Shelled by an Unseen Foe Part 13

The nurse won. Swiftly she prepared the table, called the doctor and helped to lift him from the stretcher.

Zaidos and Velo left to rescue the man whose weight had kept the captain from bleeding to death. His scalp wound was serious but not dangerous, Zaidos decided, and they returned to the First Aid with lighter hearts.

The room was empty. Hazelden was not there. Zaidos' heart dropped.

Had he died?

Helen answered the question in his face. She came to meet Zaidos. Her eyes shone, her cheeks were the loveliest pink. Her step was light.

"Well?" said Zaidos.

"More than well!" said Helen. "Oh, John, it is wonderful! Wonderful!

And you brought me my happiness! I am to be transferred to the field hospital tomorrow, where I can nurse him myself. He will live; he _must_ live! We could not talk, but he knew me. And I know everything is all right!"

"Certainly it's all right!" said Zaidos. "Didn't I tell you so? I knew just how it would be," and the hero of a single ballroom looked as wise as only a fellow could who had been dead-crazy over a girl all one evening.

"What are you going to do about things?" asked Zaidos. "Go on being engaged?"

"Indeed I'm not!" said Helen as she bathed the soldier's head. "Not at all! Just as soon as he can hold my hand, we will be married by the chaplain. I'll never, never risk another misunderstanding!"

"See that you don't!" said Zaidos quite gruffly.

CHAPTER IX

VISIONS

While Zaidos, aided by Velo, continued his heart-rending task among the dead and wounded on that b.l.o.o.d.y field, now applying the tourniquet to some emptying artery, now administering, drop by drop, the stimulant needed to hold life in some poor fellow, hurrying back with others on their stretcher, or giving way to the fearless and pitiful priests who moved among the dying--while all these things happened, it would be well to pause and reflect on the wise preparation which had made it possible for Zaidos to do well his allotted task.

As a Boy Scout, and in the extra work of school, he had taken a keen interest in the Red Cross work. Zaidos was the sort of a fellow who takes a keen pleasure in doing things well. He stood well in his cla.s.ses always, not for the benefit of school marks, but because he thought that if he studied at all, he might as well be thorough about it and try to get at what the "book Johnny," as the boys called the textbook writers, really was driving at. It was the same with athletics. He had jumped higher and run faster than anyone else in school, not so much because he was quick and light and agile, but because, having found out that he could run and jump and put up a good boost for the team at other sports, he practiced every spare moment he could find. Zaidos was always trying to see if he could break his own records. He got a lot of fun out of it. It was like a good game of solitaire. He was not dependent on some other fellow. The other fellow was incidental, a sort of side issue and like a good pace-maker.

Of course you had to beat him, but the sport was in coming in ahead of your own time.

It was for this that Zaidos had always worked. It had kept him from feeling the petty jealousies and envy which r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of so many of the fellows. Racing with himself, in Red Cross drills, or running, racing, riding or studying, his rival was always present, always ready and willing to take another "try" at something. It was like having a punching bag in his room. Every time he pa.s.sed it he took a whack or two, and developed his muscles accordingly.

So, in this unexpected and supreme test of his life, Zaidos found himself fit. As the work went on and on, endlessly as it seemed, Zaidos found that his brain commenced to work independently of his hands. The unbelievable wounds of war no longer shocked his deadened nerves. His hands worked more and more accurately and rapidly, but on the inside of his brain was a sort of screen on which flashed the moving picture of his life.

They started from his little boyhood, when he first crossed the ocean up to the time of the last crossing, at the sad summons which had taken him to his dying father. No real moving picture, thought Zaidos, had ever been screened with so many thrills and exciting incidents as the real life-film through which he saw himself rapidly moving. Here and there on the b.l.o.o.d.y field he puzzled it out for himself, finding that the plot was complete, and that Velo, his cousin, must be the villain.

Zaidos was still ignorant of the fact that Velo had stolen the papers, but that Velo hated him and would be glad enough to get him out of the way grew clearer and clearer, in spite of the apparent friendliness with which he had treated him up to the present time. But now, hour by hour, Zaidos was conscious of a sort of sour look of hatred which seemed to grow plainer and plainer in Velo's sharp face. Zaidos had an uncomfortable feeling that he must keep a watchful eye on Velo. It was nothing but an instinct, but even so, he felt it, and feeling it, was ashamed.

So the time wore on.

Bending over a soldier with a gaping, b.l.o.o.d.y hole in his side, Zaidos turned to the hospital corps pouch spread open beside him, and felt for a roll of gauze bandage. One little roll remained.

"Get back to the hospital and get another outfit of gauze and tape," he ordered Velo.

Velo stood up and straightened his back. He looked down at Zaidos, then his gaze traveled to the unconscious soldier.

"What do you bother with him for?" he said heartlessly. "It's no use.

I'm going to quit. What's the use of working myself to death?"

"Going to desert?" asked Zaidos coldly. He was holding the hurt soldier in a position where he could treat the wound quickly.

"I suppose so," said Velo. "This isn't my fight!"

"Look here," said Zaidos, "I don't care what you do. If you desert and are caught at it, and are shot, it is no affair of mine. I wash my hands of you. But for the sake of your own manhood _get me that bandage_ while I take care of this man. Don't be such a _cad_, Velo!

Get me the things I need, and then let's talk this thing out later.

But don't do anything to disgrace the family. After all, you know, if anything happens to me, why, you are the head of the house."

Zaidos glanced suddenly up at his cousin, and surprised in his face a look that once and for all swept away all the kindly doubts he had cherished. Velo's countenance was so full of cold speculation and deadly hatred that Zaidos started. Then he pulled himself together, and looked Velo in the eye.

"Get the bandages!" he said coldly and Velo, as though controlled by some superior force, turned to do as he was told.

As he hurried across the rough, blood-stained field, he too saw pictures in his mind. He saw the contrasting fates, either of which he thought might be his. The obscure life of a poor relation, dependent on a relative's kindness, and the life of luxury if all that relative had should come to him. A better boy could have planned to build up a career for himself, but Velo could not or would not. He was like a thief who would rather steal the dollar which he could go to work and earn honestly.

Velo had become desperate in the last few days. As he hurried on, he was seized with a sudden determination to end everything. He went into the First Aid shelter and secured the bandages from the supply table and went back, a dreadful resolve taking form as he went. He found Zaidos still bending over the wounded soldier.

"Well, you hurried, didn't you?" he said, looking up with a nod of thanks as Velo handed him the bandages. He went on rapidly, securing the gaping wound so that they could s.h.i.+ft the torn body to the stretcher.

"It's funny," he said as he worked, "that we don't run across the doctors oftener out here. Of course they are all at work just as hard as we are, and a good deal harder, poor fellows, but it does seem as though every time we get hold of a case that is a good deal too hard for us to tackle, why, then there isn't a soul in sight to help. I'm so afraid of doing something that will make somebody heal wrong, or limp or something."

"Be a good way to take revenge on somebody," said Velo.

"Why you--" Zaidos could not finish. "How the deuce do you _ever_ think up such stuff? For goodness' sake, don't say it to me! You make me sick!" He bent over his patient again, and Velo looked idly about.

At his feet lay a revolver. He picked it up. It was loaded. Idly he tried the trigger. It worked. He looked at Zaidos. How he hated him!

They seemed all alone on that field of dead and dying. The tide had swept away and left them there with their work.

There was a sudden red mist over Velo's sight. . . . Kneeling in the light of the big flashlight, Zaidos loomed up, a clear, clean cut figure with the velvet blackness of the night behind him. Velo brushed his hand before his eyes. Zaidos was putting the last pin in the neat dressing he had applied to the wound. There was a thread of hope for the man. Zaidos smiled. Velo knew he would get up--

The revolver sounded like a cannon. Zaidos, unhurt, got to his feet.

He pressed a hand to his side. Velo watched him with fascinated eyes.

Zaidos looked down. There was a cut across the service blouse between his sleeve and body, right under his left arm.

Zaidos stared first at Velo, then at the revolver still in his hand.

"How did that happen?" he demanded in a low, tense voice.

Velo swallowed and cleared his throat.

"The thing went off," he said huskily.

"Well, it came near doing for me," said Zaidos, still staring suspiciously at Velo. "You let me have that revolver! Yon are too funny with things to suit me."

Velo, still pale, smiled a wry, twisted smile. "I'm sorry," he lied.

"I don't see how it happened. It must be out of order."

"Give it to me!" said Zaidos, "and take the front of this stretcher.