Gladiator by Philip Wylie (great novels txt) 📕

his tremendous appetite.

Three days went by. Every day, twice, five times, they were attacked. But no offence seemed capable of driving that demoniac cluster of men from their position. A demon, so the enemy whispered, came out and fought for them. On the third day the enemy retreated along four kilometres of front, and the French moved up to reclaim many, many acres of their beloved soil. The Legionnaires were relieved and another episode was added to their valiant history.

Hugo slept for twenty hours in the wooden barracks. After that he was wakened by the captain's orderly and summoned to his quarters. The captain smiled when he saluted. "My friend," he said, "I wish to thank you in behalf of my country for your labour. I have recommended you for the Croix de Guerre."

Hugo took his outstretched hand. "I am pleased that I have helped."

"And now," the captain continued, "you will tell me how you executed that so unusual coup."

Hugo hesitated. It was the opportunity he had sought, the chance that might lead to a special commission whereby he could wreak the vengeance of his muscles on the enemy. But he was careful, because he did not feel secure in trusting the captain with too much of his secret. Even in a war it was too terrible. They would mistrust him, or they would attempt to send him to their biologists. And he wanted to accomplish his mission under their permission and with their co-operation. It would be more valuable then and of greater magnitude. So he smiled and said: "Have you ever heard of Colorado?"

"No, I have not heard. It is a place?"

"A place in America. A place that has scarcely been explored. I was born there. And all the men of Colorado are born as I was born and are like me. We are very strong. We are great fighters. We cannot be wounded except by the largest shells. I took that package by force and I carried it to you on my back, running swiftly."

The captain appeared politely interested. He thumbed a dispatch. He stared at Hugo. "If that is the truth, you shall show me."

"It is the truth—and I shall show you."

Hugo looked around. Finally he walked over to the sentry at the flap of the tent and took his rifle. The man squealed in protest. Hugo lifted him off the floor by the collar, shook him, and set him down.

The man shouted in dismay and then was silent at a word from the captain. Hugo weighed the gun in his hands while they watched and then slowly bent the barrel double. Next he tore it from its stock. Then he grasped the parallel steel ends and broke them apart with a swift wrench. The captain half rose, his eyes bulged, he knocked over his ink-well. His hand tugged at his moustache and waved spasmodically.

"You see?" Hugo said.

The captain went to staff meeting that afternoon very thoughtful. He understood the difficulty of exhibiting his soldier's prowess under circumstances that would assure the proper commission. He even considered remaining silent about Hugo. With such a man in his company it would soon be illustrious along the whole broad front. But the chance came. When the meeting was finished and the officers relaxed over their wine, a colonel brought up the subject of the merits of various breeds of men as soldiers.

"I think," he said, "that the Prussians are undoubtedly our most dangerous foe. On our own side we have—"

"Begging the colonel's pardon," the captain said, "there is a species of fighter unknown, or almost unknown, in this part of the world, who excels by far all others."

"And who may they be?" the colonel asked stiffly.

"Have you ever heard of the Colorados?"

"No," the colonel said.

Another officer meditated. "They are redskins, American Indians, are they not?"

The captain shrugged. "I do not know. I know only that they are superior to all other soldiers."

"And in what way?"

The captain's eyes flickered. "I have one Colorado in my troops. I will tell you what he did in five days near the town of Barsine." The officers listened. When the captain finished, the colonel patted his shoulder. "That is a very amusing fabrication. Very. With a thousand such men, the war would be ended in a week. Captain Crouan, I fear you have been overgenerous in pouring the wine."

The captain rose, saluted. "With your permission, I shall cause my Colorado to be brought and you shall see."

The other men laughed. "Bring him, by all means."

The captain dispatched an orderly. A few minutes later, Hugo was announced at headquarters. The captain introduced him. "Here, messieurs, is a Colorado. What will you have him do?"

The colonel, who had expected the soldier to be both embarrassed and made ridiculous, was impressed by Hugo's calm demeanour. "You are strong?" he said with a faint irony.

"Exceedingly."

"He is not humble, at least, gentlemen." Laughter. The colonel fixed Hugo with his eye. "Then, my good fellow, if you are so strong, if you can run so swiftly and carry such burdens, bring us one of our beautiful seventy-fives from the artillery."

"With your written order, if you please."

The colonel started, wrote the order laughingly, and gave it to Hugo. He left the room.

"It is a good joke," the colonel said. "But I fear it is harsh on the private."

The captain shrugged. Wine was poured. In a few minutes they heard heavy footsteps outside the tent. "He is here!" the captain cried. The officers rushed forward. Hugo stood outside the tent with the cannon they had requested lifted over his head in one hand. With that same hand clasped on the breach, he set it down. The colonel paled and gulped. "Name of the mother of God! He has brought it."

Hugo nodded. "It was as nothing, my colonel. Now I will show you what we men from Colorado can do. Watch."

They eyed him. There was a grating sound beneath his feet. Those who were quickest of vision saw his body catapult through the air high over their heads. It landed, bounced prodigiously, vanished.

Captain Crouan coughed and swallowed. He faced his superiors, trying to seem nonchalant. "That, gentlemen, is the sort of thing the Colorados do—for sport."

The colonel recovered first. "It is not human. Gentlemen, we have been in the presence of the devil himself."

"Or the Good Lord."

The captain shook his head. "He is a man, I tell you. In Colorado all the men are like that. He told me so himself. When he first enlisted, he came to me and asked for a special commission to go to Berlin and smash the Reich—to bring back the Kaiser himself. I thought he was mad. I made him peel potatoes. He did not say any more foolish things. He was a good soldier. Then the battle came and I saw him, not believing I saw him, standing on the parapet and wielding his rifle like the lightning, killing I do not know how many men. Hundreds certainly, perhaps thousands. Ah, it is as I said, the Colorados are the finest soldiers on earth. They are more than men."

"He comes!"

Hugo burst from the sky, moving like a hawk. He came from the direction of the lines, many miles away. There was a bundle slung across his shoulder. There were holes in his uniform. He landed heavily among the officers and set down his burden. It was a German. He dropped to the ground.

"Water for him," Hugo panted. "He has fainted. I snatched him from his outpost in a trench."

XIII

At Blaisencourt it was spring again. The war was nearly a year old. Blaisencourt was now a street of houses' ghosts, of rubble and dirt, populated by soldiers. A little new grass sprouted peevishly here and there; an occasional house retained enough of its original shape to harbour an industry. Captain Crouan, his arm in a sling, was looking over a heap of d�bris with the aid of field glasses.

"I see him," he said, pointing to a place on the boiling field where an apparent lump of soil had detached itself.

"He rises! He goes on! He takes one of his mighty leaps! Ah, God, if I only had a company of such men!"

His aide, squatted near by, muttered something under his breath. The captain spoke again. "He is very near their infernal little gun now. He has taken his rope. Ahaaaa! He spins it in the air. It falls. They are astonished. They rise up in the trench. Quick, Ph�dre! Give me a rifle." The rifle barked sharply four, five times. Its bullet found a mark. Then another. "Ahaaa! Two of them! And M. Danner now has his rope on that pig's breath. It comes up. See! He has taken it under his arm! They are shooting their machine guns. He drops into a shell hole. He has been hit, but he is laughing at them. He leaps. Look out, Ph�dre!"

Hugo landed behind the d�bris with a small German trench mortar in his arms. He set it on the floor. The captain opened his mouth, and Hugo waved to him to be silent. Deliberately, Hugo looked over the rickety parapet of loose stones. He elevated the muzzle of the gun and drew back the lanyard. The captain, grinning, watched through his glasses. The gun roared.

Its shell exploded presently on the brow of the enemy trench, tossing up a column of smoke and earth. "I should have brought some ammunition with me," Hugo said.

Captain Crouan stared at the little gun. "Pig," he said. "Son of a pig! Five of my men are in your little belly! Bah!" He kicked it.

Summer in Aix-au-Dixvaches. A tall Englishman addressing Captain Crouan. His voice was irritated by the heat. "Is it true that you French have an Indian scout here who can bash in those Minenwerfers?"

"Pardon, mon colonel, mais je ne comprends pas l'anglais."

He began again in bad French. Captain Crouan smiled. "Ah? You are troubled there on your sector? You wish to borrow our astonishing soldier? It will be a pleasure, I assure you."

Hot calm night. The sky pin-pricked with stars, the air redolent with the mushy flavour of dead meat. So strong it left a taste in the mouth. So strong that food and water tasted like faintly chlorinated putrescence. Hugo, his blue uniform darker with perspiration, tramped through the blackness to a dug-out. Fifteen minutes in candlelight with a man who spoke English in an odd manner.

"They've been raisin' bloody hell with us from a point about there." The tap of a pencil. "We've got little enough confidence in you, God knows—"

"Thank you."

"Don't be huffy. We're obliged to your captain for the loan of you. But we've lost too many trying to take the place ourselves not to be fed up with it. I suppose you'll want a raiding party?"

"No, thanks."

"But, cripes, you can't make it there alone."

"I can do it." Hugo smiled. "And you've lost so many of your own men—"

"Very well."

Otto Meyer pushed his helmet back on his sandy-haired head and gasped in the feverish air. A non-commissioned officer passing behind him shoved the helmet over his eyes with a muttered word of caution. Otto shrugged. Half a dozen men lounged near by. Beside and above them were the muzzles of four squat guns and the irregular silhouette of a heap of ammunition. Two of the men rolled onto their backs and panted. "I wish," one said in a soft voice, "that I was back in the Hofbrau at Munich with a tall stein of beer, with that fat Fr�ulein that kissed me in the Potsdam station last September sitting at my side and the orchestra playing—"

Otto flung a clod of dank earth at the speaker. There were chuckles from the shadows that sucked in and exhaled the rancid air. Outside the pit in which they lay, there was a gentle thud.

Otto scrambled into a sitting posture. "What is that?"

"Nothing. Even these damned English aren't low enough to fight us in this weather."

"You can never tell. At night, in the first battle of—listen!"

The thud was repeated, much closer. It was an ominous sound, like the drop of a sack of earth from a great height. Otto picked up a gun. He was a man who perspired freely, and now, in that single minute, his face trickled. He pointed the gun into the air and pulled the trigger. It kicked back and jarred his arm. In the glaring light that followed, six men peered through the spider-web of the wire. They saw nothing.

"You see?"

Their eyes smarted with the light and dark, so swiftly exchanged. Came a thud in their midst. A great thud that spattered the dirt in all directions. "Something has fallen." "A shell!" "It's a dud!"

The men rose and tried to run. Otto had regained