The Little Colonel's Hero Part 6

"Early after lunch," was the answer. "He say he will up the mountain go, behind the town. He say that now he vair old man, maybe not again will he come this way, and one more time already before he die, he long to gather for himself the Alpine rosen."

"Have you had a hard storm here?" asked Mrs. Sherman.

The landlord shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.

"The vair worst, madame. Many trees blow down. The lightning he strike a house next to the church of St. Oswald, and a goatherd coming down just now from the mountain say that the paths are heaped with fallen limbs, and slippery with mud. That is why for I fear the Major have one accident met."

"Maybe he has stopped at some peasant's hut for shelter," suggested Mr.

Sherman, seeing the distress in Lloyd's face. "He knows the region around here thoroughly. However, if he is not here by the time we are through dinner, we'll organise a searching party."

"Hero knows that something is wrong," said the Little Colonel, as they went into the dining-room a few minutes later. "See how uneasy he seems, walking from room to room. He is trying to find his mastah."

The longer they discussed the Major's absence the more alarmed they became, as the time pa.s.sed and he did not return.

"You know," suggested Lloyd, "that with just one arm he couldn't help himself much if he should fall. Maybe he has slipped down some of those muddy ravines that the goatherd told about. Besides, he was so weak and tiahed this mawnin.'"

Presently her face brightened with a sudden thought.

"Oh, Papa Jack! Let's send Hero. I know where the Majah keeps his things, the flask and the bags, and the dog will know, as soon as they are fastened on him, that he must start on a hunt. And I believe I can say the words in French so that he'll undahstand. Only yestahday the Majah had me repeating them."

"That's a bright idea," answered her father, who was really more anxious than he allowed any one to see. "At least it can do no harm to try."

"I don't want any dessert. Mayn't I go now?" Lloyd asked. As she hurried up the stairs, her heart beating with excitement, she whispered to herself, "Oh, if he _should_ happen to be lost or hurt, and Hero should find him, it would be the loveliest thing that evah happened."

Hero seemed to know, from the moment he saw the little flask marked with the well-known Red Cross, what was expected of him. All the guests in the inn gathered around the door to see him start on his uncertain quest. He sniffed excitedly at his master's slipper, which Lloyd held out to him.

Then, as she motioned toward the mountain, and gave the command in French that the Major had taught her, he bounded out into the gloaming, with several quick short barks, and darted up the narrow street that led to the mountain road.

Maybe if he had not been with his master that way, the day before, he might not have known what path to take. The heavy rain had washed away all trails, so he could not trace him by the sense of smell; but remembering the path which they had travelled together the previous day, he instinctively started up that.

The group in the doorway of the inn watched him as long as they could see the white line of his silvery ruff gleam through the dusk, and then, going back to the parlour, sat down to wait for his return. To most of them it was a matter of only pa.s.sing interest. They were curious to know how much the dog's training would benefit his master, under the circ.u.mstances, if he should be lost. But to the Little Colonel it seemed a matter of life and death. She walked nervously up and down the hall with her hands behind her, watching the clock and running to the door to peer out in the darkness, every time she heard a sound.

Some one played a noisy two-step on the loose-jointed old piano. A young man sang a serenade in Italian, and two girls, after much coaxing, consented to join in a high, shrill duet.

Light-hearted laughter and a babel of conversation floated from the parlour to the hall, where Lloyd watched and waited. Her father waited with her, but he had a newspaper. Lloyd wondered how he could read while such an important search was going on. She did not know that he had little faith in the dog's ability to find his master. She, however, had not a single doubt of it.

The time seemed endless. Again and again the little cuckoo in the hall clock came out to call the hour, the quarters and halves. At last there was a patter of big soft paws on the porch, and Lloyd springing to the door, met Hero on the threshold. Something large and gray was in his mouth.

"Oh, Papa Jack!" she cried. "He's found him! Hero's found him! This is the Majah's Alpine hat. The flask is gone from his collah, so the Majah must have needed help. And see how wild Hero is to start back. Oh, Papa Jack!

Hurry, please!"

Her call brought every one from the parlour to see the dog, who was springing back and forth with eager barks that asked, as plainly as words, for some one to follow him.

"Oh, let me go with you! _Please_, Papa Jack," begged Lloyd.

He shook his head decidedly. "No, it is too late and dark, and no telling how far we shall have to climb. You have already done your part, my dear, in sending the dog. If the Major is really in need of help, he will have you to thank for his rescue."

The landlord called for lanterns. Several of the guests seized their hats and alpenstocks, and in a few minutes the little relief party was hurrying along the street after their trusty guide, with Mr. Sherman in the lead.

He had caught up a hammock as he started. "We may need some kind of a stretcher," he said, slinging it over his shoulder.

They trudged on in silence, wondering what they would find at the end of their journey. The mountain path was strewn with limbs broken off by the storm. Although the moon came up presently and added its faint light to the yellow rays of the lanterns, they had to pick their steps slowly, often stumbling.

Hero, bounding on ahead, paused to look back now and then, with impatient barks. They had climbed more than an hour, when he suddenly shot ahead into the darkest part of the woods and gave voice so loudly that they knew that they had reached the end of their search, and pushed forward anxiously.

The moonlight could not reach this spot among the trees, so densely shaded, but the lanterns showed them the old man a short distance from the path. He was pinned to the wet earth by a limb that had fallen partly across him. Fortunately, the storm had been unable to twist it entirely from the tree. Only the outer end of the limb had struck him, but the tangle of leafy boughs above him was too thick to creep through. His clothes were drenched, and on the ground beside him, beaten flat by the storm, lay the bunch of Alpine roses he had climbed so far to find.

He was conscious when the men reached him. The brandy in the flask had revived him and as they drew him out from under the branches and stretched the hammock over some poles for a litter, he told them what had happened.

He had been some distance farther up the mountain, and had stopped at a peasant's hut for some goat's milk. He rested there a long time, never noticing in the dense shade of the woods that a storm was gathering.

It came upon him suddenly. His head was hurt, and his back. He could not tell how badly. He had lain so long on the wet ground that he was numb with cold, but thought he would be better when he was once more resting warm and dry at the inn.

He stretched out his hand to Hero and feebly patted him, a faint smile crossing his face. "Thou best of friends," he whispered. "Thou--" Then he stopped, closing his eyes with a groan. They were lifting him on the stretcher, and the pain caused by the movement made him faint.

It was a slow journey down the slippery mountain path. The men who carried him had to pick their steps carefully. At the inn the little cuckoo came out of the clock in the hall and called eleven, half past, and midnight, before the even tramp, tramp of approaching feet made the Little Colonel run to the door for the last time.

"They're comin', mothah," she whispered, with a frightened face, and then ran back to hide her eyes while the men pa.s.sed up the steps with their unconscious burden. She thought the Major was dead, he lay so white and still. But he had only fainted again on the way, and soon revived enough to answer the doctor's questions, and send word to the Little Colonel that she and Hero had saved his life. "Do you heah that?" she asked of Hero, when they told her what he had said. "The doctah said that if the Majah had lain out on that cold, wet ground till mawnin', without any attention, it surely would have killed him. I'm proud of you, Hero. I'm goin' to get Papa Jack to write a piece about you and send it to the _Courier-Journal_.

How would you like to have yo' name come out in a big American newspapah?"

Several lonely days followed for the Little Colonel. Either her father or mother was constantly with the Major, and sometimes both. They were waiting for his niece to come from Zurich and take him back with her to a hospital where he could have better care than in the little inn in Zug.

It greatly worried the old man that he should be the cause of disarranging their plans and delaying their journey. He urged them to go on and leave him, but they would not consent. Sometimes the Little Colonel slipped into the room with a bunch of Alpine roses or a cl.u.s.ter of edelweiss that she had bought from some peasant. Sometimes she sat beside him for a few minutes, but most of her time was spent with Hero, wandering up and down beside the lake, feeding the swans or watching the little steamboats come and go. She had forgotten her fear of the bottom dropping out of the town.

One evening, just at sunset, the Major sent for her. "I go to Zurich in the morning," he said, holding out his hand as she came into the room. "I wanted to say good-bye while I have the time and strength. We expect to leave very early to-morrow, probably before you are awake."

His couch was drawn up by the window, through which the s.h.i.+mmering lake shone in the sunset like rosy mother-of-pearl. Far up the mountain sounded the faint tinkling of goat-bells, and the clear, sweet yodelling of a peasant, on his homeward way. At intervals, the deep tolling of the bell of St. Oswald floated out across the water.

"When the snow falls," he said, after a long pause, "I shall be far away from here. They tell me that at the hospital where I am going, I shall find a cure. But I know." He pointed to an hour-gla.s.s on the table beside him. "See! the sand has nearly run its course. The hour will soon be done.

It is so with me. I have felt it for a long time."

Lloyd looked up, startled. He went on slowly.

"I cannot take Hero with me to the hospital, so I shall leave him behind with some one who will care for him and love him, perhaps even better than I have done." He held out his hand to the dog.

"Come, Hero, my dear old comrade, come bid thy master farewell." Fumbling under his pillow as he spoke, he took out a small leather case, and, opening it, held up a medal. It was the medal that had been given him for bravery on the field of battle.

"It is my one treasure!" murmured the old soldier, turning it fondly, as it lay in his palm. "I have no family to whom I can leave it as an heirloom, but thou hast twice earned the right to wear it. I have no fear but that thou wilt always be true to the Red Cross and thy name of Hero, so thou shalt wear thy country's medal to thy grave."

He fastened the medal to Hero's collar, then, with the dog's great head pressed fondly against him, he began talking to him softly and gently in French. Lloyd could not understand, but the sight of the gray-haired old soldier taking his last leave of his faithful friend brought the tears to her eyes.

She tried to describe the scene to her mother, afterward.

"Oh, it was so pitiful!" she exclaimed. "It neahly broke my heart. Then he called me to him and said that because I was like his little Christine, he knew that I would be good to Hero, and he asked me to take him back to America with me. I promised that I would. Then he put Hero's paw in my hand, and said, 'Hero, I give thee to thy little mistress. Protect and guard her always, as she will love and care for thee.' It was awfully solemn, almost like some kind of blessing.

"Then he lay back on the pillows as if he was too tiahed to say anothah word. I tried to thank him, but I was so surprised and glad that Hero was mine, and yet so sorry to say good-bye to the Majah, that the right words wouldn't come. I just began to cry again. But I am suah the Majah undahstood. He patted my hand and smoothed my hair and said things in French that sounded as if he was tryin' to comfort me. Aftah awhile I remembahed that we had been there a long time, and ought to go, so I kissed him good-bye, and Hero and I went out, leavin' the doah open as he told us. He watched us all the way down the hall. When I turned at the stairway to look back, he was still watchin'. He smiled and waved his hand, but the way he smiled made me feel worse than evah, it was so sad."

Mr. Sherman went with the Major next morning, when he was taken to Zurich.

Lloyd was asleep when they left the inn, so the last remembrance she had of the Major was the way he looked as he lay on his couch in the sunset, smiling, and waving his hand to her. When Christmastide came, it was as he said. He was with his little Christine.

"I can hardly keep from crying whenever I think of him," Lloyd wrote to Betty. "It was so pitiful, his giving up everything in the world that he cared for, and going off to the hospital to wait there alone for his hour-gla.s.s to run out. Hero seems to miss him, but I think he understands that he belongs to me now. I can scarcely believe that he is really mine, and that I may take him back to America with me. He is the best thing that the wonder-ball has given me, or ever can give me.