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Yet the commander of the division to which the "Here-We-Comes" were attached did not trust to probabilities nor to outward signs. He had been at the front long enough to realize that the only thing likely to happen was the thing which seemed unlikeliest. And he felt a morbid curiosity to learn more about the personnel of those dormant German trenches.
Bruce's warmest overseas friends were to be found in the ranks of the mixed Franco-American regiment, nicknamed the "Here-We-Comes." Right gallantly, in more than one tight place, had Bruce been of use to the "Here-We-Comes." On his official visits to the regiment, he was always received with a joyous welcome that would have turned any head less steady than a thoroughbred collie's.
Bruce wandered across to the place where the donor of the soup-bone brandished his offering. Other men, too, were crowding around with gifts. Between petting and feeding, the collie spent a busy hour among his comrades-at-arms. He was to stay with the "Here-We-Comes" until the following day, and then carry back to headquarters a reconnaissance report.
"How did you get word?" demanded the astonished colonel of the Here-We-Comes, later in the day. "From your note, of course," replied the general he had questioned. "The collie old Bruce." "Bruce?" babbled the colonel foolishly. "Of course," answered the general. "Who else? But I'm afraid it's the last message he'll ever deliver.
And the fur on his sides had scarcely yet grown over the mark of the high-powered ball which had gone clear through him without touching a mortal spot. Truly, the regimental surgeon of the "Here-We-Comes" had done a job worthy of his own high fame! And the dog's wonderful condition had done the rest. Apart from scars and stiffness, Bruce was none the worse for his year on the battle-front.
For months the "Here-We-Comes" had been quartered in a "quiet" or only occasionally tumultuous sector, near Chateau-Thierry. Then the comparative quiet all at once turned to pandemonium.
The "Here-We-Comes" were encamped, for the while, at the edge of a sector from whence all military importance had recently been removed by a convulsive twist of a hundred-mile battle-front. In this dull hole-in-a-corner the new-arrived rivets were in process of welding into the more veteran structure of the mixed regiment.
"This is Bruce," continued Mahan, "the dog that saved the 'Here-We-Comes' at Rache, and that steered a detail of us to safety one night in the fog, in the Chateau-Thierry sector. If you order any man of the 'Here-We-Comes' to shoot Bruce, you're liable to have a mutiny on your hands officer or no officer. But if you wish, sir, I can transmit your order to the K.O. If he endorses it "
It was in rebuke for this bit of good progress and bad tactics that the division commander had written to the colonel, in the dispatch which Bruce had brought. German airmen, sailing far above, and dodging as best they could the charges of the Allied 'planes, had just noted that the "Here-We-Comes" "salient" was really no salient at all.
The Werewolf can be killed only by a silver bullet, marked with a cross and blessed by a priest. He will live to track me down! Lock me where he cannot find me, for the sake of sweet mercy!" And in this way, the "Here-We-Comes" learned of Bruce's part in the night's averted disaster. Old Vivier wept unashamed over the body of the dog he had loved.
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