Red Fleece Part 6

II

THE COURT OF EXECUTION

Chapter 1

"Hai, you, Peter--wake up!"

It was Boylan's voice, seemingly afar off, but coming closer.

"Wake up.... I say, young man, what do you think of it by this time?"

Thus Peter was awakened the seventh morning out--and in a place he had not observed the previous night. It was as good a place as usual, if not better, except for the smell of fish that had gone before. Clearly it had been a fish shop, business suspended some time. There were certain scaly trays on the sloping s...o...b..ards to the street; scales glistened among the cobwebs of the low ceilings; also the floor was of turf, and doubtless very full of phosphor, an excellent base for rose- culture. The place dwindled and darkened to the rear, from which the head and shoulders of Samarc presently emerged, and a moment later Little Spenski, his companion, sat up and rubbed his eyes. These two, invariably together, were men of a rapid-fire battery, to meet their pieces lower in the fields, and attached for the present, as were Boylan and Mowbray, to the staff of General Kohlvihr's command.

"Think of what?" Peter asked.

Boylan disdained answer. He was strapping a pigskin legging over a bulging calf, always a severe strain. He looked up presently, reached across and touched his forefinger to Peter's chin then to his own, which bristled black and gray.

"Young man, you've got a secret," he remarked darkly.

Peter smiled. He kept his razors in the same case as his tooth-brush, and the case had not been mislaid so far. He could shave in the dark.

"You're either not of age, or your face is sterile," said Boylan.

"The floor of this fish shop isn't," said Peter.

"I've been with you the last forty-eight hours straight. No sign of life in that time."

"You went out looking for fresh meat at sundown. You were gone---"

"I was gone just five minutes, because the train wasn't up. You had tea on when I came back."

"There was a bit too much hot water."

"Peter, that will do once more, but I've got a suspicion. No man living can shave in the saddle--so you won't be able to spring that one. Besides, you are willing to discuss the matter."

"Did you ask what town this is?"

"No," said Boylan; "I couldn't remember if they told me. New town every night. The only thing to name a town is a battle. G.o.d, smell the wood smoke--doesn't it make you keen?"

"For what?"

Boylan looked at him. "What are we out for?"

"Apparently the column is out for blood, but I thought you might mean breakfast."

"The column will get blood, right enough," said Boylan, "whether it gets breakfast or not. What's the news, I wonder?"

"I've forgotten my relation to news.... Where are you going?"

"To see if that beef-train is in. I suppose you'll have rigged up a turkish bath and be in the cooling room by the time I get back."

Peter fed the horses and had tea and black bread served for two, by the time Boylan called from a distance: "Put on the griddle, Peter--a regular steak.... I stopped in the farrier's on the way back and had it anviled a bit. That's what kept me," he added.

Peter tossed it in the pan. Their fire was in the turf at the door of the fish shop. Boylan drew in close, having washed noisily, and deposited the remaining provisions in the two saddle-bags. "We're fixed for supper and breakfast," he remarked, with a sigh.

"You said that the army that would win this war must win through famine. The Russians had better begin--"

"I didn't say anything about Mr. B. B. Boylan--"

"Mr. Big Belt Boylan," Peter muttered, twisting his face away from the heat and sizzling smoke steam. The name held.

The huge Rhodes' man liked Peter more than the latter knew, and his likings of this sort were deep and peculiar. Boylan was nearing fifty, a man all in one piece--thick, ponderous, hard, scarred with _la viruela_, a saber sweep, a green-blue arc in his throat where some dart or arrow had torn its way in between vital columns. His head was bald and wrinkled, but very large, his neck and jaw to match, his eyes a soft blue that once had been his secret shame. Very often he had been called into the public glare.

"I was so hungry once," Boylan said, "that I've been a slave to the fear of it ever since." He referred to the Polar Failure. "Once in Farrel's Island--we were four," he added. "We drew lots to find out which one of us we must eat. That _was_ a winter.... All you fellows may begin famine as soon as you like. You'll come a long way before you arrive at the personal familiarity of the subject earned by this same little fat boy.... Turn it again, Peter."

Samarc rushed past, speaking excitedly in French, and in the shadows behind they saw the eyes of Spenski, sympathetic and wistful.

"What did he say, Peter?" Boylan asked quickly. "Samarc's French is like my Russian."

"He said his face had been fixed for tea--and toast with Spenski-- until we began to steam up the place. Now he's gone to the feed- wagons."

"Why, bless the ruffian, there's enough here for four."

"I told him that, but you know Samarc."

Little Spenski's voice now drawled from behind.

"We're getting low, anyway. It was right for him to fill the bags this morning, though very kind of you to offer--"

"I don't like that, Spenski," said Boylan. "Bull cheek for four was my order. Why, you fellows--"

Boylan was going to say how consistently generous with rations and private provisions the two Warsaw men had been, but got tangled in the language. Peter helped him. Boylan wouldn't have it otherwise, and quartered the steak, serving Spenski and covering the fourth with a tin. It was an excellent feast. For five days these two pair had cautiously, timidly even, stood for each other in that reserved way that much-weathered men integrate a memorable friends.h.i.+p.... Samarc returned. They helped him cache his provisions and drew him into the quadrangle around the fire. There was time for an extra pot of tea, and the dawn rose superbly. That day in the column Spenski was called into the personal escort of Kohlvihr, Boylan accompanying. Samarc and Peter rode as usual with the forward infantry--just behind the van, headquarters back a quarter of a mile.

"Tell me about Spenski," Peter asked. "He's an interesting chap. I heard him talking to you about the stars last evening, before supper, pointing out Venus and Jupiter."

"He'll grow on you," said Samarc, their talk in French. "He did in my case. We've been together six years in and out of the big instrument shop in Warsaw--Bloom's. We make a camera, microscopes and even a telescope now and then. I invented a rather profitable objective for the Blooms, for which they gave me a position, and a small interest that has kept me from wandering far from Warsaw. In the first days they told me about Spenski--his remarkable workmans.h.i.+p--and pointed out the wiry, red-headed little chap with the quick imperative smile you've seen. We got on well together from the first. It has been no small thing for me that he likes my ways. I got him in this service, by the way, and I don't know whether I'm very proud of that. He's a lot more famous as a workman now than six years ago."

"What is his work?" Peter asked.

"A lens-maker. His art is one of the finest of the human eye--requires genius to begin with. Spenski's craft on a gla.s.s in many cases doubles the price of the instrument. No one knows better what kind of a workman he is, nor can follow his particular finish with a keener or more appreciative eye, than old Dr. Abbe himself. Spenski has letters from that old master.

"He knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things--like the star stuff.

He'll name for you scores of the vague, indefinite ones, not to speak of the larger magnitudes, which he can call by color at any hour of the night. It was this pa.s.sion of his for the stars which showed him his work as a boy. That started him fabricating gla.s.ses to see them better. He has a supreme eye for light, circles and foci, and a brain that just plays with heavy mathematics--the most abstruse calculations. Yet, you see, he carries it all with the ease of a boy.

I think men who come with a task to do are like that. It's part of them. They don't feel the weight of what they know, because it's all through them--not localized. You might be with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than just a mechanic--if you were just a mechanic."

"It's very interesting," said Peter, as charmed with his companion as with the man he talked about.