The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

But you are yearning for his last word; for some voice that will seem to you now almost a voice out of the grave, and I am happy to be able to bring you that word. It was something more than chance that guided me that night, as it is every night.

We were well behind the line of actual fighting, but still in the danger zone of artillery fire. Night had settled in; all was darkness save for occasional distant flares. I had become detached from my party in moving to another station; lost, if you like, yet not lost; never have I gone so directly to so great a destination. While trying to get my location I became aware of a presence; it will sound strange to you, but I became intensely aware of your presence. Of course I knew it could not be you, in the flesh, but you it seemed to be, nevertheless. I moved as though led by an invisible hand, and presently I found a bit of shattered wall. In the gloom I could just discern the form of a man lying in the shelter of the wall—if you could call it shelter—it rose scarce a foot above the ground.

I knelt beside him and turned my torch on to his face. It was pale even through the brown skin; the eyes were closed; the hair was wet and plastered on the forehead; there were smears of blood in it and on his cheeks. As my light fell on his lips they framed a smile.

"Reenie," he said. "It was good of you to come. I knew you would come."

"I am here, Dave," I answered, and I think you will forgive me the impersonation. "Now let me find out where you are hurt, and we'll fix you up, and get you moved presently."

He opened his eyes and looked at me with the strange look of a man whose thread of consciousness is half unravelled. "Oh, it's you, Edith," he said, when he had taken me in. "Funny, I thought it was Irene. I must have been dreaming."

I questioned him again about his wound, and began feeling his hair. "It's not there," he said. "Guess I got it all over my hands. They got me this time. Shrapnel, in the body. Don't waste time on me. Some other fellow may have a chance."

I found, with a little examination, that the case was as bad as he supposed. Fortunately, the wound had induced a local paralysis, and he was not suffering to any great degree. I placed my hand in his and felt his grip tighten on it.

"I'm going to stay till it's over, Dave. We'll see it out together."

"That's decent," he answered, and then was still for quite a time.

"I've often wondered what was on the other side," he said at length. "I shall know presently."

"You are not afraid?" I whispered.

"No. Only sort of—curious. And—reverent. I guess it's reverent… You know I haven't been much on religion. Never seemed to get the formula. What is the formula? I mean the key—the thing that gives it all in one word?"

"In one word—sacrifice."

"I walked out of church once because of some doctrine about sacrifice," he continued. "I couldn't go it… And yet—there may be something in it. It's sacrifice here, Edith. War is sacrifice. Sacrifice for other people. It's not all on the surface. There's something deeper than we know."

"'He that loseth his life shall find it,'" I quoted.

He did not answer, but I could see his lips smiling again. His breath was more labored. A few drops of rain fell, and some of them spattered on his face.

Presently he chuckled. It was an eerie sensation, out on that broad plain of death, alone by the side of this man who was already far into the shadow,—to hear him chuckle.

"That splash of water—you remember—it made me think of the time we pulled the old car into the stream, and the harness broke, or something, and I had to carry you. You remember that, Reenie?" I could only say "Yes," and press his hand. His mind was back on the old, old trails.

He became suddenly sober. "And when Brownie was killed," he went on, "I said it was the innocent thing that got caught. Perhaps I was right. But perhaps it's best to get caught. Not for the getting caught, but for the—the compensations. It's the innocent men that are getting killed. And perhaps it's best. Perhaps there are compensations worth while."

His voice was weaker, and I had to lean close to catch his words.

"I'm going—out," he said. "Kiss me, Reenie."

And then I kissed him—for you.

Suddenly he sat up.

"The mountains!" he exclaimed, and his voice was a-thrill with the pride of his old hills. "See, the moonlight—on the mountains!"

Then his strength, which seemed to have gathered itself for this one last vision of the place of his boyhood, gave way, and he fell back. And he did not speak any more.

And what can I add? Dear, it is not defeat. It is promise. It is hope.

Some day we shall know. But until then we shall go on. It is woman's bit to carry on. But not in despondency; not in bitterness; not in anger or despair. He didn't go out that way. He was reverent—and a little curious, and he went out with a smile. And we shall go on, and carry his smile and his confidence through the valley of our sacrifice. What am I doing, speaking of our sacrifice?

I salute you, sister in the Order of Suffering—and of hope.

EDITH DUNCAN.

I handed the letter back to her, and for a time I had no words. "Won't you let me tell the story?" I said at length. "The world is full of sorrow, and it needs voices to give that sorrow words, and perhaps turn it into hope—as this letter does."

She hesitated, and I realized then how much I had asked. "It is the story of my life—my soul," she said. "Yet, if it would help——"

"Without names," I hastened to explain. "Without real names of places or people."

And so, in that little white-washed home, where the brown hills rise around and the placid mountains look down from the distance, and a tongue of spruce trees beyond the stream stands sentinel against the open prairie, she is carrying on, not in despondency and bitterness, but in service and in hope. And so her sisters, all this world over, must carry on, until their sweetness and their sacrifice shall fill up and flood over all the valleys of hate.… And if you should chance that way, and if you should win the confidence of young Three-year-old, he may stand for you and say, with his voice filled with the honour and the glory and the pride of it,

"My father was a soldier. He was killed at Courcelette."