CHAPTER IV A WANDERING POWDER-PUFF

“That’s Iver! Oh! no distance, nor trench, could prevent my recognizing him.”

The cry of rapt identification came from Iver Davenport’s seventeen-year-old sister, Sara.

“Yes, one can single out his shoulders at a glance--an inch higher than those of any other man in his company--Lieutenant O. Pips!”

It was Colonel Deering who amusedly spoke, president of the Board of Directors of the Craig Steel Works, retired colonel of a national guard regiment, and father of two very attractive daughters, Olive and Sybil, Camp Fire Girls, of whom only one was present here, on the sear skirts of Gas Valley, the outskirts of the great military training-camp, where the army chemists of the Gas Defense Division were again holding their so-called “classes” initiating soldiers into an experience with poison gas.

“Oh! I’m so glad that we’ll have a chance to see him again--Iver--before he goes over. I didn’t let him know that we were coming to-day; ’twill be quite a surprise when he stalks up out of the trenches--and unmasks.” Again the eager exclamation burst from Sara, a kindling flame of excitement, as standing on the edge of the camp trenches, behind the skirting sand-bags, she craned her young neck over, to gaze along a narrow earth-cut, six feet deep, to a curving trench-bay in which her brother was stationed with a few other officers--all still without their masks--to undergo an initiation on his own account.

“He said, last week, that if we happened to be visiting camp to-day, we might see him getting his medicine at the hands of the young chemists of the Gas Defense Division, who have a witch’s imagination when it comes to horrors.” Olive smiled. “I don’t suppose that this is his first initiation, though, by any manner of means.”

“No, they keep ‘putting them through gas’--or some substitute for poison gas--right along here, so that they may be able to get their masks adjusted inside of six seconds,” remarked her father. “I believe it isn’t really going to be gas and sulphur smoke to-day--simply powder-puffs.”

“Powder-puffs! Pelt--pelt them with powder-puffs!” Sesooā nipped off a comic little shriek.

“Oh! not of the vanity-box order.” Colonel Deering’s smooth-shaven lip twitched. “These puffs are just tiny brown-paper sacks, containing, each, a tablespoonful of black powder with three or four inches of red-capped fuse sticking up out of it. They explode when they strike in the trenches, near a man’s feet, throwing up, each, its own little spitting, venomous spurt of flame, so that if he should be slow about getting into his mask his eyesight might suffer.”

“O dear! To-day I hope it won’t be a case of:
“‘The gas came down and caught the blighter slow!’”

murmured Olive, shuddering with a recollection of last week’s smoky Inferno, with its shaking roar of dynamite, its bright flash of bursting “tear-shells,” its popping of monster fire-crackers in the yellow cloud--and of what that cloud gave forth.

“Oh, no, it won’t! This seems quite tame compared with the real ‘Fritzie’s show’ last week!” Sara’s voice was an echo of her soldier-brother’s. “But who wants to see another smoky spectacle? Not me! To-day, by craning our necks over and looking along the traverse, we can see things--see the boys scrambling into their masks in a blessed hurry! Oh! here come the chemists now, with their bundles of powder-puffs. Funny-looking things those puffs are--like pert snails with their long red necks thrust up, peering around them.”

She laughed, that little Camp Fire Flame, of the shading hair and eyelashes, as the members of the Gas Defense Division, four young privates and a corporal, took up their stations at intervals along the edge of the trenches, near.

Suddenly a gong gave out its loud-tongued signal.

“There! that gives the warning this time,” proclaimed the colonel, almost as eager in his interest as the two girls. “Six seconds and over go the puffs! See the officers and men are all at Gas Alert! See their hands go diving into their breast-satchels, snatching out their masks--adjusting them!”

“Iver had his on the soonest of any,” gloated Iver’s sister. “He--he’s just as quick’s a flash about everything--from temper to task!” the last words half under her breath, in a low chuckle of intense excitement, as she leaned forth over the pale, lumpy sand-bags, on which soldiers rested their weapons in rifle-practice, gazing along the narrow brown traverse beneath.

Over floated breezily the red-necked puffs--a few into one rounded trench-bay, a few into another.

Pop, pop, pop! went their snappy explosions, within a foot or two of an officer’s feet--the men not being stationed very close together--throwing up the prettiest little spitting foam of rose-red flame, lively to look upon against the brown earth of the trench-bay.

But what! All in one petrified instant the pale sand-bag became an ice-bag under the girls’ feet--to which their trembling, curdling soles froze!

Two low, pinched cries of startled fright rang out over that brown trench traverse.

Even Colonel Deering gave way to a hectic exclamation and hung, horrified, over the trench-brim! For--was it only a wild freak of the April gust, intent on the sham-battle, too, or a young chemist’s blundering aim?--one of those pelting powder-puffs drifted astray.

Wildly--wildly astray!

It lit not on the ground at an officer’s feet, but close and warm against his khaki breast--as if it would fire his heart--between his braided blouse and the respirator-satchel upon that heaving breast.

With his bare left hand he grasped it--nestling like a red-necked snail--to toss it to earth. But in the very act it exploded and wrapped those bare wrists of his in golden bracelets of flame;--a fierce, fledgling flamelet, just hatched out, which, winging upward, pecked greedily at the mask over his face, trying to peck through to his eyes! A stinging, searing flame that twined itself brilliantly about his stretched neck, his ears, the sides of his face, the roots of his hair--wherever it could find a sentient inch that the mask did not cover--with the pitting, piercing burn that only black powder can inflict.

“Oh-h--Iver!” Sara Davenport felt as if the earth were seamed with one great brown trench, all flame-lined, swallowing her.

But before her piteous exclamation died away, her brother--that young lieutenant--had plucked the fiery scorpion from his breast, shaken himself free of the hissing, spitting powder, was stamping fiercely up the beaten sod-steps of the trench, removing his mask with fingers that shook--some of them--like charred twigs, in a withering tempest of pain.

“Thank God! I was into my mask pretty quickly. Otherwise--otherwise I’d have been blinded for life!”

He shuddered, that Boy-Officer, who had prematurely “bawled out” a sergeant, as the words broke from him, seeming to make their way out through a great smoking hole upon his breast, where the tight khaki blouse was burned away.

“Iver! Oh--Iver!” From a distance his young sister started towards him.

Blistered within by pain and rising anger--as without by powder--he did not see her. Nor yet the other visitors back of her--one of them the girl with whom he had exchanged twilight confidences a week before!

His eye, a lurid lightning-flash above the bitten, twisted lips, had instantly singled out the face of a young chemist--a penitent private--nearer, as the latter, in an agony of apology, started towards him.

“I--I didn’t mean it, sir,” stammered the youth, feeble in his confusion. “It--’twas an accident----”

For just one-half minute Lieutenant Davenport’s tall figure loomed, rigid, in the sunlight, that powder-hole smoking upon his breast.

His breath smoked, too--the smoke of his agonizing burns.

The lightning of his eye withered the blunderer before him.

Then, suddenly, with masterful grip, the soldier seized the red-eyed powder-puff of temper exploding within him, tossed it deep into the trenches of his soul, and set his foot upon it.

“What! Are you the young rascal who potted me?”

Above his bitten, pain-wrung lips, above the storm of blue powder blisters puffing out around his wrists, his neck, the edges of his face, the explosive lightnings of the eye melted--wavered--towards the mellow sunlight of a smile--a humorous smile.

“Well! take a better aim next time. Pshaw! it might not have been your fault at all--boy.... A puff--a puff may have caught the puff--and landed it on me!”

Moved by a sudden impulse, the lieutenant held out the fingers of his less injured right hand to the blanching private--who touched but did not grasp them!

Silence almost confounded reigned among the three guests, now drawn near!

A voice--a voice broke it, that of Colonel Deering:
“Onward, Christian Soldiers!”

he chanted in a low, exultant sing-song. “That Boy--that officer--will go over the top smiling, master of himself, gassed by no blinding smoke-cloud of anger or hate! And his father was always telling me that he had a brute of a temper.”

“So he has! Had! Mine’s like it--somewhat! Oh-h, quite often my flame’s a powder-puff!” Sara Davenport was quivering from neck to heel now, with the purest, proudest flame that can crown a young heart, that of a seventeen-year-old girl’s pride in her hero-brother.

“But, oh! there’ll be no excuse for its--ever--being a spitfire in future; if Iver could--master.... Hif-f! He must be suffering--ter-ri-bly!”

The other, older, dark-eyed girl was silent. But perhaps, at that moment, as she drew her breath sharply through closed teeth, even the romance of looking through a periscope’s eye, with a Junior Aide, having a fascinating gold epaulet cord drooping from his left shoulder, paled beside the romance of that victor’s eye, humorously smiling, triumphant alike over pain and passion.