"Are the dogs, over there, really doing such great work as the papers say they are? I read, the other day--"" 'Great work!'" repeated the guest. "I should say so. Not only in finding the wounded and acting as guards on listening posts, and all that, but most of all as couriers. There are plenty of times when the wireless can't be used for sending messages from one point to another, and where there is no telephone connection, and where the firing is too hot for a human courier to get through. That is where is the war dogs have proved their weight in radium. Collies, mostly. There are a, million true stories of their prowess told, at camp-fires. Here are just two such incidents--both of them on record, by the way, at the British War Office "A collie, down near Soissons, was sent across a bad strip of fire-scourged ground, with a message. A boche sharpshooter fired at him and shattered his jaw. The dog kept on, in horrible agony, and delivered the message. Another collie was sent over a still hotter and much longer stretch of territory with a message. (That was during the Somme drive of 1916.) He was shot at, a dozen times, as he ran. At last two bullets got him. He fell over, mortally wounded. He scrambled to his feet and kept on falling, stumbling, staggering--till he got to his destination. Then he dropped dead at the side of the Colonel the message had been sent to. And those are only two of thousands of true collie-anecdotes.
Yet some fools are trying to get American dogs done away with, as 'non-utilitarian,' while the war lasts! As if the dogs in France, today, weren't earning their overseas brothers' right to live--and live well!"
Neither of his hearers made reply when the guest finished his earnest, eager recital. Neither of them had paid much heed to his final words. For the Master and the Mistress were looking at each other in mute unhappiness. The same miserable thought was in the mind of each. And each knew the thought that was torturing the mind of the other.
Presently, at a glint of inquiry in the Master's eye, the Mistress suddenly bent over and buried her face in the deep mass of Bruce's ruff as the dog stood lovingly beside her. Then, still stroking the collie's silken head, she returned her husband's wretchedly questioning glance with a resigned little nod. The Master cleared his throat noisily before he could speak with the calm indifference he sought. Then, turning to the apparently unnoticing guest, he said--"I think I told you I tried to get across to France at the very start--and I was barred because I am past forty and because Ihave a bum heart and several other defects that a soldier isn't supposed to have. My wife and I have tried to do what little we can for the Cause, on this side of the ocean. But it has seemed woefully little, when we remember what others are doing. And we have no son we can send."Again he cleared his throat and went on with sulky ungraciousness:
"We both know what you've been driving at for the past five minutes. And--and we agree. Bruce can go.""Great!" applauded the guest. "That's fine! He'll be worth his--""If you think we're a couple of fools for not doing this more willingly," went on the Master with savage earnestness, "just stop to think what it means to a man to give up the dog he loves.
Not to give him up to some one who will assure him a good home, but to send him over into that hell, where a German bullet or a shell-fragment or hunger or disease is certain to get him, soon or late. To think of him lying smashed and helpless, somewhere in No Man's Land, waiting for death; or caught by the enemy and eaten! (The Red Cross bulletin says no less than eight thousand dogs were eaten, in Saxony alone, in 1913, the year BEFORE the war began.) Or else to be captured and then cut up by some German vivisector-surgeon in the sacred interests of Science! Oh, we can bring ourselves to send Bruce over there! But don't expect us to do it with a good grace. For we can't.""I--" began the embarrassed guest; but the Mistress chimed in, her sweet voice not quite steady.
"You see, Captain, we've made such a pet--such a baby--of Bruce!
All his life he has lived here--here where he had the woods to wander in and the lake to swim in, and this house for his home.
He will be so unhappy and--Well, don't let's talk about that!
When I think of the people who give their sons and everything they have, to the country, I feel ashamed of not being more willing to let a mere dog go. But then Bruce is not just a 'mere dog.' He is--he is BRUCE. All I ask is that if he is injured and not killed, you'll arrange to have him sent back here to us.
We'll pay for it, of course. And will you write to whomever you happen to know, at that dog-training school in England, and ask that Bruce be treated nicely while he is training there? He's never been whipped. He's never needed it, you see."The Mistress might have spared herself much worry as to Bruce's treatment in the training school to which he was consigned. It was not a place of cruelty, but of development. And when, out of the thousands of dogs sent there, the corps of trainers found one with promise of strong ability, such a pupil was handled with all the care and gentleness and skill that a temperamental prima donna might expect.
Such a dog was the big American collie, debarked from a goods car at the training camp railway station, six weeks after the Mistress and the Master had consented to his enlistment. And the handlers treated him accordingly.
The Master himself had taken Bruce to the transport, in Brooklyn, and had led him aboard the overfull ship. The new sights and sounds around him interested the home-bred collie. But when the Master turned him over to the officer in whose charge he was to be for the voyage, Bruce's deep-set eyes clouded with a sudden heartsick foreboding.
