Red Fleece Part 28

"They call this the great German fighting machine," Peter whispered to Boylan one night, "but we're inside. We can't call it that. It's the most pitiful and devitalized thing that ever ran up and down the earth. And it doesn't mean anything. It's all waste--like a great body killing itself piece by piece--all waste and death."

He tried to make death easy for a soldier here and there, but there was so much. His clothing smelled of death; and one morning before the smoke fell, he watched the sun shining upon the pine-clad hills. That moment the thought held him that the pine trees were immortal, and men just the dung of the earth.

...One night Boylan asked as they lay down:

"Who are you?"

"Peter Mowbray."

"Yep, and I'm Boylan. You're at liberty to correct if wrong. Are we ever going to die or get out?"

"I don't know.... Boylan, you've been good to me. We're two to make one--eye to eye--"

"You're making a noise like breaking down again. Don't, Peter. I've gone on a bluff all my life. I'm a rotten sentimentalist at heart-- soft as smashed grapes. It's my devil. If you break down, I'll show him to you--"

"It wouldn't hurt you to bellow like a girl."

"Maybe not, but I'd shoot my head off first."

"Did you see the old leprous peasant to-day? He was hump-backed, and he had no lips, but teeth like a dog. He pulled at a soldier's stirrup as we came into town. The soldier was afraid and shot him through the mouth--"

"Shut up, Peter, or you'll get me. I've shown you more now than any living soul knows--"

"You ought to show it to a woman. A man isn't right until a woman knows him in and out."

"For the love of G.o.d--go to sleep!"

They sank into restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action--a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck.

A little town, so far nameless, sat with a shivering look on the slope, about a half mile up from the river. A Russian quick-fire gun or two was emplaced in that vicinity, and two batteries of bigger bores (that the correspondents knew of) were higher on either side.

Infantry intrenchments that looked like mole tracks from the distance corrugated the slopes in lateral lines, and roads came down to the two bridges that spanned the swift stream, less than a mile apart.

The morning was spent in artillery dueling. The Russians seemed partly silenced at noon. At no time was their attack c.o.c.ky and confident. The Germans determined to cross in the early afternoon. This movement was not answered by excessive firing. German cavalry and small guns on the east bridge, a heavy field of helmets took the west. Boylan and Mowbray rode with the artillery. Even as the German forces combined for position, the firing of the Russians was not spiteful. There seemed a note of complaint and hysteria. There was no tension in the German command; it was too weathered for that.

Now the cavalry went into action and guns moved away farther to the east for higher emplacement.

"They're going to charge the horses up into the town. They haven't much respect for the infantry trenches," said Boylan.

At that instant Peter's mind opened a clearer series of pictures of Berthe Wyndham than he had known for days. Palace Square near the river corner; her little house in Warsaw and the tall flowers between; across the siding after Fransic; her coming to the cot of Samarc, and all the wonderful films of the skylight prison--the dearest of all as she slept. He could not hold the battle in mind, for he was very rich with these pictures, and for days had tried vainly to think just how she looked. It had been easier to remember something which Peter designated secretly as her soul.

Suddenly the turf rocked under his feet and his body was bent in the terrific concussion from behind. They turned and saw the middle stone abutment of the nearer bridge lifted from the stream--the whole background sky black with dust and rock. Then, just as he thought of it, the west bridge went. He spoke before Boylan, and rather unerringly, as one does at times coming up from a dream.

"They've trapped what they think they can handle--and fired the bridges by wire."

Boylan said: "I can't call it German stupidity, because it didn't occur to me that the bridges were mined.... It's to be another leisure spraying. We're in the slaughter-pen.... G.o.d, man, look at the horses!"

It had been too late to call back the cavalry. Peter's eyes followed Boylan's sweeping arm. The hors.e.m.e.n were in skirmish on the slope, just breaking out into charge. The town above and the emplacements adjoining which had kept their secret so well, were now in a blur of sulphur and action directed upon the cavalry charge. The whole line went down in the deluge--suddenly vanished under the hideous blat of the machines--whole rows rubbed into the earth--a few beasts rising empty, shaking themselves and tumbling back, no riders. Peter turned to the infantry in formation on the western slopes. The Russian fire was not lax now, not discouraged in the least, nor hysterical. It was cold-blooded murder in gluttonous quant.i.ty.

The Americans forgot themselves. Cavalry gone--they turned to the west and saw the poor men-beasts in rout. Even the infantry comprehended the trick, and felt something superhuman behind it. They rushed back toward the river--swift, ugly with white patches and unfordable, requiring a good swimmer.... The eyes of Boylan turned back to the Horse. He had always loved the cavalry, ridden with the cavalry always by preference. Peter was watching the river--the hands up from the center of the river....

They were alone, and now the Russian machines were on the German batteries not yet emplaced, none unlimbered. It was as if the wind carried them the spray from the sweeping fountains, turned from the horse to put out the guns. Peter was. .h.i.t and down--hit again and the night slowly settled upon him, bringing the bells.

Chapter 4

Big Belt talked to himself in that blizzard of fire.

"He's. .h.i.t--hit twice--but we can't go back to the Russians. They'll finish the lad. Dabnitz promised. The Germans can't rescue us, because the bridges are down. I've got to get him across the river--"

He knelt and swung the burden across his back. The firing was thinner, and the weight hurried his great legs down to the water.... Personally he would have waited for recapture. How he would have laughed at Lornievitch in that case. But this that he bore was under sentence of death in that camp. He regarded the river now, propping up his head under the burden. It was a swift devil of a stream, black from its winter borders and cold. He moved toward the broken bridge, hundreds of soldiers doing the same. But none of them bore a burden.

Now he was on the steep and slidy bank-the roar of the current in his ears, the roar of the guns behind. The stone abutments of the bridge still stood, but the huge beams of the upper frame-work were sprawled in the stream, the ends visible. A string of soldiers crawled along, toward the center of the current. There was a place in which they disappeared.... He took his position in the waiting line and heard the cries wrung from the throats of those in the crossing--from the paralyzing cold. Only a few succeeded. Boylan saw this, as he awaited his turn. A steady grim procession on this side, whispering, crowding --but a thin and straggling output on the far bank. Scenes enacting in the center of the current shook his heart--faces and arms against the black water, the struggles and the cries of men as they were whipped away.

Big Belt was in; no crawl for him. He walked the ten-inch beam with his burden, as it sank deeper and deeper toward the center. The ice of the water bit and tore at him. It was like a burn, too, but the paralysis was not that of fire. The chill wrestled with his consciousness, as he reached the depth of his waist; the current was bewildering in its pressures--like a woman clinging to his limbs, betraying him to an enemy. A mysterious force, this of a running river, for the body of man is not built for it, and man's mind is slow to learn the necessity of slow movements. The temptation to hasten is like the tug of demons. There is much to break the nerve--and yet nerve must remain king of every action.

Boylan may have learned the trick in other wanderings. His own weight and the weight of his burden helped his feet in the rapid runs of white water. He made his way deeper and deeper upon the slanting ten- inch piece, holding his consciousness steady against the penetrating stab of the cold as it rose higher and higher, against the dizzying swirl of the stream, and against the fact that the timber might be broken at the center. ...The man before him seemed to go to his knees, reaching down with his hands. Then the white-topped rush took him....

One must stand; one must have weight to stand. The beam sunk to the center now-the water to his heart; the man behind urging.... One soldier ahead crawled forth where three had been.

Boylan's fears were equalized now by the sudden dread of the man behind. If he slipped he would catch at Peter's body.

"Go slow--that's the trick!" he called. "Feel for your footing each time. It's there. I tell you it's there, man! We rise in a moment more--"

He felt the jointure with his feet--some renewal or stoppage of the timber. He halted, yelling at the man behind:

"Wait--something different! I'll get you through--"

It was the slight turn of the top timbers as they had reached the apex.

"It's the top of the bridge," he yelled above the boom of the current, "--a turn like the peak of a low roof. A slight turn to the right. Now the climb--"

He put it in Russian somehow, making the words clear. His intensity was almost madness to keep the other's hands off.

A shiver pa.s.sed through his burden. The water had whipped Peter's limbs. An added call for steadiness, but a gladness about it, too, since he was not carrying the dead.... Upgrade now. The soldier behind had pa.s.sed the turn safely and was following.

...It seemed that he had walked hours, A thousand or more German soldiers were lost even as he. Their faces in the dusk pa.s.sed him--to and fro--hoa.r.s.e questions. The gray chill dusk was all about, quite different from anything Big Belt had known. His clothing had warmed to him from great exertion. There was a line that caked and dampened again down his left thigh, like an artillery stripe, from Peter's wounds. Night came on, finding him without a command--a strange sort of abandonment, and a certain fear of being overtaken by a Russian party. The character of his fatigue brought back ancient memories, when he had looked death face to face and was afraid.

"Who are you?" someone piped sharply in German.

He had moved long through the dark toward a moving file of lights.

"Two American correspondents."

"What's that you carry?"

"The other one."