Mules, dust; mules, dust, and then more mules, all enveloped in dust, clattering, ambling, trotting, bucking, shying, kicking, halting, backing; and here and there an American negro cracking a long snake whip with strange, aboriginal e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns; and three white men in khaki riding beside the trampling column, smoking cigarettes.
"Sticky" Smith and "Kid" Glenn rode mules on the column"s flank; Burley continued to lead on his wall-eyed animal, preceded now by the fat brigadier of the gendarmerie, upon whom he had bestowed a cigarette.
Burley, talking all the while from his saddle to whoever cared to listen, or to himself if n.o.body cared to listen, rode on in the van under the ancient bell-tower of Sainte Lesse, where a slim, dark-eyed girl looked up at him as he pa.s.sed, a faint smile hovering on her lips.
"Bong jour, Mademoiselle," continued Burley, saluting her _en pa.s.sant_ with two fingers at the vizor of his khaki cap, as he had seen British officers salute. "I compliment you on your silent but eloquent welcome to me, my comrades, my c.o.o.ns, and my mules. Your charming though slightly melancholy smile bids us indeed welcome to your fair city. I thank you; I thank all the inhabitants for this unprecedented ovation. Doubtless a munic.i.p.al banquet awaits us----"
Sticky Smith spurred up.
"Did you see the inn?" he asked. "There it is, to the right."
"It looks good to me," said Burley. "Everything looks good to me except these accursed mules. Thank G.o.d, that seems to be the corral--down in the meadow there, Brigadeer!"
The fat brigadier drew bridle; Burley burst into French:
"Esker--esker----"
"_Oui_," nodded the brigadier, "that is where we are going."
"Bong!" exclaimed Burley with satisfaction; and, turning to Sticky Smith: "Stick, tell the c.o.o.ns to hustle. We"re there!"
Then, above the trampling, whip-cracking, and shouting of the negroes, from somewhere high in the blue sky overhead, out of limpid, cloudless heights floated a single bell-note, then another, another, others exquisitely sweet and clear, melting into a fragment of heavenly melody.
Burley looked up into the sky; the negroes raised their sweating, dark faces in pleased astonishment; Stick and Kid Glenn lifted puzzled visages to the zenith. The fat brigadier smiled and waved his cigarette:
"_Il est midi, messieurs._ That is the carillon of Sainte Lesse."
The angelic melody died away. Then, high in the old bell-tower, a great resonant bell struck twelve times.
Said the brigadier:
"When the wind is right, they can hear our big bell, Bayard, out there in the first line trenches----"
Again he waved his cigarette toward the northeast, then reined in his horse and backed off into the flowering meadow, while the first of the American mules entered the corral, the herd following pellmell.
The American negroes went with the mules to a hut prepared for them inside the corral--it having been previously and carefully explained to France that an American mule without its negro complement was as galvanic and unaccountable as a beheaded chicken.
Burley burst into French again, like a shrapnel sh.e.l.l:
"Esker--esker----"
"_Oui_," said the fat brigadier, "there is an excellent inn up the street, messieurs." And he saluted their uniform, the same being constructed of cotton khaki, with a horseshoe on the arm and an oxidized metal mule on the collar. The brigadier wondered at and admired the minute nicety of administrative detail characterizing a government which clothed even its muleteers so becomingly, yet with such modesty and dignity.
He could not know that the uniform was unauthorized and the insignia an invention of Sticky Smith, aiming to counteract any social stigma that might blight his sojourn in France.
"For," said Sticky Smith, before they went aboard the transport at New Orleans, "if you dress a man in khaki, with some gimcrack on his sleeve and collar, you"re level with anybody in Europe. Which," he added to Burley, "will make it pleasant if any emperors or kings drop in on us for a drink or a quiet game behind the lines."
"Also," added Burley, "it goes with the ladies." And he and Kid Glenn purchased uniforms similar to Smith"s and had the horseshoe and mule fastened to sleeve and collar.
"They"ll hang you fellows for francs-tireurs," remarked a battered soldier of fortune from the wharf as the transport cast off and glided gradually away from the sun-blistered docks.
"Hang _who_?" demanded Burley loudly from the rail above.
"What"s a frank-tiroor?" inquired Sticky Smith.
"And who"ll hang us?" shouted Kid Glenn from the deck of the moving steamer.
"The Germans will if they catch you in that uniform," retorted the battered soldier of fortune derisively. "You chorus-boy mule drivers will wish you wore overalls and one suspender if the Dutch Kaiser nails you!"
CHAPTER XIV
LA PLOO BELLE
They had been nearly three weeks on the voyage, three days in port, four more on cattle trains, and had been marching since morning from the nearest railway station at Estville-sur-Lesse.
Now, lugging their large leather hold-alls, they started up the main street of Sainte Lesse, three sunburnt, loud-talking Americans, young, st.u.r.dy, careless of glance and voice and gesture, perfectly self-satisfied.
Their footsteps echoed loudly on the pavement of this still, old town, lying so quietly in the shadow of its aged trees and its sixteenth century belfry, where the great bell, Bayard, had hung for hundreds of years, and, tier on tier above it, cl.u.s.tered in set ranks the fixed bells of the ancient carillon.
"Some skysc.r.a.per," observed Burley, patronizing the bell-tower with a glance.
As he spoke, they came to the inn, a very ancient hostelry built into a remnant of the old town wall, and now a part of it. On the signboard was painted a white doe; and that was the name of the inn.
So they trooped through the stone-arched tunnel, ushered by a lame innkeeper; and Burley, chancing to turn his head and glance back through the shadowy stone pa.s.sage, caught a glimpse in the outer sunshine of the girl whose dark eyes had inspired him with jocular eloquence as he rode on his mule under the bell-tower of Sainte Lesse.
"A peach," he said to Smith. And the sight of her apparently going to his head, he burst into French: "Tray chick! Tray, tray chick! I"m glad I"ve got on this uniform and not overalls and one suspender."
"What"s biting you?" inquired Smith.
"Nothing, Stick, nothing. But I believe I"ve seen the prettiest girl in the world right here in this two-by-four town."
Stick glanced over his shoulder, then shrugged:
"She"s ornamental, only she"s got a sad on."
But Burley trudged on with his leather hold-all, muttering to himself something about the prettiest girl in the world.
The "prettiest girl in the world" continued her way unconscious of the encomiums of John Burley and the critique of Sticky Smith. Her way, however, seemed to be the way of Burley and his two companions, for she crossed the sunny street and entered the White Doe by the arched door and tunnel-like pa.s.sage.
Unlike them, however, she turned to the right in the stone corridor, opened a low wooden door, crossed the inn parlour, ascended a short stairway, and entered a bedroom.
Here, standing before a mirror, she unpinned her straw hat, smoothed her dark hair, resting her eyes pensively for a few moments on her reflected face. Then she sauntered listlessly about the little room in performance of those trivial, aimless offices, entirely feminine, such as opening all the drawers in her clothes-press, smoothing out various frilly objects and fabrics, investigating a little gilded box and thoughtfully inspecting its contents, which consisted of hair-pins. Fussing here, lingering there, loitering by her bird-cage, where a canary cheeped its greeting and hopped and hopped; bending over a cl.u.s.ter of white phlox in a gla.s.s of water to inhale the old-fashioned perfume, she finally tied on a fresh ap.r.o.n and walked slowly out to the ancient, vaulted kitchen.