Part 3

Then came a morning when there was great excitement in the camp of the carbineers. Men were running all about and officers were shouting commands. Conrad came and hurriedly harnessed Pierrot and Jef to their carriage and they started off on a run down the road toward Brussels with some of the other dogs and guns. When they had gone about a mile the dogs were unharnessed and tied to trees, and the guns were placed in the road. Presently the galloping of horses was heard and shots were fired, which frightened the dogs and made them try to break loose. But they were much more frightened when their own guns began to speak. A horrible din arose, and some of the dogs lay down and cowered and others pranced and howled. Men came and kicked them and told them to be still; all of the soldiers seemed hurried and excited. Pierrot was trembling Violently and wished he were at home with Gran’père and wee Lisa, but stolid Jef took it all very calmly and that put courage into Pierrot.

A company of Belgian infantry came running up, and throwing themselves flat on the ground by the roadside, or standing behind trees, they began firing at the Uhlans. Then, after a little, two armoured automobiles came rushing along and charged down the road, and the firing of the machine-guns ceased.

By and by the order came for the carbineers to fall back, and the dogs were quickly harnessed up again. Some of them had to be kicked and cuffed into action, but Pierrot and Jef obeyed Conrad Orts in spite of their fear. Beside their gun a soldier lay moaning, and Pierrot sniffed at him curiously. He could not understand any of it.

It had been only a little outpost skirmish, but it was Pierrot’s first taste of war.

There followed many days of this sort of thing. Sometimes there were skirmishes, sometimes false alarms, but the dogs never knew when they might be called upon to run into action with their little cannon. Day or night, it was always the same, and it was fortunate for them that they learned to snatch such moments for rest and sleep as were offered. And dinner-time became a very irregular affair. It was all quite different from the orderly course of a cart-dog’s life in Brussels. But gradually they learned to know what was expected of them and responded willingly. In fact, there was an excitement about it which kept them constantly keyed up and eager. They got used to the smell of powder and the sound of firing, too, and Pierrot did not tremble any more.

In the main, Conrad was kind, though frequently hurried and a little rough, and there were never sweetmeats any more nor caresses. It was all very hard to understand.

Two or three times the camp was moved, and finally they withdrew to the circle of the Antwerp forts. And then once more Pierrot heard the sounds and sniffed the smells of a city. Conrad hitched his dogs one day to a supply cart and took them in to town. Here again Pierrot trotted along paved streets between high buildings, and once his sharp ear caught the sound of milk cans rattling over paving stones. It made him feel very homesick.

On their way back they had to wait for a long column of soldiers to march past. They looked tired and dusty, and the tramp, tramp of their feet sounded strange in Pierrot’s ears. Suddenly his eye was caught by a face he thought he knew. Could it be Père Jean? Perhaps he had come to take him home.

Pierrot sniffed, but in the strong man-smell of the marching troops he detected no familiar scent. He barked with all his might, “Here I am, Père Jean; here I am!” But Conrad bade him be still, and the soldier in the line kept his eyes fixed sternly ahead and marched on without turning. So Pierrot must have been mistaken. It made him very unhappy, and he whined in a low, whistling tone till the column passed and Conrad started on again.

There came a day when a fiercer battle took place than any Pierrot had yet been engaged in. The Germans had spread out their forces until they were very near to the Antwerp forts, and there was need of an action in force to drive them back again. Many soldiers were ordered hastily to the front--galloping dragoons, close ranks of infantry, and horse-drawn field guns. When the command came to the carbineers, the machine-gun battery was ready and the dogs waiting in their harnesses, and they started off at a run down the road.

After they had gone about a mile an officer came galloping up and sent them off to the left around a little wood, in which a battalion of infantry was in action. The rattle of their rifles made an incessant din, and now and then shrapnel shrieked overhead and shells exploded in the soft earth or among the trees.

The men urged their dogs to greater efforts, and they tore over the rough ground, dragging their guns and wagons in and out of gullies and through underbrush at a mad pace.

As they skirted the wood they came into full view of a gray German column making its way slowly around the flank of the Belgians. The carbineers quickly deployed, falling on their faces behind any bush or hillock they could find, and opened fire. But the men in charge of the batteries could not hide. They must get their guns into action and take their chances.

There was no time to unharness the dogs, so they were turned about and were obliged to stand facing away from the tumult of battle as the machine-guns began to rattle directly behind them. It was very hard to bear, and some of them might have broken and run but for a half-dozen men who had been told off to squat by the dogs’ heads and hold them steady.

Bullets began to whistle about their ears and to go plop! plop! into the ground about them. Now and then a man fell silently or with a sharp cry, and over on the right Pierrot heard a dog’s sharp yelp of anguish. Behind him Conrad Orts grunted and breathed through his teeth as he desperately worked his gun.

Suddenly one of the men at the dogs’ heads grasped his throat, uttered a rattling moan, and fell over in the grass, and two of the dogs started wildly off, their gun bumping and careening behind them. Other dogs reared and snarled, and it was all the men could do to prevent a stampede. A panic seized Pierrot and the desire for swift flight, but Conrad turned about for a moment, crying, “Steady, boys, steady!” Stolid old Jef growled in his throat and Pierrot stood firm.

The fire of the machine-guns had checked the advancing Germans, and the carbineers began to dart ahead from hillock to hillock, continuing their fire. At length the Germans withdrew and the battle centre shifted. The carbineers were recalled and fell in with their battery behind the trees to catch their breath. Just as they were turning a speeding bullet caught a spotted young dog that Pierrot had become acquainted with. He was trotting close by with his mate and their gun, and with a cry of pain and terror he leaped into the air and fell at Pierrot’s feet, the red blood spurting from his shoulder.

In terrified amazement Pierrot stopped short and sniffed at his fallen comrade. Then Conrad urged him on again while the men cut the dead dog from the traces.

For the carbineers the battle was over for that day, but Pierrot had looked upon his dead and he began to understand.

IV

At length came the day of the evacuation of Antwerp, and the Belgian king and his brave but beaten army moved sorrowfully westward, leaving their fair land to suffer unprotected. The carbineers were sent on ahead with their battery, leaving the horse artillery and armoured motor cars and cavalry to cover the army’s retreat. Some of the troops went on railway trains through Ghent, Bruges, and Ostend, but for the most part the army, including the carbineers, was obliged to travel on foot.

It was a forced march, long and arduous. Seventy miles they covered in three days, sometimes keeping to the roads, sometimes cutting across country, but always hurrying on until it seemed to the dogs as though their legs would collapse and their lungs burst.

Once they came out upon the seashore, and Pierrot would have liked to tarry here and contemplate the new wonder, but always there seemed to be the need for haste and Conrad would not let him rest. They left behind them the pleasant farms and the wooded country and came at length to the land of canals and dykes and sand dunes, with queer, pollarded willows along the roadsides and canal banks. Also there was a great deal of rain and mud which made the hauling of the guns doubly difficult.

At last, weary and wretched, they came to a halt, and the dogs were allowed a brief rest while the ranks were reformed and the men established camps and dug trenches.

It was here that Pierrot occasionally saw soldiers in brown khaki who sang wild songs and spoke in a strange tongue but who seemed very friendly. A few of them came one day to visit the carbineers, and there was much handshaking and smoking, but very little conversation. They seemed particularly interested in the dogs, and one of them, a short, stocky fellow, with a very red face and a wide grin, strode among them as though he had been waiting for weeks to rub his hand up and down a dog’s back and pinch a dog’s ears. Jef remained coldly suspicious, but Pierrot wagged his stump tail violently and placed his muddy forepaws on the soldier’s broad chest. Whereupon the soldier gave Pierrot a stifling hug and a pat on the head and walked quickly away.

This did Pierrot a world of good, for though Conrad Orts was a good master he seemed to have no time for caresses, and in Pierrot’s heart there was a mighty craving for the love of man. When the brown khaki man was gone Pierrot stood looking after him and whining. Then he lay down, whimpering a little, and the great wave of homesickness swept over him afresh.

If a dog cannot fully reason, he can at least remember, and Pierrot felt that he had lost what was best in life and he could not understand why. He saw it all again--the peaceful dairy farm with Medard and the cows; Mère Marie, with her fresh face and the shiny milk cans; the busy city and the laughing newsgirls; mild old Gran’père and merry little Lisa; the gentle hands and voices and the joy of being loved. But of course Pierrot was only a dog and war is war. One cannot be bothered with such trivial matters when the fate of dynasties is at stake.

Soon the fighting began again, only now there were no gallant dashes along hard roads or across green fields, but weary plodding through the mud, climbing in and out of trenches, short, heartbreaking charges, and hasty retreats. It was close-range fighting, and almost continuous. There was a constant roaring of big guns and the sickening bursting of bombs near at hand. The dogs were seldom unharnessed, slept by snatches when they could, and were often obliged to go hungry.

During one of the many encounters, a miserable little affair among the dunes ungilded by any of the fabled glory of battle, Conrad Orts suddenly tumbled over in the wet sand and lay still. The order to retreat was given, but no word came from Conrad. Jef and Pierrot stood perplexedly watching the other men and dogs flounder back around the sand-hills. Then came shouts and the sound of running feet behind them, and of hostile firing. Turning about, they saw the men in gray coming on, rushing from dune to dune. Partly through fear and partly through an instinctive feeling that they should return to their friends, the two Belgian dogs started off on a mad gallop after the retreating carbineers, leaving the silent form of their master where it had fallen.

By a miracle they reached the trenches in safety, though a rain of bullets fell all about them, and a man named André Wyns took charge of them and their gun.

And now a new burden was laid upon Jef and Pierrot, for André was a rough man and knew little about the handling of dogs. He beat and prodded and kicked them, not in anger but in the mistaken belief that such treatment was necessary to get the most out of them. At first Pierrot was terrified and enraged and showed his resentment, for he had never been beaten in this manner before; but he soon learned the uselessness of rebellion and submitted with what grace he could. Eagerly he waited for the coming again of Conrad Orts, but Conrad never returned. As for Jef, he bore it all in sullen silence, but it was plain to be seen that he bore no love for André.

When the cold winter weather came there was added misery for dogs and men. Icy water stood in the bottoms of the trenches and the nights were raw and chill. It was fortunate for Pierrot that he had always been an outdoor dog, used to rain and frost and sleet, and that his rough coat was thick and matted. But that did not save his feet from getting frost-bitten after his runs through the water, and cut by the frozen mud and ice-crusted pools. Little balls of ice would form between his toes, which hurt him cruelly. Some of the men bandaged the feet of their dogs, but André Wyns seemed to have no time for that. He only beat them the harder when they started out stiffly or showed signs of weariness on the return. At night the men drew blankets around them and huddled about such small fires as they could find fuel for, but there were neither fires nor blankets for the dogs.

If Czar and Kaiser can bring such suffering to men, what chance that they will heed the aching limbs and bleeding feet of shivering dumb brutes?

The days and weeks slipped by and some of the dogs died of pneumonia, or, weakened by hunger and exposure, had to be shot. Pierrot, grown gaunt and haggard, was nearing the end of his strength. He had become almost insensible to Andre’s beatings, and his mind had become so dulled that he worked mechanically and without initiative. The happy days on the Waterloo Road seemed now so dim and unreal that he scarcely thought of them; only in the back of his brain there was always an aching, hopeless longing.

One midwinter morning at daybreak Pierrot was aroused from restless slumber by a great noise and confusion all about him. He and Jef had been sleeping unharnessed beneath their gun in a little hollow at the lip of the trench, huddled close together for warmth. In the night a light snow had fallen and partly covered them.

Pierrot rose to his feet, stretched, shook himself wearily, and stood blinking stupidly out upon a white world. Across the trench, a few hundred yards away, he could see the helmets of a great host of Germans advancing rapidly in solid ranks. The Belgian soldiers were hurrying to the escarpment to meet the attack, and already their rifles were speaking, while German bullets ploughed sharp lines in the snow or buried themselves in the bank behind. Already one or two of the dogs who were in exposed positions were yelping with pain or had stiffened out upon the ground, and now and then one of the carbineers went tumbling down to the bottom of the trench.

The men in charge of the little battery made a rush for their guns, and a few of the dogs were hastily harnessed. Presently Pierrot saw André Wyns come labouring toward them with an armful of ammunition. He had nearly reached them when he pitched forward upon his face and rolled down the bank.

Then came the Germans--hundreds, thousands of them--not cheering, but pressing grimly on and filling the gaps as their comrades fell. There was a sharp order, and the Germans broke into a run and stormed the trench with fixed bayonets.

Then all was a frightful confusion of struggling men. They filled the trench, fighting desperately, and Belgians and Germans fell together in the awful agonies of sudden death. The Belgians fought stubbornly, but foot by foot the survivors were forced back, and the Germans swarmed into the trench, across the bodies of foe and comrade, and up the opposite bank.

One or two of the carbineers had succeeded in getting their machine-guns into action, but they were soon overwhelmed and the dogs who were harnessed were quickly bayonetted that they might not run off with the guns. Some of the other dogs fled and perhaps a few escaped, but there was little chance for them.

Pierrot and Jef stood waiting, the impulse to flee not having come to them. Men scrambled past them, but they stood dazed and terrified. Then a big brute of a fellow, his face distorted with the battle madness which sometimes turns a man into a fiend, came grunting and cursing up the bank, and finding the dogs in his path, thrust his bayonet wantonly through poor Jef’s heart. Pierrot saw his team-mate fall without a cry. The German put his foot on the animal and drew out his bayonet with an effort. A spurt of blood followed it and made a red pool in the snow.

Unreasoning rage seized Pierrot, and with what remained of his once agile strength he leaped at the man’s throat and sank his fangs into the flesh. The soldier dropped his rifle, and grasping Pierrot in his strong hands sought to choke him and force him off. But the dog was crazed and blind with rage and insensible to pain. He felt the tearing of the man’s neck muscles between his jaws and he tasted the hot blood. Then the man’s grip relaxed and he fell backward. Pierrot fell with him, the breath well-nigh gone out of his body. But the man lay quiet, struggling no more, and Pierrot extricated himself and rose unsteadily.

The fight raging about him made no impression on his stunned senses. But suddenly another gray form appeared before him; a heavy boot caught him under the chin and sent him sprawling. Then the report of a rifle sounded loudly in his ears and he felt a sharp and awful pain in his right hind leg.

After that, darkness.

V

When the light again dawned upon Pierrot’s distressed brain he was conscious, first, of an intense sensation of pain and weakness. Then gradually he became aware of a weight upon his chest and a severe throbbing in his right hind leg. He lifted his head but found himself unable to move or to reach his wounded leg with his tongue. Across his body rested the heavy thigh of a dead soldier.

Pierrot sank back and waited till the dizziness passed and his head cleared a little. Then the universal instinct for self-preservation and the need to struggle for his life awoke within him. Little by little, with long, painful waits between his efforts, he managed to drag himself free from the weight upon him.

He stood for a moment, trembling with weakness, as though to reassure himself that he was alive. All was quiet about him, though the sounds of battle still raged not far away. He hardly noticed the forms of fallen men in the trench or heard their occasional moans. Then he dropped to his side again and made a feeble attempt to lick his aching leg. The foot was quite numb and the hair was matted and caked, but the bleeding had stopped.

As his small store of strength returned he discovered that he was cold as well as weak, and the need came upon him--the instinct of the hurt animal--to crawl away to some sheltered spot where he might either recuperate or die. It seemed to him that first of all he must get away from the horrible trench. Very slowly and painfully, with one leg dragging, he toiled up the bank and over the escarpment, and lay panting on the snowy ground. Then, after a little rest, he started on again unsteadily toward a little thicket of shrubbery that had been trampled nearly flat by the feet of the grenadiers.

It seemed a long way off, and he was obliged to stop often to rest. When at last he approached the thicket he was startled for a moment by a brown hare which scuttled out from beneath the tangled bushes and went bounding off across the snow. Pierrot felt no impulse to give chase nor any wonder that the hare should have escaped destruction. He burrowed under the broken branches and sniffed his way to where the hare had made a nest in the dry grass beneath. The spot was still warm, and Pierrot curled himself up in it gratefully and fell to nursing his wound.

For three days and two nights Pierrot lay in his hiding-place, sleeping much of the time. At noon the warm sun struck through the twigs which by night shielded him from the bitter winds. The Red Cross motors came and there were sounds of human activity in the trench. Soldiers marched by, but there was no rushing attack and no heavily shod phalanx came crashing through his cover. In his dense retreat he lay undiscovered, waiting patiently for life or death.

During the third day he became restless and slept but little. He was feeling somewhat stronger and his mind had become more active. His wounded leg throbbed less severely. Toward nightfall an imperative call came to him to go forth.

Thus far, strangely enough, he had not felt keen pangs of hunger, for it is natural for sick dogs to fast. But now he was painfully aware of a consuming thirst. He had occasionally reached out and lapped at the cool snow outside his covert, but while that had felt good to his fevered nose and mouth, it had not sufficed. Now his throat was parched, his tongue was thick and dry, and his head ached. If you do not believe that dogs have headaches, notice how your terrier thrusts his head against your knee next time he is ailing, and begs for the pressure of your hand.

So Pierrot crawled out of his nest in the gathering dusk and looked about him, stretching his stiffened limbs and lifting his nose to the keen wind. He walked once around his thicket and then started off across the frozen ground toward the dunes, making laborious progress, keeping to the shadows, sniffing for water.

Twice he heard voices, and once footsteps approached and passed by, while he lay still and waited, cowering. At last he came to a hollow where melting snow had formed a little pool. He broke the thin sheet of ice with one forepaw, and then, thrusting his nose into the freezing water, he drank long and gratefully.

With the quenching of his thirst a new life seemed to flow through his veins and courage returned to his stout heart. But he was still weak, and after a moment’s indecision he crept back to his shelter.

On the morning of the fourth day he awoke refreshed. But now a new need had come to torment him. He was hungry. Sharp pangs gnawed at his vitals and all his being cried aloud for food. He thrust his head out of his hiding-place and looked about, sniffing the air. Over the edge of the trench he saw the movements of men and the sun glistening on rifle barrels and German helmets. He drew back stealthily. Experience had taught him caution. He had had enough of soldiers and of war. He must wait.

All day he suffered the agonies of hunger and fought against the impulse to dash out blindly in search of food. And as the day advanced he was conscious of an ever-increasing desire to go home. A great longing filled him for his cozy bed in Medard’s stable, for the home where there was always plenty to eat, for the kind hands that knew how to cure a dog’s hurts, for the human love that had drifted so far into the past that it was like a dream of heaven. The homing instinct became his ruling motive; it obsessed him and drew him as with chains.

Repeatedly he started impulsively out from the thicket, and as often the sight of soldiers drove him fearfully back.