Part 4 (2/2)
They continued to disembark and entrain at night. n.o.body knew that British troops were in Italy.
The infernal uproar along the Isonzo never ceased; the din of the guns resounded through the Trentino, but British and Canadian noses were sniffing at something beyond the Carnic Alps, along the slopes of which they continued to concentrate, Rifles, Kilties, and Gunners.
There seemed to be no particular hurry. Details from the Canadian contingent were constantly sent out to familiarize themselves with the vast waste of tunneled mountains denting the Austrian sky-line to the northward; and all day long Dominion reconnoitering parties wandered among valleys, alms, forest, and peaks in company sometimes with Italian alpinists, sometimes by themselves, prying, poking, snooping about with all the emotionless pertinacity of Teuton tourists preoccupied with _wanderl.u.s.t_, _kultur_, and _ewigkeit_.
And one lovely September morning the British Military Observer with the Italian army, and his very British aid, sat on a sunny rock on the Col de la Reine and watched a Canadian northward reconnaissance--nothing much to see, except a solitary moving figure here and there on the mountains, crawling like a deerstalker across ledges and stretches of bracken--a few dots on the higher slopes, visible for a moment, then again invisible, then glimpsed against some lower snow patch, and gone again beyond the range of powerful gla.s.ses.
”The Athabasca regiment, 13th Battalion,” remarked the British Military Observer; ”lively and rather noisy.”
”Really,” observed his A. D. C.
”St.u.r.dy, half-disciplined beggars,” continued the B. M. O., watching the mountain plank through his gla.s.ses; ”every variety of adventurer in their ranks--cattlemen, ranchmen, Hudson Bay trappers, North West police, lumbermen, mail carriers, bear hunters, Indians, renegade frontiersmen, soldiers of fortune--a sweet lot, Algy.”
”Ow.”
”--And half of 'em unruly Yankees--the most objectionable half, you know.”
”A bad lot,” remarked the Honorable Algy.
”Not at all,” said the B. M. O. complacently; ”I've a relative of sorts with 'em--leftenant, I believe--a Yankee brother-in-law, in point of fact.”
”Ow.”
”Married a step-sister in the States. Must look him up some day,”
concluded the B. M. O., adjusting his field gla.s.ses and focussing them on two dark dots moving across a distant waste of alpine roses along the edge of a chasm.
One of the dots happened to be the ”relative of sorts” just mentioned; but the B. M. O. could not know that. And a moment afterward the dots became invisible against the vast ma.s.s of the mountain, and did not again reappear within the field of the English officer's limited vision. So he never knew he had seen his relative of sorts.
Up there on the alp, one of the dots, which at near view appeared to be a good-looking, bronzed young man in khaki, puttees, and mountain shoes, said to the other officer who was scrambling over the rocks beside him:
”Did you ever see a better country for sheep?”
”Bear, elk, goats--it's sure a great layout,” returned the younger officer, a Canadian whose name was Stent.
”Goats,” nodded Brown--”sheep and goats. This country was made for them. I fancy they _have_ chamois here. Did you ever see one, Harry?”
”Yes. They have a thing out here, too, called an ibex. You never saw an ibex, did you, Jim?”
Brown, who had halted, shook his head. Stent stepped forward and stood silently beside him, looking out across the vast cleft in the mountains, but not using his field gla.s.ses.
At their feet the cliffs fell away sheer into tremendous and dizzying depths; fir forests far below carpeted the abyss like wastes of velvet moss, amid which glistened a twisted silvery thread--a river. A world of mountains bounded the horizon.
”Better make a note or two,” said Stent briefly.
<script>