Chapter XIII: One Dog's Day

There must be a real philosophy in all proverbs. "Every dog has his day" is a significant one. It surely was for Pitchouné. He had his day. It was a glorious one, a terrible one, a memorable one, and he played his little part in it. He awoke at the gray dawn, springing like a flash from the foot of Sabron's bed, where he lay asleep, in response to the sound of the reveille, and Sabron sprang up after him.

Pitchouné in a few moments was in the center of real disorder. All he knew was that he followed his master all day long. The dog's knowledge did not comprehend the fact that not only had the native village, of which his master spoke in his letter to Miss Redmond, been destroyed, but that Sabron's regiment itself was menaced by a concerted and concentrated attack from an entire tribe, led by a fanatic as hotminded and as fierce as the Mahdi of Sudanese history.

Pitchouné followed at the heels of his master's horse. No one paid any attention to him. Heaven knows why he was not trampled to death, but he was not. No one trod on him; no horse's hoof hit his little wiry form that managed in the midst of carnage and death to keep itself secure and his hide whole. He smelt the gunpowder, he smelt the smoke, sniffed at it, threw up his pretty head and barked, puffed and panted, yelped and tore about and followed. He was not conscious of anything but that Sabron was in motion; that Sabron, his beloved master, was in action of some kind or other and he, a soldier's dog, was in action, too. He howled at fierce dark faces, when he saw them. He snarled at the bullets that whistled around his ears and, laying his little ears back, he shook his black muzzle in the very grin of death.

Sabron's horse was shot under him, and then Pitchouné saw his master, sprang upon him, and his feelings were not hurt that no attention was paid him, that not even his name was called, and as Sabron struggled on, Pitchouné followed. It was his day; he was fighting the natives; he was part of a battle; he was a soldier's dog! Little by little the creatures and things around him grew fewer, the smoke cleared and rolled away, there were a few feet of freedom around him in which he stood and barked; then he was off again close to his master's heels and not too soon. He did not know the blow that struck Sabron, but he saw him fall, and then there came into his canine heart some knowledge of the importance of his day. He had raced himself weary. Every bone in his little body ached with fatigue.

Sabron lay his length on the bed of a dried-up river, one of those phantom-like channels of a desert stream whose course runs watery only certain times of the year. Sabron, wounded in the abdomen, lay on his side. Pitchouné smelled him from head to foot, addressed himself to his restoration in his own way. He licked his face and hands and ears, sat sentinel at the beloved head where the forehead was covered with sweat and blood. He barked feverishly and to his attentive ears there came no answer whatsoever, either from the wounded man in the bed of the African river or from the silent plains.

Sabron was deserted. He had fallen and not been missed and his regiment, routed by the Arabs, had been driven into retreat. Finally the little dog, who knew by instinct that life remained in his master's body, set himself at work vigorously to awaken a sign of life. He attacked Sabron's shoulder as though it were a prey; he worried him, barked in his ear, struck him lightly with his paw, and finally, awakening to dreadful pain, to fever and to isolation, awakening perhaps to the battle for life, to the attentions of his friend, the spahi opened his eyes.

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.

Every now and then he would realize that he was alone on the vast desert, destined to finish his existence here, to cease being a human creature and to become nothing but carrion. Moments of consciousness succeeded those of mental disorder. Every now and then he would feel Pitchouné close to his arm. The dog licked his hand and the touch was grateful to the deserted officer. Pitchouné licked his master's cheek and Sabron felt that there was another life beside his in the wilderness. Neither dog nor man could long exist, however, without food or drink, and Sabron was growing momentarily weaker.

The Frenchman, though a philosopher, realized how hard it was to die unsatisfied in love, unsatisfied in life, having accomplished nothing, having wished many things and realized at an early age only death! Then this point of view changed and the physical man was uppermost.

He groaned for water, he groaned for relief from pain, turned his head from side to side, and Pitchouné whined softly. Sabron was not strong enough to speak to him, and their voices, of man and beast, inarticulate, mingled--both left to die in the open.

Then Sabron violently rebelled and cried out in his soul against fate and destiny. He could have cursed the day he was born. Keenly desirous to live, to make his mark and to win everything a man values, why should he be picked and chosen for this lonely pathetic end? Moreover, he did not wish to suffer like this, to lose his grasp on life, to go on into wilder delirium and to die! He knew enough of injuries to feel sure that his wound alone could not kill him. When he had first dragged himself into the shade he had fainted, and when he came to himself he might have stanched his blood. His wound was hardly bleeding now. It had already died! Fatigue and thirst, fever would finish him, not his hurt. He was too young to die.

With great effort he raised himself on his arm and scanned the desert stretching on all sides like a rosy sea. Along the river bank the pale and delicate blossom and leaf of the mimosa lay like a bluish veil, and the smell of the evening and the smell of the mimosa flower and the perfumes of the weeds came to him, aromatic and sweet. Above his head the blue sky was ablaze with stars and directly over him the evening star hung like a crystal lamp. But there was no beauty in it for the wounded officer who looked in vain to the dark shadows on the desert that might mean approaching human life. It would be better to die as he was dying, than to be found by the enemy!

The sea of waste rolled unbroken as far as his fading eyes could reach. He sank back with a sigh, not to rise again, and closed his eyes and waited. He slept a short, restless, feverish sleep, and in it dreams chased one another like those evoked by a narcotic, but out of them, over and over again came the picture of Julia Redmond, and she sang to him the song whose words were a prayer for the safety of a loved one during the night.

From that romantic melody there seemed to rise more solemn ones. He heard the rolling of the organ in the cathedral in his native town, for he came from Rouen originally, where there is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. The music rolled and rolled and passed over the desert's face. It seemed to lift his spirit and to cradle it. Then he breathed his prayers,--they took form, and in his sleep he repeated the _Ave Maria_ and the _Paternoster_, and the words rolled and rolled over the desert's face and the supplication seemed to his feverish mind to mingle with the stars.

A sort of midnight dew fell upon him: so at least he thought, and it seemed to him a heavenly dew and to cover him like a benignant rain. He grew cooler. He prayed again, and with his words there came to the young man an ineffable sense of peace. He pillowed his fading thoughts upon it; he pillowed his aching mind upon it and his body, too, and the pain of his wound and he thought aloud, with only the night airs to hear him, in broken sentences: "If this is death it is not so bad. One should rather be afraid of life. This is not difficult, if I should ever get out of here I shall not regret this night."

Toward morning he grew calmer, he turned to speak to his little companion. In his troubled thoughts he had forgotten Pitchouné.

Sabron faintly called him. There was no response. Then the soldier listened in silence. It was absolutely unbroken. Not even the call of a night-bird--not even the cry of a hyena,--nothing came to him but the inarticulate voice of the desert. Great and solemn awe crept up to him, crept up to him like a spirit and sat down by his side. He felt his hands grow cold, and his feet grow cold. Now, unable to speak aloud, there passed through his mind that this, indeed, was death, desertion absolute in the heart of the plains.