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Page 49
Mahan rounded the big boulder at the crest of the ridge and flung
himself upon the two combatants, as they thrashed about in a
tumultuous dual mass on the ground. And just then Bruce at last
found his grip on Stolz's throat.
A stoical German signal-corps officer, on a hilltop some miles to
eastward, laid aside his field-glass and calmly remarked to a
man at his side
"We have lost a good spy!"
Such was the sole epitaph and eulogy of Herr Heinrich Stolz, from
his army.
Meantime, Sergeant Mahan was prying loose the collie's ferocious
jaws from their prey and was tugging with all his might to drag
the dog off the shrieking spy. The throat-hold, he noted, was a
bare inch from the jugular.
The rest of the soldiers, rushing up pell-mell, helped him pull
the infuriated Bruce from his victim. The spectacle of their
admired dog-hero, so murderously mauling a woman of the Red
Cross, dazed them with horror.
"Take him AWAY!" bellowed Stolz, delirious with pain and fear.
"He's KILLED me--der gottverdammte Teufelhund!"
And now the crazed victim's unconscious use of German was not
needed to tell every one within hearing just who and what he was.
For the quavering tones were no longer a rich contralto. They
were a throaty baritone. And the accent was Teutonic.
"Bruce!" observed Top-Sergeant Mahan next morning, "I've always
said a man who kicks a dog is more of a cur than the dog is. But
you'll never know how near I came to kicking you yesterday, when
I caught you mangling that filthy spy. And Brucie, if I had
kicked you, well--I'd be praying at this minute that the good
Lord would grow a third leg on me, so that I could kick myself
all the way from here to Berlin!"
CHAPTER VI. The Werewolf
When Bruce left the quiet peace of The Place for the hell of the
Western Front, it had been stipulated by the Mistress and the
Master that if ever he were disabled, he should be shipped back
to The Place, at their expense.
It was a stipulation made rather to soothe the Mistress's sorrow
at parting from her loved pet than in any hope that it could be
fulfilled; for the average life of a courierdog on the battle-
front was tragically short. And his fate was more than ordinarily
certain. If the boche bullets and shrapnel happened to miss him,
there were countless diseases--bred of trench and of hardship and
of abominable food--to kill him.
The Red Cross appeal raised countless millions of dollars and
brought rescue to innumerable human warriors. But in caring for
humans, the generosity of most givers reached its limit; and the
Blue Cross--"for the relief of dogs and horses injured in the
service of the Allies"--was forced to take what it could get. Yet
many a man, and many a body of men, owed life and safety to the
heroism of some war-dog, a dog which surely merited special care
when its own certain hour of agony struck.
Bruce's warmest overseas friends were to be found in the ranks of
the mixed Franco-American regiment, nicknamed the
"Here-We-Comes." Right gallantly, in more than one tight place,
had Bruce been of use to the "Here-We-Comes." On his official
visits to the regiment, he was always received with a joyous
welcome that would have turned any head less steady than a
thoroughbred collie's.
Bruce enjoyed this treatment. He enjoyed, too, the food-dainties
wherewith the "Here-We-Comes" plied him. But to no man in the
army would he give the adoring personal loyalty he had left at
The Place with the Mistress and the Master. Those two were still
his only gods. And he missed them and his sweet life at The Place
most bitterly. Yet he was too good a soldier to mope.
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