"That smoke ain't such a bad screen, Jeb," Hastings shouted. "Come on; let's get busy!"
Into it again they passed; many times that afternoon they came out and passed again into it. The last trip took them nearly to the old German first line—since morning blasted level with the ground—before they found a man who had not passed the point of aid. There were plenty about them of the other kind, for machine-guns here had done frightful work. Leading the way back, confused by sounds and smoke, Hastings lost direction, coming within a trice of being picked up and carried by a sudden rush of the French troops. Jeb, more insane with fear than anger, cursed him with every oath he had ever heard, but the forward stretcher-bearer, making allowances, went indifferently on.
They had got about halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up, clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings, turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load, but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. He was obsessed with the idea that it had been the omen of Death reaching for him; he was gasping pitifully, ever alert for shell fire, and cringing at detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and a memory of the ennobling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a new spurt; yet both soon began to lose efficiency.
They had found a wounded chap and were well on their way out, crossing the crater-scarred stretch which had been No Man's Land that morning—for No Man's Lands shift from day to day. They moved slowly, and Jeb was dragging; yet in an effort to keep going he had riveted his gaze on the shoulders of Hastings. Then, suddenly, although Hastings' shoulders remained unchanged, his head disappeared; evaporating into air.
For an instant it seemed to Jeb as though his eyes were playing a trick, but the next second the lanky middle-westerner crumpled up. A warm mist settled upon Jeb's face. With a piercing shriek of uncontrollable terror he dropped the handles and sprang into the nearest shell hole; cowering close under its side, pressing his mouth against the earth and moaning.
CHAPTER XII
The last case in Bonsecours' unit had just been lifted from the table. Swathed in bandages it was laid once more upon a stretcher and carried rearward to a waiting ambulance whose racks would then be filled. Carefully, to spare his charges added pain, the driver engaged the clutch and started, but in so vile a condition was this road that the heavily loaded machine plunged as a mired horse. Yet there were no groans. Teeth might have been grit within that canopy of suffering, but the men were too game to make an outcry.
A nurse having come as far as the ambulance, now gave a stifled sob as she watched it lumber, like a huge beetle, over the uneven terrain. Her arms stiffened and her hands closed into little brown fists—for she knew too well what those bumps and plunges were doing to the lacerated human freight!
Standing alone upon a mound of earth and staring after it, her face touched by the amber glow of a westering sun that hung as an immense orange in the smoke of battle, all of Hillsdale would have gasped at her amazing beauty. For the mere prettiness which they had known, enhanced by happiness and laughter, was now transformed. As the chisel of Michael Angelo first carved but a placid face for the Mary in his masterful Pieta, and later gnawed into it shadows of pain and love until it became a part of God, so had the chisel of suffering humanity brought out the wonderful character which had been a latent part of this Nurse Marian. Her figure, while always the embodiment of grace, though attuned to the easy things of life, now stood as if it were akin to war's great sinew. She seemed indeed to be an ivory column of strength and softness, of support and beauty, of courage and tenderness.