"So was the rest of us, says you. But you're wrong. Those of us that waited for the draft had our choice of going to the hoosgow, as 'conscientious objectors,' if we didn't want to fight. And every mother's son of us knew we was fighting for the Right; and that we was making the world a decenter and safer place for our grandchildren and our womenfolks to live in. We didn't brag about God being on our side, like the boches do. It was enough for us to know WE was on GOD'S side and fighting His great fight for Him. We had patriotism and religion and Right, behind us, to give us strength.
"Brucie hadn't a one of those things. He didn't know what he was here for—and why he'd been pitched out of his nice home, into all this. He didn't have a chance to say Yes or No. He didn't have any spellbinders to tell him he was making the world safe for d'mocracy. He was MADE to come.
"How would any of us humans have acted, if a deal like that had been handed to us? We'd 'a' grouched and slacked and maybe deserted. That's because we're lords of creation and have souls and brains and such. What did Bruce do? He jumped into this game, with bells on. He risked his life a hundred times; and he was just as ready to risk it again the next day.
"Yes, and he knew he was risking it, too. There's blame little he didn't know. He saw war-dogs, all around him, choking to death from gas, or screaming their lives out, in No Man's Land, when a bit of shell had disemboweled 'em or a bullet had cracked their backbones. He saw 'em starve to death. He saw 'em one bloody mass of scars and sores. He saw 'em die of pneumonia and mange and every rotten trench disease. And he knew it might be his turn, any time at all, to die as they were dying; and he knew the humans was too busy nursing other humans, to have time to spare on caring for tortured dogs. (Though those same dogs were dying for the humans, if it comes to that.)
"Yes, Bruce knew what the end was bound to be. He knew it. And he kept on, as gay and as brave as if he was on a day's romp. He never flinched. Not even that time the K.O. sent him up the hill for reenforcements at Rache, when every sharpshooter in the boche trenches was laying for him, and when the machine guns were trained on him, too. Bruce knew he was running into death—, then and a dozen other times. And he went at it like a white man.
"I'm—I'm getting longwinded. And I'll stop. But—maybe if you boys will remember the Big Dog—and what he did for us,—when you get back home,—if you'll remember him and what he did and what thousands of other war-dogs have done,—then maybe you'll be men enough to punch the jaw of any guy who gets to saying that dogs are nuisances and that vivisection's a good thing, and all that. If you'll just do that much, then—well, then Bruce hasn't lived and died for nothing!
"Brucie, old boy," bending to lift the tawny body and lower it into the grave, "it's good-by. It's good-by to the cleanest, whitest pal that a poor dub of a doughboy ever had. I—"
Mahan glowered across at the clump of silent men.
"If anybody thinks I'm crying," he continued thickly, "he's a liar. I got a cold, and—"
"Sacre bon Dieu!" yelled old Vivier, insanely. "Regarde-donc! Nom d'une pipe!"