Part 9 (2/2)
”Ah! _Grand blesse!_” murmured old Octave.
”_Grand blesse!_ And not a blanket left, even. Put him in the coal-hole,” groaned the head nurse.
”Nix on the coal-hole.” Thus the muddy young driver, hauling out the stretcher with its long, moveless shape. ”This is the candy kid-hear me?
Our crack scout. Escadrille 32.”
”Escadrille 32?” The number held no meaning for me. Yet I pushed nearer.
_Grand blesse_, indeed, that lax, pulseless body, that shattered flesh, that blood and mire. I bent closer. Red hair, s.h.i.+ning and thick, the red that always goes with cinnamon freckles. A clean-cut, ashen young face, a square jaw, a stubborn, boyish chin with a deep-cleft dimple.
Then my heart stopped short. The room whirled round me.
”Buster!” I cried out. ”You naughty, darling little scamp! So you got your way, after all. You ran off from school, and joined the escadrille-oh, sonny-boy, don't you hear me? Listen! Listen!”
The gaunt face did not stir. Only that ashy whiteness seemed to grow yet whiter.
”We'll do our best, Miss Preston. Go away now, dear.” The head nurse put me gently back. I knew too well what her gentleness meant.
”But Doctor Lake can save him! Doctor Lake can pull him through!”
”Doctor Lake is worn out. We'll have to manage without him.”
”Don't you believe it!” I flamed. Then I, the greenest, meekest slavey in the service, dashed straight to the operating-room, and gripped Doctor Lake by both wrists and jerked him bodily off the bench where he crouched, a sick, lubberly heap, blind with fatigue.
”No, you sha'n't stop to rest. Not yet!” I stormed at him. Somehow I dragged him down the ward, to my boy's side. At sight of that deathlike face, the limp, s.h.i.+vering man pulled himself together with all his weary might.
”I'll do my level best, Miss Edith. Go away, now, that's a good girl.”
I went away and listened to the ambulance-driver. He was having an ugly bullet scratch on his arm tied up. He was not a regular field-service man, but a young Y. M. C. A. helper who had taken the place of a driver shot down that noon.
”Well, you see, that kid took the air two hours ago to locate the battery that's been spilling sh.e.l.ls into our munitions station. He spotted it, and two others besides. Naturally, they spotted him. He scooted for home, with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder, and made a bad landing three miles back of the lines, and broke his leg and whacked his head. Luckily I wasn't a hundred yards away. I got him aboard my car and gave him first aid and started to bring him straight over here. Would he stand for that? Not Buddy. 'You'll take me to headquarters first, to report,' says he. 'So let her out.'
”No use arguing. I let her out. We reported at headquarters, three miles out of our way, then started here. Two miles back, a sh.e.l.l struck just ahead and sent a rock the size of a paving-brick smack against our engine. The car stopped, dead. Did that faze the kid? Not so you could notice it. 'You hoist me on the seat and let me get one hand on the wheel,' says he, cool's a cuc.u.mber. 'There isn't a car made but will jump through hoops for me.' Go she did. With her engine knocked galley west, mind you, and him propped up, chirk as a cherub, with his broken leg and his smashed shoulder, and a knock on his head that would 'a'
stopped his clock if he'd had any brains to jolt. Skill? He drove that car like a racer. She only hit the high places. Pluck? He wrote it.
”We weren't fifty yards from the hospital when he crumpled down, and I grabbed him. Hemorrhage, I guess. I sure do hope they pull him through.
But-I don't believe-”
Soon a very dirty-faced brigadier-general, whom I used to meet at dances long ago, came and sat down on a soap-box and held my hands and tried to comfort me, so gently and so patiently, the poor, kind, blundering dear.
Most of his words just buzzed and glimmered round me. But one thought stuck in my dull brain.
”This isn't your boy's first service to his country, Miss Edith. He has been with the escadrille only a month, but he has brought down three enemy planes, and his scouting has been invaluable. He's a wonder, anyhow. So are all our flying boys. They tell me that the German youngsters make such good soldiers because they're trained to follow orders blindfold. All very well when it comes to following a bayonet charge over the top. But the escadrille-that's another story. Take our boys, brought up to sail their own boats and run their own cars and chance any fool risk in sight. Couple up that impudence, that fearlessness, that splendid curiosity, and you've got a fighting-machine that not only fights but wins. All the drilled, stolid forces in creation can't beat back that headlong young spirit. If-”
He halted, stammering.
”If-we can't keep him with us, you must remember that he gave his best to his country, and his best was a n.o.ble gift. Be very glad that you could help your boy prepare himself to bestow it. You and his parents gave him his outdoor life and his daring sports and his fearless outlook, and his uncurbed initiative. You helped him build himself, mind and body, to flawless powers and to instant decisions. To-day came his chance to give his greatest service. No matter what comes now, you-you have your royal memory.”
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