Jaganath of war was moving its wheels, sharply, pitilessly. On it rolled towards the frontier (there was now none except a line of blood where men had died) and crossing it near Gravelotte, pausing perhaps for the breathless fraction of a second to ponder on that other battle that, there, forty-four years earlier, had seen the flower of the French cavalry slaughtered by the overwhelming cannons of the Teuton invader.
Tom rode in the wake of the scouting parties, guided by the stars—"just like back home," he thought, "when I used to go after rimmed cattle."
The ground was uneven, broken by clumps of trees, then, beyond Gravelotte, rising in layer upon layer of ragged rock, again dipping into valleys and bottom farms that had been deserted by the peasants.
"Sorry, old girl," he said to the mare, as he spurred her down a sharp hillside, "don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you got to do it! Wow there!"—and, forcing the horse to squat on its hind quarters like a dog, he made it slide through the loose sand and gravel in a sitting posture, pulling the mare sharply to her feet and jerking her to a gallop, without waiting for breath, as soon as level ground was reached again.
He grinned to himself. "Well," he said in the general direction of the evening star, "I've seen a lot of those motion picture weekly reviews. But, believe me, that Dago cavalry has nothing on me!"
On he galloped, finding water for himself and his mount at many little streams. Every half hour or so he stopped for a short rest. For—to quote his range philosophy—he didn't believe in waiting till the horse was worn. He said that horses were cussed animals at best, and the only way to ride them was to give them a few minutes rest before they had a chance to know that they were tired.
Once a narrow wedge of light shot from behind a heap of stones, and his mare plunged violently, switching her flat, docked tail, and looking nervously sideways to escape the glare of the light.
The cause of it, even as Tom was drawing a bead to shoot at the flash, was revealed a second later when a Bavarian infantryman, electric pocket lamp in his hand, stepped out and saluted. He had recognized the Uhlan uniform, and it did not even need Tom's snarling "Despatch rider!" to cause him to lower his rifle to the carry and step back again into the shade of the stones, switching off his lamp.
Occasionally, riding as hard as horse and leather would let him, he met long, ghostly lines of foot soldiers plodding stolidly through the star-flecked night, field kitchens on wheels, and motor caravans of the Imperial Service Corps.
But he was hardly noticed: just an officer of Uhlans, dashing into the night, like so many hundreds of others.
There were no trenches, no miles upon miles of barbed wires in those early war days to stop his progress, and he rode, rode!
Down a hill, sliding! Up a hill, bent over the mare's neck, pulling her up almost bodily, forcing her to climb like a cat! Taking a fallen tree at a long, lean jump! Swerving to escape the shock of a battery that came suddenly looking out of the dark! Slipping down the gravel bank of a broad stream, spurring the animal to breast the swirling water, till his hands were raw with the pulling of the reins, his knees numbed with the gripping of the saddle.
Suddenly he laughed.
A saddle! A silly, light, postage stamp saddle!
And he dismounted, he loosened the girth, he chucked the saddle into a clump of bushes.
He patted the horse's glistening, sweat-studded neck.
"Now we'll do some real riding!" he said, and he vaulted up, his legs dangling like an Indian's, his flesh thrilling to the touch of the horse's flesh.
And he rode! On!
Faint from the distance, the direction of Verdun, boomed a steady, dramatic roar, the big guns slashing into the war game. A splotch of whirling white shell stabbed the opaque black of the heavens. And on he rode, at a short gallop, as, the hills coiling higher, the ground became broken with splintering, treacherous stones. He could not see them. He felt them. Sensed them. He was bred to the free range, the open.
As he drew nearer the supposed lines of the French, the thought came to him that the French outposts might not like his uniform, that they might shoot on sight.
"Holy Moses!" he soliloquized. "Cheerful little prospect. But," he laughed grimly, "better to die by a French bullet than be strangled to death by the German Web! Git up there, old girl," as the mare shied at a puddle glistening in the moonlight.
Another short rest. And again he sent the horse to a long, stretching gallop, on and on and on!