“I wasn’t tired, Lieutenant.”
“How about your horse?”
“No more than I was. Do you think that after three days stretched out on the straw in his car, without moving ...?”
“Then, if you are willing, we’ll both go to the echelon.”
“All right, Lieutenant.”
A question must have framed itself on my face, for he added almost at once:
“Yes, the echelon, the fighting train, the cavalry. You’ll be more at home there. We left it below at Morcourt, seven or eight miles away, on account of the shells that fall here sometimes. Horses, you know, cost more than men, so we have to economize them. It is understood, then? We’ll go about noon. Saddle both horses. Meet me here.”
Then he strode off and joined a group of officers who were coming up the main street of the village to the church.
Dedouche was already full of attention for me—just think of a man from home on the “little staff”—and he now burst forth eagerly: