"Can you see any—"

"Not a damn thing—yet everything," interrupted Sanborn, enigmatically.

"Dixon!" called Owens, low and quickly, from the darkness.

Dixon did not reply. His sudden hard breathing, the brushing of his garments against the door, then swift, soft steps dying away attested to the fact of his going.

Dorn tried to compose himself to rest, if not to sleep. He heard Sanborn sit down, and then apparently stay very still for some time. All of a sudden he whispered to himself. Dorn distinguished the word "hell."

"What's ailin' you, pard?" drawled Brewer.

Sanborn growled under his breath, and when some one else in the dugout quizzed him curiously he burst out: "I'll bet you galoots the state of California against a dill pickle that when your turn comes you'll be sick in your gizzards!"

"We'll take our medicine," came in the soft, quiet voice of Purcell.

No more was said. The men all pretended to fall asleep, each ashamed to let his comrade think he was concerned.

A short, dull, heavy rumble seemed to burst the outer stillness. For a moment the dugout was silent as a tomb. No one breathed. Then came a jar of the earth, a creaking of shaken timbers. Some one gasped involuntarily. Another whispered:

"By God! the real thing!"

Dorn wondered how far away that jarring shell had alighted. Not so far! It was the first he had ever heard explode near him. Roaring of cannon, exploding of shell—this had been a source of every-day talk among his comrades. But the jar, the tremble of the earth, had a dreadful significance. Another rumble, another jar, not so heavy or so near this time, and then a few sharply connected reports, clamped Dorn as in a cold vise. Machine-gun shots! Many thousand machine-gun shots had he heard, but none with the life and the spite and the spang of these. Did he imagine the difference? Cold as he felt, he began to sweat, and continually, as he wiped the palms of his hands, they grew wet again. A queer sensation of light-headedness and weakness seemed to possess him. The roots of his will-power seemed numb. Nevertheless, all the more revolving and all-embracing seemed his mind.

The officer in his speech a few hours back had said the sector to which the battalion had been assigned was alive. By this he meant that active bombardment, machine-gun fire, hand-grenade throwing, and gas-shelling, or attack in force might come any time, and certainly must come as soon as the Germans suspected the presence of an American force opposite them.

That was the stunning reality to Dorn—the actual existence of the Huns a few rods distant. But realization of them had not brought him to the verge of panic. He would not flinch at confronting the whole German army. Nor did he imagine he put a great price upon his life. Nor did he have any abnormal dread of pain. Nor had the well-remembered teachings of the Bible troubled his spirit. Was he going to be a coward because of some incalculable thing in him or force operating against him? Already he sat there, shivering and sweating, with the load on his breast growing laborsome, with all his sensorial being absolutely at keenest edge.

Rapid footfalls halted his heart-beats. They came from above, outside the dugout, from the trench.

"Dorn, come out!" called the corporal.

Dorn's response was instant. But he was as blind as if he had no eyes, and he had to feel his way to climb out. The indistinct, blurred form of the corporal seemed half merged in the pale gloom of the trench. A cool wind whipped at Dorn's hot face. Surcharged with emotion, the nature of which he feared, Dorn followed the corporal, stumbling and sliding over the wet boards, knocking bits of earth from the walls, feeling a sick icy gripe in his bowels. Some strange light flared up—died away. Another rumble, distinct, heavy, and vibrating! To his left somewhere the earth received a shock. Dorn felt a wave of air that was not wind.

The corporal led the way past motionless men peering out over the top of the wall, and on to a widening, where an abutment of filled bags loomed up darkly. Here the corporal cautiously climbed up breaks in the wall and stooped behind the fortification. Dorn followed. His legs did not feel natural. Something was lost out of them. Then he saw the little figure of Rogers beside him. Dorn's turn meant Rogers's relief. How pale against the night appeared the face of Rogers! As he peered under his helmet at Dorn a low whining passed in the air overhead. Rogers started slightly. A thump sounded out there, interrupting the corporal, who had begun to speak. He repeated his order to Dorn, bending a little to peer into his face. Dorn tried to open his lips to say he did not understand, but his lips were mute. Then the corporal led Rogers away.

That moment alone, out in the open, with the strange, windy pall of night—all-enveloping, with the flares, like sheet-lightning, along the horizon, with a rumble here and a roar there, with whistling fiends riding the blackness above, with a series of popping, impelling reports seemingly close in front—that drove home to Kurt Dorn a cruel and present and unescapable reality.

At that instant, like bitter fate, shot up a rocket, or a star-flare of calcium light, bursting to expose all underneath in pitiless radiance. With a gasp that was a sob, Dorn shrank flat against the wall, staring into the fading circle, feeling a creep of paralysis. He must be seen. He expected the sharp, biting series of a machine-gun or the bursting of a bomb. But nothing happened, except that the flare died away. It had come from behind his own lines. Control of his muscles had almost returned when a heavy boom came from the German side. Miles away, perhaps, but close! That boom meant a great shell speeding on its hideous mission. It would pass over him. He listened. The wind came from that side. It was cold; it smelled of burned powder; it carried sounds he was beginning to appreciate—shots, rumbles, spats, and thuds, whistles of varying degree, all isolated sounds. Then he caught a strange, low moaning. It rose. It was coming fast. It became an o-o-o-O-O-O! Nearer and nearer! It took on a singing whistle. It was passing—no—falling!... A mighty blow was delivered to the earth—a jar—a splitting shock to windy darkness; a wave of heavy air was flung afar—and then came the soft, heavy thumping of falling earth.

That shell had exploded close to the place where Dorn stood. It terrified him. It reduced him to a palpitating, stricken wretch, utterly unable to cope with the terror. It was not what he had expected. What were words, anyhow? By words alone he had understood this shell thing. Death was only a word, too. But to be blown to atoms! It came every moment to some poor devil; it might come to him. But that was not fighting. Somewhere off in the blackness a huge iron monster belched this hell out upon defenseless men. Revolting and inconceivable truth!

It was Dorn's ordeal that his mentality robbed this hour of novelty and of adventure, that while his natural, physical fear incited panic and nausea and a horrible, convulsive internal retching, his highly organized, exquisitely sensitive mind, more like a woman's in its capacity for emotion, must suffer through imagining the infinite agonies that he might really escape. Every shell then must blow him to bits; every agony of every soldier must be his.

But he knew what his duty was, and as soon as he could move he began to edge along the short beat. Once at the end he drew a deep and shuddering breath, and, fighting all his involuntary instincts, he peered over the top. An invisible thing whipped close over his head. It did not whistle; it cut. Out in front of him was only thick, pale gloom, with spectral forms, leading away to the horizon, where flares, like sheet-lightning of a summer night's storm, ran along showing smoke and bold, ragged outlines. Then he went to the other end to peer over there. His eyes were keen, and through long years of habit at home, going about at night without light, he could see distinctly where ordinary sight would meet only a blank wall. The flat ground immediately before him was bare of living or moving objects. That was his duty as sentinel here—to make sure of no surprise patrol from the enemy lines. It helped Dorn to realize that he could accomplish this duty even though he was in a torment.

That space before him was empty, but it was charged with current. Wind, shadow, gloom, smoke, electricity, death, spirit—whatever that current was, Dorn felt it. He was more afraid of that than the occasional bullets which zipped across. Sometimes shots from his own squad rang out up and down the line. Off somewhat to the north a machine-gun on the Allies' side spoke now and then spitefully. Way back a big gun boomed. Dorn listened to the whine of shells from his own side with a far different sense than that with which he heard shells whine from the enemy. How natural and yet how unreasonable! Shells from the other side came over to destroy him; shells from his side went back to save him. But both were shot to kill! Was he, the unknown and shrinking novice of a soldier, any better than an unknown and shrinking soldier far across there in the darkness? What was equality? But these were Germans! That thing so often said—so beaten into his brain—did not convince out here in the face of death.

* * * * *

Four o'clock! With the gray light came a gradually increasing number of shells. Most of them struck far back. A few, to right and left, dropped near the front line. The dawn broke—such a dawn as he never dreamed of—smoky and raw, with thunder spreading to a circle all around the horizon.

He was relieved. On his way in he passed Purcell at the nearest post. The elegant New-Yorker bore himself with outward calm. But in the gray dawn he looked haggard and drawn. Older! That flashed through Dorn's mind. A single night had contained years, more than years. Others of the squad had subtly changed. Dixon gave him a penetrating look, as if he wore a mask, under which was a face of betrayal, of contrast to that soldier bearing, of youth that was gone forever.



CHAPTER XXVIII

The squad of men to which Dorn belonged had to be on the lookout continually for an attack that was inevitable. The Germans were feeling out the line, probably to verify spy news of the United States troops taking over a sector. They had not, however, made sure of this fact.

The gas-shells came over regularly, making life for the men a kind of suffocation most of the time. And the great shells that blew enormous holes in front and in back of their position never allowed a relaxation from strain. Drawn and haggard grew the faces that had been so clean-cut and brown and fresh.

* * * * *

One evening at mess, when the sector appeared quiet enough to permit of rest, Rogers was talking to some comrades before the door of the dugout.

"It sure got my goat, that little promenade of ours last night over into No Man's Land," he said. "We had orders to slip out and halt a German patrol that was supposed to be stealing over to our line. We crawled on our bellies, looking and listening every minute. If that isn't the limit! My heart was in my mouth. I couldn't breathe. And for the first moments, if I'd run into a Hun, I'd had no more strength than a rabbit. But all seemed clear. It was not a bright night—sort of opaque and gloomy—shadows everywhere. There wasn't any patrol coming. But Corporal Owens thought he heard men farther on working with wire. We crawled some more. And we must have got pretty close to the enemy lines—in fact, we had—when up shot one of those damned calcium flares. We all burrowed into the ground. I was paralyzed. It got as light as noon—strange greenish-white flare. It magnified. Flat as I lay, I saw the German embankments not fifty yards away. I made sure we were goners. Slowly the light burned out. Then that machine-gun you all heard began to rattle. Something queer about the way every shot of a machine-gun bites the air. We heard the bullets, low down, right over us. Say, boys, I'd almost rather be hit and have it done with!... We began to crawl back. I wanted to run. We all wanted to. But Owens is a nervy guy and he kept whispering. Another machine-gun cut loose, and bullets rained over us. Like hail they hit somewhere ahead, scattering the gravel. We'd almost reached our line when Smith jumped up and ran. He said afterward that he just couldn't help himself. The suspense was awful. I know. I've been a clerk in a bank! Get that? And there I was under a hail of Hun lead, without being able to understand why, or feel that any time had passed since giving up my job to go to war. Queer how I saw my old desk!... Well, that's how Smith got his. I heard the bullets spat him, sort of thick and soft.... Ugh!... Owens and I dragged him along, and finally into the trench. He had a bullet through his shoulder and leg. Guess he'll live, all right.... Boys, take this from me. Nobody can tell you what a machine-gun is like. A rifle, now, is not so much. You get shot at, and you know the man must reload and aim. That takes time. But a machine-gun! Whew! It's a comb—a fine-toothed comb—and you're the louse it's after! You hear that steady rattle, and then you hear bullets everywhere. Think of a man against a machine-gun! It's not a square deal."

Dixon was one of the listeners. He laughed.

"Rogers, I'd like to have been with you. Next time I'll volunteer. You had action—a run for your money. That's what I enlisted for. Standing still—doing nothing but wait—that drives me half mad. My years of football have made action necessary. Otherwise I go stale in mind and body.... Last night, before you went on that scouting trip, I had been on duty two hours. Near midnight. The shelling had died down. All became quiet. No flares—no flashes anywhere. There was a luminous kind of glow in the sky—moonlight through thin clouds. I had to listen and watch. But I couldn't keep back my thoughts. There I was, a soldier, facing No Man's Land, across whose dark space were the Huns we have come to regard as devils in brutality, yet less than men.... And I thought of home. No man knows what home really is until he stands that lonely midnight guard. A shipwrecked sailor appreciates the comforts he once had; a desert wanderer, lost and starving, remembers the food he once wasted; a volunteer soldier, facing death in the darkness, thinks of his home! It is a hell of a feeling!... And, thinking of home, I remembered my girl. I've been gone four months—have been at the front seven days (or is it seven years?) and last night in the darkness she came to me. Oh yes! she was there! She seemed reproachful, as she was when she coaxed me not to enlist. My girl was not one of the kind who sends her lover to war and swears she will die an old maid unless he returns. Mine begged me to stay home, or at least wait for the draft. But I wasn't built that way. I enlisted. And last night I felt the bitterness of a soldier's fate. All this beautiful stuff is bunk!... My girl is a peach. She had many admirers, two in particular that made me run my best down the stretch. One is club-footed. He couldn't fight. The other is all yellow. Him she liked best. He had her fooled, the damned slacker.... I wish I could believe I'd get safe back home, with a few Huns to my credit—the Croix de Guerre—and an officer's uniform. That would be great. How I could show up those fellows!... But I'll get killed—as sure as God made little apples I'll get killed—and she will marry one of the men who would not fight!"

It was about the middle of a clear morning, still cold, but the sun was shining. Guns were speaking intermittently. Those soldiers who were off duty had their gas-masks in their hands. All were gazing intently upward.

Dorn sat a little apart from them. He, too, looked skyward, and he was so absorbed that he did not hear the occasional rumble of a distant gun. He was watching the airmen at work—the most wonderful and famous feature of the war. It absolutely enthralled Dorn. As a boy he had loved to watch the soaring of the golden eagles, and once he had seen a great wide-winged condor, swooping along a mountain-crest. How he had envied them the freedom of the heights—the loneliness of the unscalable crags—the companionship of the clouds! Here he gazed and marveled at the man-eagles of the air.

German planes had ventured over the lines, flying high, and English planes had swept up to intercept them. One was rising then not far away, climbing fast, like a fish-hawk with prey in its claws. Its color, its framework, its propeller, and its aviator showed distinctly against the sky. The buzzing, high-pitched drone of its motor floated down.

The other aeroplanes, far above, had lost their semblance to mechanical man-driven machines. They were now the eagles of the air. They were rising, circling, diving in maneuvers that Dorn knew meant pursuit. But he could not understand these movements. To him the air-battle looked as it must have looked to an Indian. Birds of prey in combat! Dorn recalled verses he had learned as a boy, written by a poet who sang of future wars in the air. What he prophesied had come true. Was there not a sage now who could pierce the veil of the future and sing of such a thing as sacred human life? Dorn had his doubts. Poets and dreamers appeared not to be the men who could halt materialism. Strangely then, as Dorn gazed bitterly up at these fierce fliers who fought in the heavens, he remembered the story of the three wise men and of Bethlehem. Was it only a story? Where on this sunny spring morning was Christ, and the love of man for man?

At that moment one of the forward aeroplanes, which was drifting back over the enemy lines, lost its singular grace of slow, sweeping movement. It poised in the air. It changed shape. It pitched as if from wave to wave of wind. A faint puff of smoke showed. Tiny specks, visible to Dorn's powerful eyes, seemed to detach themselves and fall, to be followed by the plane itself in sheer downward descent.

Dorn leaped to his feet. What a thrilling and terrible sight! His comrades stood bareheaded, red faces uplifted, open-mouthed and wild with excitement, not daring to disobey orders and yell at the top of their lungs. Dorn felt, strong above the softened wonder and thought of a moment back, a tingling, pulsating wave of gushing blood go over him. Like his comrades, he began to wave his arms and stamp and bite his tongue.

Swiftly the doomed plane swept down out of sight. Gone! At that instant something which had seemed like a bird must have become a broken mass. The other planes drifted eastward.

Dorn gasped, and broke the spell on him. He was hot and wet with sweat, quivering with a frenzy. How many thousand soldiers of the Allies had seen that downward flight of the boche? Dorn pitied the destroyed airman, hated himself, and had all the fury of savage joy that had been in his comrades.

* * * * *

Dorn, relieved from guard and firing-post, rushed back to the dugout. He needed the dark of that dungeon. He crawled in and, searching out the remotest, blackest corner, hidden from all human eyes, and especially his own, he lay there clammy and wet all over, with an icy, sickening rend, like a wound, in the pit of his stomach. He shut his eyes, but that did not shut out what he saw. "So help me God!" he whispered to himself.... Six endless months had gone to the preparation of a deed that had taken one second! That transformed him! His life on earth, his spirit in the beyond, could never be now what they might have been. And he sobbed through grinding teeth as he felt the disintegrating, agonizing, irremediable forces at work on body, mind, and soul.

He had blown out the brains of his first German.

Fires of hell, in two long lines, bordering a barren, ghastly, hazy strip of land, burst forth from the earth. From holes where men hid poured thunder of guns and stream of smoke and screeching of iron. That worthless strip of land, barring deadly foes, shook as with repeated earthquakes. Huge spouts of black and yellow earth lifted, fountain-like, to the dull, heavy bursts of shells. Pound and jar, whistle and whine, long, broken rumble, and the rattling concatenation of quick shots like metallic cries, exploding hail-storm of iron in the air, a desert over which thousands of puffs of smoke shot up and swelled and drifted, the sliding crash far away, the sibilant hiss swift overhead. Boom! Weeeee—eeeeooooo! from the east. Boom! Weeeee—eeeeooooo! from the west.

At sunset there was no let-up. The night was all the more hideous. Along the horizon flashed up the hot sheets of lightning that were not of a summer storm. Angry, lurid, red, these upflung blazes and flames illumined the murky sky, showing in the fitful and flickering intervals wagons driving toward the front, and patrols of soldiers running toward some point, and great upheavals of earth spread high.

This heavy cannonading died away in the middle of the night until an hour before dawn, when it began again with redoubled fury and lasted until daybreak.

Dawn came reluctantly, Dorn thought. He was glad. It meant a charge. Another night of that hellish shrieking and bursting of shells would kill his mind, if not his body. He stood on guard at a fighting-post. Corporal Owens lay at his feet, wounded slightly. He would not retire. As the cannons ceased he went to sleep. Rogers stood close on one side, Dixon on the other. The squad had lived through that awful night. Soldiers were bringing food and drink to them. All appeared grimly gay.

Dorn was not gay. But he knew this was the day he would laugh in the teeth of death. A slumbrous, slow heat burned deep in him, like a covered fire, fierce and hot at heart, awaiting the wind. Watching there, he did not voluntarily move a muscle, yet all his body twitched like that of the trained athlete, strained to leap into the great race of his life.

An officer came hurrying through. The talking hushed. Men on guard, backs to the trench, never moved their eyes from the forbidden land in front. The officer spoke. Look for a charge! Reserves were close behind. He gave his orders and passed on.

Then an Allied gun opened up with a boom. The shell moaned on over. Dorn saw where it burst, sending smoke and earth aloft. That must have been a signal for a bombardment of the enemy all along this sector, for big and little guns began to thunder and crack.

The spectacle before Dorn's hard, keen eyes was one that he thought wonderful. Far across No Man's Land, which sloped somewhat at that point in the plain, he saw movement of troops and guns. His eyes were telescopic. Over there the ground appeared grassy in places, with green ridges rising, and patches of brush and straggling trees standing out clearly. Faint, gray-colored squads of soldiers passed in sight with helmets flashing in the sun; guns were being hauled forward; mounted horsemen dashed here and there, vanishing and reappearing; and all through that wide area of color and action shot up live black spouts of earth crowned in white smoke that hung in the air after the earth fell back. They were beautiful, these shell-bursts. Round balls of white smoke magically appeared in the air, to spread and drift; long, yellow columns or streaks rose here, and there leaped up a fan-shaped, dirty cloud, savage and sinister; sometimes several shells burst close together, dashing the upflung sheets of earth together and blending their smoke; at intervals a huge, creamy-yellow explosion, like a geyser, rose aloft to spread and mushroom, then to detach itself from the heavier body it had upheaved, and float away, white and graceful, on the wind.

Sinister beauty! Dorn soon lost sight of that. There came a gnawing at his vitals. The far scene of action could not hold his gaze. That dark, uneven, hummocky break in the earth, which was a goodly number of rods distant, yet now seemed close, drew a startling attention. Dorn felt his eyes widen and pop. Spots and dots, shiny, illusive, bobbed along that break, behind the mounds, beyond the farther banks. A yell as from one lusty throat ran along the line of which Dorn's squad held the center. Dorn's sight had a piercing intensity. All was hard under his grip—his rifle, the boards and bags against which he leaned. Corporal Owens rose beside him, bareheaded, to call low and fiercely to his men.

The gray dots and shiny spots leaped up magically and appallingly into men. German soldiers! Boches! Huns on a charge! They were many, but wide apart. They charged, running low.

Machine-gun rattle, rifle-fire, and strangled shouts blended along the line. From the charging Huns seemed to come a sound that was neither battle-cry nor yell nor chant, yet all of them together. The gray advancing line thinned at points opposite the machine-guns, but it was coming fast.

Dorn cursed his hard, fumbling hands, which seemed so eager and fierce that they stiffened. They burned, too, from their grip on the hot rifle. Shot after shot he fired, missing. He could not hit a field full of Huns. He dropped shells, fumbled with them at the breech, loaded wildly, aimed at random, pulled convulsively. His brain was on fire. He had no anger, no fear, only a great and futile eagerness. Yell and crack filled his ears. The gray, stolid, unalterable Huns must be driven back. Dorn loaded, crushed his rifle steady, pointed low at a great gray bulk, and fired. That Hun pitched down out of the gray advancing line. The sight almost overcame Dorn. Dizzy, with blurred eyes, he leaned over his gun. His abdomen and breast heaved, and he strangled over his gorge. Almost he fainted. But violence beside him somehow, great heaps of dust and gravel flung over him, hoarse, wild yells in his ears, roused him. The boches were on the line! He leaped up. Through the dust he saw charging gray forms, thick and heavy. They plunged, as if actuated by one will. Bulky blond men, ashen of face, with eyes of blue fire and brutal mouths set grim—Huns!

Up out of the shallow trench sprang comrades on each side of Dorn. No rats to be cornered in a hole! Dorn seemed drawn by powerful hauling chains. He did not need to climb! Four big Germans appeared simultaneously upon the embankment of bags. They were shooting. One swung aloft an arm and closed fist. He yelled like a demon. He was a bomb-thrower. On the instant a bullet hit Dorn, tearing at the side of his head, stinging excruciatingly, knocking him down, flooding his face with blood. The shock, like a weight, held him down, but he was not dazed. A body, khaki-clad, rolled down beside him, convulsively flopped against him. He bounded erect, his ears filled with a hoarse and clicking din, his heart strangely lifting in his breast.

Only one German now stood upon the embankment of bags and he was the threatening bomb-thrower. The others were down—gray forms wrestling with brown. Dixon was lunging at the bomb-thrower, and, reaching him with the bayonet, ran him through the belly. He toppled over with an awful cry and fell hard on the other side of the wall of loaded bags. The bomb exploded. In the streaky burst Dixon seemed to charge in bulk—to be flung aside like a leaf by a gale.

Little Rogers had engaged an enemy who towered over him. They feinted, swung, and cracked their guns together, then locked bayonets. Another German striding from behind stabbed Rogers in the back. He writhed off the bloody bayonet, falling toward Dorn, showing a white face that changed as he fell, with quiver of torture and dying eyes.

That dormant inhibited self of Dorn suddenly was no more. Fast as a flash he was upon the murdering Hun. Bayonet and rifle-barrel lunged through him, and so terrible was the thrust that the German was thrown back as if at a blow from a battering-ram. Dorn whirled the bloody bayonet, and it crashed to the ground the rifle of the other German. Dorn saw not the visage of the foe—only the thick-set body, and this he ripped open in one mighty slash. The German's life spilled out horribly.

Dorn leaped over the bloody mass. Owens lay next, wide-eyed, alive, but stricken. Purcell fought with clubbed rifle, backing away from several foes. Brewer was being beaten down. Gray forms closing in! Dorn saw leveled small guns,, flashes of red, the impact of lead striking him. But he heard no shots. The roar in his ears was the filling of a gulf. Out of that gulf pierced his laugh. Gray forms—guns—bullets— bayonets—death—he laughed at them. His moment had come. Here he would pay. His immense and terrible joy bridged the ages between the past and this moment when he leaped light and swift, like a huge cat, upon them. They fired and they hit, but Dorn sprang on, tigerishly, with his loud and nameless laugh. Bayonets thrust at him were straws. These enemies gave way, appalled. With sweep and lunge he killed one and split a second's skull before the first had fallen. A third he lifted and upset and gored, like a bull, in one single stroke. The fourth and last of that group, screaming his terror and fury, ran in close to get beyond that sweeping blade. He fired as he ran. Dorn tripped him heavily, and he had scarcely struck the ground when that steel transfixed his bulging throat.

Brewer was down, but Purcell had been reinforced. Soldiers in brown came on the run, shooting, yelling, brandishing. They closed in on the Germans, and Dorn ran into that melee to make one thrust at each gray form he encountered.

Shriller yells along the line—American yells—the enemy there had given ground! Dorn heard. He saw the gray line waver. He saw reserves running to aid his squad. The Germans would be beaten back. There was whirling blackness in his head through which he seemed to see. The laugh broke hoarse and harsh from his throat. Dust and blood choked him.

Another gray form blocked his leaping way. Dorn saw only low down, the gray arms reaching with bright, unstained blade. His own bloody bayonet clashed against it, locked, and felt the helplessness of the arms that wielded it. An instant of pause—a heaving, breathless instinct of impending exhaustion—a moment when the petrific mace of primitive man stayed at the return of the human—then with bloody foam on his lips Dorn spent his madness.

A supple twist—the French trick—and Dorn's powerful lunge, with all his ponderous weight, drove his bayonet through the enemy's lungs.

"Ka—ma—rod!" came the strange, strangling cry.

A weight sagged down on Dorn's rifle. He did not pull out the bayonet, but as it lowered with the burden of the body his eyes, fixed at one height, suddenly had brought into their range the face of his foe.

A boy—dying on his bayonet! Then came a resurrection of Kurt Dorn's soul. He looked at what must be his last deed as a soldier. His mind halted. He saw only the ghastly face, the eyes in which he expected to see hate, but saw only love of life, suddenly reborn, suddenly surprised at death.

"God save you, German! I'd give my life for yours!"

Too late! Dorn watched the youth's last clutching of empty fingers, the last look of consciousness at his conqueror, the last quiver. The youth died and slid back off the rigid bayonet. War of men!

A heavy thud sounded to the left of Dorn. A bursting flash hid the face of his German victim. A terrific wind, sharp and hard as nails, lifted Dorn into roaring blackness....



CHAPTER XXIX

"Many Waters" shone white and green under the bright May sunshine. Seen from the height of slope, the winding brooks looked like silver bands across a vast belt of rainy green and purple that bordered the broad river in the bottom-lands. A summer haze filled the air, and hints of gold on the waving wheat slopes presaged an early and bountiful harvest.

It was warm up there on the slope where Lenore Anderson watched and brooded. The breeze brought fragrant smell of fresh-cut alfalfa and the rustling song of the wheat. The stately house gleamed white down on the terraced green knoll; horses and cattle grazed in the pasture; workmen moved like snails in the brown gardens; a motor-car crept along the road far below, with its trail of rising dust.

Two miles of soft green wheat-slope lay between Lenore and her home. She had needed the loneliness and silence and memory of a place she had not visited for many months. Winter had passed. Summer had come with its birds and flowers. The wheat-fields were again waving, beautiful, luxuriant. But life was not as it had been for Lenore Anderson.

Kurt Dorn, private, mortally wounded!—So had read the brief and terrible line in a Spokane newspaper, publishing an Associated Press despatch of Pershing's casualty-list. No more! That had been the only news of Kurt Dorn for a long time. A month had dragged by, of doubt, of hope, of slow despairing.

Up to the time of that fatal announcement Lenore had scarcely noted the fleeting of the days. With all her spirit and energy she had thrown herself into the organizing of the women of the valley to work for the interests of the war. She had made herself a leader who spared no effort, no sacrifice, no expense in what she considered her duty. Conservation of food, intensive farm production, knitting for soldiers, Liberty Loans and Red Cross—these she had studied and mastered, to the end that the women of the great valley had accomplished work which won national honor. It had been excitement, joy, and a strange fulfilment for her. But after the shock caused by the fatal news about Dorn she had lost interest, though she had worked on harder than ever.

Just a night ago her father had gazed at her and then told her to come to his office. She did so. And there he said: "You're workin' too hard. You've got to quit."

"Oh no, dad. I'm only tired to-night," she had replied. "Let me go on. I've planned so—"

"No!" he said, banging his desk. "You'll run yourself down."

"But, father, these are war-times. Could I do less—could I think of—"

"You've done wonders. You've been the life of this work. Some one else can carry it on now. You'd kill yourself. An' this war has cost the Andersons enough."

"Should we count the cost?" she asked.

Anderson had sworn. "No, we shouldn't. But I'm not goin' to lose my girl. Do you get that hunch?... I've bought bonds by the bushel. I've given thousands to your relief societies. I gave up my son Jim—an' that cost us mother.... I'm raisin' a million bushels of wheat this year that the government can have. An' I'm starvin' to death because I don't get what I used to eat.... Then this last blow—Dorn!—that fine young wheat-man, the best—Aw! Lenore..."

"But, dad, is—isn't there any—any hope?"

Anderson was silent.

"Dad," she had pleaded, "if he were really dead—buried—oh! wouldn't I feel it?"

"You've overworked yourself. Now you've got to rest," her father had replied, huskily.

"But, dad ..."

"I said no.... I've a heap of pride in what you've done. An' I sure think you're the best Anderson of the lot. That's all. Now kiss me an' go to bed."

That explained how Lenore came to be alone, high up' on the vast wheat-slope, watching and feeling, with no more work to do. The slow climb there had proved to her how much she needed rest. But work even under strain or pain would have been preferable to endless hours to think, to remember, to fight despair.

Mortally wounded! She whispered the tragic phrase. When? Where? How had her lover been mortally wounded? That meant death. But no other word had come and no spiritual realization of death abided in her soul. It seemed impossible for Lenore to accept things as her father and friends did. Nevertheless, equally impossible was it not to be influenced by their practical minds. Because of her nervousness, of her overstrain, she had lost a good deal of her mental poise; and she divined that the only help for that was certainty of Dorn's fate. She could bear the shock if only she could know positively. And leaning her face in her hands, with the warm wind blowing her hair and bringing the rustle of the wheat, she prayed for divination.

No answer! Absolutely no mystic consciousness of death—of an end to her love here on earth! Instead of that breathed a strong physical presence of life all about her, in the swelling, waving slopes of wheat, in the beautiful butterflies, in the singing birds low down and the soaring eagles high above—life beating and surging in her heart, her veins, unquenchable and indomitable. It gave the lie to her morbidness. But it seemed only a physical state. How could she find any tangible hold on realities?

She lifted her face to the lonely sky, and her hands pressed to her breast where the deep ache throbbed heavily.

"It's not that I can't give him up," she whispered, as if impelled to speak. "I can. I have given him up. It's this torture of suspense. Oh, not to know!... But if that newspaper had claimed him one of the killed, I'd not believe."

So Lenore trusted more to the mystic whisper of her woman's soul than to all the unproven outward things. Still trust as she might, the voice of the world dinned in her ears, and between the two she was on the rack. Loss of Jim—loss of her mother—what unfilled gulfs in her heart! She was one who loved only few, but these deeply. To-day when they were gone was different from yesterday when they were here—different because memory recalled actual words, deeds, kisses of loved ones whose life was ended. Utterly futile was it for Lenore to try to think of Dorn in that way. She saw his stalwart form down through the summer haze, coming with his springy stride through the wheat. Yet—the words—mortally wounded! They had burned into her thought so that when she closed her eyes she saw them, darkly red, against the blindness of sight. Pain was a sluggish stream with source high in her breast, and it moved with her unquickened blood. If Dorn were really dead, what would become of her? Selfish question for a girl whose lover had died for his country! She would work, she would be worthy of him, she would never pine, she would live to remember. But, ah! the difference to her! Never for her who had so loved the open, the silken rustle of the wheat and the waving shadows, the green-and-gold slopes, the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, the voice of child and the sweetness of life—never again would these be the same to her, if Dorn were gone forever.

That ache in her heart had communicated itself to all her being. It filled her mind and her body. Tears stung her eyes, and again they were dry when tears would have soothed. Just as any other girl she wept, and then she burned with fever. A longing she had only faintly known, a physical thing which she had resisted, had become real, insistent, beating. Through love and loss she was to be denied a heritage common to all women. A weariness dragged at her. Noble spirit was not a natural thing. It must be intelligence seeing the higher. But to be human was to love life, to hate death, to faint under loss, to throb and pant with heavy sighs, to lie sleepless in the long dark night, to shrink with unutterable sadness at the wan light of dawn, to follow duty with a laggard sense, to feel the slow ebb of vitality and not to care, to suffer with a breaking heart.

* * * * *

Sunset hour reminded Lenore that she must not linger there on the slope. So, following the grass-grown lane between the sections of wheat, she wended a reluctant way homeward. Twilight was falling when she reached the yard. The cooling air was full of a fragrance of flowers freshly watered. Kathleen appeared on the path, evidently waiting for her. The girl was growing tall. Lenore remembered with a pang that her full mind had left little time for her to be a mother to this sister. Kathleen came running, excited and wide-eyed.

"Lenore, I thought you'd never come," she said. "I know something. Only dad told me not to tell you."

"Then don't," replied Lenore, with a little start.

"But I'd never keep it," burst out Kathleen, breathlessly. "Dad's going to New York."

Lenore's heart contracted. She did not know how she felt. Somehow it was momentous news.

"New York! What for?" she asked.

"He says it's about wheat. But he can't fool me. He told me not to mention it to you."

The girl was keen. She wanted to prepare Lenore, yet did not mean to confide her own suppositions. Lenore checked a rush of curiosity. They went into the house. Lenore hurried to change her outing clothes and boots and then went down to supper. Rose sat at table, but her father had not yet come in. Lenore called him. He answered, and presently came tramping into the dining-room, blustering and cheerful. Not for many months had Lenore given her father such close scrutiny as she did then. He was not natural, and he baffled her. A fleeting, vague hope that she had denied lodgment in her mind seemed to have indeed been wild and unfounded. But the very fact that her father was for once unfathomable made this situation remarkable. All through the meal Lenore trembled, and she had to force herself to eat.

"Lenore, I'd like to see you," said her father, at last, as he laid down his napkin and rose. Almost he convinced her then that nothing was amiss or different, and he would have done so if he had not been too clever, too natural. She rose to follow, catching Kathleen's whisper:

"Don't let him put it over on you, now!"

Anderson lighted a big cigar, as always after supper, but to Lenore's delicate sensitiveness he seemed to be too long about it.

"Lenore, I'm takin' a run to New York—leave to-night at eight—an' I want you to sort of manage while I'm gone. Here's some jobs I want the men to do—all noted down here—an' you'll answer letters, 'phone calls, an' all that. Not much work, you know, but you'll have to hang around. Somethin' important might turn up."

"Yes, dad. I'll be glad to," she replied. "Why—why this sudden trip?"

Anderson turned away a little and ran his hand over the papers on his desk. Did she only imagine that his hand shook a little?

"Wheat deals, I reckon—mostly," he said. "An' mebbe I'll run over to Washington."

He turned then, puffing at his cigar, and calmly met her direct gaze. If there were really more than he claimed in his going, he certainly did not intend to tell her. Lenore tried to still her mounting emotion. These days she seemed all imagination. Then she turned away her face.

"Will you try to find out if Kurt Dorn died of his wound—and all about him?" she asked, steadily, but very low.

"Lenore, I sure will!" he exclaimed, with explosive emphasis. No doubt the sincerity of that reply was an immense relief to Anderson. "Once in New York, I can pull wires, if need be. I absolutely promise you I'll find out—what—all you want to know."

Lenore bade him good-by and went to her room, where calmness deserted her for a while. Upon recovering, she found that the time set for her father's departure had passed. Strangely, then the oppression that had weighed upon her so heavily eased and lifted. The moment seemed one beyond her understanding. She attributed her relief, however, to the fact that her father would soon end her suspense in regard to Kurt Dorn.

In the succeeding days Lenore regained her old strength and buoyancy, and something of a control over the despondency which at times had made life misery.

A golden day of sunlight and azure blue of sky ushered in the month of June. "Many Waters" was a world of verdant green. Lenore had all she could do to keep from flying to the slopes. But as every day now brought nearer the possibility of word from her father, she stayed at home. The next morning about nine o'clock, while she was at her father's desk, the telephone-bell rang. It did that many times every morning, but this ring seemed to electrify Lenore. She answered the call hurriedly.

"Hello, Lenore, my girl! How are you?" came rolling on the wire.

"Dad! Dad! Is it—you?" cried Lenore, wildly.

"Sure is. Just got here. Are you an' the girls O.K.?"

"We're well—fine. Oh, dad ..."

"You needn't send the car. I'll hire one."

"Yes—yes—but, dad—Oh, tell me ..."

"Wait! I'll be there in five minutes."

She heard him slam up the receiver, and she leaned there, palpitating, with the queer, vacant sounds of the telephone filling her ear.

"Five minutes!" Lenore whispered. In five more minutes she would know. They seemed an eternity. Suddenly a flood of emotion and thought threatened to overwhelm her. Leaving the office, she hurried forth to find her sisters, and not until she had looked everywhere did she remember that they were visiting a girl friend. After this her motions seemed ceaseless; she could not stand or sit still, and she was continually going to the porch to look down the shady lane. At last a car appeared, coming fast. Then she ran indoors quite aimlessly and out again. But when she recognized her father all her outward fears and tremblings vanished. The broad, brown flash of his face was reality. He got out of the car lightly for so heavy a man, and, taking his valise, he dismissed the chauffeur. His smile was one of gladness, and his greeting a hearty roar.

Lenore met him at the porch steps, seeing in him, feeling as she embraced him, that he radiated a strange triumph and finality.

"Say, girl, you look somethin' like your old self," he said, holding her by the shoulders. "Fine! But you're a woman now.... Where are the kids?"

"They're away," replied Lenore.

"How you stare!" laughed Anderson, as with arm round her he led her in. "Anythin' queer about your dad's handsome mug?"

His jocular tone did not hide his deep earnestness. Never had Lenore felt him so forceful. His ruggedness seemed to steady her nerves that again began to fly. Anderson took her into his office, closed the door, threw down his valise.

"Great to be home!" he exploded, with heavy breath.

Lenore felt her face blanch; and that intense quiver within her suddenly stilled.

"Tell me—quick!" she whispered.

He faced her with flashing eyes, and all about him changed. "You're an Anderson! You can stand shock?"

"Any—any shock but suspense."

"I lied about the wheat deal—about my trip to New York. I got news of Dorn. I was afraid to tell you."

"Yes?"

"Dorn is alive," went on Anderson.

Lenore's hands went out in mute eloquence.

"He was all shot up. He can't live," hurried Anderson, hoarsely. "But he's alive—he'll live to see you."

"Oh! I knew, I knew!" whispered Lenore clasping her hands. "Oh, thank God!"

"Lenore, steady now. You're gettin' shaky. Brace there, my girl!... Dorn's alive. I've brought him home. He's here."

"Here!" screamed Lenore.

"Yes. They'll have him here in half an hour."

Lenore fell into her father's arms, blind and deaf to all outward things. The light of day failed. But her consciousness did not fade. Before it seemed a glorious radiance that was the truth lost for the moment, blindly groping, in whirling darkness. When she did feel herself again it was as a weak, dizzy, palpitating child, unable to stand. Her father, in alarm, and probable anger with himself, was coaxing and swearing in one breath. Then suddenly the joy that had shocked Lenore almost into collapse forced out the weakness with amazing strength. She blazed. She radiated. She burst into utterance too swift to understand.

"Hold on there, girl!" interrupted Anderson. "You've got the bit in your teeth.... Listen, will you? Let me talk. Well—well, there now.... Sure, it's all right, Lenore. You made me break it sudden-like.... Listen. There's all summer to talk. Just now you want to get a few details. Get 'em straight.... Dorn is on the way here. They put his stretcher—we've been packin' him on one—into a motor-truck. There's a nurse come with me—a man nurse. We'd better put Dorn in mother's room. That's the biggest an' airiest. You hurry an' open up the windows an' fix the bed.... An' don't go out of your head with joy. It's sure more 'n we ever hoped for to see him alive, to get him home. But he's done for, poor boy! He can't live.... An' he's in such shape that I don't want you to see him when they fetch him in. Savvy, girl! You'll stay in your room till we call you. An' now rustle."

* * * * *

Lenore paced and crouched and lay in her room, waiting, listening with an intensity that hurt. When a slow procession of men, low-voiced and soft-footed, carried Kurt Dorn into the house and up-stairs Lenore trembled with a storm of emotion. All her former agitation, love, agony, and suspense, compared to what she felt then, was as nothing. Not the joy of his being alive, not the terror of his expected death, had so charged her heart as did this awful curiosity to see him, to realize him.

At last a step—a knock—her father's voice: "Lenore—come!"

Her ordeal of waiting was over. All else she could withstand. That moment ended her weakness. Her blood leaped with the irresistable, revivifying current of her spirit. Unlocking the door, Lenore stepped out. Her father stood there with traces of extreme worry fading from his tired face. At sight of her they totally vanished.

"Good! You've got nerve. You can see him now alone. He's unconscious. But he's not been greatly weakened by the trip. His vitality is wonderful. He comes to once in a while. Sometimes he's rational. Mostly, though, he's out of his head. An' his left arm is gone."

Anderson said all this rapidly and low while they walked down the hall toward the end room which had not been used since Mrs. Anderson's death. The door was ajar. Lenore smelled strong, pungent odors of antiseptics.

Anderson knocked softly.

"Come out, you men, an' let my girl see him," he called.

Doctor Lowell, the village practitioner Lenore had known for years, tiptoed out, important and excited.

"Lenore, it's to bad," he said, kindly, and he shook his head.

Another man glided out with the movements of a woman. He was not young. His aspect was pale, serious.

"Lenore, this is Mr. Jarvis, the nurse.... Now—go in, an' don't forget what I said."

She closed the door and leaned back against it, conscious of the supreme moment of her life. Dorn's face, strange yet easily recognizable, appeared against the white background of the bed. That moment was supreme because it showed him there alive, justifying the spiritual faith which had persisted in her soul. If she had ever, in moments of distraction, doubted God, she could never doubt again.

The large room had been bright, with white curtains softly blowing inward from the open windows. As she crept forward, not sure on her feet, all seemed to blur, so that when she leaned over the still face to kiss it she could not see clearly. Her lips quivered with that kiss and with her sob of thankfulness.

"My soldier!"

She prayed then, with her head beside his on the pillow, and through that prayer and the strange stillness of her lover she received a subtle shock. Sweet it was to touch him as she bent with eyes hidden. Terrible it would be to look—to see how the war had wrecked him. She tried to linger there, all tremulous, all gratitude, all woman and mother. But an incalculable force lifted her up from her knees.

"Ah!" she gasped, as she saw him with cleared sight. A knife-blade was at her heart. Kurt Dorn lay before her gaze—a man, and not the boy she had sacrificed to war—a man by a larger frame, and by older features, and by a change difficult to grasp.

These features seemed a mask, transparent, unable to hide a beautiful, sad, stern, and ruthless face beneath, which in turn slowly gave to her startled gaze sloping lines of pain and shades of gloom, and the pale, set muscles of forced manhood, and the faint hectic flush of fever and disorder and derangement. A livid, angry scar, smooth, yet scarcely healed, ran from his left temple back as far as she could see. That established his identity as a wounded soldier brought home from the war. Otherwise to Lenore his face might have been that of an immortal suddenly doomed with the curse of humanity, dying in agony. She had expected to see Dorn bronzed, haggard, gaunt, starved, bearded and rough-skinned, bruised and battered, blinded and mutilated, with gray in his fair hair. But she found none of these. Her throbbing heart sickened and froze at the nameless history recorded in his face. Was it beyond her to understand what had been his bitter experience? Would she never suffer his ordeal? Never! That was certain. An insupportable sadness pervaded her soul. It was not his life she thought of, but the youth, the nobility, the splendor of him that war had destroyed. No intuition, no divination, no power so penetrating as a woman's love! By that piercing light she saw the transformed man. He knew. He had found out all of physical life. His hate had gone with his blood. Deeds—deeds of terror had left their imprint upon his brow, in the shadows under his eyes, that resembled blank walls potent with invisible meaning. Lenore shuddered through all her soul as she read the merciless record of the murder he had dealt, of the strong and passionate duty that had driven him, of the eternal remorse. But she did not see or feel that he had found God; and, stricken as he seemed, she could not believe he was near to death.

This last confounding thought held her transfixed and thrilling, gazing down at Dorn, until her father entered to break the spell and lead her away.



CHAPTER XXX

It was night. Lenore should have been asleep, but she sat up in the dark by the window. Underneath on the porch, her father, with his men as audience, talked like a torrent. And Lenore, hearing what otherwise would never have gotten to her ears, found listening irresistible. Slow, dragging footsteps and the clinking of spurs attested to the approach of cowboys.

"Howdy, boys! Sit down an' be partic'lar quiet. Here's some smokes. I'm wound up an' gotta go off or bust," Anderson said, "Well, as I was sayin', we folks don't know there's a war, from all outward sign here in the Northwest. But in that New York town I just come from—God Almighty! what goin's-on! Boys, I never knew before how grand it was to be American. New York's got the people, the money, an' it's the outgoin' an' incomin' place of all pertainin' to this war. The Liberty Loan drive was on. The streets were crowded. Bands an' parades, grand-opera stars singin' on the corners, famous actors sellin' bonds, flags an' ribbons an' banners everywhere, an' every third man you bumped into wearin' some kind of uniform! An' the women were runnin' wild, like a stampede of two-year-olds.... I rode down Fifth Avenue on one of them high-topped buses with seats on. Talk about your old stage-coach—why, these 'buses had 'em beat a mile! I've rode some in my day, but this was the ride of my life. I couldn't hear myself think. Music at full blast, roar of traffic, voices like whisperin' without end, flash of red an' white an' blue, shine of a thousand automobiles down that wonderful street that's like a canon! An' up overhead a huge cigar-shaped balloon, an' then an airplane sailin' swift an' buzzin' like a bee. Them was the first air-ships I ever seen. No wonder—Jim wanted to—"

Anderson's voice broke a little at this juncture and he paused. All was still except the murmur of the running water and the song of the insects. Presently Anderson cleared his throat and resumed:

"I saw five hundred Australian soldiers just arrived in New York by way of Panama. Lean, wiry boys like Arizona cowboys. Looked good to me! You ought to have heard the cheerin'. Roar an' roar, everywhere they marched along. I saw United States sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen, English officers, an' Scotch soldiers. Them last sure got my eye. Funny plaid skirts they wore—an' they had bare legs. Three I saw walked lame. An' all had medals. Some one said the Germans called these Scotch 'Ladies from hell.' ... When I heard that I had to ask questions, an' I learned these queer-lookin' half-women-dressed fellows were simply hell with cold steel. An' after I heard that I looked again an' wondered why I hadn't seen it. I ought to know men!... Then I saw the outfit of Blue Devil Frenchmen that was sent over to help stimulate the Liberty Loan. An' when I seen them I took off my hat. I've knowed a heap of tough men an' bad men an' handy men an' fightin' men in my day, but I reckoned I never seen the like of the Blue Devils. I can't tell you why, boys. Blue Devils is another German name for a regiment of French soldiers. They had it on the Scotch-men. Any Western man, just to look at them, would think of Wild Bill an' Billy the Kid an' Geronimo an' Custer, an' see that mebbe the whole four mixed in one might have made a Blue Devil.

"My young friend Dorn, that's dyin' up-stairs, now—he had a name given him. 'Pears that this war-time is like the old days when we used to hit on right pert names for everybody.... Demon Dorn they called him, an' he got that handle before he ever reached France. The boys of his outfit gave it to him because of the way he run wild with a bayonet. I don't want my girl Lenore ever to know that.

"A soldier named Owens told me a lot. He was the corporal of Dorn's outfit, a sort of foreman, I reckon. Anyway, he saw Dorn every day of the months they were in the service, an' the shell that done Dorn made a cripple of Owens. This fellow Owens said Dorn had not got so close to his bunk-mates until they reached France. Then he begun to have influence over them. Owens didn't know how he did it—in fact, never knew it at all until the outfit got to the front, somewhere in northern France, in the first line. They were days in the first line, close up to the Germans, watchin' an' sneakin' all the time, shootin' an' dodgin', but they never had but one real fight.

"That was when one mornin' the Germans came pilin' over on a charge, far outnumberin' our boys. Then it happened. Lord! I wish I could remember how Owens told that scrap! Boys, you never heard about a real scrap. It takes war like this to make men fighters.... Listen, now, an' I'll tell you some of the things that come off durin' this German charge. I'll tell them just as they come to mind. There was a boy named Griggs who ran the German barrage—an' that's a gantlet—seven times to fetch ammunition to his pards. Another boy, on the same errand, was twice blown off the road by explodin' shells, an' then went back. Owens told of two of his company who rushed a bunch of Germans, killed eight of them, an' captured their machine-gun. Before that German charge a big shell came over an' kicked up a hill of mud. Next day the Americans found their sentinel buried in mud, dead at his post, with his bayonet presented.

"Owens was shot just as he jumped up with his pards to meet the chargin' Germans. He fell an' dragged himself against a wall of bags, where he lay watchin' the fight. An' it so happened that he faced Dorn's squad, which was attacked by three times their number. He saw Dorn shot—go down, an' thought he was done—but no! Dorn came up with one side of his face all blood. Dixon, a college football man, rushed a German who was about to throw a bomb. Dixon got him, an' got the bomb, too, when it went off. Little Rogers, an Irish boy, mixed it with three Germans, an' killed one before he was bayoneted in the back. Then Dorn, like the demon they'd named him, went on the stampede. He had a different way with a bayonet, so Owens claimed. An' Dorn was heavy, powerful, an' fast. He lifted an' slung those two Germans, one after another, quick as that!—like you'd toss a couple of wheat sheafs with your pitchfork, an' he sent them rollin', with blood squirtin' all over. An' then four more Germans were shootin' at him. Right into their teeth Dorn run—laughin' wild an' terrible, Owens said, an' the Germans couldn't stop that flashin' bayonet. Dorn ripped them all open, an' before they'd stopped floppin' he was on the bunch that'd killed Brewer an' were makin' it hard for his other pards.... Whew!—Owens told it all as if it'd took lots of time, but that fight was like lightnin' an' I can't remember how it was. Only Demon Dorn laid out nine Germans before they retreated. Nine! Owens seen him do it, like a mad bull loose. Then the shell came over that put Dorn out, an' Owens, too.

"Well, Dorn had a mangled arm, an' many wounds. They amputated his arm in France, patched him up, an' sent him back to New York with a lot of other wounded soldiers. They expected him to die long ago. But he hangs on. He's full of lead now. What a hell of a lot of killin' some men take!... My boy Jim would have been like that!

"So there, boys, you have a little bit of American fightin' come home to you, straight an' true. I say that's what the Germans have roused. Well, it was a bad day for them when they figgered everythin' on paper, had it all cut an' dried, but failed to see the spirit of men!"

Lenore tore herself away from the window so that she could not hear any more, and in the darkness of her room she began to pace to and fro, beginning to undress for bed, shaking in some kind of a frenzy, scarcely knowing what she was about, until sundry knocks from furniture and the falling over a chair awakened her to the fact that she was in a tumult.

"What—am I—doing!" she panted, in bewilderment, reaching out in the dark to turn on the light.

Like awakening from a nightmare, she saw the bright light flash up. It changed her feeling. Who was this person whose image stood reflected in the mirror? Lenore's recognition of herself almost stunned her. What had happened? She saw that her hair fell wildly over her bare shoulders; her face shone white, with red spots in her cheeks; her eyes seemed balls of fire; her lips had a passionate, savage curl; her breast, bare and heaving, showed a throbbing, tumultuous heart. And as she realized how she looked, it struck her that she felt an inexplicable passion. She felt intense as steel, hot as fire, quivering with the pulsation of rapid blood, a victim to irrepressible thrills that rushed over her from the very soles of her feet to the roots of her hair. Something glorious, terrible, and furious possessed her. When she understood what it was she turned out the light and fell upon the bed, where, as the storm slowly subsided, she thought and wondered and sorrowed, and whispered to herself.

The tale of Dorn's tragedy had stirred to the depths the primitive, hidden, and unplumbed in the unknown nature of her. Just now she had looked at herself, at her two selves—the white-skinned and fair-haired girl that civilization had produced—and the blazing, panting, savage woman of the bygone ages. She could not escape from either. The story of Demon Dorn's terrible fight had retrograded her, for the moment, to the female of the species, more savage and dangerous than the male. No use to lie! She had gloried in his prowess. He was her man, gone out with club, to beat down the brutes that would steal her from him.

"Alas! What are we? What am I?" she whispered. "Do I know myself? What could I not have done a moment ago?"

She had that primitive thing in her, and, though she shuddered to realize it, she had no regret. Life was life. That Dorn had laid low so many enemies was grand to her, and righteous, since these enemies were as cavemen come for prey. Even now the terrible thrills chased over her. Demon Dorn! What a man! She had known just what he would do—and how his spiritual life would go under. The woman of her gloried in his fight and the soul of her sickened at its significance. No hope for any man or any woman except in God!

These men, these boys, like her father and Jake, like Dorn and his comrades—how simple, natural, inevitable, elemental they were! They loved a fight. They might hate it, too, but they loved it most. Life of men was all strife, and the greatness in them came out in war. War searched out the best and the worst in men. What were wounds, blood, mangled flesh, agony, and death to men—to those who went out for liberation of something unproven in themselves? Life was only a breath. The secret must lie in the beyond, for men could not act that way for nothing. Some hidden purpose through the ages!

* * * * *

Anderson had summoned a great physician, a specialist of world renown. Lenore, of course, had not been present when the learned doctor examined Kurt Dorn, but she was in her father's study when the report was made. To Lenore this little man seemed all intellect, all science, all electric current.

He stated that Dorn had upward of twenty-five wounds, some of them serious, most trivial, and all of them combined not necessarily fatal. Many soldiers with worse wounds had totally recovered. Dorn's vitality and strength had been so remarkable that great loss of blood and almost complete lack of nourishment had not brought about the present grave condition.

"He will die, and that is best for him," said the specialist. "His case is not extraordinary. I saw many like it in France during the first year of war when I was there. But I will say that he must have been both physically and mentally above the average before he went to fight. My examination extended through periods of his unconsciousness and aberration. Once, for a little time, he came to, apparently sane. The nurse said he had noticed several periods of this rationality during the last forty-eight hours. But these, and the prolonged vitality, do not offer any hope.

"An emotion of exceeding intensity and duration has produced lesions in the kinetic organs. Some passion has immeasurably activated his brain, destroying brain cells which might not be replaced. If he happened to live he might be permanently impaired. He might be neurasthenic, melancholic, insane at times, or even grow permanently so.... It is very sad. He appears to have been a fine young man. But he will die, and that really is best for him."

Thus the man of science summed up the biological case of Kurt Dorn. When he had gone Anderson wore the distressed look of one who must abandon his last hope. He did not understand, though he was forced to believe. He swore characteristically at the luck, and then at the great specialist.

"I've known Indian medicine-men who could give that doctor cards an' spades," he exploded, with gruff finality.

Lenore understood her father perfectly and imagined she understood the celebrated scientist. The former was just human and the latter was simply knowledge. Neither had that which caused her to go out alone into the dark night and look up beyond the slow-rising slope to the stars. These men, particularly the scientist, lacked something. He possessed all the wonderful knowledge of body and brain, of the metabolism and chemistry of the organs, but he knew nothing of the source of life. Lenore accorded science its place in progress, but she hated its elimination of the soul. Stronger than ever, strength to endure and to trust pervaded her spirit. The dark night encompassing her, the vast, lonely heave of wheat-slope, the dim sky with its steady stars—these were voices as well as tangible things of the universe, and she was in mysterious harmony with them. "Lift thine eyes to the hills from whence cometh thy help!"

* * * * *

The day following the specialist's visit Dorn surprised the family doctor, the nurse, Anderson, and all except Lenore by awakening to a spell of consciousness which seemed to lift, for the time at least, the shadow of death.

Kathleen was the first to burst in upon Lenore with the wonderful news. Lenore could only gasp her intense eagerness and sit trembling, hands over her heart, while the child babbled.

"I listened, and I peeped in," was Kathleen's reiterated statement. "Kurt was awake. He spoke, too, but very soft. Say, he knows he's at 'Many Waters.' I heard him say, 'Lenore'.... Oh, I'm so happy, Lenore—that before he dies he'll know you—talk to you."

"Hush, child!" whispered Lenore. "Kurt's not going to die."

"But they all say so. That funny little doctor yesterday—he made me tired—but he said so. I heard him as dad put him into the car."

"Yes, Kathie, I heard him, too, but I do not believe," replied Lenore, dreamily.

"Kurt doesn't look so—so sick," went on Kathleen. "Only—only I don't know what—different, I guess. I'm crazy to go in—to see him. Lenore, will they ever let me?"

Their father's abrupt entrance interrupted the conversation. He was pale, forceful, as when issues were at stake but were undecided.

"Kathie, go out," he said.

Lenore rose to face him.

"My girl—Dorn's come to—an' he's asked for you. I was for lettin' him see you. But Lowell an' Jarvis say no—not yet.... Now he might die any minute. Seems to me he ought to see you. It's right. An' if you say so—"

"Yes," replied Lenore.

"By Heaven! He shall see you, then," said Anderson, breathing hard. "I'm justified even—even if it..." He did not finish his significant speech, but left her abruptly.

Presently Lenore was summoned. When she left her room she was in the throes of uncontrolled agitation, and all down the long hallway she fought herself. At the half-open door she paused to lean against the wall. There she had the will to still her nerves, to acquire serenity; and she prayed for wisdom to make her presence and her words of infinite good to Dorn in this crisis.

* * * * *

She was not aware of when she moved—how she ever got to Dorn's bedside. But seemingly detached from her real self, serene, with emotions locked, she was there looking down upon him.

"Lenore!" he said, with far-off voice that just reached her. Gladness shone from his shadowy eyes.

"Welcome home—my soldier boy!" she replied. Then she bent to kiss his cheek and to lay hers beside it.

"I never—hoped—to see you—again," he went on.

"Oh, but I knew!" murmured Lenore, lifting her head. His right hand, brown, bare, and rough, lay outside the coverlet upon his breast. It was weakly reaching for her. Lenore took it in both hers, while she gazed steadily down into his eyes. She seemed to see then how he was comparing the image he had limned upon his memory with her face.

"Changed—you're older—more beautiful—yet the same," he said. "It seems—long ago."

"Yes, long ago. Indeed I am older. But—all's well that ends well. You are back."

"Lenore, haven't you—been told—I can't live?"

"Yes, but it's untrue," she replied, and felt that she might have been life itself speaking.

"Dear, something's gone—from me. Something vital gone—with the shell that—took my arm."

"No!" she smiled down upon him. All the conviction of her soul and faith she projected into that single word and serene smile—all that was love and woman in her opposing death. A subtle, indefinable change came over Dorn.

"Lenore—I paid—for my father," he whispered. "I killed Huns!... I spilled the—blood in me—I hated!... But all was wrong—wrong!"

"Yes, but you could not help that," she said, piercingly. "Blame can never rest upon you. You were only an—American soldier.... Oh, I know! You were magnificent.... But your duty that way is done. A higher duty awaits you."

His eyes questioned sadly and wonderingly.

"You must be the great sower of wheat."

"Sower of wheat?" he whispered, and a light quickened in that questioning gaze.

"There will be starving millions after this war. Wheat is the staff of life. You must get well.... Listen!"

She hesitated, and sank to her knees beside the bed. "Kurt, the day you're able to sit up I'll marry you. Then I'll take you home—to your wheat-hills."

For a second Lenore saw him transformed with her spirit, her faith, her love, and it was that for which she had prayed. She had carried him beyond the hopelessness, beyond incredulity. Some guidance had divinely prompted her. And when his mute rapture suddenly vanished, when he lost consciousness and a pale gloom and shade fell upon his face, she had no fear.

In her own room she unleashed the strange bonds on her feelings and suffered their recurrent surge and strife, until relief and calmness returned to her. Then came a flashing uplift of soul, a great and beautiful exaltation. Lenore felt that she had been gifted with incalculable power. She had pierced Dorn's fatalistic consciousness with the truth and glory of possible life, as opposed to the dark and evil morbidity of war. She saw for herself the wonderful and terrible stairs of sand which women had been climbing all the ages, and must climb on to the heights of solid rock, of equality, of salvation for the human race. She saw woman, the primitive, the female of the species, but she saw her also as the mother of the species, made to save as well as perpetuate, learning from the agony of child-birth and child-care the meaning of Him who said, "Thou shalt not kill!" Tremendous would be the final resistance of woman to the brutality of man. Women were to be the saviors of humanity. It seemed so simple and natural that it could not be otherwise. Lenore realized, with a singular conception of the splendor of its truth, that when most women had found themselves, their mission in life, as she had found hers, then would come an end to violence, to greed, to hate, to war, to the black and hideous imperfection of mankind.

With all her intellect and passion Lenore opposed the theory of the scientist and biologists. If they proved that strife and fight were necessary to the development of man, that without violence and bloodshed and endless contention the race would deteriorate, then she would say that it would be better to deteriorate and to die. Women all would declare against that, and in fact would never believe. She would never believe with her heart, but if her intellect was forced to recognize certain theories, then she must find a way to reconcile life to the inscrutable designs of nature. The theory that continual strife was the very life of plants, birds, beasts, and men seemed verified by every reaction of the present; but if these things were fixed materialistic rules of the existence of animated forms upon the earth, what then was God, what was the driving force in Kurt Dorn that made war-duty some kind of murder which overthrew his mind, what was the love in her heart of all living things, and the nameless sublime faith in her soul?

"If we poor creatures must fight," said Lenore, and she meant this for a prayer, "let the women fight eternally against violence, and let the men forever fight their destructive instincts!"

* * * * *

From that hour the condition of Kurt Dorn changed for the better. Doctor Lowell admitted that Lenore had been the one medicine which might defeat the death that all except she had believed inevitable.

Lenore was permitted to see him a few minutes every day, for which fleeting interval she must endure the endless hours. But she discovered that only when he was rational and free from pain would they let her go in. What Dorn's condition was all the rest of the time she could not guess. But she began to get inklings that it was very bad.

"Dad, I'm going to insist on staying with Kurt as—as long as I want," asserted Lenore, when she had made up her mind.

This worried Anderson, and he appeared at a loss for words.

"I told Kurt I'd marry him the very day he could sit up," continued Lenore.

"By George! that accounts," exclaimed her father. "He's been tryin' to sit up, an' we've had hell with him."

"Dad, he will get well. And all the sooner if I can be with him more. He loves me. I feel I'm the only thing that counteracts—the—the madness in his mind—the death in his soul."

Anderson made one of his violent gestures. "I believe you. That hits me with a bang. It takes a woman!... Lenore, what's your idea?"

"I want to—to marry him," murmured Lenore. "To nurse him—to take him home to his wheat-fields."

"You shall have your way," replied Anderson, beginning to pace the floor. "It can't do any harm. It might save him. An' anyway, you'll be his wife—if only for ... By George! we'll do it. You never gave me a wrong hunch in your life ... but, girl, it'll be hard for you to see him when—when he has the spells."

"Spells!" echoed Lenore.

"Yes. You've been told that he raves. But you didn't know how. Why, it gets even my nerve! It fascinated me, but once was enough. I couldn't stand to see his face when his Huns come back to him."

"His Huns!" ejaculated Lenore, shuddering. "What do you mean?"

"Those Huns he killed come back to him. He fights them. You see him go through strange motions, an' it's as if his left arm wasn't gone. He used his right arm—an' the motions he makes are the ones he made when he killed the Huns with his bayonet. It's terrible to watch him—the look on his face!.... I heard at the hospital in New York that in France they photographed him when he had one of the spells.... I'd hate to have you see him then. But maybe after Doctor Lowell explains it, you'll understand."

"Poor boy! How terrible for him to live it all over! But when he gets well—when he has his wheat-hills and me to fill his mind—those spells will fade."

"Maybe—maybe. I hope so. Lord knows it's all beyond me. But you're goin' to have your way."

Doctor Lowell explained to Lenore that Dorn, like all mentally deranged soldiers, dreamed when he was asleep, and raved when he was out of his mind, of only one thing—the foe. In his nightmares Dorn had to be held forcibly. The doctor said that the remarkable and hopeful indication about Dorn's condition was a gradual daily gain in strength and a decline in the duration and violence of his bad spells.

This assurance made Lenore happy. She began to relieve the worn-out nurse during the day, and she prepared herself for the first ordeal of actual experience of Dorn's peculiar madness. But Dorn watched her many hours and would not or could not sleep while she was there; and the tenth day of his stay at "Many Waters" passed without her seeing what she dreaded. Meanwhile he grew perceptibly better.

The afternoon came when Anderson brought a minister. Then a few moments sufficed to make Lenore Dorn's wife.



CHAPTER XXXI

The remarkable happened. Scarcely had the minister left when Kurt Dorn's smiling wonder and happiness sustained a break, as sharp and cold and terrible as if nature had transformed him from man to beast.

His face became like that of a gorilla. Struggling up, he swept his right arm over and outward with singular twisting energy. A bayonet-thrust! And for him his left arm was still intact! A savage, unintelligible battle-cry, yet unmistakably German, escaped his lips.

Lenore stood one instant petrified. Her father, grinding his teeth, attempted to lead her away. But as Dorn was about to pitch off the bed, Lenore, with piercing cry, ran to catch him and force him back. There she held him, subdued his struggles, and kept calling with that intensity of power and spirit which must have penetrated even his delirium. Whatever influence she exerted, it quieted him, changed his savage face, until he relaxed and lay back passive and pale. It was possible to tell exactly when his reason returned, for it showed in the gaze he fixed upon Lenore.

"I had—one—of my fits!" he said, huskily.

"Oh—I don't know what it was," replied Lenore, with quavering voice. Her strength began to leave her now. Her arms that had held him so firmly began to slip away.

"Son, you had a bad spell," interposed Anderson, with his heavy breathing. "First one she's seen."

"Lenore, I laid out my Huns again," said Dorn, with a tragic smile. "Lately I could tell when—they were coming back."

"Did you know just now?" queried Lenore.

"I think so. I wasn't really out of my head. I've known when I did that. It's a strange feeling—thought—memory ... and action drives it away. Then I seem always to want to—kill my Huns all over again."

Lenore gazed at him with mournful and passionate tenderness. "Do you remember that we were just married?" she asked.

"My wife!" he whispered.

"Husband!... I knew you were coming home to me.... I knew you would not die.... I know you will get well."

"I begin to feel that, too. Then—maybe the black spells will go away."

"They must or—or you'll lose me," faltered Lenore. "If you go on killing your Huns over and over—it'll be I who will die."

She carried with her to her room a haunting sense of Dorn's reception of her last speech. Some tremendous impression it made on him, but whether of fear of domination or resolve, or all combined, she could not tell. She had weakened in mention of the return of his phantoms. But neither Dorn nor her father ever guessed that, once in her room, she collapsed from sheer feminine horror at the prospect of seeing Dorn change from a man to a gorilla, and to repeat the savage orgy of remurdering his Huns. That was too much for Lenore. She who had been invincible in faith, who could stand any tests of endurance and pain, was not proof against a spectacle of Dorn's strange counterfeit presentment of the actual and terrible killing he had performed with a bayonet.

For days after that she was under a strain which she realized would break her if it was not relieved. It appeared to be solely her fear of Dorn's derangement. She was with him almost all the daylight hours, attending him, watching him sleep, talking a little to him now and then, seeing with joy his gradual improvement, feeling each day the slow lifting of the shadow over him, and yet every minute of every hour she waited in dread for the return of Dorn's madness. It did not come. If it recurred at night she never was told. Then after a week a more pronounced change for the better in Dorn's condition marked a lessening of the strain upon Lenore. A little later it was deemed safe to dismiss the nurse. Lenore dreaded the first night vigil. She lay upon a couch in Dorn's room and never closed her eyes. But he slept, and his slumber appeared sound at times, and then restless, given over to dreams. He talked incoherently, and moaned; and once appeared to be drifting into a nightmare, when Lenore awakened him. Next day he sat up and said he was hungry. Thereafter Lenore began to lose her dread.

* * * * *

"Well, son, let's talk wheat," said Anderson, cheerily, one beautiful June morning, as he entered Dorn's room.

"Wheat!" sighed Dorn, with a pathetic glance at his empty sleeve. "How can I even do a man's work again in the fields?"

Lenore smiled bravely at him. "You will sow more wheat than ever, and harvest more, too."

"I should smile," corroborated Anderson.

"But how? I've only one arm," said Dorn.

"Kurt, you hug me better with that one arm than you ever did with two arms." replied Lenore, in sublime assurance.

"Son, you lose that argument," roared Anderson. "Me an' Lenore stand pat. You'll sow more an' better wheat than ever—than any other man in the Northwest. Get my hunch?... Well, I'll tell you later.... Now see here, let me declare myself about you. I seen it worries you more an' more, now you're gettin' well. You miss that good arm, an' you feel the pain of bullets that still lodge somewhere's in you, an' you think you'll be a cripple always. Look things in the face square. Sure, compared to what you once was, you'll be a cripple. But Kurt Dorn weighin' one hundred an' ninety let loose on a bunch of Huns was some man! My Gawd!... Forget that, an' forget that you'll never chop a cord of wood again in a day. Look at facts like me an' Lenore. We gave you up. An' here you're with us, comin' along fine, an' you'll be able to do hard work some day, if you're crazy about it. Just think how good that is for Lenore, an' me, too.... Now listen to this." Anderson unfolded a newspaper and began to read:

"Continued improvement, with favorable weather conditions, in the winter-wheat states and encouraging messages from the Northwest warrant an increase of crop estimates made two weeks ago and based mainly upon the government's report. In all probability the yield from winter fields will slightly exceed 600,000,000 bushels. Increase of acreage in the spring states in unexpectedly large. For example, Minnesota's Food Administrator says the addition in his state is 40 per cent, instead of the early estimate of 20 per cent. Throughout the spring area the plants have a good start and are in excellent condition. It may be that the yield will rise to 300,000,000 bushels, making a total of about 900,000,000. From such a crop 280,000,000 could be exported in normal times, and by conservation the surplus can easily be enlarged to 350,000,000 or even 400,000,000. In Canada also estimates of acreage increase have been too low. It was said that the addition in Alberta was 20 per cent., but recent reports make it 40 per cent. Canada may harvest a crop of 300,000,000 bushels, or nearly 70,000,000 more than last year's. Our allies in Europe can safely rely upon the shipment of 500,000,000 bushels from the United States and Canada.

"After the coming harvest there will be an ample supply of wheat for the foes of Germany at ports which can easily be reached. In addition, the large surplus stocks in Australia and Argentina will be available when ships can be spared for such service. And the ships are coming from the builders. For more than a year to come there will be wheat enough for our war partners, the Belgians, and the northern European neutral countries with which we have trade agreements."

Lenore eagerly watched her husband's face in pleasurable anticipation, yet with some anxiety. Wheat had been a subject little touched upon and the war had never been mentioned.

"Great!" he exclaimed, with a glow in his cheeks. "I've been wanting to ask.... Wheat for the Allies and neutrals—for more than a year!... Anderson, the United States will feed and save the world!"

"I reckon. Son, we're sendin' thousands of soldiers a day now—ships are buildin' fast—aeroplanes comin' like a swarm of bees—money for the government to burn—an' every American gettin' mad.... Dorn, the Germans don't know they're ruined!... What do you say?"

Dorn looked very strange. "Lenore, help me stand up," he asked, with strong tremor in his voice.

"Oh, Kurt, you're not able yet," appealed Lenore.

"Help me. I want you to do it."

Lenore complied, wondering and frightened, yet fascinated, too. She helped him off the bed and steadied him on his feet. Then she felt him release himself so he stood free.

"What do I say? Anderson I say this. I killed Germans who had grown up with a training and a passion for war. I've been a farmer. I did not want to fight. Duty and hate forced me. The Germans I met fell before me. I was shell-shot, shocked, gassed, and bayoneted. I took twenty-five wounds, and then it was a shell that downed me. I saw my comrades kill and kill before they fell. That is American. Our enemies are driven, blinded, stolid, brutal, obsessed, and desperate. They are German. They lack—not strength nor efficiency nor courage—but soul."

White and spent, Dorn then leaned upon Lenore and got back upon his bed. His passion had thrilled her. Anderson responded with an excitement he plainly endeavored to conceal.

"I get your hunch," he said. "If I needed any assurance, you've given it to me. To hell with the Germans! Let's don't talk about them any more.... An' to come back to our job. Wheat! Son, I've plans that 'll raise your hair. We'll harvest a bumper crop at 'Many Waters' in July. An' we'll sow two thousand acres of winter wheat. So much for 'Many Waters.'—I got mad this summer. I blowed myself. I bought about all the farms around yours up in the Bend country. Big harvest of spring wheat comin'. You'll superintend that harvest, an' I'll look after ours here.... An' you'll sow ten thousand acres of fallow on your own rich hills—this fall. Do you get that? Ten thousand acres?"

"Anderson!" gasped Dorn.

"Yes, Anderson," mimicked the rancher. "My blood's up. But I'd never have felt so good about it if you hadn't come back. The land's not all paid for, but it's ours. We'll meet our notes. I've been up there twice this spring. You'd never know a few hills had burned over last harvest. Olsen, an' your other neighbors, or most of them, will work the land on half-shares. You'll be boss. An' sure you'll be well for fall sowin'. That'll make you the biggest sower of wheat in the Northwest."

"My sower of wheat!" murmured Lenore, seeing his rapt face through tears.

"Dreams are coming true," he said, softly. "Lenore, just after I saw you the second time—and fell so in love with you—I had vain dreams of you. But even my wildest never pictured you as the wife of a wheat farmer. I never dreamed you loved wheat."

"But, ah, I do!" replied Lenore. "Why, when I was born dad bought 'Many Waters' and sowed the slopes in wheat. I remember how he used to take me up to the fields all green or golden. I've grown up with wheat. I'd never want to live anywhere away from it. Oh, you must listen to me some day while I tell you what I know—about the history and romance of wheat."

"Begin," said Dorn, with a light of pride and love and wonder in his gaze.

"Leave that for some other time," interposed Anderson. "Son, would it surprise you if I'd tell you that I've switched a little in my ideas about the I.W.W.?"

"No," replied Dorn.

"Well, things happen. What made me think hard was the way that government man got results from the I.W.W. in the lumber country. You see, the government had to have an immense amount of timber for ships, an' spruce for aeroplanes. Had to have it quick. An' all the lumbermen an' loggers were I.W.W.—or most of them. Anyhow, all the strikin' lumbermen last summer belonged to the I.W.W. These fellows believed that under the capitalistic order of labor the workers an' their employers had nothin' in common, an' the government was hand an' glove with capital. Now this government official went up there an' convinced the I.W.W. that the best interest of the two were identical. An' he got the work out of them, an' the government got the lumber. He dealt with them fairly. Those who were on the level he paid high an' considered their wants. Those who were crooked he punished accordin' to their offense. An' the innocent didn't have to suffer with the guilty.

"That deal showed me how many of the I.W.W. could be handled. An' we've got to reckon with the I.W.W. Most all the farm-hands in the country belong to it. This summer I'll give the square harvesters what they want, an' that's a big come-down for me. But I won't stand any monkey-bizness from sore-headed disorganizers. If men want to work they shall have work at big pay. You will follow out this plan up in the Bend country. We'll meet this labor union half-way. After the war there may come trouble between labor an capital. It begins to seem plain to me that men who work hard ought to share somethin' of the profits. If that doesn't settle the trouble, then we'll know we're up against an outfit with socialist an' anarchist leaders. Time enough then to resort to measures I regret we practised last summer."

"Anderson, you're fine—you're as big as the hills!" burst out Dorn. "But you know there was bad blood here last summer. Did you ever get proof that German money backed the I.W.W. to strike and embarrass our government?"

"No. But I believe so, or else the I.W.W. leaders took advantage of a critical time. I'm bound to say that now thousands of I.W.W. laborers are loyal to the United States, and that made me switch."

"I'll deal with them the same way," responded Dorn, with fervor.

Then Lenore interrupted their discussion, and, pleading that Dorn was quite worn out from excitement and exertion, she got her father to leave the room.

* * * * *

The following several days Lenore devoted to the happy and busy task of packing what she wanted to take to Dorn's home. She had set the date, but had reserved the pleasure of telling him. Anderson had agreed to her plan and decided to accompany them.

"I'll take the girls," he said. "It'll be a fine ride for them. We'll stay in the village overnight an' come back home next day.... Lenore, it strikes me sudden-like, your leavin'.... What will become of me?"

All at once he showed the ravages of pain and loss that the last year had added to his life of struggle. Lenore embraced him and felt her heart full.

"Dad, I'm not leaving you," she protested. "He'll get well up there—find his balance sooner among those desert wheat-hills. We will divide our time between the two places. Remember, you can run up there any day. Your interests are there now. Dad, don't think of it as separation. Kurt has come into our family—and we're just going to be away some of the time."

Thus she won back a smile to the worn face.

"We've all got a weak spot," he said, musingly. "Mine is here—an' it's a fear of growin' old an' bein' left alone. That's selfish. But I've lived, an' I reckon I've no more to ask for."

Lenore could not help being sad in the midst of her increasing happiness. Joy to some brought to others only gloom! Life was sunshine and storm—youth and age.

This morning she found Kathleen entertaining Dorn. This was the second time the child had been permitted to see him, and the immense novelty had not yet worn off. Kathleen was a hero-worshiper. If she had been devoted to Dorn before his absence, she now manifested symptoms of complete idolatry. Lenore had forbidden her to question Dorn about anything in regard to the war. Kathleen never broke her promises, but it was plain that Dorn had read the mute, anguished wonder and flame in her eyes when they rested upon his empty sleeve, and evidently had told her things. Kathleen was white, wide-eyed, and beautiful then, with all a child's imagination stirred.

"I've been telling Kathie how I lost my arm," explained Dorn.

"I hate Germans! I hate war!" cried Kathleen, passionately.

"My dear, hate them always," said Dorn.

When Kathleen had gone Lenore asked Dorn if he thought it was right to tell the child always to hate Germans.

"Right!" exclaimed Dorn, with a queer laugh. Every day now he showed signs of stronger personality. "Lenore, what I went through has confused my sense of right and wrong. Some day perhaps it will all come clear. But, Lenore, all my life, if I live to be ninety, I shall hate Germans."

"Oh, Kurt, it's too soon for you to—to be less narrow, less passionate," replied Lenore, with hesitation. "I understand. The day will come when you'll not condemn a people because of a form of government—of military class."

"It will never come," asserted Dorn, positively. "Lenore, people in our country do not understand. They are too far away from realities. But I was six months in France. I've seen the ruined villages, thousands of refugees—and I've met the Huns at the front. I know I've seen the realities. In regard to this war I can only feel. You've got to go over there and see for yourself before you realize. You can understand this—that but for you and your power over me I'd be a worn-out, emotionally burnt out man. But through you I seem to be reborn. Still, I shall hate Germans all my life, and in the after-life, what ever that may be. I could give you a thousand reasons. One ought to suffice. You've read, of course, about the regiment of Frenchmen called Blue Devils. I met some of them—got friendly with them. They are great—beyond words to tell! One of them told me that when his regiment drove the Huns out of his own village he had found his mother disemboweled, his wife violated and murdered, his sister left a maimed thing to become the mother of a Hun, his daughter carried off, and his little son crippled for life! ... These are cold facts. As long as I live I will never forget the face of that Frenchman when he told me. Had he cause to hate the Huns? Have I?... I saw all that in the faces of those Huns who would have killed me if they could."

Lenore covered her face with her hands. "Oh—horrible! ... Is there nothing—no hope—only...?" She faltered and broke down.

"Lenore, because there's hate does not prove there's nothing left.... Listen. The last fight I had was with a boy. I didn't know it when we met. I was rushing, head down, bayonet low. I saw only his body, his blade that clashed with mine. To me his weapon felt like a toy in the hands of a child. I swept it aside—and lunged. He screamed 'Kamarad!' before the blade reached him. Too late! I ran him through. Then I looked. A boy of nineteen! He never ought to have been forced to meet me. It was murder. I saw him die on my bayonet. I saw him slide off it and stretch out.... I did not hate him then. I'd have given my life for his. I hated what he represented.... That moment was the end of me as a soldier. If I had not been in range of the exploding shell that downed me I would have dropped my rifle and have stood strengthless before the next Hun.... So you see, though I killed them, and though I hate now, there's something—something strange and inexplicable."

"That something is the divine in you. It is God!... Oh, believe it, my husband!" cried Lenore.

Dorn somberly shook his head. "God! I did not find God out there. I cannot see God's hand in this infernal war."

"But I can. What called you so resistlessly? What made you go?"

"You know. The debt I thought I ought to pay. And duty to my country."

"Then when the debt was paid, the duty fulfilled—when you stood stricken at sight of that poor boy dying on your bayonet—what happened in your soul?"

"I don't know. But I saw the wrong of war. The wrong to him—the wrong to me! I thought of no one else. Certainly not of God!"

"If you had stayed your bayonet—if you had spared that boy, as you would have done had you seen or heard him in time—what would that have been?"

"Pity, maybe, or scorn to slay a weaker foe."

"No, no, no—I can't accept that," replied Lenore, passionately. "Can you see beyond the physical?"

"I see only that men will fight and that war will come again. Out there I learned the nature of men."

"If there's divinity in you there's divinity in every man. That will oppose war—end it eventually. Men are not taught right. Education and religion will bring peace on earth, good-will to man."

"No, they will not. They never have done so. We have educated men and religious men. Yet war comes despite them. The truth is that life is a fight. Civilization is only skin-deep. Underneath man is still a savage. He is a savage still because he wants the same he had to have when he lived in primitive state. War isn't necessary to show how every man fights for food, clothing, shelter. To-day it's called competition in business. Look at your father. He has fought and beaten men like Neuman. Look at the wheat farmers in my country. Look at the I.W.W. They all fight. Look at the children. They fight even at their games. Their play is a make-believe battle or escaping or funeral or capture. It must be then that some kind of strife was implanted in the first humans and that it is necessary to life."