Mahan had reached the edge of the rocks when his ears were greeted by a yell of mortal fear. The captain and the rest, catching the sound, went faster. Screech after screech rang from the rocky enclosure.
Mahan rounded the big boulder at the crest of the ridge and flung himself upon the two combatants, as they thrashed about in a tumultuous dual mass on the ground. And just then Bruce at last found his grip on Stolz's throat.
A stoical German signal-corps officer, on a hilltop some miles to eastward, laid aside his field-glass and calmly remarked to a man at his side
"We have lost a good spy!"
Such was the sole epitaph and eulogy of Herr Heinrich Stolz, from his army.
Meantime, Sergeant Mahan was prying loose the collie's ferocious jaws from their prey and was tugging with all his might to drag the dog off the shrieking spy. The throat-hold, he noted, was a bare inch from the jugular.
The rest of the soldiers, rushing up pell-mell, helped him pull the infuriated Bruce from his victim. The spectacle of their admired dog-hero, so murderously mauling a woman of the Red Cross, dazed them with horror.
"Take him AWAY!" bellowed Stolz, delirious with pain and fear. "He's KILLED me—der gottverdammte Teufelhund!"
And now the crazed victim's unconscious use of German was not needed to tell every one within hearing just who and what he was. For the quavering tones were no longer a rich contralto. They were a throaty baritone. And the accent was Teutonic.
"Bruce!" observed Top-Sergeant Mahan next morning, "I've always said a man who kicks a dog is more of a cur than the dog is. But you'll never know how near I came to kicking you yesterday, when I caught you mangling that filthy spy. And Brucie, if I had kicked you, well—I'd be praying at this minute that the good Lord would grow a third leg on me, so that I could kick myself all the way from here to Berlin!"