This is to tell you that it took longer than I expected to get me fixed up again but I am all O. K. now and never better and I am off for the place where things is doing. You know from what I said that I think there is something for me to do that nobody else could and I am going to do it if God lets me. Not that I think I am a Daniel but there sure is lions and just now they seem to be roaring pretty loud and I can’t get there too soon. I want to ask you to pray for me not that I won’t be afraid for I am not afraid but that I’ll be let to do something worth coming over here for. The preacher Mr. Black said that God always hears if we have anything to say to Him and I think He would hear you speshally—because anybody would. This leaves me well and hoping you are the same.
Your friend,
Private Enos Dyer.
“I suppose you have no idea where he is now,” Jane said, as she carefully put away the paper.
“Yes, I have an idea.” The surgeon was looking off now into the night outside. Gusts of wind blew the rain into his face, but he seemed to welcome its refreshing touch. “I had a word with a young artilleryman just now on whom I operated yesterday for a smashed elbow joint. He doesn’t mind that in the least, but the thing he does mind is that he’s sure his ‘buddy,’ as he calls him, ‘Enie Dyer,’ was in that battalion of the ——nth Division that has just been wiped out. It had taken the objective it was sent for, and this boy has had to help shell the position where Dyer would have been if the battalion hadn’t been sacrificed. His idea is that it was a perhaps inevitable sacrifice, but the thought that he might have been pouring lead and steel in on his friend, still alive and hiding in a shell-hole, has got on his nerves till he’s all in pieces. He’s a giant physically, but Dyer is twice his size, nevertheless.”
“I’ll find him,” said Jane. She felt suddenly weak with dread. She had caught rumours before now of the battalion which had not been heard from and which seemed to have vanished from the earth, but she had no idea that anyone in whom she was especially interested had been among that ill-fated number. She had known young Dyer but a few days, yet he had made upon her one of the most deeply disturbing impressions of her experience. His own personality, reinforced by her knowledge that he owed this simple trust of his to Robert Black, had combined to make the thought of him a poignant one. As she went back to her work she realized that Dyer was not to be out of her mind until the question of his whereabouts was settled—if it could be settled.
And meanwhile—what was it that he had bade her do for him?
It was three days later that the rumour reached the Hospital that the battalion which had been supposed to be wiped out had been heard from. Two runners had come through the enemy’s lines, it was said, and had brought word that what was left of the four companies which formed the battalion was under constant barrage fire from the guns of its own side. The barrage had been stopped, rescue was on its way; the daring men who had brought the word would shortly be here to be fixed up—they had been completely exhausted when they arrived.
The artilleryman sat up in bed. He waved his good right arm and shouted, before anybody could restrain him:
“I’ll bet Enie Dyer’s one of ’em! I’ll bet he’s one of ’em! Darn his hide, he’d get through hell itself if he started to. He’d never know when he was beat—he never did. He wouldn’t know it if a seventy-five hit him—he’d tell it he had to be gettin’ along where he was goin’, and he’d pull it out and leave it layin’ where ’twas! I vum——”