"Monsieur, it was more serious than love; it was friendship."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE AVIATOR
Where the Fontanes highroad crosses the byroad to Sainte Lesse they were halted by a dusty column moving rapidly west—four hundred American mules convoyed by gendarmerie and remount troopers.
The sweating riders, passing at a canter, shouted from their saddles to the big gendarme in the market cart that neither Nivelle nor Sainte Lesse were to be defended at present, and that all stragglers were being directed to Fontanes and Le Marronnier. Mules and drivers defiled at a swinging trot, enveloped in torrents of white dust; behind them rode a peloton of the remount, lashing recalcitrant animals forward; and in the rear of these rolled automobile ambulances, red crosses aglow in the rays of the setting sun.[pg 212]
The driver of the last ambulance seemed to be ill; his head lay on the shoulder of a Sister of Charity who had taken the steering wheel.
The gendarme beside Maryette signalled her to stop; then he got out of the market cart and, lifting the body of the American muleteer in his powerful arms, strode across the road. The airman leaped from the market cart and followed him.
Between them they drew out a stretcher, laid the muleteer on it, and shoved it back into the vehicle.
There was a brief consultation, then they both came back to Maryette, who, rigid in her seat and very pale, sat watching the procedure in silence.
The gendarme said: