Shelled by an Unseen Foe Part 11

"Look like him?" he asked.

"Exactly like him!" she replied.

"Well, when I meet him," promised Zaidos, "I'll tell him a few things!"

Helen smiled. "You will never meet," she said. "But if ever anything happens to me, John, take this and send it to him. You'll remember the name, won't you?"

"Oh, yes!" said Zaidos, "I'll remember! But just you take notice, he never got that letter!"

"What a stubborn boy you are!" exclaimed Helen.

"Not stubborn at all," declared Zaidos, looking at the lovely face.

"I'm merely a man _myself_, if I _am_ young."

CHAPTER VIII

HAPPINESS FOR HELEN

Again Helen laughed.

"All right," said Zaidos. "Have it all your own way, but I know I am right about this affair. A fellow with a face like that, engaged to a girl like you, would have acknowledged that letter just in common politeness if nothing else. Just to say, 'Thank you, but I don't care to play with you any more!' Oh, yes, he would have answered it!"

"Whether he would or not," said Helen, "the breach is too wide to cross now. It is all over. I deserved to lose him and I feel no bitterness about it. My fate is what I deserve."

Zaidos hated to hear her self-reproaches. "I don't know about that,"

he defended awkwardly. "Probably he ought to have come half way. It looks so to me."

"It is growing light in the east," said Helen. "We have talked all night about my poor little affairs. Let us think of something else now, let us--"

She was interrupted by a shattering boom of artillery. It seemed to crack the very air. They sprang upright and stood for a moment listening.

"The beginning!" said Helen solemnly.

"Well, good-bye," said Zaidos. "I must see where they want me to go.

Where's that doctor?"

The doctor and his a.s.sistants as well were there. They hurried into the dug-out, calm, collected, business-like.

"Set out the antiseptics, nurse," said the doctor. "You were on night duty, but I can't let you go until someone comes to relieve you. This is very apt to be a big day. You, Zaidos, get out in the first line trench, and don't lose your head. That cousin of yours is hunting for you. I sent him forward too. Nurse, the new troops are here; every trench and shelter is full of men. A big day, children, a big day!"

He rubbed his muscular, sensitive hands together. Another roar shook the ground and b.a.l.l.s of dirt rolled down the walls of the First Aid Station. They heard the m.u.f.fled beat-beat of feet running through the trenches toward the front.

Zaidos, shivering, his teeth chattering with excitement, buckled on his aid kit and bolted out with a last wave of the hand. He hurried over through the short trench into the cook house, and then made his way along the trench toward the front. A return fire was beginning now, and high in the sky was seen the first Zeppelin. Like a great bird of prey it circled high in air above the lines. Then from somewhere in the rear an English airship skimmed to meet it. The bull-nosed Zeppelin soared and the lighter machine followed, light as a swallow.

Zaidos stared, fascinated. He could see spurts of smoke from one and then the other. Another delicate craft pa.s.sed overhead and joined the first English ship in pursuit. Zaidos stumbled on, still trying to watch the chase. He was suddenly thrown violently to the ground, and covered with earth. Screams of agony came from the trench ahead. He scrambled to his feet and ran forward. A dozen men, tumbled together in horrible confusion, lay tossing and shrieking. Zaidos turned faint for a moment. They were the awful flat, senseless cries of hurt animals. "A-a-a-a-a-a-a!" they shrilled and some of them tore at their wounds. Zaidos ran for the nearest man and knelt beside him. He tried to turn what was left of his body, and could not. He glanced around for help. Sneaking past toward the rear he saw a familiar figure. It was Velo Kupenol. Zaidos called him sharply, and the stern note of authority made Velo turn.

"Come here quickly!" commanded Zaidos.

"I can't!" panted Velo. "Zaidos, it makes me sick! I'm going to the rear for a little while."

Zaidos looked up at the face, white with cowardice.

"Come here!" said Zaidos. Still kneeling he pointed a small but business looking revolver at his cousin's heart. "Come here!" he ordered.

Velo obeyed, the look on his face changing from white terror to black hate.

Zaidos saw the look, and read it with unconcern.

"Come here, Velo!" He held Velo's shifty eyes. "You get to work here.

If you don't, I shall shoot you, just as I would shoot a dog. There is no time to talk. Get to work! You hear what I tell you. Turn this man!"

Velo shudderingly put himself to the horrid task of lifting the bleeding and torn body. Zaidos talked as he worked in a deep, earnest tone that carried to Velo's ears even in the noise of battle.

"I'm going to be after you every minute, Velo Kupenol! You won't disgrace me if I can help it. Go get your stretcher. If you drop it I will kill you!"

He spoke so fiercely, and with such meaning, that Velo felt that for once his easy-going cousin had the upper hand.

As the doctor had said, they were suffering for lack of help, so Zaidos could not afford to let the coward run away. He _had_ to have a.s.sistance if he was to save some of the lives which he felt were in a measure entrusted to him. So Velo had to be used. He stopped the gush of blood from a dozen wounds and, lifting on one end of the stretcher, ordered Velo, with a nod of his head, to lead on toward the First Aid Station.

Almost immediately they had the wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where the doctors and Nurse Helen worked with incredible swiftness and skill.

He did not speak to Helen, nor did she notice him. Velo, still pale, kept doggedly at his task, only an occasional gleam of hatred lighting his eyes when he had to look at his fearless cousin. He was more than ever like a treacherous dog, watching, always watching for its chance for a throat-hold.

And somehow, without a spoken word, the thing became clear to Zaidos.

All at once he knew how deeply and utterly his cousin hated him. He knew as well as if Velo had shouted it aloud that he meant to be the instrument of his death in some way or other, sooner or later. And Zaidos, filled with the frenzy of the battle, did not care. He was not afraid of Velo. He put him aside as though he was something that might be attended to later.

A sort of mental illumination came to Zaidos. He cared for wounded men with a quick skill that he had never known that he possessed. He grew so weary that he staggered under his part of the stretcher's load. His leg pained him so that it was like a whip, keeping him awake and at work when all his body cried to drop down and sleep.

Once when he waited in the opening of the First Aid shelter, he was conscious that someone asked, "Have they broken our lines?"

"Not quite, but they are through the barbed wire. Our troops are ma.s.sing along the first trench."

"If we can hold out until dark we are all right," said the first speaker, a captain with one leg gone at the knee, awaiting his turn with the doctor without the quiver of a muscle.

"The chaps over there beyond are pretty well tired out. I can tell by the way they are fighting. They are trying to save men."

Zaidos hurried out and lost the rest. It seemed to him that the whole world was in conflict just ahead there. The bomb-proof shelter was crammed with reserves. On and on and on went the fighting; for years and years and years it seemed to Zaidos. He did not know that the day waned and night was near. All he knew was that at last, while he and Velo waited in the First Aid for the stretcher to be emptied, silence fell, a silence punctuated with scattering explosions. The darkness had ended the fighting, and the enemy had only reached the first line of trenches.

"It is over!" said the doctor, glancing up.

Velo sank down on a plank and covered his face with his hands. Zaidos, standing, closed his eyes.

"Let those boys rest for five minutes," ordered the doctor.

Nurse Helen gently pushed Zaidos down on a bench. He toppled over and she put a folded cloak under his head. Then for thirty happy minutes he lost consciousness of everything. When an aide shook Zaidos awake, he came to himself with as much physical pain as though his body had actually felt the shock of wounds. He groaned involuntarily. Velo was sobbing dryly from fatigue and pain.