If German
troops appeared and speed to escape were lacking, he would jump from
Marne's back and hunt a new covert. But he saw nobody. The evidences of
man's work were present continually in the cannonade, but man himself
was absent.
The horse went on with ponderous and sure tread. Evidently he had
wandered far under the influence of the firing, but it was equally
evident that his certain instinct was guiding him back again. He crossed
a brook flowing down into the Marne, passed through a wheat field, and
entered a little valley, where grew a number of oaks, clear of
undergrowth.
When he saw what was lying under the oaks he pulled hard at the rough
mane, until the horse stopped. He had distinctly made out the figures of
men, stretched upon the ground, apparently asleep, and sure to be
Germans. He stared hard at them, but the horse snorted and tried to pull
away. The action of the animal rather than his own eyesight made him
reckon aright.
A horse would not be afraid of living men, and, slipping from the back
of Marne, John approached cautiously. A few rays of wan moonlight
filtered through the trees, and when he had come close he shuddered over
and over again. About a dozen men lay on the ground and all were stone
dead. The torn earth and their own torn figures showed that a shell had
burst among them. Doubtless it had been an infantry patrol, and the
survivors had hurried away.
John, still shuddering, was about to turn back to his horse, when he
remembered that he needed much and that in war one must not be too
scrupulous.
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