Page:Armistice Day.djvu/380

358 I was sure that Pierre had been wounded or blinded; nothing less could have beguiled his vigilance. Hastily halting the line, I made my way forward with some effort, only to find Pierre gone and an American private in the lead. To my angry question this man replied a little shakily: "Dead, sir—didn't you know? Shell splinter—the heart. About four o'clock." Between grief, wrath, and alarm, I could hardly put the questions that hurried to my lips. Pierre had died, as the man said, about four o'clock, and the soldier nearest him had tried to send a message back to me. That message had evaporated on the way. It had passed, as it crept down the line, from certainty to probability, from probability to conjecture, from conjecture to a vague hint of unknown evil, till it reached me finally as a shapeless fear. At the point where Pierre fell, the trail was unusually distinct, and the head soldier, in the absence of orders and the vanity of leadership, had passed on. He had failed to note the point where the trail diverged to the northwest, and we were astray without a guide near set of sun in the depths of an intricate and unknown forest raked by German fire.

The head soldier protested that he could guide us back, and after a moment's irresolution I allowed him to try. Twilight falls early and blurs the trails in a great forest. In a quarter of an