which had gone clear through him without touching a mortal spot.
Truly, the regimental surgeon of the "Here-We-Comes" had done a job
worthy of his own high fame! And the dog's wonderful condition had done
the rest.
Apart from scars and stiffness, Bruce was none the worse for his year
on the battle-front. He could serve no longer as a dashing courier. But
his life as a pet was in no way impaired.
"Here's something that came by the afternoon mail, Bruce," the Master
greeted him, as the collie ranged alongside. "It belongs to you. Take a
look at it."
The Master drew from his pocket a leather box, and opened it. On the
oblong of white satin, within the cover, was pinned a very small and
very thin gold medal. But, light as it was, it had represented much
abstinence from estaminets and tobacco-shops, on the part of its donors.
"Listen," the Master said, holding the medal in front of the collie.
"Listen, while I read you the inscription: 'To Bruce. From some of the
boys he saved from the boches.'"
Bruce was sniffing the thin gold lozenge interestedly. The inscription
meant nothing to him. But--strong and vivid to his trained nostrils--he
scented on the medal the loving finger-touch of his old friend and
admirer, Top-Sergeant Mahan.
THE END