“Hallo,” laughed a voice, “your Adjutant’s gone to sleep.”
“I’m not asleep, sir.” Peter, very indignant, started up from the Weasel’s berth on which he had been sitting; dived back to his own part of the tunnel. The two Colonels heard his voice down the telephone: “Very well Corporal. If the Brigade’s gone, you can disconnect. Are the horses ready? Just coming up the road. Thanks. . . .”
And then, for the first time in his life, Peter knew fear. Real crazy fear. It was midnight. Pitch-dark. Not a shell falling. But a shell might fall. If it did, what would happen to Little Willie? Little Willie was trotting up that damned road. If anything happened to Little Willie. If Jelks hadn’t fed Little Willie properly. Little Willie was the finest horse. . . .
“Your coat, sir, and your spurs. I’ve packed your belt in the valise. And there’s only two cigars left, sir?”
Driver Garton, smiling, proffered one of them.
The batteries of the 4th Brigade had been amazingly fortunate; got away almost without a casualty.
Laughed the Colonel, as he and Peter trotted side by side through cool rain: “Well, P.J., you won’t forget Le Rutoire in a hurry.”
Peter turned in his saddle, looked back towards the farm: “I should think not,” he said, and added, “Though I suppose that dug-out must have been pretty safe.”
“Safe?” Stark laughed again. “Why, man, it wouldn’t have stopped a direct hit from a pip-squeak.” . . .
They passed the cross-roads of Corons de Rutoire. “Francis!” thought Peter suddenly. Through the blurr of sleep, memory came back, clear-cut, horribly personal. He must find out what had happened to Francis. Then he fell fast asleep in his saddle; woke with a start to find Little Willie at walk through shadowy traffic.
“It’s a pity that attack didn’t succeed,” the Colonel was saying. “If it had, we might have got a brace of medals between us. As it is, if you live to be as old as Methuselah you’ll never see a worse show than the first two days of the battle of Loos.”
Next morning, as they rode, Brigade behind them, through the streets of Béthune, Peter fumbled in his breeches pocket; found a coin; stretched it down to the boy trotting at Little Willie’s head; took the proffered paper; spread it on his saddle-peak.