The way became steep for the wagons as they neared the emplacements. Peter swung off and led his pony. Infantry was already engaged down in the hollows; the reek of powder began to cut the air at intervals, but the strong wind as often cleansed it away, and the scent of woods came up startlingly, with the warmth of the sun upon the ground--the sweet healing breath of drying cedar boughs.
He was sorry now he had roughed it with the young doctor; that sort of thing was very far from him. He had no memory of another episode like it. On occasion, dropping into the queerest abstractions, he fancied _her_ near.... It had been like a soldier leaving his lady for the battle--the precious few minutes less than an hour ago. She had promised to be with him. There had been no talk nor thought of the terrifying day she faced in the hospital; everything had to do with his taking the field. She would follow him with her thoughts. Perhaps he would find his soul out there, she suggested, as he had never found it before. Peter wondered now just what she meant by that. It was not his way to fall back upon any such abstraction.
He reflected how her presence always changed him, gave him strength of a different sort, and directness of aim.... It was true that she seemed near--on the other side from Samarc--a part of the mountain fragrance that would not be overpowered in the gun-reek. He felt if he could turn quickly enough he would catch the gleam of her colors. This was her country. She was of the north and the cold lands; she belonged to the purity of the cedars.
He played with the thought that she was near; and from the thought, because it was good, a glimpse of the future came to him--the peace to come, when men would dwell again with their loves, and the dream of superb affiliation would come true. All this madness of men would pass, as the rising powder-reek would pass from these Galician hills, and leave them their silence and their natural fragrance.
The wagons had gone on. Samarc's battery might have been rubbed out for all their ability to find it. All faces strange--gunners, range-finders, and the cartridge hands. Peter felt a horror in his breast for the immediate presence of the guns--as if he had reached the end of toleration in the one day with them. Samarc felt this hate, too, his ruling passion.... Any moment one of the rapid-firers might drum into action. Their sense was one--that something would be uncoupled in their minds. They turned, Peter laughing at his desire to run--as they found another group of machines emplaced in a rocky shelter a little higher than the spot where the shrapnel had struck three days before.