His love story

by Marie Van Vorst

Sabron's wound was serious, but his body was vigorous, strong and healthy, and his mind more so. There was a film over it just now. He raised himself with great effort, and in a moment realized where he was and that to linger there was a horrible death. On each side of the river rose an inclined bank, not very high and thickly grown with mimosa bush. This meant to him that beyond it and probably within easy reach, there would be shade from the intense and dreadful glare beating down upon him, with death in every ray. He groaned and Pitchouné's voice answered him. Sabron paid no attention to his dog, did not even call his name. His mind, accustomed to quick decisions and to a matter-of-fact consideration of life, instantly took its proper course. He must get out of the river bed or die there, rot there.

What there was before him to do was so stupendous an undertaking that it made him almost unconscious of the pain in his loins. He could not stand, could not thoroughly raise himself; but by great and painful effort, bleeding at every move, he could crawl; he did so, and the sun beat upon him. Pitchouné walked by his side, whining, talking to him, encouraging him, and the spahi, ashen pale, his bright gray uniform ripped and stained, all alone in the desert, with death above him and death on every hand, crawled, dragged, hitched along out of the river to the bank, cheered, encouraged by his little dog.

For a drop of water he would have given—oh, what had he to give? For a little shade, he would have given—about all he had to give had been given to his duty in this engagement which could never bring him glory, or distinction or any renown. The work of a spahi with a native regiment is not a very glorious affair. He was simply an officer who fell doing his daily work.

Pitchouné barked and cried out to him: "Courage!"

"I shall die here at the foot of the mimosa," Sabron thought; and his hands hardly had the courage or strength to grasp the first bushes by which he meant to pull himself up on the bank. The little dog was close to him, leaping, springing near him, and Sabron did not know how tired and thirsty and exhausted his brave little companion was, or that perhaps in that heroic little body there was as much of a soldier's soul as in his own human form.

The sun was so hot that it seemed to sing in the bushes. Its torrid fever struck on his brow, struck on his chest; why did it not kill him? He was not even delirious, and yet the bushes sang dry and crackling. What was their melody? He knew it. Just one melody haunted him always, and now he knew the words: they were a prayer for safety.

"But," Sabron said aloud, "it is a prayer to be said at night and not in the afternoon of an African hell."

He began to climb; he pulled himself along, leaving his track in blood.

He fainted twice, and the thick growth held him like the wicker of a cradle, and before he came to his consciousness the sun was mercifully going down. He finally reached the top of the bank and lay there panting. Not far distant were the bushes of rose and mimosa flower, and still panting, weaker and ever weaker, his courage the only living thing in him, Sabron, with Pitchouné by his side, dragged himself into healing hands.

All that night Sabron was delirious; his mind traveled far into vague fantastic countries, led back again, ever gently, by a tune, to safety.