Not the best character actor unhung could have simulated the owlish
ignorance in Cash's face. Not the shrewdest spy could have had time to
mask a knowledge of German. And, as Colonel von Scheurer well knew, no
spy who did not understand German would have been sent to enlist in the
German Army.
The colonel at once was satisfied that the newcomer was not a spy. Yet
to make doubly certain of the recruit's willingness to serve against his
own country Von Scheurer sought another test. Pulling toward him a
scratch pad he picked up a pencil from the table before him and
proceeded to make a rapid sketch. When the sketch was complete he
detached the top sheet and showed it to Cash. On it was drawn a rough
likeness of the American flag.
"What is that?" he demanded.
"Old Glory," answered Cash after a leisurely survey of the picture;
adding in friendly patronage: "And not bad drawed, at that."
"It is the United States flag," pursued the colonel, "as you say. It is
the national emblem of the country where you were born; the country you
are renouncing, to become a subject of the All Highest."
"Meanin' Gawd?" asked Cash.
He wanted to be sure of every step. While he did not at all know the
meaning of "renounce," yet his attendance at mountain camp-meeting
revivals had given him a possible inkling as to what "All Highest"
meant.
"What?" inquired the puzzled colonel, not catching his drift.
"The 'All Highest' is Gawd, ain't it?" said Cash.
"It is His Imperial Majesty, the Kaiser," sharply retorted the
scandalized colonel.
"Oh!" exclaimed Cash, much interested. "I see. In Wes' V'ginny we call
Him 'Gawd.' An' over in this neck of the woods your Dutch name for Him
is 'Kaiser.' What a ninny I am! I'd allers had the idee the Kaiser was
jes' a man, with somethin' the same sort of job as Pres'dent Wilson's.
But----"
"This picture represents the flag of the United States," resumed the
impatient Von Scheurer, waiving the subject of theology for the point in
hand. "You have renounced it. You have declared your wish to fight
against it. Prove that. Prove it by tearing that sketch in two--and
spitting upon it!"
"Hold on!" interposed Cash, speaking with tolerant kindness as to a
somewhat stupid child. "Hold on, Cap! You got me wrong. Or may be I
didn't make it so very clear. I didn't ever say I wanted to fight Old
Glory. All I said I wanted to do was to fight that crowd of smart Alecks
over yonder who jail me all the time an' won't let me fight in my own
way. I've got nothin' agin th' old flag. Why, that 'ere's the flag I was
borned under! Me an' pop an' gran'ther an' the hull b'ilin' of us--as
fur back as there was any 'Merica, I reckon. I don't go 'round wavin' it
none. That ain't my way. But I sure ain't goin' to tear it up. And I
most gawdamightysure ain't goin' to spit on it. I----"
He checked himself. Not that he had no more to say, but because to his
astonishment he found he was beginning to lose his temper. This
phenomenon halted his speech and turned his wondering thoughts inward.
Cash could not understand his own strange surge of choler. He had not
been aware of any special interest in the American flag. A little
bunting representation of the Stars and Stripes--now faded close to
whiteness--hung on the wall of his shack at home, where his grandmother,
a rabid Unionist, had hung it nearly sixty years earlier, when West
Virginia had refused to join the Confederacy. Every day of his life Cash
had seen it there; had seen without noting or caring.
Camp Lee, too, had been ablaze with American flags. And after he had
learned the rules as to the flag salute Cash had never given the banners
a second thought. The regimental flags, too, here in France, had seemed
to him but a natural part of the Army's equipment, and no more to be
venerated than the twin bars on his captain's tunic.
Thus he could not in the very least account for the fiery flare of
rebellion that gripped him at this ramrod-like Prussian's command to
defile the emblem. Yet grip him it did. And it held him there, quivering
and purple, the strange emotion waxing more and more overpoweringly
potent at each passing fraction of a second. Dumb and shaking he
glowered down at the amused colonel.
Von Scheurer watched him placidly for a few moments; then with a short
laugh he advanced the test. Reaching for the sheet of paper whereon he
had sketched the flag the colonel held it lightly between the fingers of
his outstretched hands.
"It is really a very simple thing to do," he said carelessly, yet
keeping a covert watch upon the mountaineer. "And it is a thing that
every loyal German subject should rejoice to do. All I required was that
you first tear the emblem in two and then spit upon it--as I do now."
But the colonel did not suit action to words. As his fingers tightened
on the sheet of paper the dugout echoed to a low snarl that would have
done credit to a Cumberland catamount.
And with the snarl six feet of lean and wiry bulk shot through the air
across the narrow table that separated Cash from the colonel.
Von Scheurer with admirable presence of mind snatched his pistol from
its temporary resting place in his lap. With the speed of the wind he
seized the weapon. But with the speed of the whirlwind Cash Wyble was
upon him, his clawlike fingers deep in the colonel's full throat, his
hundred and sixty pounds of bone and gristle smiting Von Scheurer on
chest and shoulder.
Cash had literally risen in air and pounced on the Prussian. Under the
impact Von Scheurer's chair collapsed. Both men shot to earth, the
colonel undermost and the pistol flying unheeded from his grasp. Over,
too, went the table, and the electric light upon it. And the dugout was
in pitch blackness.
There in the dark Cash Wyble deliriously tackled his prey, making queer
and hideous little worrying sounds now and then far down in his throat,
like a dog that mangles its meat.
And there the sentry from the earthen passageway found them when he
rushed in with an electric torch, and followed by a rabble of fellow
soldiers.
Cash at sound of the running footsteps jumped to his feet. The man he
had attacked was lying very still, in a crumpled and yet sprawling
heap--in a posture never designed by Nature.
With one wild sweep of his windmill arms Cash grabbed up the sheet of
paper on which Von Scheurer had made his life's last sketch. With a
simultaneous sweep he knocked the glass-bulbed torch from the sentinel,
just as a rifle or two were centering their aim toward him; and, head
down, he tore into the group of men who blocked the dugout entrance.
Cash had a faintly conscious sense of dashing down one passageway and up
another, following by forestry instinct the course he noted when he was
led into the colonel's presence.
He collided with a sentinel; he butted another from his flying path. He
heard yells and shots--especially shots. Once something hit him on the
shoulder, whirling him half round without breaking his stride. Again
something hot whipped him across the cheek. And at last he was out,
under the foggy stars, with excited Germans firing in his general
direction and loosing off star shells.
Again instinct and scout skill came to the rescue as he plunged into a
bramble thicket and wriggled through long grass on his heaving stomach.
An hour before dawn Cash Wyble was led before his sleepy and unloving
company commander. The returned wanderer was caked with dirt and blood.
His face was scored by briers. Across one cheek ran the red wale of a
bullet. A very creditable flesh wound adorned his left shoulder. His
clothes were in ribbons.
Before the captain could frame the first of a thousand scathing words
Cash broke out pantingly: "Stick me in the hoosgow if you're a mind to,
Cap! Stick me there for life. Or wish me onto a kitchen-police job
forever! I'm not kickin'. It's comin' to me, all right, arter what I
done.
"I git the drift of the hull thing now. I'm onter what it means. It--it
means Old Glory! It means--_this!_"
He stuck out one muddy hand wherein was clutched a wad of scratch-pad
paper.
Then the company commander did a thing that stamped him as a genius.
Instead of administering the planned rebuke and following it by sending
the wretch to the guard house he began to ask questions.
"What do you make of it all?" dazedly queried the captain of Top
Sergeant Mahan when Cash had been taken to the trench hospital to have
his shoulder dressed.
"Well, sir," reported Mahan meditatively, "for one thing, I take it,
we've got a new soldier in the company. A soldier, not a varmint. For
another thing, I take it, Uncle Sam's got a new American on his list of
nephews. And--and, unless I'm wrong, Kaiser Bill is short one crackajack
sniper and one perfectly good Prussian colonel too. War's a funny thing,
sir."
--Albert Payson Terhune.