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Page 29
"Downs Bruce?" queried Vivier in fine scorn. "The boche he is no
borned who can do it. Bruce has what you call it, in Ainglish,
the 'charm life.' He go safe, where other caniche be pepper-
potted full of holes. I've watch heem. I know."
Unscathed by the several shots that whined past him, Bruce came
to a halt at the edge of a traverse. There he stood, wagging his
plume of a tail in grave friendliness, while a score of khaki-
clad arms reached up to lift him bodily into the trench.
A sergeant unfastened the message from the dog's collar and
posted off to the colonel with it.
The message was similar to one which had been telephoned to each
of the supporting bodies, to right and to left of the Here-We-
Comes. It bade the colonel prepare to withdraw his command from
the front trenches at nightfall, and to move back on the main
force behind the hill-crest. The front trenches were not
important; and they were far too lightly manned to resist a mass
attack. Wherefore the drawing-in and consolidating of the whole
outflung line.
Bruce, his work done now, had leisure to respond to the countless
offers of hospitality that encompassed him. One man brought him a
slice of cold broiled bacon. Another spread pork-grease over a
bit of bread and proffered it. A third unearthed from some
sacredly guarded hiding-place an excessively stale half-inch
square of sweet chocolate.
Had the dog so chosen, he might then and there have eaten himself
to death on the multitude of votive offerings. But in a few
minutes he had had enough, and he merely sniffed in polite
refusal at all further gifts.
"See?" lectured Mahan. "That's the beast of it! When you say a
fellow eats or drinks 'like a beast,' you ought to remember that
a beast won't eat or drink a mouthful more than is good for him."
"Gee!" commented the somewhat corpulent Dale. "I'm glad I'm not a
beast--especially on pay-day."
Presently Bruce tired of the ovation tendered him. These ovations
were getting to be an old story. They had begun as far back as
his training-camp days--when the story of his joining the army
was told by the man to whom The Place's guest had written
commending the dog to the trainers' kindness.
At the training-camp this story had been reenforced by the chief
collie-teacher--a dour little Hieland Scot named McQuibigaskie,
who on the first day declared that the American dog had more
sense and more promise and more soul "than a' t'other tykes south
o' Kirkcudbright Brae."
Being only mortal, Bruce found it pleasanter to be admired and
petted than ignored or kicked. He was impersonally friendly with
the soldiers, when he was off duty; and he relished the dainties
they were forever thrusting at him.
But at times his soft eyes would grow dark with homesickness for
the quiet loveliness of The Place and for the Mistress and the
Master who were his loyally worshiped gods. Life had been so
happy and so sweetly uneventful for him, at The Place! And there
had been none of the awful endless thunder and the bewilderingly
horrible smells and gruesome sights which here met him at every
turn.
The dog's loving heart used to grow sick with it all; and he
longed unspeakably for home. But he was a gallant soldier, and he
did his work not only well, but with a snap and a dash and an
almost uncanny intelligence which made him an idol to the men.
Presently, now, having eaten all he wanted and having been patted
and talked to until he craved solitude, Bruce strolled ever to an
empty dugout, curled up on a torn blanket there, put his nose
between his white paws and went to sleep.
The German artillery-fire had swelled from an occasional
explosion to a ceaseless roar, that made the ground vibrate and
heave, and that beat on the eardrums with nauseating iterance.
But it did not bother Bruce. For months he had been used to this
sort of annoyance, and he had learned to sleep snugly through it
all.
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