Still his curiosity was very mild. Surely, if danger threatened, the sentinel would realize it. For by this time the Shadow was a bare three feet behind him near enough, by Bruce's system of logic, for the Missourian to have smelled and heard the pursuer. So Bruce got up, in the most leisurely fashion, preparatory to strolling across to investigate. But at almost his first step he saw something that changed his gracefully slouching walk into a charging run.
The Shadow suddenly had merged with the sentinel. For an instant, in stark silence, the two seemed to cling together. Then the Shadow fled, and the lanky Missourian slumped to the earth in a sprawling heap, his throat cut.
The slayer had been a deft hand at the job. No sound had escaped the Missourian, from the moment the stranglingly tight left arm had been thrown around his throat from behind until, a second later, he fell bleeding and lifeless.
In twenty leaping strides, Bruce came up to the slain sentinel and bent over him. Dog-instinct told the collie his friend had been done to death. And the dog's power of scent told him it was a German who had done the killing.
For many months, Bruce had been familiar with the scent of German soldiers, so different from that of the army in which he toiled. And he had learned to hate it, even as a dog hates the vague "crushed cucumber" smell of a pitviper. But while every dog dreads the viper-smell as much as he loathes it, Bruce had no fear at all of the boche odor. Instead, it always awoke in him a blood-lust, as fierce as any that had burned in his wolf-ancestors.
This same fury swept him now, as he stood, quivering, above the body of the kindly man who so lately had petted him; this and a craving to revenge the murder of his human friend.
For the briefest time, Bruce stood there, his dark eyes abrim with unhappiness and bewilderment, as he gazed down on the huddled form in the wet grass. Then an electric change came over him. The softness fled from his eyes, leaving them bloodshot and blazing. His great tawny ruff bristled like an angry cat's. The lazy gracefulness departed from his mighty body. It became tense and terrible. In the growing moonlight his teeth gleamed whitely from under his upcurled lip.