Renni the Rescuer (24 page)

One day Renni had found eleven unfortunates. It was growing late when George, a wagging tail on either side of him, went to the dressing-station with the last of the rescued. The sky was starless, and the night so inky black that the very din of the distant battle seemed hushed, extinguished. Only here and there the ray of a far-off searchlight would stab the heavens, to hunt for a wavering moment, and then even its climbing beam of light would disappear.

The work at the dressing-station ended, and the last of the ambulances was about to roll off to the field hospital.

George might have ridden in with one of them, like the other dog-trainers. But Renni seemed strangely uneasy. So he delayed. Nickel called to him, “Aren't you coming along?”

“No,” George said shortly.

“You must be tired and hungry.”

“Not especially,” said George. “It's only a little way. I'd rather walk. It won't take much more than an hour.”

So Nickel's ambulance went its way. George felt Renni pull impatiently on his leash. A sort of presentiment awoke in George, a foretaste of something disagreeable, painful. He thought: “If we should find another one . . . now . . . when all the stretcher-bearers have gone . . . when there isn't an ambulance left . . . ” He thought it over: “Can Renni possibly have let one get by him . . . ? Strange! Worse than that—awful! The poor fellow would have to be in a dreadful state if even Renni could find no sign of life in him!”

He went on thinking and thinking, as he walked along the edge of the battlefield. He followed Renni's lead. The dog was testing the air in evident excitement. “Surely he'll soon find him now . . . but what will he find? And the wretched man will have to wait another hour till I get back with the ambulance . . . only he'll die first.”

His thoughts were broken off short by Renni's sharp pull at the leash. Fox dashed ahead like a streak. George saw the little snow-white body flash through the dark, while he busied himself to free the now excited Renni from the leash.

All of a sudden two short quick barks rang out, with a queer sharpness in them. And immediately after a cry of pain, a shriek that died in a gurgle. Renni darted forward to Fox's rescue and George followed at a dead run.

As he ran he thought in half-conscious surprise: “That's no wounded man. That's something . . . something . . . ”

He had about a hundred steps to go. Renni's bellow of rage gave wings to his feet. What went on there that made Renni charge like a mad dog, rush in, give way, and then attack again? He flicked on the flashlight which hung around his neck. The ray fell on a wildly distorted face. Two threatening eyes glared at him. The man reared up, deadly, menacing, right before him. A long thin-bladed knife gleamed in his uplifted hand, poised to strike.

Swift as lightning, George snatched at his pistol, fired once, twice, right at that wild and horrible face. It shuddered into something beyond recognition. The eyes glazed, went out. The man doubled up and, as he fell, he wavered out of the little circle of light into the enveloping darkness.

As quickly as it all happened, still George saw everything, from one fraction of a second to the next. Aghast, yet ready for danger, he bent over the fallen man.

He was dead. That blood-smeared face seemed to cry to heaven. “Most hideous of crimes!” flashed through George's mind. “A monster who robs the dead, who steals from the fallen . . . watches, rings, money . . . who murders the dying . . . with that knife.”

He picked the knife up. The blade was ground to razor edge. A few feet away Renni broke into a long wailing howl of grief.

“Fox!” cried George, and reached him in one leap. He lay with a gaping wound in his side. Dead. Quite dead. Over his body stood Renni, mouth wide open, howling. The pigeon hovered restlessly on his back.

Shocked, shaken, George knelt by the dog's body. “Poor little Foxy! True and honest friend! No matter how many men have fallen, it is right for me to mourn for you.”

Renni listened to his words with ears pricked up sharply. He understood and he echoed them with a melodious moaning, which gradually grew softer and softer. Now George spoke to him. “What do you say? We can't leave our old friend lying on the field? Let's bury him right here.” As if to agree, Renni reached out one forepaw and laid it on his arm.

The same knife that had killed Fox helped dig his grave. “And it might have killed you, Renni, and me too,” said George while he worked with it.

Renni looked on attentively. He had stopped his keening. On his back the pigeon had stuck her head under her wing. She was asleep. As George laid Fox's stiffening body in the hole, Renni gave one last low moan. He stood with nose pointing steeply downward and saw Fox disappear beneath the earth. George tamped the dirt carefully, and then, in sudden revulsion,
he hurled the knife as far as he could into the dark.

“Come, Renni!”

They made for the field hospital, where they were to spend the night. They walked slowly, sadly. Renni's head was down, his tail hung limp. And as they walked, a vision of the man suddenly flared up in George's imagination—the man he'd shot, that dreadful, murderous face whose criminal fury had so suddenly broken, paled and sunk into the darkness. And George realised, “I've killed a man!”

Horror filled him. He defended himself to his rebellious conscience. “A hyena, a ghoul . . . ! And he killed Fox and tried to kill Renni and me. He would have done it too. I fired in self-defence.” It was no use. Again and again the self-reproach returned: “. . . killed a man!”

When he tried to justify himself with the old saying, “All's fair in war,” he found no comfort in it.

Reasoning like that might have justified the man he'd killed, might have led him to his gruesome crimes—the plea that he was only taking from the dead the things they'd never need again.

“Perhaps his children were hungry at home . . . . And I shot him down! It's my business to save men from death . . . and I have killed a man!”

He caught at Renni's collar. “You too, gentle Renni, your business is to help no less than mine—and you sprang at him in fury!”

But Renni, who usually responded to any words from his master, remained indifferent. He did not wag his tail. He just trotted quietly along.

George went on accusing himself. “How many wicked things I've done!” He thought of the blow he'd given poor, innocent Flamingo. A soft word would have been enough to stop his mad rage. There had been no call for brutal action.

And young Rupert Fifer. He wasn't all bad. He had just been led astray by hunger and poverty. Patient kindness would have brought him around. “What I should have done,” thought George, “was try to awaken his better nature, train him in the right way. Patience and kindness! That's where I've failed. Completely. Beat him and throw him out of the house! Send him home
sprawling! Make a young boy bitter forever. Kick him back into hopeless misery!”

And now this wretch who had sunk in war to the vilest of crimes . . . he should have shot to wound not to kill him, should have arrested him and taken him to the guard. But no . . . he had fired a bullet straight in his face. In blind rage he had willed to slaughter.

But was he fair to himself? Had there been time for choice?

So, in this wild agitation, he reached his quarters and went to bed, but could find no rest. Renni, who usually slept close against him, did not share his cot tonight, but stretched out beside it on the floor. He curled up there and, after whimpering softly, went to sleep.

Then Renni began to dream. And in his dream he saw the man again, the knife held high, and little Fox dead. He howled in high thin whines, and his legs twitched violently.

George tossed sleepless the whole night long. In the morning he told Nickel what had happened.

Nickel raged. “The beast, the unspeakable beast! A
bullet was too good for him. He ought to have been hanged! I tell you the best way to get rid of such vermin is the shortest way. String them up on the nearest tree! Hack them down without mercy! Ghouls like that violate the honoured dead who have given their lives for their country! There's no forgiveness for it! You were right, as right as rain! Execute them on the spot!” And he added, “Poor little Fox! Such a cute little fellow! It's a shame!”

At first the way Nickel took it touched and comforted George a little, but its effect did not last long. He did not dare speak of his self-accusations. He took especially good care of Renni, provided him with the best of food—though, indeed, Renni would scarcely touch it—stroked him, talked tenderly to him. The dog would wag his tail faintly, look at him with swift, sidelong glances, and drop his eyes to the ground.

“He's mourning for Fox,” Nickel said gently.

George sighed. “Renni's tired of war . . . and I am too . . . . ”

B
UT THE WAR WAS NOT over. Not for a long time yet.

They had set up a new field hospital in an abandoned factory. The spacious rooms were filled with cots, and on every cot lay a wounded man. This one had his leg propped up; that, his arm in splints; a third, his head in a bandage. Many raved in fever. Many died, and they were carried out at once. Cries of agony or delirium rang through the halls, and an evil smell pervaded them in spite of the open windows.
Nurses hurried to and fro. They could not answer all the calls, the demands, the pleading. Most of them showed care and kindness; only a few seemed peevish. Surgeons repeatedly made their rounds.

George and Renni, who were stationed here, came in one evening when their work was done for the time being, and spent a couple of days at the hospital. George made himself useful in every way he could think of.

Renni had gradually regained cheerfulness, and he tried to win George back to it, but without success.

Once Renni followed George into a ward. The wounded lay quiet, hardly stirring. They had fallen prey to the apathy that is apt to overcome those who are long ill or long confined. A sort of indifference to their own condition, and to passing time. A sort of daze which may go over into oblivion. But the sight of Renni with the pigeon on his head aroused even the most benumbed. It amused and cheered them all.

“You mustn't come in here, Renni,” whispered George. “Wait outside.”

But Renni had no idea of waiting outside. The men
called to him from all sides, and on all sides asked George his name. Renni brightened the whole room. The nurses smiled and let him stay. Even the surgeons made no objection. Some petted him—and the dog took it forbearingly.

Renni went steadily from bed to bed, searching, sniffing, drawing away from hands that sought to stroke or stop him. At last he paused before a certain cot, sat down on his hind quarters, and looked carefully at the man who lay there, his face bright with fever.

He was an enemy soldier, a strapping peasant boy. He opened his eyes.

“What's that perched there on your skull?” he asked the dog.

A nurse whispered to George, “We have to be awfully careful with this patient. Shot through the lungs. Terrible case of pneumonia.”

“Renni!” cried George at once. But Renni, instead of springing at his master's word, refused to budge an inch.

“Well, after all,” said the nurse, “he's beyond hurting or helping. He won't live longer than tomorrow morning,
at the most. Leave your dog with him. It might give him one last pleasure.”

So George did not repeat his command, but instead questioned the nurse about the sick boy.

“He's always asking for cigarettes,” she said, “but they're strictly forbidden. So is meat, and coffee. He's allowed nothing but milk . . . and he won't drink that. He keeps asking for cigarettes, meat and coffee over and over. He fairly pleads for them!”

“Poor devil!” said George. Renni seemed of the same opinion, for he laid one forepaw on the edge of the bed.

“You're mighty friendly with me,” said the wounded soldier. Renni's tail swung faster. The boy went on in a hoarse voice, “Everybody here is nice to me . . . it's hard to believe I'm among enemies. But you, you're especially nice. Pity you haven't a cigarette. I'll bet you'd give me one.”

As George went out he heard his invitation to Renni: “Come see me every day . . . do you hear? Every day.”

The nurse whispered sympathetically, “Every day . . . that won't be very many days.”

From beds near by patients began tossing cigarettes to the poor soldier. Young peasants like him, foes yesterday, comrades now in pain and distress, they took pity on their fellow sufferer and cared not a fig for the doctor's stern commands. He smoked happily, eagerly. He smoked as one dying of thirst might cool his throat at a clear spring. And later he smoked again, occasionally, hurriedly, at odd moments when nurses and doctors weren't around, just a few blissful puffs. And doing it thus secretly gave him exquisite pleasure. He did not die that day, nor the next, nor the day after. His fever was still high, but he was cheerful. Every day Renni would sit down by his bed and stay there even when George was busy elsewhere—in the kitchen, the sterilising room, or the operating room.