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Page 54
Bruce saw the man he was chasing,--saw him plainly. The German
was still running, but not at all as one who flees from peril. He
ran, rather, as might the bearer of glad tidings. And he was even
now drawing up to a group of men who awaited eagerly his coming.
There must have been fifty men in the group. Behind them--in open
formation and as far as the dog's near-sighted eyes could see--
were more men, and more, and more--thousands of them, all moving
stealthily forward.
Now, a collie (in brain, though never in heart) is much more wolf
than dog. A bullterrier, or an Airedale, would have charged on at
his foe, and would have let himself be hacked to pieces before
loosing his hold on the man.
But--even as a wolf checks his pursuit of a galloping sheep when
the latter dashes into the guarded fold--Bruce came to an abrupt
halt, at sight of these reenforcements. He stood irresolute,
still mad with vengeful anger, but not foolish enough to assail a
whole brigade of armed men.
It is quite impossible (though Mahan and Vivier used to swear it
must be true) that Bruce had the reasoning powers to figure out
the whole situation which confronted him. He could not have known
that a German brigade had been sent to take advantage of the
"Here-We-Comes" temporarily isolated position--that three
sentries had been killed in silence and that their deaths had
left a wide gap through which the brigade hoped to creep
unobserved until they should be within striking distance of their
unsuspectingly slumbering victims.
Bruce could not have known this. He could not have grasped the
slightest fraction of the idea, being only a real-life dog and
not a fairytale animal. But what he could and did realize was
that a mass of detested Germans was moving toward him, and that
he could not hope to attack them, single-handed; also, that he
was not minded to slink peacefully away and leave his friend
unavenged.
Thwarted rage dragged from his furry throat a deep growl; a growl
that resounded eerily through that silent place of stealthy
moves. And he stepped majestically forth from the surrounding
long grass, into the full glare of moonlight.
The deceptive glow made him loom gigantic and black, and tinged
his snowy chest with the phosphorous gleam of a snowfield. His
eyes shone like a wild beast's.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Corporal Rudolph Freund, of the Konigin Luise Regiment, had just
finished his three-word report to his superior. He had merely
saluted and announced
"He is dead!"
Corporal Freund did not thrill, as usual, to the colonel's grunt
of approval. The Corporal was worried. He was a Black Forest
peasant; and, while iron military life had dulled his native
superstitions, it had not dispelled them.
The night was mystic, in its odd blend of moon and shadows.
However hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep
through long grass, like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile
sentinel. And every German in the "Pocket" had been under
frightful mental and physical stress, for the past week.
Corporal Rudolph Freund was a brave man and a brute. But that
week had sapped his nerve. And the work of this night had been
the climax. The desolate ground, over which he had crawled to the
killing, had suddenly seemed peopled with evil gnomes and
goblins, whose existence no true Black Forest peasant can doubt.
And, on the run back, he had been certain he heard some unseen
monster tearing through the underbrush in hot pursuit of him. So
certain had he been, that he had redoubled his speed.
There were no wolves or other large wild animals in that region.
When he had wriggled toward the slow-pacing American sentinel, he
had seen and heard no creature of any sort. Yet he was sure that
on the way back he had been pursued by--by Something! And into
his scared memory, as he ran, had flashed the ofttold Black
Forest tale of the Werewolf--the devil--beast that is entered by
the soul of a murdered man and which tracks the murderer to his
death.
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