Part 10 (1/2)

”Yes, he might fight.” The colonel looked hard at Stransky's rigid profile, with its tight lips and chin as firm as if cut out of stone.

”You never know who will fight in the pinch, they say. But that's speculation. It's the example that I have to deal with.”

”He is not of the insidious, plotting type. He spoke his mind openly,”

suggested Lanstron. ”If you give him the limit of the law, why, he becomes a martyr to persecution. I should say that his remarks might pa.s.s for barrack-room ga.s.sing.”

”Very well,” said the colonel, taking the shortest way out of the difficulty. ”We will excuse the first offence.”

”Yes, sir!” said the sergeant mechanically as he released his grip of the offender. ”We had two anarchists in my company in Africa,” he observed in loyal agreement with orders. ”They fought like devils. The only trouble was to keep them from shooting innocent natives for sport.”

Stransky's collar was still crumpled on the nape of his neck. He remained stock-still, staring down the bridge of his nose. For a full minute he did not vouchsafe so much as a glance upward over the change in his fortunes. Then he looked around at Lanstron gloweringly.

”I know who you are!” he said. ”You were born to the purple. You have had education, opportunity, position--everything that you and your kind want to keep for your kind. You are smarter than the others. You would hang a man with spider-webs instead of hemp. But I won't fight for you!

No, I won't!”

He threw back his head with a determination in his defiance so intense that it had a certain kind of dignity that freed it of theatrical affectation.

”Yes, I was fortunate; but perhaps nature was not altogether unkind to you,” said Lanstron. ”In Napoleonic times, Stransky, I think you might even have carried a marshal's baton in your knapsack.”

”You--what rot!” A sort of triumph played around Stransky's full lips and his jaw shot out challengingly. ”No, never against my comrades on the other side of the border!” he concluded, his dogged stare returning.

Now the colonel gave the order to fall in; the bugle sounded and the centipede's legs began to a.s.semble on the road. But Stransky remained a statue, his rifle untouched on the sward. He seemed of a mind to let the regiment go on without him.

”Stransky, fall in!” called the sergeant.

Still Stransky did not move. A comrade picked up the rifle and fairly thrust it into his hands.

”Come on, Bert, and knead dough with the rest of us!” he whispered.

”Come on! Cheer up!” Evidently his comrades liked Stransky.

”No!” roared Stransky, bringing the rifle down on the ground with a heavy blow.

Then impulse broke through the restraint that seemed to characterize the Lanstron of thirty-five. The Lanstron of twenty-five, who had met catastrophe because he was ”wool-gathering,” a.s.serted himself. He put his hand on Stransky's shoulder. It was a strong though slim hand that looked as if it had been trained to do the work of two hands in the process of its owner's own transformation. Thus the old sergeant had seen a general remonstrate with a brave veteran who had been guilty of bad conduct in Africa. The old colonel gasped at such a subversion of the dignity of rank. He saw the army going to the devil. But young Dellarme, watching with eager curiosity, was sensible of no familiarity in the act. It all depended on how such a thing was done, he was thinking.

”We all have minutes when we are more or less anarchists,” said Lanstron in the human appeal of one man to another. ”But we don't want to be judged by one of those minutes. I got a hand mashed up for a mistake that took only a second. Think this over to-night before you act. Then, if you are of the same opinion, go to the colonel and tell him so. Come, why not?”

”All right, sir, you're so decent about it!” grumbled Stransky, taking his place in the ranks.

Hep-hep-hep! the regiment started on its way, with Grandfather Fragini keeping at his grandson's side.

”Makes me feel young again, but it's darned solemn beside the Hussars, with their horses' bits a-jingling. Times have certainly changed--officers' hands in their pockets, saying 'if you don't mind' to a man that's insulted the flag! Kicking ain't good enough for that traitor! Ought to hang him--yes, sir, hang and draw him!”

Lanstron watched the marching column for a time.

”Hep-hep-hep! It's the brown of the infantry that counts in the end,” he mused. ”I liked that wall-eyed giant. He's all man!”

Then his livening glance swept the heavens inquiringly. A speck in the blue, far away in the realms of atmospheric infinity, kept growing in size until it took the form of the wings with which man flies. The plane volplaned down with steady swiftness, till its racing shadow lay large over the landscape for a few seconds before it rose again with beautiful ease and precision.

”Bully for you, Etzel!” Lanstron thought, as he started back to the aeroplane station. ”You belong in the corps. We shall not let you return to your regiment for a while. You've a cool head and you'd charge a church tower if that were the orders.”