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Page 41
The Sergeant carried a chunk of fried beef, for which he had just
given the cook his entire remaining stock of cigarettes.
"Here you are, Bruce!" he exclaimed. "The best in the shop is
none too good for the dog that got us safe out of that filthy
mess. Eat hearty!"
Bruce did not so much as sniff at the (more or less) tempting bit
of meat. Coldly he looked up at Mahan. Then, with sensitive ears
laid flat against his silken head, in token of strong contempt,
he turned his back on the Sergeant and walked away.
Which was Bruce's method of showing what he thought of a human
fool who would give him a command and who would then hold so
tightly to him that the dog could hardly carry out the order.
CHAPTER V The Double Cross
In the background lay a landscape that had once been beautiful.
In the middle distance rotted a village that had once been alive.
In the foreground stood an edifice that had once been a church.
The once-beautiful landscape had the look of a gigantic
pockmarked face, so scored was it by shell-scar and crater. Its
vegetation was swept away. Its trees were shattered stumps. Its
farmsteads were charred piles of rubble.
The village was unlike the general landscape, in that it had
never been beautiful. In spite of globe-trotters' sentimental
gush, not all villages of northern France were beautiful. Many
were built for thrift and for comfort and for expediency; not for
architectural or natural loveliness.
But this village of Meran-en-Laye was not merely deprived of what
beauty it once might or might not have possessed. Except by
courtesy it was no longer a village at all. It was a double row
of squalid ruins, zig-zagging along the two sides of what was
left of its main street. Here and there a cottage or tiny shop or
shed was still habitable. The rest was debris.
The church in the foreground was recognizable as such by the
shape and size of its ragged walls, and by a half-smashed image
of the Virgin and Child which slanted out at a perilous angle
above its fa�ade.
Yet, miserable as the ruined hamlet seemed to the casual eye, it
was at present a vacation-resort--and a decidedly welcome one--to
no less than three thousand tired men. The wrecked church was an
impromptu hospital beneath whose shattered roof dozens of these
men lay helpless on makeshift cots.
For the mixed American and French regiment known as the "Here-We-
Comes" was billeted at Meran-en-Laye during a respite from the
rigors and perils of the front-line trenches.
The rest and the freedom from risks, supposed to be a part of the
"billeting" system, were not wholly the portion of the "Here-We
Comes." Meran--en--Laye was just then a somewhat important little
speck on the warmap.
The Germans had been up to their favorite field sport of trying
to split in half two of the Allied armies, and to roll up each,
independently. The effort had been a failure; yet it had come so
near to success that many railway communications were cut off or
deflected. And Meran-en-Laye had for the moment gained new
importance, by virtue of a spur railway-line which ran through
its outskirts and which made junction with a new set of tracks
the American engineers were completing. Along this transverse of
roads much ammunition and food and many fighting men were daily
rushed.
The safety of the village had thus become of much significance.
While it was too far behind the lines to be in grave danger of
enemy raids, yet such danger existed to some extent. Wherefore
the presence of the "Here-We-Comes"--for the paradoxical double
purpose of "resting up" and of guarding the railway Function.
Still, it was better than trench-work; and the "Here-We-Comes"
enjoyed it--for a day or so. Then trouble had set in.
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