The Last Shot Part 24

After this fusillade from the people the major glared at the retreating back of the lieutenant as much as to say that some men would never learn to hold their tongues. Naturally, the duty of looking after refugees was not to his soldierly taste.

"We are doing it all for you, for the country," he explained. "We are going to make them pay for every foot they take--the invaders!"

"Yes, make them pay!" called a voice from the houses.

"Make them pay!" other voices joined in.

"It isn't the fellows just across the border that want to take our property," said an elderly man. "They're good friends enough. It's the Grays' politicians and the fire-eaters in the other provinces."

"The robbers!" piped a woman's high-pitched note. "I've got a son in the army, and if ever he leaves that mountain range and goes down the other side with the Grays chasing him, he'll get worse from me than the Grays could give him!"

"That's right! That's the way to talk!" came a chorus.

Then the major became aware of a young woman who was going in the wrong direction. Her cheeks were flushed from her rapid walk, her lips were parted, showing firm, white teeth, and her black eyes were regarding him in a blaze of satire or amus.e.m.e.nt; an emotion, whatever it was, that thoroughly centred his attention.

"Yes," she said, anger getting the better of her, "make them pay--and they make you pay--and you make them pay--and so on!"

The major smiled. It seemed the safe thing to do. He did not know but the young woman might charge.

"Mademoiselle, I am sorry, but unless you live in this direction," he said very politely, "you may not go any farther. Until we have other orders or they attack, every one is supposed to remain in his house or his place of business."

"This is my place of business!" Marta answered, for she was already opposite a small, disused chapel which was her schoolroom, where a half dozen of the faithful children were gathered around the masculine importance of Jacky Werther, one of the older boys.

"Then you are Miss Galland!" said the major, enlightened. His smile had an appreciation of the irony of her occupation at that moment. "Your children are very loyal. They would not tell me where they lived, so we had to let them stay there."

"Those who have homes," she said, identifying each one of the faithful with a glance, "have so many brothers and sisters that they will hardly be missed from the flock. Others have no homes--at least, not much of a one"--here her temper rose again--"taxes being so high in order that you may organize murder and the destruction of property."

"I--" gasped the major under the fire of those black eyes.

But their flashes suddenly splintered into less threatening lights as she realized the fatuity of this personal allusion.

"Oh, I'm not the town scold!" she explained with a nervous little laugh that helped her to recover poise.

With the black eyes in this mood, the major was conscious only of a desire to please which conflicted with duty.

"Now, really, Miss Galland," he began solicitously, "I have been a.s.signed to move the civil population in case of attack. Your children ought--"

"After school! You have your duty this morning and I have mine!" Marta interrupted pleasantly, and turned toward the chapel.

"They are putting sharpshooters in the church tower to get the aeroplanes, and there are lots of the little guns that fire bullets so fast you can't count 'em--and little spring wagons with dynamite to blow things up--and--" Jacky Werther ran on in a series of vocal explosions as Marta opened the door to let the children go in.

"Yet you came!" said Marta with a hand caressingly on his shoulder.

"It looks pretty bad for peace, but we came," answered Jacky, round-eyed, in loyalty. "We'd come right through the bullets 'cause we said we would if we wasn't sick, and we wasn't sick."

"My seven disciples--seven!" exclaimed Marta as she counted them. "And you need not sit on the regular seats, but around me on the platform. It will be more intimate."

"That's grand!" came in chorus. They did not bother, about chairs, but seated themselves on the floor around Marta's skirts.

"My, Miss Galland, but your eyes are bright!"

"And your cheeks are all red!"

"With little spots in the centre!"

"You're very wonderful, Miss Galland!"

The church clock boomed out its deliberate strokes through ten, the hour set for the lesson, and all counted them--one--two--three. Marta was thinking what a dismal little effort theirs was, and yet she was very happy, tremblingly happy in her distraction and excitement, that they had not waited for her at the door of the chapel in vain.

She announced that there would be no talk this morning; they would only say their oath. Repeating in concert the pledge to the boys and girls of other lands, the childish voices peculiarly sweet and harmonious in contrast to the raucous and uneven sounds of foreboding from the street, they came in due course to the words of the concession that the oath made to militancy.

"If an enemy tries to take my land--"

"Children--I--" Marta interrupted with a sense of wonder and shock. They paused and looked at her questioningly. "I had almost forgotten that part!" she breathed confusedly.

"That's the part that makes all we're doing against the Grays right!"

put in Jacky Werther promptly.

"As I wrote it for you! 'I shall appeal to his sense of justice and reason with him--'"

Jaws dropped and eyes bulged, for above the sounds of the street rose from the distance the unmistakable crackling of rifle-fire which, as they listened, spread and increased in volume.

"Go on--on to the end of the oath! It will take only a moment," said Marta resolutely. "It isn't much, but it's the best we can do!"

XVIII

THE BAPTISM OF FIRE

After the morning sun commenced to tickle the back of his neck, Eugene Aronson, the giant of the 128th of the Grays, stretched his limbs as healthily as a cub bear.

"No war yet!" he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes.

"Oh, we'd have called you if there were!" said the manufacturer's son, trying to make a joke, which was hard work with his clothes dew-soaked after a sleepless night in the open.

"Wouldn't want you to miss it after coming so far," added the laborer's son, aiming to show that he, too, was in a light-hearted mood.

"And how did you sleep?" asked Eugene, cheerily, of his neighbors.

"Fine!"

"First rate!"

"Like a stone!"

Every man was too intent in forcing his own spontaneity to notice that that of the others was also forced.