And another answered, “Why? Let him howl. He sounds good to me. I used to have a dog at home that howled. I never could break him. Yellow dog. I don’t mind the howl. They took my dog when they took the others,” he said factually, in a dull voice.
And the corporal said, “Couldn’t have dogs eating up food that was needed.”
“Oh, I’m not complaining. I know it was necessary. I can’t plan the way the leaders do. It seems funny to me, though, that some people here have dogs, and they don’t have even as much food as we have. They’re pretty gaunt, though, dogs and people.”
“They’re fools,” said the corporal. “That’s why they lost so quickly. They cant plan the way we can.”
“I wonder if we’ll have dogs again after it’s over,’ said the soldier. “I suppose we could get them from America or some place and start the breeds again. What kind of dogs do you suppose they have in America?”
“I don’t know,” said the corporal. “Probably dogs as crazy as everything else they have.” And he went on, “Maybe dogs are no good, anyway. It might be just as well if we never bothered with them, except for police work.”
“It might be,” said the soldier. “I’ve heard the Leader doesn’t like dogs. I’ve heard they make him itch and sneeze.”
“You hear all kinds of things,” the corporal said. “Listen!” The patrol stopped and from a great distance came the bee hum of planes.
“There they come,” the corporal said. “Well, there aren’t any lights. It’s been two weeks, hasn’t it, since they came before?”
“Twelve days,” said the soldier.
The guards at the mine heard the high drone of the planes. “They’re flying high,” a sergeant said. And Captain Loft tilted his head back so that he could see under the rim of his helmet. “I judge over 20,000 feet,” he said. “Maybe they’re going on over.”
“Aren’t very many.” The sergeant listened. “I don’t think there are more than three of them. Shall I call the battery?”
“Just see they’re alert, and then call Colonel Lanser —no, don’t call him. Maybe they aren’t coming here. They’re nearly over and they haven’t started to dive yet.”
“Sounds to me like they’re circling. I don’t think there are more than two,” the sergeant said.
In their beds the people heard the planes and they squirmed deep into their featherbeds and listened. In the palace of the Mayor the little sound awakened Colonel Lanser, and he turned over on his back and looked at the dark ceiling with wide-open eyes, and he held his breath to listen better and then his heart beat so that he could not hear as well as he could when he was breathing. Mayor Orden heard the planes in his sleep and they made a dream for him and he moved and whispered in his sleep.
High in the air the two bombers circled, mud-colored planes. They cut their throttles and soared, circling. And from the belly of each one tiny little objects dropped, hundreds of them, one after another. They plummeted a few feet and then little parachutes opened and drifted small packages silently and slowly downward toward the earth, and the planes raised their throttles and gained altitude, and then cut their throttles and circled again, and more of the little objects plummeted down, and then the planes turned and flew back in the direction from which they had come.
The tiny parachutes floated like thistledown and the breeze spread them out and distributed them as seeds on the ends of thistledown are distributed. They drifted so slowly and landed so gently that sometimes the ten-inch packages of dynamite stood upright in the snow, and the little parachutes folded gently down around them. They looked black against the snow. They landed in the white fields and among the woods of the hills and they landed in trees and hung down from the branches. Some of them landed on the housetops of the little town, some in the small front yards, and one landed and stood upright in the snow crown on top of the head of the village statue of St. Albert the Missionary.
One of the little parachutes came down in the street ahead of the patrol and the sergeant said, “Careful! It’s a time bomb.”
“It ain’t big enough,” a soldier said.
“Well, don’t go near it.” The sergeant had his flashlight out and he turned it on the object, a little parachute no bigger than a handkerchief, colored light blue, and hanging from it a package wrapped in blue paper.
“Now don’t anybody touch it,” the sergeant said. “Harry, you go down to the mine and get the captain. We’ll keep an eye on this damn thing.”
The late dawn came and the people moving out of their houses in the country saw the spots of blue against the snow. They went to them and picked them up. They unwrapped the paper and read the printed words. They saw the gift and suddenly each finder grew furtive, and he concealed the long tube under his coat and went to some secret place and hid the tube.
And word got to the children about the gift and they combed the countryside in a terrible Easter egg hunt, and when some lucky child saw the blue color, he rushed to the prize and opened it and then he hid the tube and told his parents about it. There were some people who were frightened, who turned the tubes over to the military, but they were not very many. And the soldiers scurried about the town in another Easter egg hunt, but they were not so good at it as the children were.
In the drawing-room of the palace of the Mayor the dining-table remained with the chairs about as it had been placed the day Alex Morden was shot. The room had not the grace it had when it was still the palace of the Mayor. The walls, bare of standing chairs, looked very blank. The table with a few papers scattered about on it made the room look like a business office. The clock on the mantel struck nine. It was a dark day now, overcast with clouds, for the dawn had brought the heavy snow clouds.
Annie came out of the Mayors room; she swooped by the table and glanced at the papers that lay there. Captain Loft came in. He stopped in the doorway, seeing Annie.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
And Annie said sullenly, “Yes, sir.”
“I said, what are you doing here?”
“I thought to clean up, sir.”
“Let things alone, and go along.”
And Annie said, “Yes, sir,” and she waited until he was clear of the door, and she scuttled out.
Captain Loft turned back through the doorway and he said, “All right, bring it in.” A soldier came through the door behind him, his rifle hung over his shoulder by a strap, and in his arms he held a number of the blue packages, and from the ends of the packages there dangled the little strings and pieces of blue cloth.
Loft said, “Put them on the table.” The soldier gingerly laid the packages down. “Now go upstairs and report to Colonel Lanser that I’m here with the—things,” and the soldier wheeled about and left the room.
Loft went to the table and picked up one of the packages, and his face wore a look of distaste. He held up the little blue cloth parachute, held it above his head and dropped it, and the cloth opened and the package floated to the floor. He picked up the package again and examined it.
Now Colonel Lanser came quickly into the room, followed by Major Hunter. Hunter was carrying a square of yellow paper in his hand. Lanser said, “Good morning, Captain,” and he went to the head of the table and sat down. For a moment he looked at the little pile of tubes, and then he picked one up and held it in his hand. “Sit down, Hunter,” he said. “Have you examined these?”
Hunter pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked at the yellow paper in his hand. “Not very carefully,” he said. “There are three breaks in the railroad all within ten miles.”
“Well, take a look at them and see what you think,” Lanser said.
Hunter reached for a tube and stripped off the outer covering, and inside was a small package next to the tube. Hunter took out a knife and cut into the tube. Captain Loft looked over his shoulder. Then Hunter smelled the cut and rubbed his fingers together, and he said, “It’s silly. It’s commercial dynamite. I don’t know what per cent of nitroglycerin until I test it.” He looked at the end. “It has a regular dynamite cap, fulminate of mercury, and a fuse—about a minute, I suppose.” He tossed the tube back onto the table. “It’s very cheap and very simple,” he said.