The Desert of Wheat, Zane Grey [good non fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

slapped me on the back and shouted, "Bill, you could lick the world!" … And, my son, I fell for it!'"

This story fetched a roar from every soldier present except Dorn. An absence of mirth in him had been noted before.

"Dorn, can't you laugh!" protested Dixon.

"Sure I can—when I hear something funny," replied Dorn.

His comrades gazed hopelessly at him.

"My Lawd! boy, thet was shore funny," drawled Brewer with his lazy Southern manner.

"Kurt, you're not human," said Owens, sadly. "That's why they call you Demon Dorn."

All the boys in the squad had nicknames. In Dorn's case several had been applied by irrepressible comrades before one stuck. The first one received a poor reception from Kurt. The second happened to be a great blunder for the soldier who invented it. He was not in Dorn's squad, but he knew Dorn pretty well, and in a moment of deviltry he had coined for Dorn the name "Kaiser Dorn." Dorn's reaction to this appellation was discomfiting and painful for the soldier. As he lay flat on the ground, where Dorn had knocked him, he had struggled with a natural rage, quickly to overcome it. He showed the right kind of spirit. He got up. "Dorn, I apologize. I was only in fun. But some fun is about as funny as death." On the way out he suggested a more felicitous name—Demon Dorn. Somehow the boys took to that. It fitted many of Dorn's violent actions in training, especially the way he made a bayonet charge. Dorn objected strenuously. But the name stuck. No comrade or soldier ever again made a hint of Dorn's German name or blood.

"Fellows, if a funny story can't make Dorn laugh, he's absolutely a dead one," said Owens.

"Spring a new one, quick," spoke up some one. "Gee! it's great to laugh.… Why, I've not heard from home for a month!"

"Dorn, will you beat it so I can spring this one?" queried Owens.

"Sure," replied Dorn, amiably, as he started away. "I suppose you think me one of these I-dare-you-to-make-me-laugh sort of chaps."

"Forget her, Dorn—come out of it!" chirped up Rogers.

To Dorn's regret, he believed that he failed his comrades in one way, and he was always trying to make up for it. Part of the training of a soldier was the ever-present need and duty of cheerfulness. Every member of the squad had his secret, his own personal memory, his inner consciousness that he strove to keep hidden. Long ago Dorn had divined that this or that comrade was looking toward the bright side, or pretending there was one. They all played their parts. Like men they faced this incomprehensible duty, this tremendous separation, this dark and looming future, as if it was only hard work that must be done in good spirit. But Dorn, despite all his will, was mostly silent, aloof, brooding, locked up in his eternal strife of mind and soul. He could not help it. Notwithstanding all he saw and divined of the sacrifice and pain of his comrades, he knew that his ordeal was infinitely harder. It was natural that they hoped for the best. He had no hope.

"Boys," said Owens, "there's a squad of Blue Devils camped over here in an old barn. Just back from the front. Some one said there wasn't a man in it who hadn't had a dozen wounds, and some twice that many. We must see that bunch. Bravest soldiers of the whole war! They've been through the three years—at Verdun—on the Marne—and now this awful Flanders drive. It's up to us to see them."

News like this thrilled Dorn. During all the months he had been in France the deeds and valor of these German-named Blue Devils had come to him, here and there and everywhere. Dorn remembered all he heard, and believed it, too, though some of the charges and some of the burdens attributed to these famed soldiers seemed unbelievable. His opportunity had now come. With the moving up to the front he would meet reality; and all within him, the keen, strange eagerness, the curiosity that perplexed, the unintelligible longing, the heat and burn of passion, quickened and intensified.

Not until late in the afternoon, however, did off duty present an opportunity for him to go into the village. It looked the same as the other villages he had visited, and the inhabitants, old men, old women and children, all had the somber eyes, the strained, hungry faces, the oppressed look he had become accustomed to see. But sad as were these inhabitants of a village near the front, there was never in any one of them any absence of welcome to the Americans. Indeed, in most people he met there was a quick flashing of intense joy and gratitude. The Americans had come across the sea to fight beside the French. That was the import, tremendous and beautiful.

Dorn met Dixon and Rogers on the main street of the little village. They had been to see the Blue Devils.

"Better stay away from them," advised Dixon, dubiously.

"No!… Why?" ejaculated Dorn.

Dixon shook his head. "Greatest bunch I ever looked at. But I think they resented our presence. Pat and I were talking about them. It's strange, Dorn, but I believe these Blue Devils that have saved France and England, and perhaps America, too, don't like our being here."

"Impossible!" replied Dorn.

"Go and see for yourself," put in Rogers. "I believe we all ought to look them over."

Thoughtfully Dorn strode on in the direction indicated, and presently he arrived at the end of the village, where in an old orchard he found a low, rambling, dilapidated barn, before which clusters of soldiers in blue lounged around smoking fires. As he drew closer he saw that most of them seemed fixed in gloomy abstraction. A few were employed at some task of hand, and several bent over the pots on fires. Dorn's sweeping gaze took in the whole scene, and his first quick, strange impression was that these soldiers resembled ghouls who had lived in dark holes of mud.

Kurt meant to make the most of his opportunity. To him, in his peculiar need, this meeting would be of greater significance than all else that had happened to him in France. The nearest soldier sat on a flattened pile of straw around which the ground was muddy. At first glance Kurt took him to be an African,