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Page 27
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 �e 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.
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