第38章 The Werewolf(4)

Bruce saw the man he was chasing,--saw him plainly. The German was still running, but not at all as one who flees from peril. He ran, rather, as might the bearer of glad tidings. And he was even now drawing up to a group of men who awaited eagerly his coming.

There must have been fifty men in the group. Behind them--in open formation and as far as the dog's near-sighted eyes could see--were more men, and more, and more--thousands of them, all moving stealthily forward.

Now, a collie (in brain, though never in heart) is much more wolf than dog. A bullterrier, or an Airedale, would have charged on at his foe, and would have let himself be hacked to pieces before loosing his hold on the man.

But--even as a wolf checks his pursuit of a galloping sheep when the latter dashes into the guarded fold--Bruce came to an abrupt halt, at sight of these reenforcements. He stood irresolute, still mad with vengeful anger, but not foolish enough to assail a whole brigade of armed men.

It is quite impossible (though Mahan and Vivier used to swear it must be true) that Bruce had the reasoning powers to figure out the whole situation which confronted him. He could not have known that a German brigade had been sent to take advantage of the "Here-We-Comes" temporarily isolated position--that three sentries had been killed in silence and that their deaths had left a wide gap through which the brigade hoped to creep unobserved until they should be within striking distance of their unsuspectingly slumbering victims.

Bruce could not have known this. He could not have grasped the slightest fraction of the idea, being only a real-life dog and not a fairytale animal. But what he could and did realize was that a mass of detested Germans was moving toward him, and that he could not hope to attack them, single-handed; also, that he was not minded to slink peacefully away and leave his friend unavenged.

Thwarted rage dragged from his furry throat a deep growl; a growl that resounded eerily through that silent place of stealthy moves. And he stepped majestically forth from the surrounding long grass, into the full glare of moonlight.

The deceptive glow made him loom gigantic and black, and tinged his snowy chest with the phosphorous gleam of a snowfield. His eyes shone like a wild beast's.

Corporal Rudolph Freund, of the Konigin Luise Regiment, had just finished his three-word report to his superior. He had merely saluted and announced "He is dead!"Corporal Freund did not thrill, as usual, to the colonel's grunt of approval. The Corporal was worried. He was a Black Forest peasant; and, while iron military life had dulled his native superstitions, it had not dispelled them.

The night was mystic, in its odd blend of moon and shadows.

However hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep through long grass, like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile sentinel. And every German in the "Pocket" had been under frightful mental and physical stress, for the past week.

Corporal Rudolph Freund was a brave man and a brute. But that week had sapped his nerve. And the work of this night had been the climax. The desolate ground, over which he had crawled to the killing, had suddenly seemed peopled with evil gnomes and goblins, whose existence no true Black Forest peasant can doubt.

And, on the run back, he had been certain he heard some unseen monster tearing through the underbrush in hot pursuit of him. So certain had he been, that he had redoubled his speed.

There were no wolves or other large wild animals in that region.

When he had wriggled toward the slow-pacing American sentinel, he had seen and heard no creature of any sort. Yet he was sure that on the way back he had been pursued by--by Something! And into his scared memory, as he ran, had flashed the ofttold Black Forest tale of the Werewolf--the devil--beast that is entered by the soul of a murdered man and which tracks the murderer to his death.

Glad was the unnerved Corporal Freund when his run ceased and he stood close to his grossly solid and rank-scented fellowmen once more. Almost he was inclined to laugh at his fears of the fabled Werewolf--and especially at the idea that he had been pursued. He drew a long breath of relief. He drew the breath in. But he did not at once expel it. For on his ears came the sound of a hideous menacing growl.

Corporal Freund spun about, in the direction of the mysterious threat. And there, not thirty feet from him, in the ghostly moonlight, stood the Werewolf!

This time there could be no question of overstrained nerves and of imagination. The Thing was THERE!

Horribly visible in every detail, the Werewolf was glaring at him. He could see the red glow of the gigantic devil-beast's eyes, the white flash of its teeth, the ghostly shimmering of its snowy chest. The soul of the man he had slain had taken this traditional form and was hunting down the slayer! A thousand stories of Freund's childhood verified the frightful truth. And overwrought human nature's endurance went to pieces under the shock.

A maniac howl of terror split the midnight stillness. Shriek after shriek rent the air. Freund tumbled convulsively to the ground at his colonel's feet, gripping the officer's booted knees and screeching for protection. The colonel, raging that the surprise attack should be imperiled by such a racket, beat the frantic man over the mouth with his heavy fist, kicking ferociously at his upturned writhing face, and snarling to him to be silent.

The shower of blows brought Freund back to sanity, to the extent of changing his craven terror into Fear's secondary phase--the impulse to strike back at the thing that had caused the fright.

Rolling over and over on the ground, under the impact of his superior's fist blows and kicks, Freund somehow regained his feet.

Reeling up to the nearest soldier, the panic-crazed corporal snatched the private's rifle and fired three times, blindly, at Bruce. Then, foaming at the mouth, Freund fell heavily to earth again, chattering and twitching in a fit.