Big Belt talked to himself in that blizzard of fire.
“He's hit—hit twice—but we can't go back to the Russians. They'll finish the lad. Dabnitz promised. The Germans can't rescue us, because the bridges are down. I've got to get him across the river—”
He knelt and swung the burden across his back. The firing was thinner, and the weight hurried his great legs down to the water.... Personally he would have waited for recapture. How he would have laughed at Lornievitch in that case. But this that he bore was under sentence of death in that camp. He regarded the river now, propping up his head under the burden. It was a swift devil of a stream, black from its winter borders and cold. He moved toward the broken bridge, hundreds of soldiers doing the same. But none of them bore a burden.
Now he was on the steep and slidy bank-the roar of the current in his ears, the roar of the guns behind. The stone abutments of the bridge still stood, but the huge beams of the upper frame-work were sprawled in the stream, the ends visible. A string of soldiers crawled along, toward the center of the current. There was a place in which they disappeared.... He took his position in the waiting line and heard the cries wrung from the throats of those in the crossing—from the paralyzing cold. Only a few succeeded. Boylan saw this, as he awaited his turn. A steady grim procession on this side, whispering, crowding—but a thin and straggling output on the far bank. Scenes enacting in the center of the current shook his heart—faces and arms against the black water, the struggles and the cries of men as they were whipped away.
Big Belt was in; no crawl for him. He walked the ten-inch beam with his burden, as it sank deeper and deeper toward the center. The ice of the water bit and tore at him. It was like a burn, too, but the paralysis was not that of fire. The chill wrestled with his consciousness, as he reached the depth of his waist; the current was bewildering in its pressures—like a woman clinging to his limbs, betraying him to an enemy. A mysterious force, this of a running river, for the body of man is not built for it, and man's mind is slow to learn the necessity of slow movements. The temptation to hasten is like the tug of demons. There is much to break the nerve—and yet nerve must remain king of every action.
Boylan may have learned the trick in other wanderings. His own weight and the weight of his burden helped his feet in the rapid runs of white water. He made his way deeper and deeper upon the slanting ten-inch piece, holding his consciousness steady against the penetrating stab of the cold as it rose higher and higher, against the dizzying swirl of the stream, and against the fact that the timber might be broken at the center. ...The man before him seemed to go to his knees, reaching down with his hands. Then the white-topped rush took him.... One must stand; one must have weight to stand. The beam sunk to the center now-the water to his heart; the man behind urging.... One soldier ahead crawled forth where three had been.
Boylan's fears were equalized now by the sudden dread of the man behind. If he slipped he would catch at Peter's body.
“Go slow—that's the trick!” he called. “Feel for your footing each time. It's there. I tell you it's there, man! We rise in a moment more—”
He felt the jointure with his feet—some renewal or stoppage of the timber. He halted, yelling at the man behind:
“Wait—something different! I'll get you through—”
It was the slight turn of the top timbers as they had reached the apex.
“It's the top of the bridge,” he yelled above the boom of the current, “—a turn like the peak of a low roof. A slight turn to the right. Now the climb—”
He put it in Russian somehow, making the words clear. His intensity was almost madness to keep the other's hands off.
A shiver passed through his burden. The water had whipped Peter's limbs. An added call for steadiness, but a gladness about it, too, since he was not carrying the dead.... Upgrade now. The soldier behind had passed the turn safely and was following.
...It seemed that he had walked hours, A thousand or more German soldiers were lost even as he. Their faces in the dusk passed him—to and fro—hoarse questions. The gray chill dusk was all about, quite different from anything Big Belt had known. His clothing had warmed to him from great exertion. There was a line that caked and dampened again down his left thigh, like an artillery stripe, from Peter's wounds. Night came on, finding him without a command—a strange sort of abandonment, and a certain fear of being overtaken by a Russian party. The character of his fatigue brought back ancient memories, when he had looked death face to face and was afraid.
“Who are you?” someone piped sharply in German.
He had moved long through the dark toward a moving file of lights.
“Two American correspondents.”
“What's that you carry?”
“The other one.”
Peter heard this. It seemed that terrible hands had been tugging at his flesh for hours; yet he could not move, and lay upon a bed that swung and swayed and stumbled.
“Two American correspondents,” the voice repeated.... “Search....”
Then Peter looked into the dazzle of a flashlight, and the familiar voice said:
“Yes, he's hard hit and heavy as hell.... Passports in hip pocket-handle him gently. ... Thanks, I'll take care of this man—unless you have a stretcher—”
“To whom were you formerly assigned?”
“To Colonel Ulrich. We were across the river when that trap was sprung this afternoon—”
“Just about wiped you fellows out, didn't they?... Passports right enough as far as I can see. Stay here, I'll try to get a conduct. I'm afraid there isn't any Colonel Ulrich—at least I am of that opinion....”
Peter was let down. It puzzled him a long time because the ground was still. The big hands eased. His familiar was beside him, however, wet and panting. Now Peter seemed to remember that he had messages to carry.
“There's no other way—I've got to get through the lines—”
“Quite right,” Boylan answered.
“I don't want to fail. She wouldn't look twice at a man who failed—”
“Hell, child, sit still. She'd look twice if you failed a thousand times.... Hai, don't tear open a man's bridle arm. What is it?”
“He was hump-backed—no lips—teeth like a dog—and the trooper shot him through the mouth—”
“I know, but he's dead. His back is straight now—don't look any worse now than ten thousand others....”
For a long time all was bewilderment. He had been lifted and lost consciousness again in the wrenching of the hands. Then slowly he came back and eternity began as before, his bed swaying and straining. The familiar voice was near, the German ahead. Sentry after sentry was passed, and each time deadly waiting.... In snatches he understood that the voice always near was Boylan's, but as often forgot it again. Once he realized that Boylan was carrying him, but he could not hold it in mind.... Now he was sure that it was Boylan. He wished he could die from the cold. He recalled that the cold climbs to a man's heart and then lets him out in comfortable dreams.
“Hai, you!” he heard in the familiar tones. “I can't go any further. Send a stretcher or a wagon. Tell 'em two American correspondents are sitting out here—one with a bullet or two through his chest of drawers—”
The bed was sinking now.... Then he was dragged across the big man's lap, and the voice was saying:
“I never knew it to fail. The man who wins a woman gets the steel, when it's anywhere in the air, but bullets fly wide and knives curve about a lonely maverick who has lost all his heart winnings.”
They found Boylan so, his jaw clenched, the huge scarred head bare and and still breathed.
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