Every fourth man wormed himself backward on his stomach until he was below the sky-line, when his stiffened limbs brought him to his feet and he started on a dead run down into the valley and toward a cut behind another knoll across the road from the Galland house.
"Tom Fragini, with your corporal dead I put you in charge of the first section! What are you waiting for, Corporal Fragini?"
Tom was bending over Grandfather Fragini, who had been forgotten by everybody in the ordeal. The old man was lying where he had fallen after the first burst of shrapnel.
"Can"t go! Got a game leg!" said grandfather, pointing to a swollen ankle that had been bruised by a piece of shrapnel jacket that had lost most of its velocity before striking him. "You do your duty and leave me alone. I ain"t a fighting man any more. I done my work when I steadied you young fellows."
"Yes, go on, Fragini," said Dellarme. "Attend to your men. Everybody in his place. We"ll get the old man away on a litter."
"Yes, you go or you ain"t any grandson of mine!" shouted the old man in a high-pitched voice. "Just been promoted, too! You"ll be up for insubordination in a minute, you young whelp!"
Dellarme meant to look after grandfather, but his attention was engrossed in seeing that his men withdrew cautiously, for every minute that he was able to delay the enemy"s charge was vital. He himself picked up a rifle in order to increase the volume of fire when the third section was starting. As the fourth and last section drew off he uttered his first cry of triumph of the day as his final look revealed the Grays still in place. But they would not wait long once all fire from the knoll had ceased. Stransky, who was in the fourth section, remained to give a parting shot.
"Good-by, d---- you!" he called to the Grays. "You"ll hear more from me later!"
Then Dellarme saw that grandfather had not yet been carried away and no litters remained. What was to be done? Grandfather was prompt with his own view.
"Just leave me behind. I"ve done my work, I tell you!" he declared.
"Can"t lose you, grandpop!" said Stransky.
Quickly shifting his pack to the ground, he squatted with his back to the old man.
"I ain"t going to--and you"re a traitor, anyway; that"s what you are!"
"No back talk! No politics in this!" Stransky replied. "Get up! You carry your skin and I"ll carry your bones. Get up quick!"
With Dellarme"s authoritative a.s.sistance grandfather mounted. Then Dellarme put Stransky"s pack on his own back.
"Let me carry your rifle, too," he said to Stransky as they started.
"Not much!" answered Stransky. "I was just married to that rifle this morning. We"re on our honeymoon trip and getting fairly well acquainted, and expect shortly to settle down to a busy domestic life."
He set off at a lope and gained the rear of the section in his first burst of speed. As the other men got their second wind, however, Stransky began to puff and they soon drew away from him.
"Put me down! I ain"t going to depend on any traitor that insulted the flag!" protested grandfather.
"That"s the way! Call out to me now and then so I"ll know you"re there,"
said Stransky. "You"re so light I mightn"t know it if you fell off."
Dellarme did not think it right to expose the last section by asking it to delay. Shepherd of his flock and miser of his pieces of gold, now that their work was done the one thing he wanted in the world was that they should escape without further punishment. Already the van of the first section was disappearing into the cut in safety. But the fourth section, which had held to the last, had yet a thousand yards to go over a path bare of cover except a single small bush. At any moment he expected to hear a cheer from the knoll, and what would follow the cheer he knew only too well. Yet he tarried with Stransky out of one man"s impulse not to desert another in danger. At the same time he was wroth with the old man for having made such a nuisance of himself.
"What are you waiting for?" Stransky demanded of Dellarme.
"I like good company," answered Dellarme cheerfully.
"Compliment for you, grandfather!" said Stransky.
"Put me down!" screamed grandfather.
"Still there, eh? Thanks, grandpop!" said Stransky, turning on Dellarme. "Can"t you run any faster than that, captain? Your place is with your men, sir. If you got wounded I"d have to carry you, too. Your company"s gaining on you every minute. Hurry up!"
From the peremptory way that he spoke, Dellarme might have been the private and Stransky the officer.
"Right!" said Dellarme in face of such unanswerable military logic, and broke into a run.
Stransky adapted himself to a pace which he thought he could maintain, and plodded on, eyes on the bush as a half-way point. After a while he heard a mighty hurrah, which was cut short abruptly; then spits of dust about their feet hastened the steps of the last section, which was near the cut. He saw men drop out of line to make a cradle of their arms for comrades who had been hit; and these finally pa.s.sed out of danger with their burdens.
"No flock in sight! It"s the turn of the individual birds!" thought Stransky, and heard a familiar sound about his ears.
"Bullets!" exclaimed grandfather. "Don"t whistle like they used to. They kind of crack and sizzle now. Maybe if they hit me I"ll stop "em, and that"ll save you."
"That"s so," replied Stransky glumly, realizing that he was running with a human shield on his back. "But they"ll go right through him he"s so thin," he thought in relief. The worst of it was that he had to receive without sending, which made him boil with rage. He wished that the bush had legs so it could run toward him; he half believed that it had and was retreating. "They"re shooting right at us, and that"s in our favor.
It"s hard to get the bull"s-eye at that range," he a.s.sured grandfather.
Whish-whish-whish! Enough pellets were singing by to have torn away the rim of the target, yet none got the centre before Stransky dropped behind the bush. Blessed bush! Back of it was a bowlder. Thrice-blessed bowlder! It protected grandfather as securely as the armor of a battleship.
"We are having a noisy time," remarked Stransky as two or three of the leaves fell. "Intelligent thieves! How did you guess we were here?" and he put his big thumb to his big nose.
"But they didn"t know about the bowlder!" said the old man with a senile giggle. "Say, I didn"t mean it when I called you a traitor--not after the fight! I just said that to make you mad so you"d put me down and we shouldn"t lose a good fighting man trying to save an old bag of bones like me. You ain"t no traitor! You"re a patriot!"
"More politics, when I"m simply full of cussedness!" grumbled Stransky.
"Not having any home, I"m fighting to save the other fellows" homes, princ.i.p.ally because I was married this morning by a shrapnel-sh.e.l.l to a lady that understands me perfectly. Say, shall we give them a few?" he asked with a squint down the bridge of his nose as he took up his rifle.
"Yes, give "em a few!" grandfather urged when they ought to have remained quiet, as the firing was dying down. It was not worth while to shoot at a bush, and after all the torrent of lead that they had poured into the bush the Grays had concluded that nothing behind it could remain alive.
Stransky aimed at a head and shoulder on the sky-line, which he took for those of an officer, and was accurate enough to make the head and shoulders duck and to get a swarm of bullets in return.
"Children, why will you waste your country"s ammunition?" said Stransky, firing again.
"That"s the way to talk!" said grandfather approvingly. "Nothing like a little gayety and ginger in war."
Now a Brown battery whose fire could be spared from other work dropped a few sh.e.l.ls on the knoll and so occupied the attention of the 128th that it had no time to attend to occasional bullets from snipers.
"Think we"re no account! Shall we charge them now we"ve got the support of the guns?" chuckled Stransky.
"You Hussar, you!" Grandfather gave Stransky a slap on the back. "With a thousand like you we could charge me whole army, if the general would let us!"
"But he wouldn"t let us," replied Stransky. "I could even tell you why."
With the shadows gathering he slipped back to grandfather"s side, and after it was quite dark he said that it was time for the old Hussar to mount his fiery steed. Grandfather"s hands slipped from around Stransky"s neck at the first trial; with the next, Stransky took the bony fingers in his grip and held them clasped on his chest with one hand, proceeding as quietly as he could, for he had an idea that the Grays were already moving down from the knoll under cover of night.
"Yes, sir, I"m glad I came!" said grandfather faintly and meanderingly.
"I wasn"t sure about Tom--all this new-fangled education and these uniforms without any color in "em. But I saw him firing away steady as a rock; yes, sir! I was in it, too, under fire! It made my heart thump-thump like the old days. And we"re going to hold "em--we"re going to teach the land-sharks--I"m very happy--made my heart thump so--kind of tired me--"
The old man"s voice died away into silence. His knees weakened their grip and his legs swung pendulum-like with Stransky"s steps.
"What about me for a sleeping-car!" thought Stransky. "But he"s certainly harder to carry."