CAPTAIN DOBIE’S heart and thoughts were with the men under his command. Beyond that, he was desperately aware of great armies fighting a hard battle near by.
Seeing Marie here, knowing André was also in the battle area, he thought angrily, “This is too much.”
“Ma’moiselle,” he shouted, “this is no place for you. Find cover immediately!”
Marie looked up. “You do not understand,” she said. “This dog belongs to my brother. André must be here somewhere. Patchou couldn’t get this far alone.”
“I do know,” replied the captain. “Get under that gateway quickly—and hold that dog.”
When Marie crouched under the arch, he explained quickly how he had come to know André.
Marie said nervously, “You haven’t seen him?”
“No! Since I left your home, I have not.” The captain’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “And I haven’t time to look for him now. My men are in that burning barn with Germans all around it. I’ve ordered covering smoke shells dropped to help them escape. And I can’t understand what’s held the shells up.”
He hesitated. Looking with deep concern at Marie, he spoke more gruffly. “I’m just afraid there’s a good chance André may be in that barn.”
Marie ran out a step or two and pointed.
“In that barn?” she cried. “Oh! I can get him out then. Come, Patchou!”
Captain Dobie stood up and shouted, but Marie and Patchou had disappeared through the cottage door—not across the field.
Captain Dobie sank back, fuming. The flames were spreading across the barn roof. He switched on the radio and waited irritably. When there was no response, he reached back into the jeep for grenades which he hooked into his belt.
He had just grasped his gun firmly, and gingerly lowered a leg to the ground, when Patchou barked and wriggled out of the cottage door.
At the same instant Slim came around the garden wall and stopped in his tracks, staring at the doorway.
“Ouvarski!” he shouted and then, “André!”
Captain Dobie’s head snapped toward the cottage.
A tall officer stood behind Patchou, and with him was André.
Behind Lieutenant Ouvarski and André straggled several dusty, smoke-blackened men. They moved a few steps forward.
Ouvarski steadied himself against a stone pillar. Marie and two of the men eased a wounded soldier they were carrying, to the ground.
“Captain,” Ouvarski said hoarsely, “can you get medics? Three wounded—one badly.”
Captain Dobie swallowed hard. “Is that all?”
“All others accounted for, sir,” Ouvarski reported. “No worse.”
“Not any of you are accounted for,” the captain growled. “How did you get here? I thought you were in that blasted barn.”
Slim gasped as Marie, finished with making her patient more easy, walked forward.
Ouvarski simply threw out a hand toward Marie, and said, “She led us out.”
Marie walked up to Captain Dobie.
“There’s a tunnel to the barn from this gardener’s cottage, sir,” she explained. “I didn’t have time to tell you before. The tunnel is old, but it is open. The Maquis have been using it for months, partly for wounded men. The barn was our headquarters. We just moved out yesterday.”
Marie came up through the old tunnel
Captain Dobie nodded, speechless with relief. He pushed back his helmet, mopped his forehead, and switched on the radio. “I’ll cancel those smoke shells,” he muttered.
At that moment the air overhead whined ominously. A curtain of shells fell around the barn and exploded. A dense pall of white smoke drifted across the field.
“Where’s Weller?” the captain asked Slim. “And what about the Nazis still around that barn?”
He was interrupted by grenade and rifle fire and the thrashing of men breaking through shrubbery.
“Watch it!” Weller’s voice rang above the din.
The shooting stopped suddenly, and German and American voices mingled.
Captain Dobie listened a moment, smiled, and switched on the radio.
“Thanks for the smoke shells,” he said into the receiver. He switched through to his command post. “Say, send along a couple of trucks for prisoners. And a medic and ambulance. At least three wounded here—one pretty bad.”
He turned back to the others.
“Well, Ouvarski,” he said pleasantly, “I certainly sent you into something. Headquarters said positively no Germans left in this area.”
“They came out of this château and we had to take cover in the barn, sir,” Ouvarski said.
“Take it easy,” Dobie said, “all of you, till the trucks get here. Sergeant! What ails you?”
Weller limped into sight along the wall.
“We’ve about cleaned ’em all out—finally,” he grinned.
Dobie frowned. “But what happened to you?”
“Got myself a bullet.” Weller’s smile broadened and turned into a grimace of pain.
“I thought I told you to stay away from those Germans,” Dobie barked.
Weller limped painfully to the jeep and Slim spun him gently around and into the back seat.
“You sure did, sir,” Weller said. “But you forgot to tell them Germans to keep away from me.”
Not far behind Weller, a line of Nazi prisoners were coming across the field, hands on head. With them, on each side, strode Americans with Tommy guns ready.
Marie was examining the injury to Weller’s leg.
“That bullet will have to be taken out,” she said. “It’s not in very deep. It won’t hurt much.”
“It’s gonna stay right there,” Weller said. “It’s probably the only proof I’ll have to show my kids I was ever in this war.”
André had been saying, “Sir,” at intervals. But he had trouble saying it loud enough to make the captain hear.
When the prisoners had been herded together under guard a little distance away, Captain Dobie sank back in his seat and smiled down.
“André,” he said, “I’m too glad to see you alive to tell you what I ought to.”
André felt his face grow red. “I wanted to try to get my father and mother home.”
“It would have been simpler for all of us if you had waited,” replied the captain.
“I couldn’t, sir,” André said staunchly.
“If Patchou hadn’t been here, Captain,” Marie said, “I might have missed André. It was Patchou who found me.”
The dog, at the sound of his name, tossed up his head. Then he sniffed deeply, and whirled in the direction of the château gates, paused a brief second, and shot away at an excited gallop.
Captain Dobie could only say, “Now what?”