heard that I looked again an' wondered why I hadn't seen it.
I ought to know men!... Then I saw the outfit of Blue Devil
Frenchmen that was sent over to help stimulate the Liberty Loan. An'
when I seen them I took off my hat. I've knowed a heap of tough men
an' bad men an' handy men an' fightin' men in my day, but I reckoned
I never seen the like of the Blue Devils. I can't tell you why,
boys. Blue Devils is another German name for a regiment of French
soldiers. They had it on the Scotch-men. Any Western man, just to
look at them, would think of Wild Bill an' Billy the Kid an'
Geronimo an' Custer, an' see that mebbe the whole four mixed in one
might have made a Blue Devil.

"My young friend Dorn, that's dyin' up-stairs, now--he had a name
given him. 'Pears that this war-time is like the old days when we
used to hit on right pert names for everybody.... Demon Dorn they
called him, an' he got that handle before he ever reached France.
The boys of his outfit gave it to him because of the way he run wild
with a bayonet. I don't want my girl Lenore ever to know that.

"A soldier named Owens told me a lot. He was the corporal of Dorn's
outfit, a sort of foreman, I reckon. Anyway, he saw Dorn every day
of the months they were in the service, an' the shell that done Dorn
made a cripple of Owens. This fellow Owens said Dorn had not got so
close to his bunk-mates until they reached France. Then he begun to
have influence over them. Owens didn't know how he did it--in fact,
never knew it at all until the outfit got to the front, somewhere in
northern France, in the first line. They were days in the first
line, close up to the Germans, watchin' an' sneakin' all the time,
shootin' an' dodgin', but they never had but one real fight.

"That was when one mornin' the Germans came pilin' over on a charge,
far outnumberin' our boys. Then it happened. Lord! I wish I could
remember how Owens told that scrap! Boys, you never heard about a
real scrap. It takes war like this to make men fighters.... Listen,
now, an' I'll tell you some of the things that come off durin' this
German charge. I'll tell them just as they come to mind. There was a
boy named Griggs who ran the German barrage--an' that's a
gantlet--seven times to fetch ammunition to his pards. Another boy,
on the same errand, was twice blown off