The Little Colonel's Hero

by Annie F. Johnston

The sentry turned his head away. "I wouldn't have been the one to take that dog's life for anything in the world!" he exclaimed. "I'd pretty near as soon have killed a man. It never entered my head that any tame animal would come leaping out of the woods that way at this time of night. He loomed up nearly as big as a lion when the moon shone out on him. The next minute it was all dark again, and I heard his big soft feet come pattering through the leaves, straight on toward me. It flashed over me that it must be one of those escaped circus animals, so I just let loose and blazed away at him."

The surgeon stood up and looked down at the still form at his feet. "It's too bad," he said. "He was a grand old dog, the finest St. Bernard I ever saw. How that little girl loved him! It will just about break her heart when she finds out what's happened to him."

"Don't!" begged the sentry, huskily. "Don't say anything like that. I feel bad enough about it now, goodness knows, without your harrowing up my feelings, talking of the way she's going to feel."

As the surgeon started on, the sentry stopped him. "For heaven's sake, Mac, don't leave him lying there on the picket-line where I've got to see him every time I pass. Send somebody to take him away. I'm all unnerved. I feel as if I'd shot one of my own comrades."

The surgeon looked at him curiously and walked on. Nobody was sent to take the dog away, but a little while later the sentry was relieved from duty, and another soldier kept guard over the silent camp, pacing back and forth past the Red Cross Hero, sleeping his last sleep under the light of the sentinel stars.

Somebody draped a flag across him before the camp was astir next morning. "Well, why not?" the man asked when he was joked about paying so much attention to a dead dog. "Why not? He was a war dog, wasn't he? It's no more than his due. I was the man he found in the ditch yesterday. As far as his intention and good will went, he did as much to save me as if I had been really lying there a wounded soldier. When he came leaping down there into the ditch after me, licking my face in such a friendly fashion and holding still so that I could help myself to the flask and bandages, I thought how grateful a fellow would feel to him if he were really rescued by him that way. It was all make-believe to me, but it was dead earnest to the dog, and he did his part as faithfully as any soldier who ever wore a uniform."

"You're right," said a young lieutenant, sitting near. "If for no other reason than that he was in the service of the Red Cross, he has a right to the respect of every man that calls himself a soldier, no matter what flag he follows."

Later in the morning, when the orderly rode into the little picnic camp, the girls were away. They were down by the waterfall digging ferns and mosses to take home. "We are thinking of breaking up camp this afternoon," Mrs. Walton told him. "The weather looks so threatening that I have sent for the wagonette to come for us, and I was about to send over to your camp to see if Hero had wandered back there. He has not been seen since last night. He was lying by Lloyd's cot just before I went to sleep, but this morning he is nowhere to be found. Lloyd is distressed. I told her that probably the drill yesterday awakened all his love for the old life, and that he might have been drawn back to it. Was I right? Have you seen him?"

"Yes," said the orderly, hesitating. "I saw him, but I find it hard to tell you how and where, Mrs. Walton." He paused again, and then hurried on with the explanation, as if anxious to have it over as soon as possible.

"He was shot last night by mistake on the picket-line. The sentry is all broken up over it, poor fellow, and the whole camp regrets it more than I can tell. You see, after yesterday's performance we almost claimed the dog as one of us. Colonel Wayne has made me the bearer of his deepest regrets. He especially deplores the occurrence on account of the dog's little mistress, knowing what a great grief it will be to her. He wishes, if you think it will be any consolation to her, to give Hero a military funeral, and bury him with the honours due a brave soldier."