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Page 28
Ludendorff and his little playmates were just then engaged in the
congenial sport of delivering unexpected blows at various
successive points of the Allied line, in an effort to find some
spot that was soft enough to cave in under the impact and let
through a horde of gray-clad Huns. And though none of the
defenders knew it, this "quiet" sector had been chosen for such a
minor blow.
The men in higher command, back there behind the hill crest, had
a belated inkling, though, of a proposed attack on the lightly
defended front trenches. For the Allied airplanes which drifted
in the upper heavens like a scattered handful of dragon-flies
were not drifting there aimlessly. They were the eyes of the
snakelike columns that crawled so blindly on the scarred brown
surface of the earth. And those "eyes" had discerned the massing
of a force behind the German line had discerned and had duly
reported it.
The attack might come in a day. It might not come in a week. But
it was coming--unless the behind-the-lines preparations were a
gigantic feint.
A quiet dawn, in the quiet trenches of the quiet sector.
Desultory artillery and somewhat less desultory sniping had
prevailed throughout the night, and at daybreak; but nothing out
of the ordinary.
Two men on listening-post had been shot; and so had an
overcurious sentry who peeped just an inch too far above a
parapet. A shell had burst in a trench, knocking the telephone
connection out of gear and half burying a squad of sleepers under
a lot of earth. Otherwise, things were drowsily dull.
In a dugout sprawled Top-Sergeant Mahan,--formerly of Uncle Sam's
regular army, playing an uninspiring game of poker with Sergeant
Dale of his company and Sergeant Vivier of the French infantry.
The Frenchman was slow in learning poker's mysteries.
And, anyway, all three men were temporarily penniless and were
forced to play for I.O.U's--which is stupid sport, at best.
So when, from the German line, came a quick sputt-sputt-sputt
from a half-dozen sharpshooters' rifles, all three men looked up
from their desultory game in real interest. Mahan got to his feet
with a grunt.
"Some other fool has been trying to see how far he can rubber
above the sandbags without drawing boche fire," he hazarded,
starting out to investigate. "It's a miracle to me how a boche
bullet can go through heads that are so full of first-quality
ivory as those rubberers'."
But Mahan's strictures were quite unwarranted. The sharpshooters
were not firing at the parapet. Their scattering shots were
flying high, and hitting against the slope of the hill behind the
trenches.
Adown this shell-pocked hillside, as Mahan and the other
disturbed idlers gazed, came cantering a huge dark-brown-and-
white collie. The morning wind stirred the black stippling that
edged his tawny fur, showing the gold-gray undercoat beneath it.
His white chest was like a snowdrift, and offered a fine mark for
the German rifles. A bullet or two sang whiningly past his gayly
up-flung head.
A hundred voices from the Here-We-Come trenches hailed the
advancing dog.
"Why, it's Bruce!" cried Mahan in glad welcome. "I might 'a'
known he or another of the collies would be along. I might 'a'
known it, when the telephones went out of commission. He--"
"Regardez-donc!" interrupted the admiring Vivier. "He acts like
bullets was made of flies! Mooch he care for boche lead-pills, ce
brave vieux!"
"Yes," growled Dale worriedly; "and one of these days a bullet
will find its way into that splendid carcass of his. He's been
shot at, a thousand times, to my own knowledge. And all I ask is
a chance, with a rifle-butt, at the skull of the Hun who downs
him!"
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