Shelled by an Unseen Foe Part 14

I've got to look out for accidents, it seems. I never saw anything so careless in my life. You have just got to be careful, Velo! I won't stand for it! This isn't the first time I've nearly come to harm through your _carelessness_, if you want to call it that. I tell you I won't stand for it! Mind, I don't make any accusations; and I don't claim you are to blame for a lot of things that have happened to me lately, but if things don't stop, why, you are going to be sorry!

There won't be any revolvers going off, and your bed won't go down, and your medicine won't get exchanged for poison, like it sometimes happens. I shall just take you out back of the next wire entanglement, and I will give you a _good beating up_, Velo. I remember I used to have to do it when we were about four years old. It used to do you a lot of good, and I suppose all these years since you have had no one to keep you where you belonged. I won't do this, you understand, unless you get careless with guns and things again. You hear, Velo?"

Velo made no reply.

The two boys carefully bearing the stretcher tramped along in silence.

"You hear, Velo?" said Zaidos again. "Honestly, the more I think of it, the madder I get!"

"You stop your nonsense!" said Velo suddenly over his shoulder. His voice took on a whine. "What makes you act so, Zaidos? I'm your cousin, and I should think you would be ashamed of the things you say to me, just as if I haven't stuck right beside you every minute, and as if I had not done everything in the world that I possibly could do to help you. You don't treat me well, Zaidos!"

"I do, too," said Zaidos, stung by this injustice. "I should think I did; but how do you treat me?"

They reached the entrance to the First Aid Station and gave their unconscious burden into the hands waiting to receive him. The doctor scanned the wound.

"Well, boys," he said, "you have saved this man all right." He turned the bright light on the still, white face. "My heavens!" he exclaimed.

"Who is it?" asked the nurse.

Velo looked at the face, and spoke before the doctor could reply.

"I know him," he said. "His name is John Smith."

The doctor was working rapidly with restoratives.

"John Smith?" he repeated. "This is the Prince of Teck's oldest son, and his brother was killed an hour ago. We must keep this fellow alive," he went on, doggedly. "First time I met him he was just an hour old. He won't go out of this world yet if _I_ can help it!"

The boys went outside and for a moment sat down on the ground to rest.

"What do you suppose made him do that?" said Velo musingly.

"Do what?" asked Zaidos.

"Why," said Velo, "I asked what his name was one night and he said John Smith. I think that old doctor is making a mistake."

"What does it matter?" said Zaidos. "He would make just the same effort to save the plain John Smiths as he would to save the princes of the world."

"Pooh!" said Velo, sneering. "I guess not! Why should he? He knows a thing or two and you will find it out some day. Why, n.o.body does anything for anybody unless they get paid for it somehow or other!"

"Oh, say," said Zaidos, getting up and striking one clenched, fist violently into the other, "I wouldn't have your little bit of a soul for anything on earth! I wouldn't have your mean, little bit of a suspicious, ungenerous mind! I hate to remind a fellow like you of anything so fine, but how about my father? What pay, _pay_, mind you, did he ever get for taking care of _you_? What did he ever get for starting that colony of sick people up on the mountain back of his hunting lodge, with a doctor right there, and a nurse or two paid by father? Do you suppose it made him feel good to see them tottering all over the preserve where he could no longer shoot, for fear of hitting some of the poor wretches?"

"No," agreed Velo, "he didn't get a thing out of all that, and I always thought that colony for the sick was the silliest thing I ever heard of. I'll tell you right now when I get hold of things--" he caught himself up quickly. "I mean, of course, when _you_ get hold of things, if you do as I would do, you will send those people packing back to their slums as fast as they can go. As far as his doing for me, why, I'm one of the family and he sort of had to. It is a duty. Besides, do you suppose it was very much fun sticking around that house, quiet as the grave, _nothing_ going on, _no_ one coming to see your father but old, grey-headed men and women forever fixing up charities?"

"That's all right," said Zaidos. "Do you know what I am going to do as soon as I get out of this? I'm going to cut right back to America and study as hard as I can. Then as soon as the war is over, I will come back here and straighten everything up. I will of course keep the t.i.tle. You can't give that away, and I wouldn't want to. I'm proud of my name. It is an honorable one and it has been kept clean by the men before me; but I mean to give Greece everything I can turn into money.

Then I'll take enough to start me, go back to America again, and cut out a career for myself. I'm going to be a doctor and as good a doctor as ever lived if study will do it. _That's_ the monument I mean to give my father and my mother."

He gave a jerk of the head toward Velo, who sat upright before him.

"How does that strike you, old top?" he asked and climbed down into the First Aid pit.

Left alone, Velo sat thinking. Then he rolled over on his face and beat the earth with his fists. Once more the films flew along, in the moving picture of his mind. He saw the wealth of the Zaidos house--gold, gold! a _stream_ of gold flowing and flowing _away_ from him! He saw the bright lights, the dancing, drinking, all the carousels he had so often dreamed of, slipping out of his grasp. What possible hope could a fellow like himself have of keeping on the right side of anyone like Zaidos? He smiled when he thought what Zaidos would say if he could know or guess what Velo's life had been. What would he do if he ever found out how he had treated Zaidos' long suffering father? And Velo did not try to deceive himself. He knew perfectly well that back there in Saloniki, there were people who would jump at a chance to get even with him, and who would give Zaidos an account of meanness and wrong-doing that would cause him to kick Velo out of the house.

Velo began to hate himself for the uncertainty in putting off what to him was a disagreeable necessity. Once more he went over the situation. It seemed as though he had gone over it a dozen times, a million times. It all ended at the blank wall which was Zaidos.

Zaidos _must_ be removed.

Now it is a well-known fact that we are what our thoughts make us. Our minds are like our houses, our homes. We do not have to entertain unwelcome guests. We do not have to invite them there. It may be that we feel obliged to treat everyone whom we meet at our games or in school or at work with common politeness. No matter how we despise a man, we can't very well go up to him in the street and say, "Here, I don't like your style," and proceed to knock him out with a good right-hander. Naturally it won't do. But we need not give the bounder the freedom of our homes. So with our thoughts. It is only when we bring them in and grow intimate with them, and make them part of ourselves that they begin to harm us.

Velo, too evil and too lazy to close the door of his mind on common thoughts and low desires, had grown more and more like his unworthy guests. And now instead of kicking the whole mob into the outer darkness, he lay there, face down, listening to their evil whispers.

"Get rid of Zaidos," they said over and over. "Get rid of him. Who will know? Don't you hate him? You ought to! Just because he is the one who really owns everything, is that any reason why you should get out and work for an honest living? You don't want to bother with an honest living. You want to live soft and lie easy. Get rid of Zaidos!

Now is your chance! It is your only chance. You know how he makes friends everywhere. He is straight as a string. He does not lie. He wouldn't do a mean action. Fellows like us are afraid of that sort.

Get rid of him. Now--now!"

So the whispering in Velo's mind went on, and he listened and listened, and presently he sat up. On his face was written what is written on every man's face when he gives the keys of his soul over to Evil.

Zaidos came climbing out.

"Well, the doctor is going to save your friend Smith," he said cheerfully. "Good work, too! One of the nicest fellows I ever knew, that Smith. Too bad about his little brother. I never saw two fellows so crazy over each other. It seems they are the last of the family.

Doctor says this fellow will never be able to fight again, but he will get perfectly well in time. I don't believe it myself. I don't believe any of the men wounded go will ever get all over it, but we can hope so, anyhow. You see I feel as though I knew this man Smith real well because he knows a schoolmate of mine, Nickell-Wheelerson his name is. He was just a plain boy when we were at school, but he came over with me, and now he's a lord. Poor old Nick, how he will hate it!"

Zaidos paused, and stared into the night.

Velo scanned him under lowering brows.

"Get it over soon--soon!" whispered the impatient Evil in his soul.

Velo put a hand on his breast where the papers were hidden. Zaidos stooped and tightened the strap of his puttee. Velo watched him sneeringly. Zaidos was so maddeningly unconcerned. Velo wondered if he could be near anyone who hated him as he hated Zaidos and not feel and fear it. The urge of Evil became like a heavy hand knocking on his heart. He almost feared Zaidos would hear it. "Now--now--now!" it went.

"Come on, Zaidos," he said, standing up. "Let's get to work. I suppose we have an all-night task before us."

Zaidos yawned. "I thought so, too," he said; "but it seems they are looking for a bad day to-morrow and we have been relieved from duty for the night. A new s.h.i.+ft goes into the field in ten minutes, and we go back to the rear to one of the farm-houses there to rest until ten to-morrow. Come on, let's start."

"To-morrow, then," whispered Velo to the Evil in his soul.

CHAPTER X

VICTORY

The boys walked slowly back, picking their way as well as they could in the darkness, occasionally taking to the zig-zag trenches when the surface paths were too obscure. Everywhere men were sleeping, rolled up in their blankets and lying uncomfortably along the bottom of the trenches or out on the ground under the stars. The boys did not talk.

Zaidos was busy thinking of the present, with all its tragic incidents, and occasionally a funny happening to lighten the gloom. He thought of Helen, and wondered how her well-beloved patient was progressing. He had a sort of "hunch" as the fellows at school used to say, that Helen was a happy girl, and certainly, if the man was conscious at all, he was happy, too.

About four hundred yards from the lines they found the farm-house to which they had been sent. It was practically a ruin. The roof was gone, excepting over one room where a fire burned in a big fireplace, and where a great kettle swung on a heavy chain. This room had had one side blown out of it, so it was not much better off except in the matter of a rainstorm, than the other rooms that had four sides but no ceilings. It was too open to the weather for much use, however, and the small group of soldiers present were quartered in a cellar close by.

A young sentinel showed Zaidos and Velo the way down, and they rolled up in their blankets and tried to sleep. It was a difficult thing to do. Zaidos found that the steady tramping and kneeling of the day and evening had made his leg, so recently healed, ache badly. It throbbed and he turned and twisted in an effort to find a comfortable position.

Velo's head ached splittingly, and he lay staring into the darkness, keeping company ever with the evil thoughts in his heart. He slept finally, however, and did not awake until Zaidos shook him by the shoulder and told him it was time for breakfast. The three-sided room with the fireplace had been turned into a kitchen, and the cooks were busy there when the boys went over. The meal tasted good, and although the coffee was thick and muddy, the boys partook of it eagerly. It was at least hot and sweet.