Renni the Rescuer

by Felix Salten

  “But what did you do with him?”

  If Flamingo had spoken low and hesitantly before, now he fairly whispered. “I left him with my . . . my wife.”

  “So you married again?”

  “Again? No.” He dropped his eyes.

  George tried to make it easier for him. “Did you send for her to come back?”

  “No . . . . I didn’t know where she was. She came of her own accord.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, just three weeks before I had to join my regiment . . . . ”

  “And you took her back?”

  “Of course. What else could I do?”

  “Certainly, certainly! We must always forgive those who repent.”

  Flamingo shook his head. “Repent? No, I don’t think you’d say Amalie repented. Of course she said she was sorry . . . but I don’t believe a word of it. She just ran out of money . . . and then she thought me good enough . . . . ”

  “And you left her at home?”

  “Yes. Here I am in the war, and she’s sitting snug back there. The three weeks we were together she was humble enough. She didn’t have time to start making fun of me again, and . . . ” He straightened up. “When I left she called me a hero! . . . ” He burst out laughing. “Fine hero I am.”

  “Why not?” George tried to cheer him. “Maybe you are. You’ve been through several battles . . . . ”

  “Yes, and shook with fright every minute!”

  “Don’t be ashamed of that. The man who’s afraid and fights on all the same—he’s the brave man.”

  “But,” said Flamingo, “I don’t fight! I never fight! I shut both eyes every time I have to shoot.” Suddenly he changed his tone. “My wife—she squandered my money, and she doesn’t know I’ve saved up a lot more!” He winked knowingly. “I carry my bankbook with me. The account’s in my name only. If I fall Amalie can have it, but not till I do . . . . ”

  “How will she treat the spaniel?”

  “Fine! I’m sure of that. She was always good to the dog . . . . I was the only one she had it in for.” He shrugged his shoulders. “God knows how it will all end, what with war out here and war back there!”

  He started away, after a pitiful attempt at a salute. George and Nickel followed him with their eyes, as he went along, striving to show an energy he by no means possessed. Soon they lost sight of him in the crowds of soldiers.

  “Poor specimen!” was Nickel’s opinion.

  “A fellow with no talent for happiness,” said George trying to soften his comrade’s harsh judgment.

  And then, suddenly, Fox was back with them again. He had slipped up very quietly, like a criminal coming home with a guilty conscience. No sooner had Renni caught sight of him than he leaped to meet him, jubilant, ready to celebrate. But Fox acted as though he were snapping at Renni’s ear, while really he was whispering, “Be quiet!”

  “Why?” Renni asked.

  “I’m afraid He’ll send me away again.”

  “Oh, no. He didn’t want to give you up.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know it.”

  At that moment George ran his hand gently over Fox’s head. “God bless you, little fellow! I’m so glad you’re back with us!”

  When he felt George’s hand, a quiver of fear went over Fox, but as soon as he heard his voice, he went into a spasm of joy. He leaped up on George, on Renni. Like a whirlwind he rushed around among the soldiers who filled the space before the town hall. His yelps, barks and howls sounded now like cries of joy, now like sobs of grief, but they all amounted to this: “I won’t stay any longer with that man who dragged me off. I’ll never stay with him! If he carries me away again, I’ll just run away again! How could anybody do a thing like that? Just as if I had no feelings! I was so hurt . . . so terribly hurt . . . and I was so homesick . . . for you, Renni . . . and for Him . . . . ”

  He ran around Renni pressing against him closely, caressingly. Renni waved his tail. Then Fox danced about George who tried to pet him.

  “That’ll do now,” said Renni.

  And George said, “All right, Fox . . . you’re a fine boy . . . and you’re back with me . . . and here’s hoping you’ll stay with me from now on in.”

  Panting, Fox threw himself down on the floor beside Renni. His tongue was hanging far out. When Renni lay down beside him and asked, “How did you ever manage to get loose?” Fox cut one eye around toward his string. It had been chewed in two and hung from his neck.

  * * *

  Man cannot read his fate. How then shall a little dog know where his safety lies?

  Chapter XXVI

  THE FIGHTING BEGAN AGAIN, wilder, more insane than ever. The earth shuddered from the crash of the heavy guns. The whistling shrieks of the grenades, the thundering explosions of bombs, the chatter of machine guns, the firing of armoured cars and tanks, all mingled in one raging, deafening clangour. Human voices could be heard above the stupendous din, but they sounded thin and pathetically faint. Sometimes they were cries of anguish or the gasp of the dying. And again they were hoarse shouts of command, sharp, breathless, verging on panic and causing panic in those who heard.

  Forward rolled the army. Forward . . . forward!

  All the soldiers, all the officers seemed in a daze, in a sort of delirium, in which courage, horror and fear were so mingled that they could not be distinguished or separated.

  They all had one common will, one common goal, one common irresistible impulse . . . to press onward.

  The Sanitary Corps moved along in the rear of this flaming inferno, this huge engine of destruction. From the torn and trampled field which the army left them, they gleaned their sorrowful harvest. They had to go carefully about it, for sometimes enemy bombers flew overhead and sometimes long-range artillery swept the field.

  But help must be brought where help was needed.

  The number of hurt and injured was appalling. When at last one would have said that all must surely have been carried to the dressing-stations, the dogs would be sent out still again to find any that might by any possible chance have been overlooked. These must be helped at once if they were to be helped at all, for generally these were the most severely wounded, lying there unconscious, unable to make their presence known.

  And then, as always, Renni did the best work. Not only was his skill superior but he seemed to be working by plan, with a definite purpose. In the whirlwind of his activity he would hardly notice the pigeon, who was constantly having to give up her favourite seat on his head for the safer one on his back. Nor did he bother with Fox, who ran along by his side or galloped ahead in busy idleness. George himself had reached the point where he hardly ever thought of Renni’s companions. At first he had expected that the dove might bother Renni and Fox and distract his attention, but by now he had grown quite used to this animal comedy, as he called it. So now as Renni was not in the least disturbed by them, but rather performed his services more brilliantly than ever, George took a humorous view of terrier and pigeon. And when the work was over—as long as the search was on both dog and master gave it complete absorption, and there was no time for joking—after the work was over, he would call the pigeon Renni’s periscope, and Fox his no-account stooge.

  One day Renni had found eleven unfortunates. It was growing late when George, a wagging tail on either side of him, went to the dressing-station with the last of the rescued. The sky was starless, and the night so inky black that the very din of the distant battle seemed hushed, extinguished. Only here and there the ray of a far-off searchlight would stab the heavens, to hunt for a wavering moment, and then even its climbing beam of light would disappear.

  The work at the dressing-station ended, and the last of the ambulances was about to roll off to the field hospital.

  George might have ridden in with one of them, like the other dog-trainers. But Renni seemed strangely uneasy. So he delayed. Nickel called to him, “Aren’t you coming along?”

  “No,” Geo
rge said shortly.

  “You must be tired and hungry.”

  “Not especially,” said George. “It’s only a little way. I’d rather walk. It won’t take much more than an hour.”

  So Nickel’s ambulance went its way. George felt Renni pull impatiently on his leash. A sort of presentiment awoke in George, a foretaste of something disagreeable, painful. He thought: “If we should find another one . . . now . . . when all the stretcher-bearers have gone . . . when there isn’t an ambulance left . . . ” He thought it over: “Can Renni possibly have let one get by him . . . ? Strange! Worse than that—awful! The poor fellow would have to be in a dreadful state if even Renni could find no sign of life in him!”

  He went on thinking and thinking, as he walked along the edge of the battlefield. He followed Renni’s lead. The dog was testing the air in evident excitement. “Surely he’ll soon find him now . . . but what will he find? And the wretched man will have to wait another hour till I get back with the ambulance . . . only he’ll die first.”

  His thoughts were broken off short by Renni’s sharp pull at the leash. Fox dashed ahead like a streak. George saw the little snow-white body flash through the dark, while he busied himself to free the now excited Renni from the leash.

  All of a sudden two short quick barks rang out, with a queer sharpness in them. And immediately after a cry of pain, a shriek that died in a gurgle. Renni darted forward to Fox’s rescue and George followed at a dead run.

  As he ran he thought in half-conscious surprise: “That’s no wounded man. That’s something . . . something . . . ”

  He had about a hundred steps to go. Renni’s bellow of rage gave wings to his feet. What went on there that made Renni charge like a mad dog, rush in, give way, and then attack again? He flicked on the flashlight which hung around his neck. The ray fell on a wildly distorted face. Two threatening eyes glared at him. The man reared up, deadly, menacing, right before him. A long thin-bladed knife gleamed in his uplifted hand, poised to strike.

  Swift as lightning, George snatched at his pistol, fired once, twice, right at that wild and horrible face. It shuddered into something beyond recognition. The eyes glazed, went out. The man doubled up and, as he fell, he wavered out of the little circle of light into the enveloping darkness.

  As quickly as it all happened, still George saw everything, from one fraction of a second to the next. Aghast, yet ready for danger, he bent over the fallen man.

  He was dead. That blood-smeared face seemed to cry to heaven. “Most hideous of crimes!” flashed through George’s mind. “A monster who robs the dead, who steals from the fallen . . . watches, rings, money . . . who murders the dying . . . with that knife.”

  He picked the knife up. The blade was ground to razor edge. A few feet away Renni broke into a long wailing howl of grief.

  “Fox!” cried George, and reached him in one leap. He lay with a gaping wound in his side. Dead. Quite dead. Over his body stood Renni, mouth wide open, howling. The pigeon hovered restlessly on his back.

  Shocked, shaken, George knelt by the dog’s body. “Poor little Foxy! True and honest friend! No matter how many men have fallen, it is right for me to mourn for you.”

  Renni listened to his words with ears pricked up sharply. He understood and he echoed them with a melodious moaning, which gradually grew softer and softer. Now George spoke to him. “What do you say? We can’t leave our old friend lying on the field? Let’s bury him right here.” As if to agree, Renni reached out one forepaw and laid it on his arm.

  The same knife that had killed Fox helped dig his grave. “And it might have killed you, Renni, and me too,” said George while he worked with it.

  Renni looked on attentively. He had stopped his keening. On his back the pigeon had stuck her head under her wing. She was asleep. As George laid Fox’s stiffening body in the hole, Renni gave one last low moan. He stood with nose pointing steeply downward and saw Fox disappear beneath the earth. George tamped the dirt carefully, and then, in sudden revulsion, he hurled the knife as far as he could into the dark.

  “Come, Renni!”

  They made for the field hospital, where they were to spend the night. They walked slowly, sadly. Renni’s head was down, his tail hung limp. And as they walked, a vision of the man suddenly flared up in George’s imagination—the man he’d shot, that dreadful, murderous face whose criminal fury had so suddenly broken, paled and sunk into the darkness. And George realised, “I’ve killed a man!”

  Horror filled him. He defended himself to his rebellious conscience. “A hyena, a ghoul . . . ! And he killed Fox and tried to kill Renni and me. He would have done it too. I fired in self-defence.” It was no use. Again and again the self-reproach returned: “. . . killed a man!”

  When he tried to justify himself with the old saying, “All’s fair in war,” he found no comfort in it.

  Reasoning like that might have justified the man he’d killed, might have led him to his gruesome crimes—the plea that he was only taking from the dead the things they’d never need again.

  “Perhaps his children were hungry at home . . . . And I shot him down! It’s my business to save men from death . . . and I have killed a man!”

  He caught at Renni’s collar. “You too, gentle Renni, your business is to help no less than mine—and you sprang at him in fury!”

  But Renni, who usually responded to any words from his master, remained indifferent. He did not wag his tail. He just trotted quietly along.

  George went on accusing himself. “How many wicked things I’ve done!” He thought of the blow he’d given poor, innocent Flamingo. A soft word would have been enough to stop his mad rage. There had been no call for brutal action.

  And young Rupert Fifer. He wasn’t all bad. He had just been led astray by hunger and poverty. Patient kindness would have brought him around. “What I should have done,” thought George, “was try to awaken his better nature, train him in the right way. Patience and kindness! That’s where I’ve failed. Completely. Beat him and throw him out of the house! Send him home sprawling! Make a young boy bitter forever. Kick him back into hopeless misery!”

  And now this wretch who had sunk in war to the vilest of crimes . . . he should have shot to wound not to kill him, should have arrested him and taken him to the guard. But no . . . he had fired a bullet straight in his face. In blind rage he had willed to slaughter.

  But was he fair to himself? Had there been time for choice?

  So, in this wild agitation, he reached his quarters and went to bed, but could find no rest. Renni, who usually slept close against him, did not share his cot tonight, but stretched out beside it on the floor. He curled up there and, after whimpering softly, went to sleep.

  Then Renni began to dream. And in his dream he saw the man again, the knife held high, and little Fox dead. He howled in high thin whines, and his legs twitched violently.

  George tossed sleepless the whole night long. In the morning he told Nickel what had happened.

  Nickel raged. “The beast, the unspeakable beast! A bullet was too good for him. He ought to have been hanged! I tell you the best way to get rid of such vermin is the shortest way. String them up on the nearest tree! Hack them down without mercy! Ghouls like that violate the honoured dead who have given their lives for their country! There’s no forgiveness for it! You were right, as right as rain! Execute them on the spot!” And he added, “Poor little Fox! Such a cute little fellow! It’s a shame!”

  At first the way Nickel took it touched and comforted George a little, but its effect did not last long. He did not dare speak of his self-accusations. He took especially good care of Renni, provided him with the best of food—though, indeed, Renni would scarcely touch it—stroked him, talked tenderly to him. The dog would wag his tail faintly, look at him with swift, sidelong glances, and drop his eyes to the ground.

  “He’s mourning for Fox,” Nickel said gently.

  George sighed. “Renni’s tired of war . . . and I am too . . . . ”
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  Chapter XXVII

  BUT THE WAR WAS NOT over. Not for a long time yet.

  They had set up a new field hospital in an abandoned factory. The spacious rooms were filled with cots, and on every cot lay a wounded man. This one had his leg propped up; that, his arm in splints; a third, his head in a bandage. Many raved in fever. Many died, and they were carried out at once. Cries of agony or delirium rang through the halls, and an evil smell pervaded them in spite of the open windows. Nurses hurried to and fro. They could not answer all the calls, the demands, the pleading. Most of them showed care and kindness; only a few seemed peevish. Surgeons repeatedly made their rounds.

  George and Renni, who were stationed here, came in one evening when their work was done for the time being, and spent a couple of days at the hospital. George made himself useful in every way he could think of.

  Renni had gradually regained cheerfulness, and he tried to win George back to it, but without success.

  Once Renni followed George into a ward. The wounded lay quiet, hardly stirring. They had fallen prey to the apathy that is apt to overcome those who are long ill or long confined. A sort of indifference to their own condition, and to passing time. A sort of daze which may go over into oblivion. But the sight of Renni with the pigeon on his head aroused even the most benumbed. It amused and cheered them all.

  “You mustn’t come in here, Renni,” whispered George. “Wait outside.”

  But Renni had no idea of waiting outside. The men called to him from all sides, and on all sides asked George his name. Renni brightened the whole room. The nurses smiled and let him stay. Even the surgeons made no objection. Some petted him—and the dog took it forbearingly.

  Renni went steadily from bed to bed, searching, sniffing, drawing away from hands that sought to stroke or stop him. At last he paused before a certain cot, sat down on his hind quarters, and looked carefully at the man who lay there, his face bright with fever.

  He was an enemy soldier, a strapping peasant boy. He opened his eyes.