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Page 44
Mahan had often seen Red Cross nurses stop to caress Bruce. He
had been amused at the dog's almost protective cordiality toward
all women, whether the French peasants or the wearers of the
brassard of mercy.
Toward men--except those he had learned to look on as friends--
the collie always comported himself with a courteous aloofness
But he had seemed to regard every woman as something to be
humored and guarded and to be treated with the same cordial
friendliness that he bestowed on their children--which is the way
of the best type of collie. Yet Bruce had actually snarled at
this woman who had chirped to him from the steps of the church!
And he showed every sign of following up the challenge by still
more drastic measures.
"Bruce!" called Mahan sharply. "BRUCE! Shame! Come over here!
Come, NOW!"
At the Sergeant's vehement summons Bruce turned reluctantly away
from the foot of the church steps and came across the street
toward the estaminet. He came slowly. Midway he halted and looked
back over his shoulder at the nurse, his fangs glinting once more
in a snarl. At a second and more emphatic call from Mahan the dog
continued his progress.
The nurse had started back in alarm at the collie's angry
demonstration. Now, gathering up her work, she retreated into the
church.
"I'm sorry, Miss!" Mahan shouted after her. "I never saw him that
way, before, when a lady spoke to him. If it was any dog but old
Bruce, I'd give him a whaling for acting like that to you. I'm
dead-sure he didn't mean any harm."
"Oh, I was going in, anyway," replied the nurse, from the
doorway. "It is of no consequence."
She spoke nervously, her rich contralto voice shaken by the dog's
fierce show of enmity. Then she vanished into the church; and
Mahan and Vivier took turns in lecturing Bruce on his shameful
dearth of courtesy.
The big dog paid no heed at all to his friends' discourse. He was
staring sullenly at the doorway through which the nurse had gone.
"That's one swell way for a decently bred dog to treat a woman!"
Mahan was telling him. "Least of all, a Red Cross nurse! I'm
clean ashamed of you!"
Bruce did not listen. In his heart he was still angry--and very
much perplexed as well. For he knew what these stupid humans did
not seem to know.
HE KNEW THE RED CROSS NURSE WAS NO WOMAN AT ALL, BUT A MAN.
Bruce knew, too, that the nurse did not belong to his loved
friends of the Red Cross. For his uncanny power of scent told him
the garments worn by the impostor belonged to some one else. To
mere humans, a small and slender man, who can act, and who dons
woman's garb, is a woman. To any dog, such a man is no more like
a woman than a horse with a lambskin saddle-pad is a lamb. He is
merely a man who is differently dressed from other men--even as
this man who had chirped to Bruce, from the church steps, was no
less a man for the costume in which he had swathed his body. Any
dog, at a glance and at a sniff, would have known that.
Women, for one thing, do not usually smoke dozens of rank cigars
daily for years, until their flesh is permeated with the smell of
tobacco. A human could not have detected such a smell--such a
MAN-smell,--on the person who had chirped to Bruce. Any dog,
twenty feet away, would have noticed it, and would have tabulated
the white-clad masquerader as a man. Nor do a woman's hair and
skin carry the faint but unmistakable odor of barracks and of
tent-life and of martial equipment, as did this man's. The
masquerader was evidently not only a man but a soldier.
Dogs,--high-strung dogs,--do not like to have tricks played on
them; least of all by strangers. Bruce seemed to take the
nurse-disguise as a personal affront to himself. Then, too, the
man was not of his own army. On the contrary, the scent
proclaimed him one of the horde whom Bruce's friends so
manifestly hated--one of the breed that had more than once fired
on the dog.
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