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Page 56
Back to camp, carried lovingly in Mahan's strong arms, went all
that was left of the great courier-dog. Back to camp, propelled
between two none-too-gentle soldiers, staggered the fit-ridden
Corporal Freund.
At the colonel's quarters, a compelling dose of stimulant cleared
some of the mists from the prisoner's brain. His nerve and his
will-power still gone to smash, he babbled eagerly enough of the
night attack, of the killing of the sentries and of his encounter
with the Werewolf.
"I saw him fall!" he raved. "But he is not dead. The Werewolf can
be killed only by a silver bullet, marked with a cross and
blessed by a priest. He will live to track me down! Lock me where
he cannot find me, for the sake of sweet mercy!"
And in this way, the "Here-We-Comes" learned of Bruce's part in
the night's averted disaster.
Old Vivier wept unashamed over the body of the dog he had loved.
Top-Sergeant Mahan--the big tears splashing, unnoted, from his
own red eyes--besought the Frenchman to strive for better self-
control and not to set a cry-baby example to the men.
Then a group of grim-faced soldiers dug a grave. And, carried by
Mahan and Vivier, the beautiful dog's body was borne to its
resting-place. A throng of men in the gray dawn stood wordless
around the grave. Some one shamefacedly took off his hat. With
equal shamefacedness, everybody else followed the example.
Mahan laid the dog's body on the ground, at the grave's brink.
Then, looking about him, he cleared his throat noisily and spoke.
"Boys," he began, "when a human dies for other humans, there's a
Christian burial service read over him. I'd have asked the
chaplain to read one over Bruce, here, if I hadn't known he'd say
no. But the Big Dog isn't going to rest without a word said over
his grave, for all that."
Mahan cleared his throat noisily once more, winked fast, then
went on:--
"You can laugh at me, if any of you feel like it. But there's
some of you here who wouldn't be alive to laugh, if Bruce hadn't
done what he did last night. He was only just a dog--with no
soul, and with no life after this one, I s'pose. So he went ahead
and did his work and took the risks, and asked no pay.
"And by and by he died, still doing his work and asking no pay.
"He didn't work with the idea of getting a cross or a ribbon or a
promotion or a pension or his name in the paper or to make the
crowd cheer him when he got back home, or to brag to the
homefolks about how he was a hero. He just went ahead and WAS a
hero. That's because he was only a dog, with no soul--and not a
man.
"All of us humans are working for some reward, even if it's only
for our pay or for the fun of doing our share. But Bruce was a
hero because he was just a dog, and because he didn't know enough
to be anything else but a hero.
"I've heard about him, before he joined up with us. I guess most
of us have. He lived up in Jersey, somewhere. With folks that had
bred him. I'll bet a year's pay he was made a lot of by those
folks; and that it wrenched 'em to let him go. You could see he'd
been brought up that way. Life must 'a' been pretty happy for the
old chap, back there. Then he was picked up and slung into the
middle of this hell.
"So was the rest of us, says you. But you're wrong. Those of us
that waited for the draft had our choice of going to the hoosgow,
as 'conscientious objectors,' if we didn't want to fight. And
every mother's son of us knew we was fighting for the Right; and
that we was making the world a decenter and safer place for our
grandchildren and our womenfolks to live in. We didn't brag about
God being on our side, like the boches do. It was enough for us
to know WE was on GOD'S side and fighting His great fight for
Him. We had patriotism and religion and Right, behind us, to give
us strength.
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