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Page 53
Bruce pricked his ears and started to get up. His curiosity was
roused. The direction of the wind prevented him from smelling out
the nature of the mystery. It also kept his keen hearing from
supplying any clue. And the distance would not permit him to see
with any distinctness.
Still his curiosity was very mild. Surely, if danger threatened,
the sentinel would realize it. For by this time the Shadow was a
bare three feet behind him near enough, by Bruce's system of
logic, for the Missourian to have smelled and heard the pursuer.
So Bruce got up, in the most leisurely fashion, preparatory to
strolling across to investigate. But at almost his first step he
saw something that changed his gracefully slouching walk into a
charging run.
The Shadow suddenly had merged with the sentinel. For an instant,
in stark silence, the two seemed to cling together. Then the
Shadow fled, and the lanky Missourian slumped to the earth in a
sprawling heap, his throat cut.
The slayer had been a deft hand at the job. No sound had escaped
the Missourian, from the moment the stranglingly tight left arm
had been thrown around his throat from behind until, a second
later, he fell bleeding and lifeless.
In twenty leaping strides, Bruce came up to the slain sentinel
and bent over him. Dog-instinct told the collie his friend had
been done to death. And the dog's power of scent told him it was
a German who had done the killing.
For many months, Bruce had been familiar with the scent of German
soldiers, so different from that of the army in which he toiled.
And he had learned to hate it, even as a dog hates the vague
"crushed cucumber" smell of a pitviper. But while every dog
dreads the viper-smell as much as he loathes it, Bruce had no
fear at all of the boche odor. Instead, it always awoke in him a
blood-lust, as fierce as any that had burned in his wolf-
ancestors.
This same fury swept him now, as he stood, quivering, above the
body of the kindly man who so lately had petted him; this and a
craving to revenge the murder of his human friend.
For the briefest time, Bruce stood there, his dark eyes abrim
with unhappiness and bewilderment, as he gazed down on the
huddled form in the wet grass. Then an electric change came over
him. The softness fled from his eyes, leaving them bloodshot and
blazing. His great tawny ruff bristled like an angry cat's. The
lazy gracefulness departed from his mighty body. It became tense
and terrible. In the growing moonlight his teeth gleamed whitely
from under his upcurled lip.
In a flash he turned and set off at a loping run, nose close to
ground, his long stride deceptively swift. The zest of the man-
hunt had obsessed him, as completely as, that day, it had spurred
the advance of the "Here-We-Comes."
The trail of the slayer was fresh, even over such broken ground.
Fast as the German had fled, Bruce was flying faster. Despite the
murderer's long start, the dog speedily cut down the distance
between his quarry and himself. Not trusting to sight, but solely
to his unerring sense of smell. Bruce sped on.
Then, in a moment or two, his hearing re-enforced his scent. He
could catch the pad-pad-pad of running feet. And the increasing
of the sound told him he was gaining fast.
But in another bound his ears told him something else--something
he would have heard much sooner, had not the night wind been
setting so strongly in the other direction. He heard not only the
pounding of his prey's heavy-shod feet, but the soft thud of
hundreds--perhaps thousands--of other army shoes. And now,
despite the adverse wind, the odor of innumerable soldiers came
to his fiercely sniffing nostrils. Not only was it the scent of
soldiers, but of German soldiers.
For the first time, Bruce lifted his head from the ground, as he
ran, and peered in front of him. The moon had risen above the
low-lying horizon vapors into a clear sky, and the reach of
country was sharply visible.
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