Far up on a peak among the birds and aeroplanes, in a roofed,
shell-proof chamber, with a telephone orderly at his side, a powerful
pair of field-glasses and range-finders at his elbow, and a telescope
before his eye, Gustave Feller, one-time gardener and now acting colonel
of artillery, watched the burst of shells over the enemy's lines. While
other men had grown lean on war, he had taken on enough flesh to fill
out the wrinkles around eyes that shone with an artist's enjoyment of
his work. Down under cover of the ridge were his guns, the keys of the
instrument that he played by calls over the wire. Their barking was a
symphony to his ears; errors of orchestration were errors in aim. He
talked as he watched, his lively features reflective of his impressions.
"Oh, pretty! Right into their tummies! Right in the nose! La, la, la!
But that's off--and so's that! Tell Battery C they're fifty yards over.
Oh, beady-eyed gods and shiny little fishes--two smacks in the same
spot! Humph! Tell Battery C that the trouble with that gun is worn
rifling; that's why it's going short. Elevate it for another hundred
yards--but it ought not to wear out so soon. I'd like to kick the maker
or the inspector. The fellows in B 21 will accuse us of inattention.
It's time to drop a shell on them to show we're perfectly impartial in
our favors. La, la, la! Oh, what a pretty smack! Congratulations!"
B 21 was the position of Fracasse's company and the pretty smack the
one that broke one man's arm and crushed another's head.
* * * * *
The "God with us!" song was singularly suited to the great, bull voice
of its composer, born to the red and become Captain Stransky in the red
business of war. It was he who led the thunder of its verses not far
from where Peterkin led the song of the Grays.
"I certainly like that song," said Stransky. Well he might. It had made
him famous throughout the nation. "There's Jehovah and brimstone in it.
Now we'll have our own."
"Our own" was also of Stransky's composition and about Dellarme; for
Stransky, child of the highways and byways, of dark, tragic alleys and
sunny fields, had music in him, the music of the people. The skin on his
high cheek-bones was drawn tighter than before, further exaggerating the
size of his nose, and the deeper set of his eyes gave their cross a more
marked character. He carried on the spirit of Dellarme in the company in
his own fashion. The survivors among his men were as lean and dirty as
Fracasse's, but, never having expected to reach the enemy's capital, war
had brought few illusions. They had known sleepless vigils, but not much
digging since they had fallen back on the main line into the
fortifications which, with all resources at command, the engineers had
built before the war. And the Browns still held the range! The principal
fortifications of Engadir and every other vital point of the main line
was theirs. All that the enemy had gained in his latest attack were a
few minor positions.
"But we're always losing positions!" complained one of the men. "Little
by little they are getting possession."
"They say the offensive always wins," said another.
"Five against three! They count on numbers," said Lieutenant Tom
Fragini.
"There you go, Tom! Any other pessimists or anarchists want to be
heard?" called out Stransky. "Just how long, at the present rate, will
it take them to get the whole range? There's a limit to the number of
even five millions."
"Yes, but if they ever break through in one place and get their guns
up--"
"As you've said before, Tom!"
"As we want to keep saying--as we want to keep fighting our damnedest to
make sure they won't," Tom explained.
"Yes, that's it!" declared a chorus.
"That's it, no matter what we pay!" declared Stransky. "We're not going
back there except in hearses!" He swung his hand in a semicircle toward
the distant hills, gold and purple in their dying foliage under the
autumn sunlight.
Then the telephone in the redoubt brought some news. The staff begged to
inform the army that the enemy's casualties in the last three days had
been two hundred thousand! Immediately everybody was talking at once in
Stransky's parliament, as he sometimes called that company of which he
was, in the final analysis, unlimited monarch.
"How do they know?"
"Do you think it's fake?"
"That sums up to pretty near a million!"
"My God! Think of it--a million!"
"We're whittling them down!"
"It doesn't make any difference whether Partow or Lanstron is chief of
staff!"
"They're paying!"
"Paying for our fellows that they've killed! Paying for being in the
wrong!"
"Let's have the song again! Come on!"
"Yes, the song! The song!"
"No; hold on!" cried Tom. "Not because men are killed!"
"That's right, that's right!" said Stransky. "After all, they're our
brothers." It was the first time since he had undergone the
transformation which the war had wrought in him that he had mentioned
any of his world-brotherhood ideas. "I still believe in that. We're
fighting for that!" he concluded.
With the ready change of subject of soldiers who have been long in
company, they were soon talking about other things--things that
concerned the living.
"Say, wouldn't I like a real bath--an altogether!"
"And plenty of soap all over!"
"A welter of lather from head to foot and blowing bubbles from between
my lips!"
"And to shave off this beard!"
"Think of the beards that are going when the war is over!"
"Not if you can't grow any more than John!"
"I'm not fighting out of ambush like you!" replied John. "I haven't got
a place for the birds to nest!"
"I'm going to trim mine down gradually," said another; "first an
imperial and mustache with mutton choppers; then mow my cheeks; then a
great, sweeping mustache; then a dandy little mustache; then--"
"Mow is the word! Don't inflict a barber!"
"And, after the bath, clean underclothes, and, oh, me!--a home dinner!"
"Stop with your home dinners! That's barred. Army biscuits!"
"Yes, we all prefer army biscuits!"
"We wouldn't touch a home dinner!"
Stransky, his eyes drawing inward in their characteristic slant, was
well pleased with his company, and the scattered exclamatory badinage
kept on until it was interrupted by the arrival of the mail. Partow and
Lanstron, understanding their machine as human in its elements, had
chosen that the army should hear from home.
"How's this!" exclaimed one man, reading from a newspaper. "They're
going to put up a statue of Partow in the capital! It's to show him as
he died, dropped forward on the map, and in front of his desk a field of
bayonets. On one face of the base will be his name. Two of the other
faces will have 'God with us!' and 'Not for theirs, but for ours!' The
legend on the fourth face the war is to decide."
"Victory! Victory!" cried those who had listened to the announcement.
"My mother says just what yours says, Tom. I needn't come home unless we
win."
"The girl I'm going to marry said that, too!"
"If we go back with the Gray army at our heels we shall strike a worse
fire than if we stick!"
Stransky was thinking that they had to do more than hold the Grays.
Before he should see his girl they had to take back the lost territory.
He carried two pictures of Minna in his mind: one when she had struck
him in the face as he had tried to kiss her and the other as he said
good-by at the kitchen door. There was not much encouragement in either.
"But when she gets better acquainted with me there's no telling!" he
kept thinking. "I was fighting out of cussedness at first. Now I'm
fighting for her and to keep what is ours!"