"Say your prayers now, Sonny," he muttered in the mule's big, waving ear, which came to "attention" promptly to receive his communication. "You'll be wishing you was back in them old lines at Aveluy afore we're through with this job. Fritzy over yonder ain't goin' to like you an' me one little bit when he gits on to what we're up to. It ain't like haulin' fodder, I tell you that. But I guess we've got the nerve all right."
Instead of rolling the whites of his eyes at him, in surly protest against this familiarity, the black mule responded by nibbling gently at the sleeve of his muddy tunic.
"Geezely Christmas," murmured the driver, astonished at this evidence of goodwill, "but it's queer, how a taste o' shell-fire'll sometimes work a change o' heart, even in an Argentine mule. I only hope it'll last, Sonny. If it does, we're goin' to git along fine, you an' me." And the next time he visited the canteen he brought back a biscuit or two and a slab of sweet chocolate, to confirm the capricious beast in its mended manners.
Early that same afternoon the black mule found himself in new surroundings. He was at the big ammunition dump which lay concealed in an obscure hollow near the ruins of Courcelette. He looked with suspicion on the wicker panniers which were slung across his sturdy back. Saddles he knew, and harness he knew, but this was a contraption which roused misgivings in his conservative soul. When the shells were slipped into the panniers, and he felt the sudden weight, so out of all proportion to the size of the burden, he laid back his long ears with a grunt, and gathered his muscles for a protesting kick. But his driver, standing at his head, stroked his muzzle soothingly and murmured: "There, there, steady, Son! Keep your hair on! It ain't goin' to bite you."
Thus adjured, he composed himself with an effort, and the lashing kick was not delivered.
"What a persuasive cuss you must be, Jimmy Wright!" said the man who was handling the shells. "I wouldn't trust you round with my best girl, If you can get a bucking mule locoed that way with your soft sawder."
"It ain't me," replied the New Brunswicker. "It's shell-shock, I guess, kind of helped along with chocolate an' biscuits. He got a bit of a shaking up when they shelled the lines at Aveluy night afore last, an' he's been a lamb ever since. Seems to think I saved his hide for him. He was the very devil to handle afore that."
For some way from the dump the journey was uneventful. The path to the guns led along a sunken road, completely hidden from the enemy's observation posts. The dull, persistent rain had ceased for a little, and the broad patches of blue overhead were dotted with our droning aeroplanes, which every now and then would dive into a low-drifting rack of grey cloud to shake off the shrapnel of the German "Archies." Of German 'planes none were to be seen, for they had all sped home to their hangars when our fighting squadrons rose to the encounter. The earth rocked to the explosions of our 9.2 howitzers ranged about Pozières and Martinpuich, and the air clamoured under the passage of their giant shells as they went roaring over toward the German lines. Now and again a vicious whining sound would swell suddenly to a nerve-racking shriek, and an enemy shell would land with a massive cr-r-ump, and a furious blast of smoke and mud would belch upwards to one side or other of the sunken road. But none of these unwelcome visitors came into the road itself, and neither the black mule nor Jimmy Wright paid them any more attention than the merest roll of an eye to mark their billet.
"Change o' heart hain't spoiled old Sonny's nerve, anyhow," thought the driver to himself, with deep approval.
A little further on and the trail up to "X's Group," quitting the shelter of the sunken road, led out across the red desolation, in the very eye, as it seemed to the New Brunswicker, of the enemy's positions. It was a narrow, undulating track, slippery as oil, yet tenacious as glue, corkscrewing its laborious way between the old slime-filled shell-pits. From the surface of one of these wells of foul-coloured ooze the legs of a dead horse stuck up stiffly into the air, like four posts on which to lay a foot-bridge. A few yards beyond, the track was cut by a fresh shell-hole, too new to have collected any water. Its raw sides were streaked red and white and black, and just at its rim lay the mangled fragments of something that might recently have been a mule. The long ears of Wright's mule waved backwards and forwards at the sight, and he snorted apprehensively.