|
Schwartnzenburg's senses swam slowly to the surface and he struggled to his feet to find; an open tunic like a wound in his heart—a despairing, triumphant girl, with the coquette gone out of her eyes and through golden lights, gone cold, nothing but a loathing "Yankee" looking out, facing him, and the collie dog he had tolerated for no reason save the desire for the favor of Golden Eyes—that collie dog vanished quite! In his open breast he thrust a violent, fearful hand; and found no papers there!
His reports, his orders; his superior's communiqués, the strength of his division; movements of troops and guns! Fury and fear though together in the Hun's breast—the poor counterfeit love he had felt for Golden Eye's dear beauty was swallowed in the rage of defeat; and before his eyes she glimmered—the enemy woman! A despised American—the "female" of the hated who "honored their women and did not understand that they were servants and slaves and dolls!" And she had outwitted him! The loss of his papers was a ruined career and suicide. His life was nothing worth.
He dragged Golden-Eyes to the top of the trench. He would shoot her before the eyes of the American sentries of their lines three hundred yards away! Freet above the mud and turf the slim figure stood—a tiny silk flag of her own country clutched close to her heart—hear game up! —but her lips smiling! She had fought hard for love and life—but honor remained—hers and her army's. So she smiled!
As the Hun raised his automatic, two mud-bespattered, glitter-eyed beings, Uncle Same and Bill, fell upon him, a snarling dog and a roaring man, a man crying, "My bare hands for you!" Shots and cries—panic—and "Kamarad!"
And bill and his doughboys had taken that trench.
|
