He treated Zaidos with a protective fondness that was almost funny. He watched him, saw that he went to bed and arose on schedule time, helped dress his scratch, and looked after him generally like a faithful and devoted nurse.
Yet Nurse Helen pondered. She never once let him handle one of the dressings which were rapidly healing the ugly little tear in Zaidos' arm. Zaidos, escaping from Velo's watchful eye, felt like a glad little, bad little boy who has run away from school and who refuses to think of supper time, when he must go home and find that father has the note teacher has sent home by some other little boy. He went here and there, his sunny smile and ready kindliness making friends everywhere.
Wherever he sat down to rest some soldier told him something of interest. Gunners explained the watch-like perfection of their guns. Snipers told thrilling tales of long shots. The cooks showed him how cleverly the big field stoves came apart, and how they could be assembled at a moment's notice.
At supper time his new friend, Lieutenant Cunningham, called him. He had kept a place for Zaidos beside him. Velo had been omitted from the group, so he smilingly sat down in another bend of the trench with his pannikin of stew and cup of coffee, seemingly quite content. But black hate raged in his black heart!
Velo was a strange sort. He was a coward; he dreaded danger and endured hardships badly. Yet the thought that harm might come to him never entered his head. He was deeply superstitious, and while he could and did change the bottles and place the poison within his cousin's reach, while he placed the rusty pin in the crutch where it would inflict a wound on Zaidos' body, while he could plan endlessly to rid himself of his cousin, he would not himself directly aim the blow or fire the deadly shot. He rejoiced in the battle that was threatening. Zaidos would die, and he wanted the evidence of his own eyes. Also he wanted the statements of witnesses. Sometimes when he heard Zaidos' ready laugh, and saw his bright, straightforward look, a flicker of pity shadowed his dastardly resolve. Then he remembered the soft living, the ease and luxury of the house of Zaidos, and remembering that he, as Velo Kupenol, must be all his life nothing but a dependent on his cousin's bounty, he steeled his wicked heart to its self-appointed task.
But he must change his tactics. Zaidos as usual was surrounding himself with friends. Velo felt that he must be doubly careful. There must be no more strange, unaccountable accidents to Zaidos. When the blow fell it must crush him utterly; until then, he must be left to move securely.
Velo thought of all this as he sat talking to the soldier beside him and eating the plain fare of the men in the field.
The talk was all of the coming attack. Spies had reported a movement of preparation in the enemy's ranks, and there was a stir of warning in the very air. To Velo's amazement, no one seemed worried or anxious. The conversation moved smoothly on, as though the battle was a test of skill on a chess-board. Not a man there seemed to regard the coming event in a personal light. Even the uncertainty did not distress anyone. The attack would surely come, but whether it would come the following night or in a week's time did not seem to matter in the least. Velo had expected to see in an event like this a lot of men brooding gloomily over the possible outcome, a dismal time with last farewells, and touching letters written home. He watched the young officer beside him. He had finished his meal and had taken out a pad of paper and an indelible pencil. He wrote rapidly, but with a calm and smiling face. Velo could not imagine any tragic farewells in that letter.
Velo, still staring at the writer, listened to the conversation along the wall of the trench. It had at last turned from war to out-door sports. Velo, who never exercised if he could avoid it, listened idly. A small, pale boy in a lieutenant's uniform was violently upholding certain rules while the officer next to Zaidos disputed him smilingly. They argued pleasantly, but with the most intense earnestness.
"Who is that straw-colored chap?" Velo asked the writer beside him.