War had merely
increased their enterprise, and they took all kinds of risks, usually
with success.
John was very comfortable now, as he leaned back in the armored car,
driven by a young Frenchman. He wore a heavy blue overcoat over his
uniform, and his only weapon was a powerful automatic revolver in his
belt, but it was enough. The ambulances, filled with wounded, stretched
a half-mile in front of him, but he had grown so used to such sights
that they did not move him long. Moreover in this war a man was not dead
until he _was_ dead. The small bullets of the high-powered rifle either
killed or harmed but little. It was the shrapnel that tore.
The road led across low hills, and down slopes which he knew were kissed
by a warm sun in summer. It was here that the vines flourished, but the
snow could not hide the fact that it was torn and trampled now. Huge
armies had surged back and forth over it, and yet John, who was of a
thoughtful mind, knew that in a few more summers it would be as it had
been before. In this warm and watered France Nature would clothe the
earth in a green robe which winter itself could not wholly drive away.
A reader of history, he knew that Europe had been torn and ravaged by
war, times past counting, and yet geologically it was among the youngest
and freshest of lands. Everything would pass and new youth would take
the place of the youth that the shells and bullets were now carrying
away.
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