Part 15 (1/2)
”We have to stop here and put the lights out,” he added, seeing a gaunt post beside the road on which was a half-obliterated sign.
”If you have to do that it must be perilous,” declared Ruth.
”No. It's just an order. Maybe they've forgotten to take the sign down.
But I don't want to be stopped by one of these old territorials-or even by one of our own military police. You don't know when you're likely to run into one of them. Or maybe it's a marine. Those are the boys, believe me! They're on the job first and always.”
”But this time you boys who came to France to run automobiles got ahead of even the marine corps,” laughed Ruth. ”Oh! What's that?”
They were then traveling a very dark bit of road. Right across the gloomy way and just ahead of the machine something white dashed past. It seemed to cross the road in two or three great leaps and then sailed over the hedge on the left into a field.
”Did you see it?” asked Charlie Bragg, and there was a queer shake in his voice.
”Why, what is it? There it goes-all white!” and the excited girl pointed across the field, half standing up in the rocking car to do so.
”Going for the lines,” said the young driver.
”Is it a dog? A big dog? And he didn't bark or anything!”
”Never does bark,” said her companion. ”They say they can't bark.”
”Then it's a wolf! Wolves don't bark,” Ruth suggested.
”I guess that's right. They say they are dumb. Gos.h.!.+ I don't know,”
Charlie said. ”You didn't really see anything, did you?” and he said it so very oddly that Ruth Fielding was perfectly amazed.
”What do you mean by that?” she demanded. ”I saw just as much as you did.”
”Well, I'm not sure that I saw anything,” he told her slowly. ”The French say it's the werwolf-and that means just nothing at all.”
”Goodness!” exclaimed Ruth, repeating the word. ”What old-world superst.i.tion is that? The ghost of a wolf?”
”They have a story that certain people, selling themselves to the Devil, can change at will into the form of a wolf,” went on Charlie.
”Oh, I know! They have that legend in every language there is, I guess,”
Ruth returned.
”Now you've said it!”
”How ridiculous that sounds-in this day and generation. You don't mean that people around here believe such stories?”
”They do.”
”And you half believe it yourself, Mr. Bragg,” cried Ruth, laughing.
”I tell you what it is,” the young fellow said earnestly, while still guiding the car through the dark way with a skill that was really wonderful. ”There are a whole lot of things I don't know in this world.
I didn't used to think so; but I do now.”
”But you don't believe in magic-either black or white?”