KAMERAD
Down the slope, through the thicket, came a man. She could see his legs
only. He wore dust-coloured breeches and tan puttees, like Sticky Smith’s
and Kid Glenn’s, only he wore no big, clanking Mexican spurs.
The man passed in front of her, his burly body barely visible through the
leaves, but not his features.
She rose, turned, ran over the moss, hurried through the ferns of the
warren, retracing her steps, and arrived breathless at the _lavoir_. And
scarcely had she dropped to her knees and seized soap and paddle, than a
squat, bronzed, powerfully built young man appeared on the opposite bank
of the stream, stepping briskly out of the bushes.
He did not notice her at first. He looked about for a place to jump, found
one, leaped safely across, and came on at a swinging stride across the
meadow.
The girl, bending above the water, suddenly struck sharply with her
paddle.
Instantly the man halted in his tracks, knee deep in clover.
Maryette, apparently unconscious of his presence, continued to soap and
scrub and slap her wash, singing in her clear, untrained voice of a child
the chansonette she had made that morning. But out of the corner of her
eyes she kept him in view--saw him come sauntering forward as though
reassured, became aware that he had approached very near, was standing
behind her.
Turning presently, where she knelt, to pick up another soiled garment, she
suddenly encountered his dark gaze; and her start and slight exclamation
were entirely genuine.
"_Mon Dieu!_" she said, with offended emphasis, "one does not approach
people that way, without a word!"
"Did I frighten mademoiselle?" he asked, in recognizable French, but with
an accent unpleasantly familiar to her. "If I did, I am very sorry and I
offer mademoiselle a thousand excuses and apologies."
The girl, kneeling there in the clover, flashed a smile at him over her
shoulder. The quick colour reddened his face and powerful neck. The girl
had been right; her smile had been an answer that he was not going to
ignore.
"What a pretty spot for a _lavoir_," he said, stepping to the edge of the
pool; "and what a pretty girl to adorn it!"
Maryette tossed her head:
"Be pleased to pass your way, monsieur. Do you not perceive that I am
busy?"
"It is not impossible to exchange a polite word or two when people are
busy, is it, mademoiselle?" he asked, laughing and showing a white and
perfect set of teeth under a short, dark mustache.
She continued to wring out her wash; but there was now a slight smile on
her lips.
"May I not say who I am?" he asked persuasively. "May I not venture to
speak?"
"_Mon dieu_, monsieur, there is liberty of speech for all in France. That
blackbird might be glad to know your name if you choose to tell him."
"But I ask _your_ permission to speak to _you_!" There seemed to be no
sense of humour in this young man.
She laughed:
"I am not curious to hear who you are!... But if it affords you any relief
to explain to the west wind what your name may be--" She ended with a
disdainful shrug. After a moment she lifted her pretty eyes to
his--lovely, provocative, tormenting eyes. But they were studying the
stranger closely.
He was a powerfully built, dark-skinned young man in the familiar khaki of
the American muleteers, wearing their insignia, their cap, their holster
and belt, and an extra pouch or wallet, loaded evidently with something
heavy.
She said, coolly:
"You must be one of the new Yankee muleteers who came with that beautiful
new herd of mules."
He laughed:
"Yes, I’m an American muleteer. My name is Charles Braun. I came over in
the last transport."
"You know Steek?"
"Who?"
"Steek! Monsieur Steekee Smeete?"
"Sticky Smith?"
"_Mais oui?_"
"I’ve met him," he replied curtly.
"And Monsieur Keed Glenn?"
"I’ve met Kid Glenn, too. Why?"
"They are friends of mine--very intimate friends. Of course," she added,
nose up-tilted, "if they are not also _your_ friends, any acquaintance
with me will be very difficult for _you_, Monsieur Braun."
He laughed easily and seated himself on the grass beside her; and, as he
sat down, a metallic clinking sounded in his wallet.
"_Tenez_," she remarked, "you carry old iron and bottles about with you, I
notice."
"Snaffles, curbs and stirrup irons," he replied carelessly. And in the
girl’s heart there leaped the swift, fierce flame of certainty in
suspicion.
"Why do you bring all that ironmongery down here?" she inquired, with
frankly childish curiosity, leisurely wringing out her linen.
"A mule got away from the corral. I’ve been wandering around in the bushes
trying to find him," he explained, so naturally and in such a friendly
voice that she raised her eyes to look again at this young gallant who
lingered here at the _lavoir_ for the sake of her _beaux yeux_.
Could this dark-eyed, smiling youth be a Hun spy? His smooth, boyish
features, his crisp short hair and tiny mustache shading lips a trifle too
red and overfull did not displease her. In his way he was handsome.
His voice, too, was attractive, gaily persuasive, but it was his
pronunciation of the letters c and d which had instantly set her on her
guard.
Seated on the bank near her, his roving eyes full of bold curiosity bent
on her from time to time, his idle fingers plaiting a little wreath out of
long-stemmed clover and _boutons d’or_, he appeared merely an intrusive,
irresponsible young fellow willing to amuse himself with a few moments’
rustic courtship here before he continued on his way.
"You are exceedingly pretty," he said. "Will you tell me your name in
exchange for mine?"
"Maryette Courtray."
"Oh," he exclaimed in quick recognition; "you are bell-mistress in Sainte
Lesse, then! _You_ are the celebrated carillonnette! I have heard about
you. I suspected that you might be the little mistress of Sainte Lesse
bells, because you wear the Legion--" He nodded his handsome head toward
the decoration on her blouse.
"And to think," he added effusively, "that it is just a mere slip of a
girl who was decorated for bravery by France!"
She smiled at him with all the beguilingly _bête_ innocence of the young
when flattered:
"You are too amiable, monsieur. I really do not understand why they gave
me the Legion. To encourage all French children, perhaps--because I really
am a dreadful coward." She tapped the holster on her thigh and gazed at
him quite guilelessly out of wide and trustful eyes. "You see? I dare not
even come here to wash my clothes unless I carry this--in case some Boche
comes prowling."
"Whose pistol is it?" he asked.
"The weapon belongs to Monsieur Steek. When I come to wash here I borrow
it."
"Are you the sweetheart of Monsieur Steek?" he inquired, mimicking her
pronunciation of "Stick," and at the same time fixing his dark eyes boldly
and expressively on hers.
"Does a young girl of my age have sweethearts?" she demanded scornfully.
"If she hasn’t had one, it’s time," he returned, staring hard at her with
a persistent and fixed smile that had become almost offensive.
"Oh, la!" she exclaimed with a shrug of her youthful shoulders. "Perhaps
you think I have time for such foolishness--what with housework to do and
washing, and caring for my father, and my duties in the belfry every day!"
"Youth passes swiftly, belle Maryette."
"Imitate him, beau monsieur, and swiftly pass your way!"
"_L’amour est doux, petite Marie!_"
"_Je m’en moque!_"
He rose, smiling confidently, dropped on his knees beside her, and rolled
back his cuffs.
"Come," he said, "I’ll help you wash. We two should finish quickly."
"I am in no haste."
"But it will give you an hour’s leisure, belle Maryette."
"Why should I wish for leisure, beau monsieur?"
"I shall try to instruct you why, when we have our hour together."
"Do you mean to pay court to me?"
"I am doing that now. My ardent courtship will already be accomplished, so
that we need not waste our hour together!" He began to laugh and wring out
the linen.
"Monsieur," she expostulated smilingly, "your apropos disturbs me. Have
you the assurance to believe that you already appeal to my heart?"
"Have I not appealed to it a little, Maryette?"
The girl averted her head coquettishly. For a few minutes they scrubbed
away there together, side by side on their knees above the rim of the
pool. Then, without warning, his hot, red lips burned her neck. Her swift
recoil was also a shudder; her face flushed.
"Don’t do that!" she said sharply, straightening up in the grass where she
was kneeling.
"You are so adorable!" he pleaded in a low, tense voice.
There was a long silence. She had moved aside and away from him on her
knees; her head remained turned, too, and her features were set as though
carven out of rosy marble.
She was summoning every atom of resolution, every particle of courage to
do what she must do. Every fibre in her revolted with the effort; but she
steeled herself, and at last the forced smile was stamped on her lips, and
she dared turn her head and meet his burning gaze.
"You frighten me," she said--and her unsteady voice was convincing. "A
young girl is not courted so abruptly."
"Forgive me," he murmured. "I could not help myself--your neck is so
fragrant, so childlike----"
"Then you should treat me as you would a child!" she retorted pettishly.
"Amuse me, if you aspire to any comradeship with me. Your behaviour does
not amuse me at all."
"We shall become comrades," he said confidently, "and you shall be
sufficiently amused."
"It requires time for two people to become comrades."
"Will you give me an hour this evening?"
"What? A rendezvous?" she exclaimed, laughing.
"Yes."
"You mean somewhere alone with you?"
"Will you, Maryette?"
"But why? I am not yet old enough for such foolishness. It would not amuse
me at all to be alone with you for an hour." She pouted and shrugged and
absently plucked a hollow stem from the sedge.
"It would amuse me much more to sit here and blow bubbles," she added,
clearing the stem with a quick breath and soaping the end of it.
Then, with tormenting malice, she let her eyes rest sideways on him while
she plunged the hollow stem into the water, withdrew it, dripping, and
deliberately blew an enormous golden bubble from the end.
"Look!" she cried, detaching the bubble, apparently enchanted to see it
float upward. "Is it not beautiful, my fairy balloon?"
On her knees there beside the basin she blew bubble after bubble,
detaching each with a slight movement of her wrist, and laughing
delightedly to see them mount into the sunshine.
"You _are_ a child," he said, worrying his red underlip with his teeth.
"You’re a baby, after all."
She said:
"Very well, then, children require toys to amuse them, not sighs and
kisses and bold, brown eyes to frighten and perplex them. Have you any
toys to amuse me if I give you an hour with me?"
"Maryette, I can easily teach you----"
"No! Will you bring me a toy to amuse me?--a clay pipe to blow bubbles? I
adore bubbles."
"If I promise to amuse you, will you give me an hour?" he asked.
"How can I?" she demanded with sudden caprice. "I have my wash to finish;
then I have to see that my father has his soup; then I must attend to
customers at the inn, go up to the belfry, oil the machinery, play the
carillon later, wind the drum for the night----"
"I shall come to you in the tower after the angelus," he said eagerly.
"I shall be too busy----"
"After the carillon, then! Promise, Maryette!"
"And sit up there alone with you in the dark for an hour? _Ma foi!_ How
amusing!" She laughed in pretty derision. "I shall not even be able to
blow bubbles!"
Watching her pouting face intently, he said:
"Suppose I bring some toy balloons for you to fly from the clock tower?
Would that amuse you--you beautiful, perverse child?"
"Little toy balloons!" she echoed, enchanted. "What pleasure to set them
afloat from the belfry! Do you really promise to bring me some little toy
balloons to fly?"
"Yes. But _you_ must promise not to speak about it to anybody."
"Why?"
"Because the gendarmes wouldn’t let us fly any balloons."
"You mean that they might think me a spy?" she inquired naïvely.
"Or me," he rejoined with a light laugh. "So we shall have to be very
discreet and go cautiously about our sport. And it ought to be great fun,
Maryette, to sail balloons out over the German trenches. We’ll tie a
message to every one! Shall we, little comrade?"
She clapped her hands.
"That _will_ enrage the Boches!" she cried, "You won’t forget to bring the
balloons?"
"After the carillon," he nodded, staring at her intently.
"Half past ten," she said; "not one minute earlier. I cannot be disturbed
when playing. Do you understand? Do you promise?"
"Yes," he said, "I promise not to bother you before half past ten."
"Very well. Now let me do my washing here in peace."
------------------
She was still scrubbing her linen when he went reluctantly away across the
meadow toward Sainte Lesse. And when she finally stood up, swung the
basket to her head, and left the meadow, the sun hung low behind Sainte
Lesse Wood and a rose and violet glow possessed the world.
At the White Doe Inn she flew feverishly about her duties, aiding the
ancient peasant woman with the simple preparations for dinner, giving her
father his soup and helping him to bed, swallowing a mouthful herself as
she hastened to finish her household tasks.
Kid Glenn came in as usual for an _aperitif_ while she was gathering up
her wooden gloves.
"Did a mule stray today from your corral?" she asked, filling his glass
for him.
"No," he said.
"Are you sure?"
"Dead certain. Why?"
"Do you know one of the new muleteers named Braun?"
"I know him by sight."
"Keed!" she said, going up to him and placing both hands on his broad
shoulders; "I play the carillon after the angelus. Bring Steek to the
bell-tower half an hour after you hear the carillon end. You will hear it
end; you will hear the quarter hour strike presently. Half an hour later,
after the third quarter hour strikes, you shall arrive. Bring pistols. Do
you promise?"
"Sure! What’s the row, Maryette?"
"I don’t know yet. I _think_ we shall find a spy in the tower."
"Where?"
"In the belfry, _parbleu_! And you and Steek shall come up the stairs and
you shall wait in the dark, there where the keyboard is, and where you see
all the wires leading upward. You shall listen attentively, and I will be
on the landing above, among my bells. And when you hear me cry out to you,
then you shall come running with pistols!"
"For heaven’s sake----"
"Is it understood? Give me your word, Keed!"
"Sure!----"
"_Allons! Assez!_" she whispered excitedly. "Make prisoner any man you see
there!--_any_ man! You understand?"
"You bet!"
"_Any man!_" she repeated slowly, "even if he wears the same uniform _you_
wear."
There was a silence. Then:
"By God!" said Glenn under his breath.
"You suspect?"
"Yes. And if it _is_ one of our German-American muleteers, we’ll lynch
him!" he whispered in a white rage.
But Maryette shook her head.
"No," she said in a dull, even voice, "let the gendarmerie take him in
charge. Spy or suspect, he must have his chance. That is the law in
France."
"You don’t give rats a chance, do you?"
"I give everything its chance," she said simply. "And so does my country."
She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, examined it, raised her
eyes gravely to the American beside her:
"This is terrible for me," she added, in a low but steady voice. "If it
were not for my country--" She made a grave gesture, turned, and went
slowly out through the arched stone passage into the main street of the
town. A few minutes later the angelus sounded sweetly over the woods and
meadows of Sainte Lesse.
------------------
At ten, as the last stroke of the hour ended, there came a charming,
intimate little murmur of awakening bells; it grew sweeter, clearer,
filling the starry sky, growing, exquisitely increasing in limpid,
transparent volume, sweeping through the high, dim belfry like a great
wind from Paradise carrying Heaven’s own music out over the darkened
earth.
All Sainte Lesse came to its doorways to listen to the playing of their
beloved Carillonnette; the bell-music ebbed and swelled under the stars;
the ancient Flemish masterpiece, written by some carillonneur whose bones
had long been dust, became magnificently vital again under the enchanted
hands of the little mistress of the bells.
In fifteen minutes the carillon ended; a slight pause followed, then the
quarter hour struck.
With the last stroke of the bell, the girl drew off her wooden gloves,
laid them on the keyboard, turned slowly in her seat, listening. A slight
sound coming from the spiral staircase of stone set her heart beating
violently. Had the suspected man violated his word? She drew the automatic
pistol from her holster, rose, and stole up to the stone platform
overhead, where, rising tier on tier into the darkness, the great carillon
of Sainte Lesse loomed overhead.
She listened uneasily. Had the man lied? It seemed to her as though her
hammering heart must burst from her bosom with the terrible suspense of
the moment.
Suddenly a shadowy form appeared at the head of the stairs, reaching the
platform at one bound. And her heart seemed to stop as she realized that
this man had arrived too early for her friends to be of any use to her. He
had lied to her. And now she must take him unaided, or kill him there in
the starlight under the looming bells.
"Maryette!" he called. She did not stir.
"Maryette!" he whispered. "Where are you, little sweetheart? Forgive me, I
could not wait any longer. I adore you----"
All at once he discovered her standing motionless in the shadow of the
great bell Bayard--sprang toward her, eager, ardent, triumphant.
"Maryette," he whispered, "I love you! I shall teach you what a lover
is----"
Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her face; the terrible expression in her
eyes checked him.
"What has happened?" he asked, bewildered. And then he caught sight of the
pistol in her hand.
"What’s that for?" he demanded harshly. "Are you afraid to love me? Do you
think I’m the kind of lover to stop for a thing like that----"
She said, in a low, distinct voice:
"Don’t move! Put up both hands instantly!"
"What!" he snapped out, like the crack of a lash.
"I know who you are. You’re a Boche and no Yankee! Turn your back and
raise your arms!"
For a moment they looked at each other.
"I think," she said, steadily, "you had better explain your gas cylinders
and balloons to the gendarmes at the Poste."
"No," he said, "I’ll explain them to you, _now_!----"
"If you touch your pistol, I fire!----"
But already he had whipped out his pistol; and she fired instantly,
smashing his right hand to pulp.
"You damned hell-cat!" he screamed, stretching out his shattered hand in
an agony of impotent fury. Blood rained from it on the stone flags.
Suddenly he started toward her.
"Don’t stir!" she whispered. "Turn your back and raise both arms!"
His face became ghastly.
"Let me go, in God’s name!" he burst out in a strangled voice. "Don’t send
me before a firing squad! Listen to me, little comrade--I surrender myself
to your mercy----"
"Then keep away from me! Keep your distance!" she cried, retreating. He
followed, fawning:
"Listen! We were such good comrades----"
"Don’t come any nearer to me!" she called out sharply; but he still
shuffled toward her, whimpering, drenched in blood, both hands uplifted.
"Kamerad!" he whined, "Kamerad--" and suddenly launched a kick at her.
She just avoided it, springing behind the bell Bayard; and he rushed at
her and struck with both uplifted arms, showering her with blood, but not
quite reaching her.
In the darkness among the beams and the deep shadows of the bells she
could hear him hunting for her, breathing heavily and making ferocious,
inarticulate noises, as she swung herself up onto the first beam above and
continued to crawl upward.
"Where are you, little fool?" he cried at length. "I have business with
you before I cut your throat--that smooth, white throat of yours that I
kissed down there by the _lavoir_!" There was no sound from her.
He went back toward the stairs and began hunting about in the starlight
for his pistol; but there was no parapet on the bell platform, and he
probably concluded that it had fallen over the edge of the tower into the
street.
Supporting his wounded hand, he stood glaring blankly about him, and his
bloodshot eyes presently fell on the door to the stairs. But he must have
realized that flight would be useless for him if he left this girl alive
in her bell-tower, ready to alarm the town the moment he ran for the
stairs.
With his left hand he fumbled under his tunic and disengaged a heavy
trench knife from its sheath. The loss of blood was making his legs a
trifle unsteady, but he pulled himself together and moved stealthily under
the shadows of beam and bell until he came to the spot he selected. And
there he lay down, the hilt of the knife in his left hand, the blade
concealed by his opened tunic.
------------------
His heavy groans at last had their effect on the girl, who had climbed
high up into the darkness, creeping from beam to beam and mounting from
one tier of bells to another.
Standing on the lowest beam, she cautiously looked out through an
oubliette and saw him lying on his back near the sheer edge of the roof.
Evidently he, also, could see her head silhouetted against the stars, for
he called up to her in a plaintive voice that he was bleeding to death and
unable to move.
After a few moments, opening his eyes again, he saw her standing on the
roof beside him, looking down at him. And he whispered his appeal in the
name of Christ. And in His name the little bell-mistress responded.
When she had used the blue kerchief at her neck for a tourniquet and had
checked the hemorrhage, he was still patiently awaiting a better
opportunity to employ his knife. It would not do to bungle the affair. And
he thought he knew how it could be properly done--if he could get her head
in the crook of his muscular elbow.
"Lift me, dear ministering angel," he whispered weakly.
She stooped impulsively, hesitated, then, suddenly terrified at the
blazing ferocity in his eyes, she shrank back at the same instant that his
broad knife flashed in her very face.
He was on his feet at a bound, and, as she raised her voice in a startled
cry for help, he plunged heavily at her, but slipped and fell in his own
blood. Then the clattering jingle of spurred boots on the stone stairs
below caught his ear. He was trapped, and he realized it. He slowly got to
his feet.
As Smith and Glenn appeared, springing out of the low-arched door, the
muleteer Braun turned and faced them.
There was a silence, then Glenn said, bitterly:
"It’s you, is it, you dirty Dutchman!"
"Hands up!" said Smith quietly. "Come on, now; it’s a case of ’Kamerad’
for yours."
Braun did not move to comply with the demand. Gradually it dawned on them
that the man was game.
"Maryette!" he called; "where are you?"
Smith said curiously:
"What do you want with her, Braun?"
"I want to speak to her."
"Come over here, Maryette," said Glenn sullenly.
The girl crept out of the shadows. Her face was ghastly.
Braun looked at her with pallid scorn:
"You little, ignorant fool," he said, "I’d have made you a better lover
than you’ll ever have now!"
He shrugged his square shoulders in contempt, turned without a glance at
Smith and Glenn, and stepped outward into space. And as he fell there
between sky and earth, hurtling downward under the stars, Glenn’s pistol
flashed twice, killing his quarry in midair while falling.
"Can you beat it?" he demanded hoarsely, turning on Smith. "Ain’t that me
all over!--soft-hearted enough to do that skunk a kindness thataway!"
But his youthful voice was shaking, and he stared at the edge of the
abyss, listening to the far tumult now arising from the street below.
"Did you shoot?" he inquired, controlling his nervous voice with an
effort.
"Naw," said Smith disgustedly. "... Now, Maryette, put one arm around my
neck, and me and the Kid will take you down them stairs, because you look
tired--kind o’ peeked and fussed, what with all this funny business going
on----"
"Oh, Steek! Steek!" she sobbed. "Oh, _mon ami_, Steek!"
She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.
"What you need is sleep," he said very gently.
But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that
night--business with the Mother of God that would take all night long--and
many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.
She put her left arm around Smith’s neck and hid her tear-wet face on his
shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the
unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his
breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who
had tried to be to her a "Kamerad"--as he understood it--including the
entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.
------------------
There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the
"zinc," side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each
big, sunburnt fist was an empty glass; their spurred feet dangled; they
leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly
turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the
candle flame.
The drone of an aëroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at
intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.
By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter
that kept them there:
--I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don’t
say a word to Maryette.
Jack.
Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.
"When Jack comes," he drawled, "it’s a-goin’ to he’p a lot. That Maryette
girl’s plumb done in."
"Sure she’s done in," nodded Kid Glenn. "Wouldn’t it do in anybody to
shoot up a young man an’ then see him step off the top of a skyscraper?"
Smith admitted that he himself had felt "kind er squeamish." He added:
"Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn’t look at him, did
you, Kid?"
"Naw. Say, d’ya think Maryette has gone to bed?"
"I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek
to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china
virgin on the niche over her bed."
"She oughter be in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel
punk next day," remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of
eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his
lips. "She’ll come around all O. K. when she sees Jack," he added.
"Goin’ to let him wake her up?"
"Can you see us stoppin’ him? He’d kick the pants off us----"
"Sh-h-h!" motioned Smith; "there’s a automobile! By gum! It’s
stopped!----"
The two muleteers set their glasses on the bar, slid to the floor, and
marched, clanking, into the covered way that led to the street. Smith
undid the bolts. A young man stood outside in the starlight.
"Well, Jack Burley, you old son of a gun!" drawled Glenn. "Gawd! You look
fit for a dead one!"
"We ain’t told her!" whispered Smith. "She an’ us done in a Fritz this
evening, an’ it sorter turned Maryette’s stomach----"
"Not that she ain’t well," explained Glenn hastily; "only a girl feels
different. Stick an’ me, we just took a few drinks, but Maryette, soon as
she got home, she just flopped down on her knees and asked that china
virgin of hers to go easy on that there Fritz----"
They had conducted Burley to the bar; both their arms were draped around
his shoulders; both talked to him at the same time.
"This here Fritz," began Glenn--but Burley freed himself from their
embrace.
"Where’s Maryette?" he demanded.
Smith jerked a silent thumb toward the ceiling.
"In bed?"
"Or prayin’."
Burley flushed, hesitated.
"G’wan up, anyway," said Glenn. "I reckon it’ll do her a heap o’ good to
lamp you, you old son of a gun!"
Burley turned, went up the short flight of stairs to her closed door.
There was candle-light shining through the transom. He knocked with a
trembling hand. There was no answer. He knocked again; heard her uncertain
step; stepped back as her door opened.
The girl, a drooping figure in her night robe, stood listlessly on the
threshold. Which of the muleteers it was who had come to her door she did
not notice. She said:
"I am very tired. Death is a dreadful thing. I can’t put it from my mind.
I am trying to pray----"
She lifted her weary eyes and found herself looking into the face of her
own lover. She turned very white, lovely eyes dilated.
"Is--is it thou, Djack?"
"C’est moi, ma ploo belle!"
She melted into his tightening arms with a faint cry. Very high overhead,
under the lustrous stars, an aëroplane droned its uncharted way across a
blood-soaked world.
POPULAR COPYRIGHT NOVELS
AT MODERATE PRICES
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of
A. L. Burt Company’s Popular Copyright Fiction
*Abner Daniel.* By Will N. Harben.
*Adventures of Gerard.* By A. Conan Doyle.
*Adventures of a Modest Man.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.* By A. Conan Doyle.
*Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The.* By Frank L. Packard.
*After House, The.* By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
*Alisa Paige.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*Alton of Somasco.* By Harold Bindloss.
*A Man’s Man.* By Ian Hay.
*Amateur Gentleman, The.* By Jeffery Farnol.
*Andrew The Glad.* By Maria Thompson Daviess.
*Ann Boyd.* By Will N. Harben.
*Anna the Adventuress.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
*Another Man’s Shoes.* By Victor Bridges.
*Ariadne of Allan Water.* By Sidney McCall.
*Armchair at the Inn, The.* By F. Hopkinson Smith.
*Around Old Chester.* By Margaret Deland.
*Athalie.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*At the Mercy of Tiberius.* By Augusta Evans Wilson.
*Auction Block, The.* By Rex Beach.
*Aunt Jane.* By Jeanette Lee.
*Aunt Jane of Kentucky.* By Eliza C. Hall.
*Awakening of Helena Richie.* By Margaret Deland.
*Bambi.* By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
*Bandbox, The.* By Louis Joseph Vance.
*Barbara of the Snows.* By Harry Irving Green.
*Bar 20.* By Clarence E. Mulford.
*Bar 20 Days.* By Clarence E. Mulford.
*Barrier, The.* By Rex Beach.
*Beasts of Tarzan, The.* By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
*Beechy.* By Bettina Von Hutten.
*Bella Donna.* By Robert Hichens.
*Beloved Vagabond, The.* By Wm. J. Locke.
*Beltane the Smith.* By Jeffery Farnol.
*Ben Blair.* By Will Lillibridge.
*Betrayal, The.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
*Better Man, The.* By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
*Beulah.* (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans.
*Beyond the Frontier.* By Randall Parrish.
*Black Is White.* By George Barr McCutcheon.
*Blind Man’s Eyes, The.* By Wm. MacHarg & Edwin Balmer.
*Bob Hampton of Placer.* By Randall Parrish.
*Bob, Son of Battle.* By Alfred Ollivant.
*Britton of the Seventh.* By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
*Broad Highway, The.* By Jeffery Farnol.
*Bronze Bell, The.* By Louis Joseph Vance.
*Bronze Eagle, The.* By Baroness Orczy.
*Buck Peters, Ranchman.* By Clarence E. Mulford.
*Business of Life, The.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*By Right of Purchase.* By Harold Bindloss.
*Cabbages and Kings.* By O. Henry.
*Calling of Dan Matthews, The.* By Harold Bell Wright.
*Cape Cod Stories.* By Joseph C. Lincoln.
*Cap’n Dan’s Daughter.* By Joseph C. Lincoln.
*Cap’n Eri.* By Joseph C. Lincoln.
*Cap’n Warren’s Wards.* By Joseph C. Lincoln.
*Cardigan.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*Carpet From Bagdad, The.* By Harold MacGrath.
*Cease Firing.* By Mary Johnson.
*Chain of Evidence, A.* By Carolyn Wells.
*Chief Legatee, The.* By Anna Katharine Green.
*Cleek of Scotland Yard.* By T. W. Hanshew.
*Clipped Wings.* By Rupert Hughes.
*Coast of Adventure, The.* By Harold Bindloss.
*Colonial Free Lance, A.* By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
*Coming of Cassidy, The.* By Clarence E. Mulford.
*Coming of the Law, The.* By Chas. A. Seltzer.
*Conquest of Canaan, The.* By Booth Tarkington.
*Conspirators, The.* By Robt. W. Chambers.
*Counsel for the Defense.* By Leroy Scott.
*Court of Inquiry, A.* By Grace S. Richmond.
*Crime Doctor, The.* By E.W. Hornung
*Crimson Gardenia, The, and Other Tales of Adventure.* By Rex Beach.
*Cross Currents.* By Eleanor H. Porter.
*Cry in the Wilderness, A.* By Mary E. Waller.
*Cynthia of the Minute.* By Louis Jos. Vance.
*Dark Hollow, The.* By Anna Katharine Green.
*Dave’s Daughter.* By Patience Bevier Cole.
*Day of Days, The.* By Louis Joseph Vance.
*Day of the Dog, The.* By George Barr McCutcheon.
*Depot Master, The.* By Joseph C. Lincoln.
*Desired Woman, The.* By Will N. Harben.
*Destroying Angel, The.* By Louis Joseph Vance.
*Dixie Hart.* By Will N. Harben.
*Double Traitor, The.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
*Drusilla With a Million.* By Elizabeth Cooper.
*Eagle of the Empire, The.* By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
*El Dorado.* By Baroness Orczy.
*Elusive Isabel.* By Jacques Futrelle.
*Empty Pockets.* By Rupert Hughes.
*Enchanted Hat, The.* By Harold MacGrath.
*Eye of Dread, The.* By Payne Erskine.
*Eyes of the World, The.* By Harold Bell Wright.
*Felix O’Day.* By F. Hopkinson Smith.
*54-40 or Fight.* By Emerson Hough.
*Fighting Chance, The.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*Financier, The.* By Theodore Dreiser.
*Flamsted Quarries.* By Mary E. Waller.
*Flying Mercury, The.* By Eleanor M. Ingram.
*For a Maiden Brave.* By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
*Four Million, The.* By O. Henry.
*Four Pool’s Mystery, The.* By Jean Webster.
*Fruitful Vine, The.* By Robert Hichens.
*Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.* By George Randolph Chester.
*Gilbert Neal.* By Will N. Harben.
*Girl From His Town, The.* By Marie Van Vorst.
*Girl of the Blue Ridge, A.* By Payne Erskine.
*Girl Who Lived in the Woods, The.* By Marjorie Benton Cook.
*Girl Who Won, The.* By Beth Ellis.
*Glory of Clementina, The.* By Wm. J. Locke.
*Glory of the Conquered, The.* By Susan Glaspell.
*God’s Country and the Woman.* By James Oliver Curwood.
*God’s Good Man.* By Marie Corelli.
*Going Some.* By Rex Beach.
*Gold Bag, The.* By Carolyn Wells.
*Golden Slipper, The.* By Anna Katharine Green.
*Golden Web, The.* By Anthony Partridge.
*Gordon Craig.* By Randall Parrish.
*Greater Love Hath No Man.* By Frank L. Packard.
*Greyfriars Bobby.* By Eleanor Atkinson.
*Guests of Hercules, The.* By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
*Halcyone.* By Elinor Glyn.
*Happy Island* (Sequel to Uncle William). By Jeannette Lee.
*Havoc.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
*Heart of Philura, The.* By Florence Kingsley.
*Heart of the Desert, The.* By Honoré Willsie.
*Heart of the Hills, The.* By John Fox, Jr.
*Heart of the Sunset.* By Rex Beach.
*Heart of Thunder Mountain, The.* By Elfrid A. Bingham.
*Heather-Moon, The.* By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
*Her Weight in Gold.* By Geo. B. McCutcheon.
*Hidden Children, The.* By Robert W. Chambers.
*Hoosier Volunteer, The.* By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
*Hopalong Cassidy.* By Clarence E. Mulford.
*How Leslie Loved.* By Anne Warner.
*Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.* By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.
*Husbands of Edith, The.* By George Barr McCutcheon
*I Conquered.* By Harold Titus.
*Illustrious Prince, The.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
*Idols.* By William J. Locke.
*Indifference of Juliet, The.* By Grace S. Richmond.
*Inez.* (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans.
*Infelice.* By Augusta Evans Wilson.
*In Her Own Right.* By John Reed Scott.
*Initials Only.* By Anna Katharine Green.
*In Another Girl’s Shoes.* By Berta Ruck.
*Inner Law, The.* By Will N. Harben.
*Innocent.* By Marie Corelli.
*Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The.* By Sax Rohmer.
*In the Brooding Wild.* By Ridgwell Cullum.
*Intrigues, The.* By Harold Bindloss.
*Iron Trail, The.* By Rex Beach.
*Iron Woman, The.* By Margaret Deland.
*Ishmael.* (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth.
BARBARIANS
BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
In this story Mr. Chambers deals with the early years of the Great War.
Sickened by what seems to them at that time indifference on the part of
the American Government, an odd group of men meet on the decks of a mule
transport. They have been drawn to this common rendezvous by a desire to
enter the war and purge their souls in the fight for the freedom of the
world.
There are twelve in the group, eight Americans, three Frenchmen, and a
Belgian, and prominent among them is Jim Neeland, whose earlier
experiences Mr. Chambers has related in the "Dark Star."
Barbarians records the adventures of these men, not together, but singly
or in groups, along the whole western battle front, from the Belgian coast
to the mountains of Alsace. It is filled with unusual character sketches
of the lives of the men in the Trenches, and of life in the little towns
just inside the lines of Battle. Through it all there is great beauty and
wonderful sense of justice and right that is indeed more precious than
peace.
Other Books by Robert W. Chambers:
*Adventures of a Modest Man*
*Alisa Paige*
*Athalie*
*Business of Life, The*
*Cardigan*
*Conspirators, The*
*Fighting Chance, The*
*Hidden Children, The*
*Girl Phillippa, The*
*Red Republic, The*
*Dark Star, The*
*Who Goes There?*
*Younger Set, The*
*Japonette*
*Streets of Ascalon*
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers,--New York
THE NEWEST BOOKS
IN POPULAR REPRINT FICTION
Only Books of Superior Merit and Popularity are Published in this List
*TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR.* By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The Tarzan books need no introduction. Thousands are waiting for this
volume, being further adventures of TARZAN OF THE APES, and volume five
of the series.
*LONG LIVE THE KING.* By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
This is a story of love, intrigue and adventure in a European court. In
this story Mrs. Rinehart combines mystery, heart interest, and
excitement of her past successes into a story that will be hailed as the
most interesting of all her stories.
*WE CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING.* By Rupert Hughes.
A novel of metropolitan life, of a girl who had never had anything and
of a man who had always had everything, and of the manner in which his
richness and her poverty colored each other, and the lives of many other
persons as well.
*BARBARIANS.* By Robert W. Chambers.
Brave, reckless, idealistic chaps--careless of peril, unafraid of
death--who deliberately sought danger and the venturesome life as found
during the war, over there. The adventures will hold the reader
breathless and the romance will delight.
*THE FORFEIT.* By Ridgwell Cullum.
A ranch story of Montana which centers around the fact that the leader
of the "Lightfoot Rustlers" and the likeable but devil-may-care brother
of the hero are one and the same. Cullum is a "big" western story
writer.
*UNDER HANDICAP.* By Jackson Gregory.
Here is a story which is a strong picture of the changing of a western
desert into a land of usefulness, by irrigation. The story has a
pleasing romance, yet exciting at times, with adventures of more than
one kind. Every reader of "The Outlaw" will want this book.
*THE TRIUMPH.* By Will N. Harben.
Loyalty is the keynote of this story, loyalty of the hero to his
patriotic duty, loyalty of a daughter to her father, and loyalty of a
lover to his sweetheart. The followers, of Mr. Harben will enjoy another
of his southern stories.
*PIP.* By Ian Hay (Capt. Ian Hay Beith), Author of "The First Hundred
Thousand."
A story of English school boys, their pleasures and pains, their sports
and escapades, that might be called a modern "Tom Brown," but a Tom
Brown brimming with laughter and with the slang of the day.
*MISS MILLION’S MAID.* By Berta Ruck.
Another ingenious Berta Ruck plot in which a high-spirited girl of
twenty-three, well-bred, but penniless, flies in the face of tradition,
becoming a maid of a newly-made heiress. So entangled grow the love
affairs of mistress and maid that the reader has a merry time with the
author in steering the girls on the road to happiness.
*ENOCH CRANE.* By F. Hopkinson and F. Berkeley Smith.
A story of New York specially. The scene is Waverly Place, in one of the
characteristic old houses of that section. In this respect the story is
very similar to "Peter," Mr. Smith’s most popular book.
*PARTNERS OF THE NIGHT.* By Leroy Scott.
Although a detective story, it is one altogether different from those of
the ordinary detective story writer. It is a story of the plain-clothes
men and criminals of New York, with a splendid romance.
For sale by all booksellers.
A. L. BURT COMPANY, 114-120 East 23rd Street, New York