Part 10

They had a brace of drinks, two more and two more. All about them was bedlam, as if the emotions of man had suddenly been let loose to sweep him off his feet. Grief, joy, rage, lust, fear were all obviously there in almost equal proportions.

Shayne extended his hand. "They have something to fight for, at least. Something besides money and glory. A grudge. I wonder what it is that makes me want to get in? I do."

"So do I."

Shayne shook his head. "I wouldn't if I were you. Still, you will probably be compelled to in a while." He looked at his watch. "Do you care to take dinner with me? I had an engagement with an aunt who is on the verge of apoplexy because two of the Boston Shaynes are in Munich. It scarcely seems appropriate at the moment. I detest her, anyway. What do you say?"

"I'd like to have dinner with you."

They walked down the Cannebière. At a restaurant on the east side near the foot of the thoroughfare they found a table in the corner. A pair of waiters hastened to take their order. The place was riotous with voices and the musical sounds of dining. On a special table was a great demijohn of 1870 cognac, which was fast being drained by the guests. Shayne consulted with his companion and then ordered in fluent French. The meal that was brought approached a perfection of service and a superiority of cooking that Hugo had never experienced. And always the babble, the blare of bands, the swelling and fading persistence of the stringed orchestra, the stream of purple Châteauneuf du Pape and its flinty taste, the glitter of the lights and the bright colours on the mosaics that represented the principal cities of Europe. It was a splendid meal.

"I'm afraid I'll have to ask your name again," Shayne said.

"Danner. Hugo Danner."

"Good God! Not the football player?"

"I did play football--some time ago."

"I saw you against Cornell--when was it?--two years ago. You were magnificent. How does it happen that--"

"That I'm here?" Hugo looked directly into Shayne's eyes.

"Well--I have no intention of prying into your affairs."

"Then I'll tell you. Why not?" Hugo drank his wine. "I killed a man--in the game--and quit. Beat it."

Shayne accepted the statement calmly. "That's tough. I can understand your desire to get out from under. Things like that are bad when you're young."

"What else could I have done?"

"Nothing. What are you going to do? Rather, what were you going to do?"

"I don't know," Hugo answered slowly. "What do you do? What do people generally do?" He felt the question was drunken, but Shayne accepted it at its face value.

"I'm one of those people who have too much money to be able to do anything I really care about, most of the time. The family keeps me in sight and control. But I'm going to cut away to-morrow."

"In the Foreign Legion? I'll go with you."

"Splendid!" They shook hands across the table.

Three hours later found them at another café. They had been walking part of the time in the throngs on the street. For a while they had stood outside a newspaper office watching the bulletins. They were quite drunk.

"Old man," Shayne said, "I'm mighty glad I found you."

"Me, too, old egg. Where do we go next?"

"I don't know. What's your favourite vice? We can locate it in Marseilles."

Hugo frowned. "Well, vice is so limited in its scope."

His companion chuckled. "Isn't it? I've always said vice was narrow. The next time I see Aunt Emma I'm going to say: 'Emma, vice is becoming too narrow in its scope.' She'll be furious and it will bring her to an early demise and I'll inherit a lot more money, and that will be the real tragedy. She's a useless old fool, Aunt Emma. Never did a valuable thing in her life. Goes in for charity--just like we go in for golf and what-not. Oh, well, to hell with Aunt Emma."

Hugo banged his glass on the table. "_Garçon! Encore deux whiskey à l'eau_ and to hell with Aunt Emma."

"Like to play roulette?"

"Like to try."

They climbed into a taxi. Shayne gave an address and they were driven to another quarter of the town. In a room packed with people in evening clothes they played for an hour. Several people spoke to Shayne and he introduced Hugo to them. Shayne won and Hugo lost. They went out into the night. The streets were quieter in that part of town. Two girls accosted them.

"That gives me an idea," Shayne said. "Let's find a phone. Maybe we can get Marcelle and Claudine."

Marcelle and Claudine met them at the door of the old house. Their arms were laden with champagne bottles. The interior of the dwelling belied its cold, grey, ancient stones. Hugo did not remember much of what followed that evening. Short, unrelated fragments stuck in his mind--Shayne chasing the white form of Marcelle up and down the stairs; himself in a huge bath-tub washing a back in front of him, his surprise when he saw daylight through the wooden shutters of the house.

Someone was shaking him. "Come on, soldier. The leave's up."

He opened his eyes and collected his thoughts. He grinned at Shayne. "All right. But if I had to defend myself right now--I'd fail against a good strong mouse."

"We'll fix that. Hey! Marcelle! Got any Fernet-Branca?"

The girl came with two large glasses of the pick-me-up. Hugo swallowed the bitter brown fluid and shuddered. Claudine awoke. "_Chéri!_" she sighed, and kissed him.

They sat on the edge of the bed. "Boy!" Hugo said. "What a binge!"

"You like eet?" Claudine murmured.

He took her hand. "Loved it, darling. And now we're going to war."

"Ah!" she said, and, at the door: "_Bonne chance!_"

Shayne left Hugo, after agreeing on a time and place for their meeting in the afternoon. The hours passed slowly. Hugo took another drink, and then, exerting his judgment and will, he refrained from taking more. At noon he partook of a light meal. He thought, or imagined, that the ecstasy of the day before was showing some signs of decline. It occurred to him that the people might be very sober and quiet before the war was a thing to be written into the history of France.

The sun was shining. He found a place in the shade where he could avoid it. He ordered a glass of beer, tasted it, and forgot to finish it. The elation of his first hours had passed. But the thing within him that had caused it was by no means dead. As he sat there, his muscles tensed with the picturization of what was soon to be. He saw the grim shadows of the enemy. He felt the hot splash of blood. For one suspended second he was ashamed of himself, and then he stamped out that shame as being something very much akin to cowardice.

He wondered why Shayne was joining the Legion and what sort of person he was underneath his rather haughty exterior. A man of character, evidently, and one who was weary of the world to which he had been privileged. Hugo's reverie veered to his mother and father. He tried to imagine what they would think of his enlistment, of him in the war; and even what they thought of him from the scant and scattered information he had supplied. He was sure that he would justify himself. He felt purged and free and noble. His strength was a thing of wreck and ruin, given to the world at a time when wreck and ruin were needed to set it right. It was odd that such a product should emerge from the dusty brain of a college professor in a Bible-ridden town.

Hugo had not possessed a religion for a long time. Now, wondering on another tangent if the war might not bring about his end, he thought about it. He realized that he would hate himself for murmuring a prayer or asking protection. He was gamer than the Cross-obsessed weaklings who were not wise enough to look life in the face and not brave enough to draw the true conclusions from what they saw. True conclusions? He meditated. What did it matter--agnosticism, atheism, pantheism--anything but the savage and anthropomorphic twaddle that had been doled out since the Israelites singled out Jehovah from among their many gods. He would not commit himself. He would go back with his death to the place where he had been before he was born and feel no more regret than he had in that oblivious past. Meanwhile he would fight! He moved restively and waited for Shayne with growing impatience.

Until that chaotic and gorgeous hour he had lived for nothing, proved nothing, accomplished nothing. Society was no better in any way because he had lived. He excepted the lives he had saved, the few favours he had done. That was nothing in proportion to his powers. He was his own measure, and by his own efforts would he satisfy himself. War! He flexed his arms. War. His black eyes burned with a formidable light.

Then Shayne came. Walking with long strides. A ghostly smile on his lips. A darkness in his usually pale-blue eyes. Hugo liked him. They said a few words and walked toward the recruiting-tent. A _poilu_ in steely blue looked at them and saw that they were good. He proffered papers. They signed. That night they marched for the first time. A week later they were sweating and swearing over the French manual of arms. Hugo had offered his services to the commanding officer at the camp and been summarily denied an audience or a chance to exhibit his abilities. When they reached the lines--that would be time enough. Well, he could wait until those lines were reached.

XII

Just as the eastern horizon became light with something more steady than the flare of the guns, the command came. Hugo bit his lip till it bled darkly. He would show them--now. They might command him to wait--he could restrain himself no longer. The men had been standing there tense and calm, their needle-like bayonets pointing straight up. "_En avant!_"

His heart gave a tremendous surge. It made his hands falter as he reached for the ladder rung. "Here we go, Hugo."

"Luck, Tom."

He saw Shayne go over. He followed slowly. He looked at no man's land. They had come up in the night and he had never seen it. The scene of holocaust resembled nothing more than the municipal ash dump at Indian Creek. It startled him. The grey earth in irregular heaps, the litter of metal and equipment. He realized that he was walking forward with the other men. The ground under his feet was mushy, like ashes. Then he saw part of a human body. It changed his thoughts.

The man on Hugo's right emitted a noise like a squeak and jumped up in the air. He had been hit. Out of the corner of his eye Hugo saw him fall, get up quickly, and fall again very slowly. His foot kicked after he lay down. The rumbling in the sky grew louder and blotted out all other sound.

They walked on and on. It was like some eternal journey through the dun, vacant realms of Hades. Not much light, one single sound, and ghostly companions who faced always forward. The air in front of him was suddenly dyed orange and he felt the concussion of a shell. His ears rang. He was still walking. He walked what he thought was a number of miles.

His great strength seemed to have left him, and in its place was a complete enervation. With a deliberate effort he tested himself, kicking his foot into the earth. It sank out of sight. He squared his shoulders. A man came near him, yelling something. It was Shayne. Hugo shook his head. Then he heard the voice, a feeble shrill note. "Soon be there."

"Yeah?"

"Over that hill."

Shayne turned away and became part of the ghost escort of Hugo and his peculiarly lucid thoughts. He believed that he was more conscious of himself and things then than ever before in his life. But he did not notice one-tenth of the expression and action about himself. The top of the rise was near. He saw an officer silhouetted against it for an instant. The officer moved down the other side. He could see over the rise, then.

Across the grey ashes was a long hole. In front of it a maze of wire. In it--mushrooms. German helmets. Hugo gaped at them. All that training, all that restraint, had been expended for this. They were small and without meaning. He felt a sharp sting above his collar bone. He looked there. A row of little holes had appeared in his shirt.

"Good God," he whispered, "a machine gun."

But there was no blood. He sat down. He presumed, as a casualty, he was justified in sitting down. He opened his shirt by ripping it down. On his dark-tanned skin there were four red marks. The bullets had not penetrated him. Too tough! He stared numbly at the walking men. They had passed him. The magnitude of his realization held him fixed for a full minute. He was invulnerable! He should have known it--otherwise he would have torn himself apart by his own strength. Suddenly he roared and leaped to his feet. He snatched his rifle, cracking the stock in his fervour. He vaulted toward the helmets in the trench.

He dropped from the parapet and was confronted by a long knife on a gun. His lips parted, his eyes shut to slits, he drew back his own weapon. There was an instant's pause as they faced each other--two men, both knowing that in a few seconds one would be dead. Then Hugo, out of his scarlet fury, had one glimpse of his antagonist's face and person. The glimpse was but a flash. It was finished in quick motions. He was a little man--a foot shorter than Hugo. His eyes looked out from under his helmet with a sort of pathetic earnestness. And he was worried, horribly worried, standing there with his rifle lifted and trying to remember the precise technique of what would follow even while he fought back the realization that it was hopeless. In that split second Hugo felt a human, amazing urge to tell him that it was all right, and that he ought to hold his bayonet a little higher and come forward a bit faster. The image faded back to an enemy. Hugo acted mechanically from the rituals of drill. His own knife flashed. He saw the man's clothes part smoothly from his bowels, where the point had been inserted, up to the gray-green collar. The seam reddened, gushed blood, and a length of intestine slipped out of it. The man's eyes looked at Hugo. He shook his head twice. The look became far-away. He fell forward.

Hugo stepped over him. He was trembling and nauseated. A more formidable man approached warily. The bellow of battle returned to Hugo's ears. He pushed back the threatening rifle easily and caught the neck in one hand, crushing it to a wet, sticky handful. So he walked through the trench, a machine that killed quickly and remorselessly--a black warrior from a distant realm of the universe where the gods had bred another kind of man.

He came upon Shayne and found him engaged. Hugo stuck his opponent in the back. No thought of fair play, no object but to kill--it did not matter how. Dead Legionnaires and dead Germans mingled blood underfoot. The trench was like the floor of an _abattoir_. Someone gave him a drink. The men who remained went on across the ash dump to a second trench.

It was night. The men, almost too tired to see or move, were trying to barricade themselves against the ceaseless shell fire of the enemy. They filled bags with gory mud and lifted them on the crumbling walls. At dawn the Germans would return to do what they had done. The darkness reverberated and quivered. Hugo worked like a Trojan. His efforts had made a wide and deep hole in which machine guns were being placed. Shayne fell at his feet. Hugo lifted him up. The captain nodded. "Give him a drink."

Someone brought liquor, and Hugo poured it between Shayne's teeth. "Huh!" Shayne said.

"Come on, boy."

"How did you like it, Danner?"

Hugo did not answer. Shayne went on, "I didn't either--much. This is no gentleman's war. Jesus! I saw a thing or two this morning. A guy walking with all his--"

"Never mind. Take another drink."

"Got anything to eat?"

"No."

"Oh, well, we can fight on empty bellies. The Germans will empty them for us anyhow."

"The hell they will."

"I'm pretty nearly all in."

"So's everyone."

They put Hugo on watch because he still seemed fresh. Those men who were not compelled to stay awake fell into the dirt and slept immediately. Toward dawn Hugo heard sounds in no man's land. He leaped over the parapet. In three jumps he found himself among the enemy. They were creeping forward. Hugo leaped back. "_Ils viennent!_"

Men who slept like death were kicked conscious. They rose and fired into the night. The surprise of the attack was destroyed. The enemy came on, engaging in the darkness with the exhausted Legionnaires. Twice Hugo went among them when inundation threatened and, using his rifle barrel as a club, laid waste on every hand. He walked through them striking and shattering. And twice he saved his salient from extermination. Day came sullenly. It began to rain. The men stood silently among their dead.

Hugo lit a cigarette. His eyes moved up and down the shambles. At intervals of two yards a man, his helmet trickling rain, his clothes filthy, his face inscrutable. Shayne was there on sagging knees. Hugo could not understand why he had not been killed.

Hugo was learning about war. He thought then that the task which he had set for himself was not altogether to his liking. There should be other and more important things for him to do. He did not like to slaughter individuals. The day passed like a cycle in hell. No change in the personnel except that made by an occasional death. No food. No water. They seemed to be exiled by their countrymen in a pool of fire and famine and destruction. At dusk Hugo spoke to the captain.

"We cannot last another night without water, food," he said.

"We shall die here, then."

"I should like, sir, to volunteer to go back and bring food."

"We need ammunition more."

"Ammunition, then."

"One man could not bring enough to assist--much."

"I can."

"You are valuable here. With your club and your charmed life, you have already saved this remnant of good soldiers."

"I will return in less than an hour."

"Good luck, then."

Where there had been a man, there was nothing. The captain blinked his eyes and stared at the place. He swore softly in French and plunged into his dug-out at the sound of ripping in the sky.

A half hour passed. The steady, nerve-racking bombardment continued at an unvaried pace. Then there was a heavy thud like that of a shell landing and not exploding. The captain looked. A great bundle, tied together by ropes, had descended into the trench. A man emerged from beneath it. The captain passed his hand over his eyes. Here was ammunition for the rifles and the machine guns in plenty. Here was food. Here were four huge tins of water, one of them leaking where a shell fragment had pierced it. Here was a crate of canned meat and a sack of onions and a stack of bread loaves. Hugo broke the ropes. His chest rose and fell rapidly. He was sweating. The bundle he had carried weighed more than a ton--and he had been running very swiftly.

The captain looked again. A case of cognac. Hugo was carrying things into the dug-out. "Where?" the captain asked.

Hugo smiled and named a town thirty kilometres behind the lines. A town where citizens and soldiers together were even then in frenzied discussion over the giant who had fallen upon their stores and supplies and taken them, running off like a locomotive, in a hail of bullets that did no harm to him.

"And how?" the captain asked.

"I am strong."

The captain shrugged and turned his head away. His men were eating the food, and drinking water mixed with brandy, and stuffing their pouches with ammunition. The machine gunners were laughing. They would not be forced to spare the precious belts when the Germans came in the morning. Hugo sat among them, dining his tremendous appetite.

Three days went by. Every day, twice, five times, they were attacked. But no offence seemed capable of driving that demoniac cluster of men from their position. A demon, so the enemy whispered, came out and fought for them. On the third day the enemy retreated along four kilometres of front, and the French moved up to reclaim many, many acres of their beloved soil. The Legionnaires were relieved and another episode was added to their valiant history.

Hugo slept for twenty hours in the wooden barracks. After that he was wakened by the captain's orderly and summoned to his quarters. The captain smiled when he saluted. "My friend," he said, "I wish to thank you in behalf of my country for your labour. I have recommended you for the Croix de Guerre."

Hugo took his outstretched hand. "I am pleased that I have helped."

"And now," the captain continued, "you will tell me how you executed that so unusual coup."

Hugo hesitated. It was the opportunity he had sought, the chance that might lead to a special commission whereby he could wreak the vengeance of his muscles on the enemy. But he was careful, because he did not feel secure in trusting the captain with too much of his secret. Even in a war it was too terrible. They would mistrust him, or they would attempt to send him to their biologists. And he wanted to accomplish his mission under their permission and with their co-operation. It would be more valuable then and of greater magnitude. So he smiled and said: "Have you ever heard of Colorado?"

"No, I have not heard. It is a place?"

"A place in America. A place that has scarcely been explored. I was born there. And all the men of Colorado are born as I was born and are like me. We are very strong. We are great fighters. We cannot be wounded except by the largest shells. I took that package by force and I carried it to you on my back, running swiftly."

The captain appeared politely interested. He thumbed a dispatch. He stared at Hugo. "If that is the truth, you shall show me."

"It is the truth--and I shall show you."

Hugo looked around. Finally he walked over to the sentry at the flap of the tent and took his rifle. The man squealed in protest. Hugo lifted him off the floor by the collar, shook him, and set him down.

The man shouted in dismay and then was silent at a word from the captain. Hugo weighed the gun in his hands while they watched and then slowly bent the barrel double. Next he tore it from its stock. Then he grasped the parallel steel ends and broke them apart with a swift wrench. The captain half rose, his eyes bulged, he knocked over his ink-well. His hand tugged at his moustache and waved spasmodically.

"You see?" Hugo said.

The captain went to staff meeting that afternoon very thoughtful. He understood the difficulty of exhibiting his soldier's prowess under circumstances that would assure the proper commission. He even considered remaining silent about Hugo. With such a man in his company it would soon be illustrious along the whole broad front. But the chance came. When the meeting was finished and the officers relaxed over their wine, a colonel brought up the subject of the merits of various breeds of men as soldiers.

"I think," he said, "that the Prussians are undoubtedly our most dangerous foe. On our own side we have--"

"Begging the colonel's pardon," the captain said, "there is a species of fighter unknown, or almost unknown, in this part of the world, who excels by far all others."

"And who may they be?" the colonel asked stiffly.

"Have you ever heard of the Colorados?"

"No," the colonel said.

Another officer meditated. "They are redskins, American Indians, are they not?"

The captain shrugged. "I do not know. I know only that they are superior to all other soldiers."

"And in what way?"

The captain's eyes flickered. "I have one Colorado in my troops. I will tell you what he did in five days near the town of Barsine." The officers listened. When the captain finished, the colonel patted his shoulder. "That is a very amusing fabrication. Very. With a thousand such men, the war would be ended in a week. Captain Crouan, I fear you have been overgenerous in pouring the wine."

The captain rose, saluted. "With your permission, I shall cause my Colorado to be brought and you shall see."

The other men laughed. "Bring him, by all means."