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Updated: June 20, 2025
Nightly, ever since, he had besought the saints to give him, some day, a tiny share in the avenging of that black disgrace. Mahan and Vivier were the warmest of Bruce's many admirers in the "Here-We-Comes." Ordinarily a dual whoop of joy from them would have greeted his advent.
In the growing moonlight his teeth gleamed whitely from under his upcurled lip. In a flash he turned and set off at a loping run, nose close to ground, his long stride deceptively swift. The zest of the man-hunt had obsessed him, as completely as, that day, it had spurred the advance of the "Here-We-Comes." The trail of the slayer was fresh, even over such broken ground.
The Big Dog always sleeps in the general's own room, when he's off-duty, at Division Headquarters. Maybe the general will O.K. his death-sentence, if you ask him to. He " Somewhat quickening his stately stride, the surgeon passed out of earshot. At the officers' mess of the "Here-We-Comes," he had often heard Bruce's praises sung. He had never chanced to see the dog until now.
The message was similar to one which had been telephoned to each of the supporting bodies, to right and to left of the Here-We-Comes. It bade the colonel prepare to withdraw his command from the front trenches at nightfall, and to move back on the main force behind the hill-crest. The front trenches were not important; and they were far too lightly manned to resist a mass attack.
To the left of the Here-We-Comes, and then in front of them, appeared the same wall of billowing gas. The Here-We-Comes were ready for it with their hastily donned masks. But there was no need of the precaution.
By instinct, the big dog seemed to know where to find the temporary regimental headquarters. He trotted past a sentry, into an unroofed cattle-shed where the colonel was busily scribbling a detailed report of the work done by the "Here-We-Comes" during that day's drive.
Now, the complete element of surprise was all-needful for the attack the Germans had planned against the "Here-We-Comes." Deprived of that advantage the expedition was doomed to utter failure. For, given a chance to wake and to rally, the regiment could not possibly be "rushed," in vivid moonlight, before the nearest Allied forces could move up to its support.
Though Mahan's tone of reproof was professionally harsh, his spirit was not in his words. And the silenced private knew it. He knew, too, that the top-sergeant was as savage over the early halt as were the rest of the men. Bruce, as a rule, when he honored the "Here-We-Comes" with a visit, spent the bulk of his time with Mahan and old Vivier.
As a result, when the signal to bivouac for the night was given, the "Here-We-Comes" were something like a mile ahead of the regiment which should have been at their immediate right, and nearly two miles in front of the brigade at their left. In other words, the "Here-We-Comes" now occupied a salient of their own, ahead of the rest of the FrancoAmerican line.
The rifles and machine-guns of the Here-We-Comes played merrily into the advancing gray swarms, stopping wave after wave, and at last checking the fifth and "master" wave almost at the very brink of the Franco-American parapet. "That's how they do!" Mahan pantingly explained to a rather shaky newcomer, as the last wave fell back. "They count on numbers and bullrushes to get them there.
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