Bruce knew, too, that the nurse did not belong to his loved friends of
the Red Cross. For his uncanny power of scent told him the garments
worn by the impostor belonged to some one else. To mere humans, a small
and slender man, who can act, and who dons woman's garb, is a woman. To
any dog, such a man is no more like a woman than a horse with a
lambskin saddle-pad is a lamb. He is merely a man who is differently
dressed from other men--even as this man who had chirped to Bruce, from
the church steps, was no less a man for the costume in which he had
swathed his body. Any dog, at a glance and at a sniff, would have known
that.
Women, for one thing, do not usually smoke dozens of rank cigars daily
for years, until their flesh is permeated with the smell of tobacco. A
human could not have detected such a smell--such a MAN-smell,--on the
person who had chirped to Bruce. Any dog, twenty feet away, would have
noticed it, and would have tabulated the white-clad masquerader as a
man. Nor do a woman's hair and skin carry the faint but unmistakable
odor of barracks and of tent-life and of martial equipment, as did this
man's. The masquerader was evidently not only a man but a soldier.
Dogs,--high-strung dogs,--do not like to have tricks played on them;
least of all by strangers. Bruce seemed to take the nurse-disguise as a
personal affront to himself. Then, too, the man was not of his own
army. On the contrary, the scent proclaimed him one of the horde whom
Bruce's friends so manifestly hated--one of the breed that had more
than once fired on the dog.
Diet and equipment and other causes give a German soldier a markedly
different scent, to dogs' miraculously keen nostrils,--and to those of
certain humans,--from the French or British or American troops. War
records prove this. Once having learned the scent, and having learned
to detest it, Bruce was not to be deceived.
For all these reasons he had snarled loathingly at the man in white.
For these same reasons he could not readily forget the incident, but
continued every now and then to glance curiously across toward the
church.
Presently,--not relishing the rebukes of the friends who had heretofore
pestered him by overmuch petting,--the collie arose quietly from his
couch of trampled earth at the foot of the stone bench and strolled
back across the street. Most of the men were too busy, talking, to note
Bruce's departure. But Sergeant Mahan caught sight of him just as the
dog was mounting the last of the steps leading into the church.
As a rule, when Bruce went investigating, he walked carelessly and with
his tail slightly a-wag. Now his tail was stiff as an icicle, and he
moved warily, on the tips of his toes. His tawny-maned neck was low.
Mahan, understanding dogs, did not like the collie's demeanor.
Remembering that the nurse had entered the church a few minutes
earlier, the Sergeant got to his feet and hastily followed Bruce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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