Suddenly a company of Saxon pioneers arrived on the double-quick, halted, fell out, and began to break down the locked doors of the houses on either side of the street. At the same time Prussian infantry came hurrying past, dragging behind them dozens of vehicles, long hay-wagons, gardeners’ carts, heavy wheelbarrows, even a dingy private carriage, with tarnished lamps, rocking crazily on rusty springs.
The soldiers wheeled these wagons into a double line, forming a complete chain across the street, where the Turcos had commenced to dig their ditch and breastworks—a barricade high enough to check a charge, and cunningly arranged, too, for the wooden abatis could not be seen from the eastern end of the street, where a charge of French infantry or cavalry must enter Morsbronn if it entered at all.
We watched the building of the barricade, fascinated. Soldiers entered the houses on either side of the street, only to reappear at the windows and thrust out helmeted heads. More soldiers came, running heavily—the road swarmed with them; some threw themselves flat under the wagons, some knelt, thrusting their needle-guns through the wheel-spokes; others remained standing, rifles resting over the rails of the long, skeleton hay-wagons.
“Something is going to happen,” I said, as a group of smartly uniformed officers appeared on the roof of the opposite house and hastily scrambled to the ridge-pole.
Something was surely going to happen; the officers 81 were using their field-glasses and pointing excitedly across the roof-tops; the windows of every house as far as I could see were black with helmets; a regiment in column came up on the double, halted, disintegrated, melting away behind walls, into yards, doorways, gardens.
A colonel of infantry, splendidly mounted, drew bridle under our loop-hole and looked up at the officers on the roof across the way.
“Attention, you up there!” he shouted. “Is it infantry?”
“No!” bawled an officer, hollowed hand to his cheek. “It’s their brigade of heavy cavalry coming like an earthquake!”
“The cuirassiers!” I cried, electrified. “It’s Michel’s cuirassiers, madame! And—oh, the barricade!” I groaned, twisting my fingers in helpless rage. “They’ll be caught in a trap; they’ll die like flies in that street.”
“This is horrible!” muttered the girl. “Don’t they know the street is blocked? Can’t they find out before they ride into this ravine below us? Will they all be killed here under our windows?”