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THE MAN ON HORSEBACK





rekomende
:
THE MAN ON
HORSEBACK
BY
ACHMED ABDULLAH
Author of "The Trail of The Beast"
NEW YORK
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
1919


PUBLIC LIDLARI
91281A
AST*??, LENOX AND
TILCZN FOUNDATION
R 1923 L
Copyright 1919, by
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
AU Rights Reserved
:
Printed in the U.S. A





CONTENTS
CHAPTER
•
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
PAGE 1
I. THE YANKEE DOODLE GLORY . . .
II. GOLD . . . . . . .
III. THE UNKNOWN METAL • • ..
IV. BERTHA WEDEKIND . j .
V. THE OFFER . . . . . ..
VI. GETTING ON . . . . .
VII. BARON HORST VON GÖTz-WREDE .
VIJI. THE SECOND OFFER ...
IX. EASTWARD Ho! . . . . .
X. THE MEETING . . . .
XI. THE WIRELESS . . . . .'
XII. COLONEL WEDEKIND . . ::
XIII. BERLIN . . . . . . . .
XIV. THE STRETCHING OF THE WEB
XV. ANONYMOUS . . . . . .
XVI. THE HORSEMAN . . . . . .
XVII. THE OLD WOMAN SPEAKS.
XVIII. LORD VYVYAN SPEAKS . . . . .
XIX. THE VOICE OF BERLIN . . . . .
XX. WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME .. 124
XXI. THE TIGHTENING OF THE WEB 134
XXII. HERR LEUTNANT GRAVES. . . . 139
XXIII. TRUEX . . . . . . .
146
XXIV. ALL DRESSED UP . . . . . .
XXV. DER DEUTSCHE . . . . . 159
·
·
·
·
·
119
·
·
153


CONTENTS
171
180
185
192
225
235.
XXVI. THE ARMY :
o o o • 10/
XXVII. THE STATEMENT . •
XXVIII. HAMBURG-TACOMA ::
XXIX. PERSONA NON GRATA
XXX. STORM CLOUDS . o
XXXI. THE INSULT. ..
202
XXXII. THE DUEL . . .
XXXIII. THE NOOSE IN THE WEB
XXXIV. BERTHA SPEAKS .
o
XXXV. BACK FIRE . . . . .
XXXVI. SPANDAU . ooo
XXXVII. VIEW-HALLOO . : go
XXXVIII. THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL doo
XXXIX. B. E. D. . . . : OO
XL. War!. . . . . Nooi
XLI. THE MOB SPEAKS od
XLII. TOWARDS THE FRONTIER
XLIII. METZ . . . . o o o o o
XLIV. THE BLUFF . . o
XLV. OVER THE BORDER O OO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCCO
SI
Có
323
331


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK





The Man on Horseback
CHAPTER I
THE YANKEE DOODLE GLORY
LIKE a great, shimmering silver horn the morning
mist swung out of the valley and Tom Graves swung
along with it, sitting his tough, sinewy, thirteen-hand
pony as easily as a lifetime of it can teach a man, and
lifting the mare gently with knee and soft word and
knowing hand when ruts or slippery timber falls cleft
the road or when it dipped too suddenly into rock-
strewn levels.
Fourteen miles beyond, an hour and a half's ride if
the pony was as keen as the man, was Woodfell, a one-
horse, one-man homestead of drab, slat-built house,
splintering, zig-zag fence, rickety corral, and a brown,
hopeless blotch of illy tilled fields. There he would
stable his horse with “Swede” Johnson, the squatter,
pay more or less gracefully that flaxen-haired individ-
uals habitual overcharge for a meal consisting of
bread mixed in the flour bag and baked in the frying-
pan, inky, boiled coffee, stringy bacon that tasted of
fish, and rice pudding remarkable for its shortcomings
as to raisins, and resume his journey on foot into the
Hoodoo mining district.
Tom Graves was easily moved to laughter. He


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
would laugh, at other people and at himself, with his
mouth that was wide and generous, his flashing, even,
white teeth, his square fighter's chin, his nose that,
starting in a haughty Wellingtonian curve, finished
disconcertingly with a humorous tilt to starboard. He
would laugh with every inch of his muscular, well-knit
body, with his very hair that was uncompromisingly
bristly and as uncompromisingly red; and he laughed
now as he said to himself that the district was rightly
named.
The Hoodoo! The evil, lumpish spirit of man's
aspirations, man's hopes and faith!
Once that part of Idaho had been famed for its rich
placer claims that had washed every day into the thou-
sands; then a misleading and glittering outcropping of
gold-studded quartz, and a mad wave of adventurers,
Americans, Canadians, Englishmen, Scots, and Scan-
dinavians, surging in and making the gaunt hillsides
ring with the staccato thud of pickaxe and the dull,
minatory rumble of powder and dynamite. Finally
disappointment, misgivings, an indiscriminate swal-
lowing of both capital and labor in one tremendous
avalanche of failure ... And the merry band of Ar-
gonauts, shaking off their dismay as a spaniel shakes
off water and cocking their beavers at the face of mis-
fortune, had followed the gold lure into farther fields,
the Kootenais this time.
To-day the Hoodoo district was empty of life ex-
cept for a couple of ancient Chinamen from Cali-
fornia, satisfied with washing their daily dole of five
dollars of gold in a forgotten claim; à few op-
timistic Spokane prospectors who dreamt glimmer-
ing mirages of mica; and John Truex, called “Old
Man” Truex throughout the Inland Empire.
He was a relic of former days, a man who had once


THE YANKEE DOODLE GLORY
3
hobnobbed with such notorious characters of local
Northwestern history as Soapy Smith and Swiftwater
Bill and who, well past three score and ten, white-
haired, patriarchal, yet erect and lithe, had built him-
self a two-story cabin of logs neatly dovetailed, in the
heart of the bleak, frowning Hoodoos. It was sur-
rounded by a flower garden, odorous with old-fash-
ioned blossoms, and flanked by a nostalgic strawberry
patch, shooting thin roots in fifteen inches of well-
fertilized soil that he had carried in bags from the roll-
ing Palouse and spread with loving hands on the nar-
row rock ledge that framed his cabin.
He still called himself a prospector, still was sure
that some day he would strike it rich, and he was the
partner of Tom Graves, half owner in the latter's
prospect hole that was called grandiloquently the Yan-
kee Doodle Glory and was the joke of every mining
man from Seattle to the Idaho Panhandle.
Not that Tom Graves was a miner by profession.
He had been born thirty years earlier in the Palouse,
had never been west of Spokane nor east of Butte, and
had followed the range all his life. As a boy he had
helped his father in a decade's hopeless fight against
the sprouting of grain, the fencing of free land, and
the nibbling of sharp-toothed sheep, afterwards riding
herd to various cattle men, and finally becoming horse
wrangler to Charles Nairn, the owner and manager of
the Killicott ranch.
He was a typical Man on Horseback, an atavistic
throwback to an earlier age when men rode free and
large, and before steam and electricity and machinery
came to cumber, some say to lighten, the world's bur-
den. But he was not displeased when his friends re-
ferred to him as “the miner," or introduced him to
traveling salesmen or visiting ranchers as the “King
ed to as of shitain, the de's hôn, As a is


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
of the Hoodoos.” For he had a healthy American
appetite after money and the decent things that money
can buy.
He remembered how the Yankee Doodle Glory had
come into his possession at the end of a memorable
day and night two-handed, stud-poker session with
Dixon Harris, the horse wrangler of a neighboring
ranch.
Tom had won steadily, hand after hand, pot after
pot, until finally Dixon Harris had risen to his feet,
had taken a greasy, yellowish, thumb-stained paper
from his pocket, and thrown it across the table.
"I am flat, Tom," he had announced. “Thirty
seeds to the bow-wows an' next pay day a hell o' a
long ways off. Take this here Yankee Doodle Glory
an' call it even. Somebody stuck me with it when I
wasn't lookin' an' now I'm goin' to stick you, you
old son-of-a-gun. Turn about's fair play!"
And Tom Graves had laughed and had taken the
title certificate—the mine was patented-in payment
of Dixon Harris' gambling debt.
The Yankee Doodle Glory was a standing joke in
the community. It had had a variegated, picturesque,
and not altogether honest career. It had been sold
and re-sold to capitalists from Boston, London, Minne-
apolis, and New York, abandoned and picked up again,
disposed of at auction in Spokane amidst the roaring
laughter of those present for thirty-five cents cash
("an' you're paying damned high for what you're get-
ting !" the auctioneer had added facetiously); money
had been spent on it lavishly for blasting and timber-
ing, tunneling and assaying, and never a speck of color,
neither gold nor silver, neither copper nor galena, had
ever been discovered in its frowning, hopeless depths.
Men out there in the Northwest spoke of "passing


CHAPTER II
GOLD
Se of cari back to the wine Doodipprobricare
“LOOK a-here, Tom," said “Old Man" Truex late
that evening as he was busying himself amongst his
pots and pans that shone and twinkled and glittered
like so many kindly, ruby-eyed hobgoblins, "what are
you goin' t'do with your half of all them opprobrious
riches down yonder in the Yankee Doodle Glory?"
He waved a hand through the window towards the
Hoodoos that coiled back to the star-lit firmament in
a great wave of carved, black stone.
Tom was toasting his legs in front of the glowing
hearth. He was tired and sleepy and happy. All
morning he had ridden; then the long up-hill pull on
foot from "Swede” Johnson's homestead to the cabin;
and finally three hours' climbing and slipping in and
about the prospect hole of the Yankee Doodle Glory
under his partner's guidance. It had not meant much
to him: just a flat facet of shimmering quartz where
the old miner's pickaxe had uncovered it, something
like a trail of haggard, indifferent light that disap-
peared in the frowning maw of a rudely blasted,
rudely timbered tunnel, and a small heap of what to
him had appeared to be rubbish, but which his part-
ner had handled as a fond mother handles her first-
born and had designated as: “Gold, my lad! Virgin
gold, or I'm a Dutchman!"
"Sure it isn't fool's gold?” Tom asked now with
a laugh.
had handled i onated in


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
there. You can surround yer bow-legged self with
Chink cooks and autermobiles and baskets of cham-
pagne and ... Say, what d'you call them things full
o'small bones that tastes like punk chicken and sticks
in yer throat?”
"Fishes?” suggested Tom sleepily.
"No! Not fishes! I had it once when I sold that
there Sally Miller prospect hole to that Eastern guy.
Wait! I have it! Terrapin—that's the name! Why,
man,” he continued seriously, sitting down on the edge
of his narrow bunk and scratching his shins, "there's
so much gold down there in that hole it makes me
afraid at times. Afraid !” he repeated in a strangely
sibilant whisper.
"Say, you're locoed !” Tom laughed. “What's the
matter with you, old-timer? Afraid of gold?”
"I ain't afraid of the gold. Gold is all right.”
Truex shook his head. “But, Tom ...” he crossed
the room and put his hand on the younger man's shoul-
der, “when you were down there, in that tunnel of
the Yankee Doodle Glory, didn't you-oh-hear some-
thing?"
Tom looked up sharply.
"I did. But it wasn't exactly hearing. It was
more like ..."he hunted for the right word. “Well,
something like ... I don't know what !"
"All right. You did notice it then!" Truex broke
in triumphantly. "And so did I !"
"Isn't it always so in a mine? In a tunnel? Like
an echo?"
"No. It isn't. And it wasn't like an echo. Nor
did I notice it until my pickaxe knocked off that bit
o'sure-enough quartz, the morning I sent you that
wire! Say, Tom," he went on, very earnestly, “it's
maybe because I am an old fellow and sorta supersti-


GOLD
tious. I've followed the gold trail these fifty years
or more, an' I know! I have seen mighty strange
things in the hills. I could tell things. And, Tom,
down there in the Yankee Doodle Glory, when I found
that bit o' quartz with the true color sticking in it
like raisins in a pudding, I had a funny feeling. I
... I was scared, scared stiff. Well, never mind,”
he wound up, returning to his bunk and taking off his
clothes. “To-morrow you got to get up right early
and take a sample of that there ore to Newson Gar-
rett in Spokane. He'll make us an assay. Good
night.”
"Good night,” mumbled Tom, who was already half
asleep.


CHAPTER III
THE UNKNOWN METAL
A LONG career as chemist and assayer had made a
pessimist and misanthrope of Newson Garrett.
Miners had come to his laboratory and had offered
him large, certified checks, asking nothing of him in
return except that he should rectify his reports by tak-
ing off a couple of figures from the rubric entitled
Silica and add them to that labeled Gold. Other
miners had proposed to kill him on the spot when he
told them that what they had taken for virgin gold
were only shimmering, deceptive bits of iron crystal.
Still others, told by him that they had struck it rich,
went straightway on a lengthy spree in the old Cour
d'Alene Theater to wake up a week later with a split-
ting headache and a brown taste, and to discover on
returning to their mines that somebody had jumped
their claims in the meantime.
So he was morose and silent.
"It'll take another Treadwell, another Leroy, to
make me excited," he used to say at the Club over
his glass of Vichy and milk, “and those days are over.
Why, to-day a fellow thinks he's all the Guggenheims
rolled into one and multiplied by the sum total of all
the Vanderbilts when his stuff runs two ounces to the
ton!”
But, five days later, when Tom Graves ambled into
his office, still dressed as if he had just come fresh
meanita silentiell, 2
and th at the
one anilow think
ΙΟ


THE UNKNOWN METAL
II
from the range, in blue jeans tucked into high-heeled
boots, a gray flannel shirt, and sombrero, but all neat
and clean, even slightly dandyish in the careful knot-
ting of the blue cotton necktie, the rakish angle of his
hat, and the elaborate pattern stitched on his boot
legs, Newson Garrett smiled. He smiled all over his
large, puttyish, hairless face, and held out a flabby
hand.
“Mr. Graves,” he said in his exact, well-modulated
diction that still smacked of Harvard after a lifetime
in the Northwest, “permit me to shake you by the
hand.”
"Sure, I'll permit it if you ask like a nice little girl.
But, what's the festive occasion? Why this exuber-
ance of comehitherness, Garrett ?”
"Your mine!” replied the other. “Your Yankee
Doodle Glory! The jest of the decade has turned
into the marvel, the envy of the decade, my dear sir.
It is wonderful. I might say extraordinary. It will
make history in the mining annals of the Inland Em-
pire. See for yourself,” handing Tom the typewritten
assay report of the quartz samples which Truex had
given him.
Tom read:
"Au.
Ag. ......
115 oz.
Fe...
..............1.5 oz.
Cu.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Si O
................ 12.2%
.........45%
AL O, CaO, Mg O, etc., not determined.
There is also present an element, probably some metal that
could not be determined, as it did not respond to ordinary tests.”
Tom looked up with a laugh.
“Say, put it in plain Americar. All this is Siwąsh
to me. \Vhat does it mean?”


I2
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"It means that you are rich beyond the dreams of
avarice. It means that you are a budding Rocke-
feller. It means that the Yankee Doodle Glory, if ·
the vein runs true ..."
“Truex says it does ..."
“He ought to know. He is an expert at blocking
out ore bodies in his own crude way.”
"I guess so." Tom pointed at the paragraph at the
bottom of the assay report. "Say, Garrett, what's
this?”
"Just what it says there. You see, when I assayed
the ore samples, though I used all the known tests,
there was one little ingredient, a metal most likely-
I am trying not to be too technical—that I was un-
able to separate."
Tom leaned across the counter. He thought of his
partner's curious words, and of his own curious seni-
sation, something like an echo, yet less decided, more
far away, he had experienced when he had entered
the tunnel of the Yankee Doodle Glory and had come
face to face with the ore ledge which his partner's
pickaxe had uncovered.
"This unknown metal or whatever you call it,” he
asked, "did it-well-affect you any? Your ears, I
mean . . .?"
“Yes !” Garrett gave his words the emphasis of a
suddenly lowered voice. “It did affect my ears in a
very strange,” he thumped the table in an access of
quite unhabitual excitement, "a perfectly unscientific
manner.” He was going to say more, but checked
himself. “Never mind," he went on, "you are rich.
You've got the gold. As to this unknown ingredient,
this unknown metal, I have made sure that it will not
interfere with any smelting process you may decide
on. And I shall send it East to a friend of mine who


THE UNKNOWN METAL
13
has a great scientific laboratory to see what he makes
of it. Don't you worry about it.”
But Tom Graves did worry a day later when Truex
suddenly came to town and went straight to his room
in the Hotel Spokane.
"Tom,” said the old miner, “I'm through with the
Yankee Doodle Glory. I'd swap my half of it for a
chaw of Macdonald's plug.” And being pressed for
a reason he repeated his former statement that he was
afraid. He said that, in continuing blasting the tunnel
and running it smack up against the vein, he had
uncovered an even richer ore body, but that the strange
sensations, as of a far-off echo, had increased a hun-
dredfold.
“Garrett says something about a new metal,” re-
joined Tom Graves.
“Forget it. Metals don't affect your ears. I don't
want nothing to do with that there mine.”
"But,” said Tom philosophically, "half of it is
yours."
"I don't want nothing to do with it, just the same.
I'm scared. I don't want to ever enter that tunnel
again!”
"You won't have to. We'll develop the mine in
style. It won't cost much, will it?”.
“No. We got enough ore in sight to pay for all
the machinery we need, an' I've a little money saved
up. But,” he repeated, irritably, “I tell you, Tom,
I'm goin' to sidestep that there mine. I don't want
nothing to do with it-not a damned thing. I'd
rather ..."
"All right, all right, old-timer. Keep your hair
on. I'll take a run over to the Club and have a talk
with Martin Wedekind.”
The latter was a German-American of the best type.


14
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
He came of an excellent Berlin family, but his father,
dead these many years, had been of such a grimly
Calvinistic turn of mind that he had not been able to
understand why his own children should have been
born with a grain of original sin. To the father, the
whole of life had meant nothing but a continuous and
emphatic moral action. He had brought up his two
sons accordingly, and had strained their souls to such
a horrible pitch of self-righteousness and hard ideal-
ism that they threatened to snap and recoil.
And finally, in the case of Martin, his younger son,
it had recoiled. He had been guilty of a small sin and
had been shipped off to America thirty years earlier.
He had come straight West, had done well there,
and had become an American heart, soul, and politics,
including even the saving prejudices. He hated the
very sound of the word hyphen.
"There are two classes of hyphenates," he used to
say when he warmed to the subject. “There's the
sort who get here via the steerage with the clothes they
stand in, make their stake, thanks to the splendid hos-
pitality, the fairness of equal chance, and the unlim-
ited possibilities of America, and return to Germany
as first-class passengers with money jingling in their
jeans. Over yonder they pose as Simon-pure Yan-
kees and read the New York Herald, while here in
America they swear by Bill the Kaiser and read the
New Yorker Herold. They are the breed who hate
America and dislike Germany, who try to straddle the
fence, who would kick at the climate of both Hell and
Paradise, who are neither fish nor flesh nor good red
herring. Then there's the other variety, the intel-
lectual hyphenates—and often they have good Amer-
ican names and not a drop of German blood in their
as singiling in many
w Yorkery swear your ho


THE UNKNOWN METAL
15
veins—who spout statistics about German efficiency,
meaning by that damnable word a comparison between
what's best in Germany with what's worst in Amer-
ica. I hate both breeds. I'm an American. No. I
am not sorry that I wasn't born over here. If I had
been, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate so thor-
oughly what America is, and means, and does."
To-day Martin Wedekind was retired from active
business affairs and spent his time between his home
in Lincoln Addition and the Club, where he played
his afternoon game of cards or dominoes and took
his whiskey straight, like a native born. His wife
was a New England woman and he had an only child,
a daughter. He was a little on the autumn side of
fifty, tall, heavy, slightly stooped, with peering, twin-
kling, kindly eyes, a mass of close-curled hair, a thick,
graying mustache, and great hairy hands that he used
freely to gesticulate with.
He did so this afternoon when the Club steward
announced Tom Graves, whom he had met the year
before on a visit to the owner of the Killicott ranch.
At that time an impromptu friendship had sprung up
between the two men in spite of their difference in
age and fortune and, at least on Tom's side, not alto-
gether hindered by the fact that Bertha, Martin Wede-
kind's daughter, was blond and violet-eyed and straight
of limb.
"Hullo, Tom! Hullo, capitalist !” was his hearty
greeting as the young Westerner ambled into the room
with that peculiar, straddling, side-wheeling walk
which smacked of stock saddle and rolling prairie.
Tom grinned sheepishly as he sat down. "I guess
the news of the rich strike in the Yankee Doodle
Glory is all over town by this time?” he asked.


16
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Sure. Garrett spilled the beans.”
“Damned good beans," commented Tom, "fine and
rich and nutritious and juicy.”
“Yes. But look out, young fellow. Every con
agent in the Inland Empire is going to lay for you
with a flannel-wrapped brick and a cold deck."
Tom waved a careless hand.
"A fat lot of good it'll do them,” he laughed. “My
mother was Scotch and as careful as a setting hen,
and I've followed the range all my life. Bulliest lit-
tle training-school to kick some horse sense into you.
Well, Wedekind,” he leaned across the table and his
eyes lit up with a frank, boyish appeal, “you're a good
friend of mine, aren't you?”
“None better !" came the kindly reply.
"Fine and dandy. You see, I want to talk to you
about that mine."
Wedekind smiled.
“Need a stake to start your developing work?” he
asked, slapping his check book on the table. “Name
your figure, my boy.”
Tom shook his head. “Thanks. It isn't that. It's
just some advice I want about my partner. The old
son-of-a-gun has gone loco ..
“Gold gone to his head?”
"Not a bit. Gold's gone to his feet. They're coid,
Wedekind, as cold as clay.” And he told the other
about the curious sensation, as of a far-off echo, he
and his partner had experienced in the tunnel, adding
that Truex resolutely refused to have anything more
to do with the Yankee Doodle Glory, and showing
Garrett's assay report with the paragraph about the
unknown substance on the bottom.
“Garrett says it's all right?" asked Wedekind.
"Sure. As right as rain. Says that foreign metal


THE UNKNOWN METAL
17
or whatever it may turn out to be won't interfere
with the smelting."
“Well, there's nothing to worry over then. I guess
platinum was an unknown metal once, and even gold
and silver were unknown during the iron age.”
"But Truex won't play."
“You don't need him, Tom. You work the mine
yourself. I'll give you a line to Fred Gamble, the
engineer. He has done some work for me. And you
make a contract with Truex ... Never mind. I'll
take the matter up with him myself.” He looked at
his watch. “What are you doing to-night?”.
“Oh, nothing special.”
"Fine. Come on up to the house and take pot luck.
Mrs. Wedekind will be glad to see you. And
Bertha, too."
"I haven't seen your daughter since last year,” said
Tom, as he walked down the broad staircase of the
Club side by side with Wedekind.
The latter laughed.
"She's changed some,” he replied. “You know she
has been visiting my brother Heinrich in Berlin for
over five months. Just returned. Oh, yes,” he re-
peated rather musingly, "she's changed some.”


CHAPTER IV
BERTHA WEDEKIND
“Well, Tom, I am glad to see you!" Mrs.
Wedekind, small, delicate, white-haired, with some-
thing about her reminiscent of old lace and lavender,
beamed upon him through her gold-rimmed spectacles.
“And rich, aren't you?”
Tom Graves felt slightly embarrassed. References
to the lucky strike in the Yankee Doodle Glory and his
suddenly acquired wealth often made him curiously
ill at ease as if it were a reflection, quite undeserved,
on his character and his manliness.
So he smiled vaguely and apologetically and shook
her hand without knowing what to reply, while Mar-
tin Wedekind, guessing what was going on in the
young Westerner's mind, came to the rescue.
“Yes, Fanny," he said to his wife. "Who would
have believed last year that the Killicott ranch har-
bored a prospective capitalist?" He turned to Tom
and led him to the sideboard with its hospitable array
of bottles and glasses and syphons. “Shall I mix you
one in honor of the occasion?"
But Tom Graves was not listening, for Bertha
Wedekind had come into the dining-room, an exquis-
ite little figure with her wheat-colored hair that rip-
pled over the broad, smooth, low forehead in a curly,
untamable mass, her violet-blue eyes, her pure oval of
a face, pink and white and flower-soft. Her youth-
18


BERTHA WEDEKIND
19
ful incompleteness seemed a lovely sketch for some-
thing larger, finer, more splendid; just a sketch of
happy, seductive hints with the high-lights of woman-
hood yet missing.
Tom took her narrow, white hand, looking upon
her admiringly and approvingly. She was dressed in
foamy silver lace over shimmering rose-pink satin,
with contrasting moire ribbons in deep purple and a
cluster of purple satin orchids at her high waist line.
Tom laughed. He remembered how he had seen
her the year before, on the Killicott ranch where she
had been spending the summer together with her par-
ents, in riding breeches, a khaki coat, a blue silk tie
loosely knotted around her slim throat, and her hair
pinned up carelessly beneath a flopping, mannish stet-
son, riding the range alongside of him and glorying
in the speed and tang and zest of it.
“By Ginger, Bertha,” he said, "you've sure changed
some. Now that gown of yours," he was studying it
naïvely, “I lay you my rock bottom dollar it's from
Paris.”
Bertha smiled rather languidly.
"I am afraid you would lose your bet, Tom," she
replied. “This gown is not from Paris. I bought it
in Berlin. Had it made there ..." And, as if re-
turning to a subject that was uppermost in her mind:
"You don't have to go to Paris any more for gowns
or, oh, 'most anything. You can get everything you
want in Berlin. Not only frocks and frills, but beauty,
and culture, and big things, worthwhile things! Why,
compared to Germany, America is ..."
“Daughter," cut in her mother dryly, “aren't you
forgetting that you are an American?"
"Dad is a German. Aren't you, Dad?”
Martin Wedekind flushed an angry red. "I was


20
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
born in Berlin. But I am an American-every inch
of me—all the time !"
"Uncle Heinrich told me in Berlin that ..."
“Leave your Uncle Heinrich out of the question.
He and I have gone different ways. I tell you that
I am an American, while he is a Prussian officer.
And—” turning to Tom and smiling bitterly, as if
remembering something that had happened very long
ago and that he had never been able to eradicate com-
pletely from his mind, "you know what Prussian of-
ficers are, don't you?”
Tom shook his head. His range of actual expe-
rience was limited by Spokane to the west, by Butte
to the east, and the British Columbia border to the
north. Of course he had known foreigners, but they
were mostly Britons, Canadians, and Scandinavians,
men very much like himself, men blending easily into
the great, rolling West.
"I'll tell you what they are,” continued Wedekind
heatedly, "for I know them. They are brass-buttoned,
brass-gallooned, brass-helmeted, brass-souled, saber-
rattling vulgarians. They are ..."
"Father! Please !" came Bertha's hurt, indignant
cry, and at the same time, simultaneous with the Chi-
nese servant's felt-slippered appearance, Mrs. Wede-
kind interrupted with a conciliatory :
“The soup's on the table !"
Martin Wedekind laughed.
“Never mind, little fellow," he said to his daugh-
ter, calling her by his favorite nickname, "you and I
aren't going to quarrel over ..
"Over anything or anybody, Dad dear.". Bertha
finished the sentence for him, and gave his arm an
affectionate little squeeze.
But even so there was a sort of embarrassed hush


BERTHA WEDEKIND
21
during dinner now and again when the conversation
turned to Berlin; and, somehow, it seemed impossible
to keep away from the subject. Bertha was young
and impressionable. She had just returned from Ger-
many after her first visit abroad; and all she had seen
there, and felt and heard, was very vivid in her mem-
ory, and very important.
Tom Graves looked at her rather ruefully. He was
deeply in love with her, and he said to himself that
she was different from the girl he used to know, dif-
ferent from the clear-eyed Western girl who had rid-
den by his side across the rolling range of the Killi-
cott. Harder she seemed, more sure of herself, less
considerate of other people's feelings, more stubborn
and unreasonable in the swing of her own prejudices,
more critical and skeptical; and after dinner, when
Mrs. Wedekind had left the house to call on a neigh-
bor while her husband was stealing a surreptitious
forty winks behind the shelter of the evening paper,
the change struck him more forcibly than ever.
Bertha was at the piano, her fingers softly sweeping
the keys while she hummed a German song:
"Klingling, tschingtsching und Paukenkrach,
Noch aus der Ferne tönt es schwach,
Ganz leise bumbumbumbum tsching,
Zog da ein bunter Schmetterling,
Tschingtsching, bum, um die Ecke?" ....
Tom looked at her: at the tiny points of light that
danced in her fair hair, the soft curve of her neck, the
slim, straight young shoulders, and he took a deep
breath, like a man about to jump. He was what
his life had made him, the range, the free roaming,
the open, vaulted sky. Simple he was and just a
little stubborn; at times easily embarrassed, but of
a lean veracity, with himself and other people, that
c: at the tit Curve of took a what


22
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
She turneel gestui he said, hat I ne' that you just 127
forced him to speak out sudden and unafraid where
other, more sophisticated men, would have hesitated.
Thus it was now.
He had always loved her, and he had never con-
sidered the fact that he was a simple horse wrangler,
while she was the daughter of a well-to-do, well-
educated man. What had kept him from speaking
to her of love had been the fact that he had been poor.
Now he was on the road to fortune, and so he spoke,
straight out, without preamble:
“Bertha, I must tell you something. 1..."
She turned very quickly and cut through his sen-
tence with a gesture of her slim, white fingers.
"Don't, Tom,” she said.
“But you don't know what I ..."
“I do. You are going to tell me that you love me,
aren't you?” And, when he did not reply, just in-
clined his head, she went on: “I shall never marry an
American!”
“You ... What?" Tom was utterly taken aback.
"I shall never marry an American," she repeated
calmly.
“But-why?”
She did not reply for several seconds. She i.'
always liked Tom, had always felt safe in his pres
ence. There had even been moments, last year on the
Killicott ranch, when her liking had edged close to
the danger line of something greater. But she had
changed since then. In Berlin a new world, new
people, a new view-point, new prejudices, had spread
before her; and, honest in so far that she saw things
without spectacles, dishonest in so far that these things
were only those she wanted to see, she told Tom just
what she thought.


BERTHA WEDEKIND
23
"Love to me is a romantic thing, and you-I mean,
American men-are so terribly, terribly prosy, so com-
monplace!"
Tom Graves was hurt. Not personally hurt, but
hurt in his Americanism, his patriotism. It was a nar-
row patriotism, geographically limited, but it was clean
and good and very decent.
"Bertha,” he said, “pardon membut you don't know
what you're talking about!”.
“Oh, don't I?”
“You don't. Romance? Is that what you are
after?”
“Yes,” she said stubbornly.
"All right. And aren't we Americans romantic
enough for anybody who cares for that sort of thing?
Why, girl, is there anything more romantic in the wide
world than a typical American whose great-grand-
father, rifle in arm and knife in boot, came out of
Virginia into Kentucky in the days when Kentucky
was the farthest frontier ? Not for gain, but just to
see what was going on behind the ranges? Whose
grandfather drifted into Kansas when it was 'Bloody'
Kansas and thence via Panama to California in the
f het great gold rush? Whose father mined and
a anched and played poker and drank his red liquor
from Alaska to the Sierras?”
"Meaning yourself?”
“You bet your life! I guess I've read some, back
on the old homestead, in the long winter evenings in
my father's tattered old books! I read a lot about
your Brian Boru, and Richard the Lion-Hearted, and
Tamerlane, and Frederick Barbarossa, and Roland,
and all the other guys with their long, foreign, stem-
winding names! But, say, for real, live, kicking ro-


24
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
mance, you give me a plain American, out of the
Northwest, via Kentucky, Kansas, and California!
Give me ..."
“Teleglam, Missie!" came a soft, sing-song voice
from the door, and Yat, the old Chinese servant, wad-
dled in, giving a yellow envelope to Bertha.
She tore it open rapidly, read, and rushed over to
her father.
“Dad! Dad!"
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Hello, little fellow!
What's all the excitement?”
"Oh, Dad! Baron von Götz-Wrede is coming to
America! He's going to come West, to Spokane!”
Martin Wedekind did not reply. Rather pityingly
he looked at Tom Graves, who was moodily studying
the pattern in the claret-colored Saruk rug.
But the German baron's cable was not the only one
which was flashed over the Western wires that night.
For when Tom returned to his room at the Hotel
Spokane he found there a telegram, dated Berlin,
offering him half a million dollars spot cash for con-
trol of the Yankee Doodle Glory.
It was signed: “Johannes Hirschfeld & Co.
G. M. B. H.”
For bane he four a million coory.


CHAPTER V
THE OFFER
"What do these hieroglyphics mean?" asked Tom
of Martin Wedekind the next afternoon, pointing at
the signature of the cablegram.
“'G. M. B. H..!"
“Yes."
"It's an abbreviation for 'Gesellschaft mit be-
schränkter Haftung.'”
“Sounds like a he-clam singing through his nose,”
came Tom's observation. “What's the answer?”
“The English for it? 'Company with limited re-
sponsibility.' 'Johannes Hirschfeld & Co., Ltd.,' as
the English would have it. By the way, some little
offer that, Tom! Half a million cold cash ...
Whew !"
"I guess it's some sort of a con game."
"No!” Wedekind laughed. “In Germany the
name of Johannes Hirschfeld stands for nickel-plated,
harveyized-steel, all-wool respectability. The Hirsch-
felds are hand in glove with the Deutsche Bank, and
the Deutsche Bank people are as thick as thieves with
the German Government.”
"In other words, that offer is O. K.?”
“Sure, Tom. If you want to sell.”
Tom Graves shook his bristly, red head. “What
knocks me is how that Berlin gang knows about the
when guess Wedeki Hirse
25


26
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Yankee Doodle Glory. Why, man, everybody used
to poke fun at that particular prospect hole in the
Hoodoos. There wasn't a day in the last twenty years
when you couldn't have picked up the Yankee Doodle
for a grin and a handful of peanuts, and now ...
Wait!”
They were sitting in the little red-and-gold poker
room of the Club and just then Newson Garrett was
passing by on his way to the library. Tom hailed him
through the open door:
“Say, Garrett! Step in here a moment." He
showed him the cable. “What d'you make of it?
Half a million chilly ducats for the Yankee Doodle
Glory!"
"For a controlling interest in it,” rectified the exact
assayist. Then he shook his head. “Steep price.
Too steep. Those Dutchmen are loco. Brand them
before they escape.”
"Yes, yes,” put in Martin Wedekind. “But the
Hirschfeld people are not exactly fools. They have
mining interests all over the world, and agents, and
correspondents. There must be a reason ..."
"And they seem to be in a devil of a hurry," said
Tom. “'Old Man' Truex struck the vein on the first,
and to-day is the fifteenth. Let me figure back.”
“You got to the Hoodoos on the third.”
“Yes. Back in Spokane on the fifth, and gave you
the ore sample the same day.”
"Yes,” Garrett inclined his head. “I made my as-
say tests on the sixth, while you went back to the Kil-
licott ranch and asked me to hold my report until
your return ..."
“Which was on the eighth. Of course the news of
the strike spread,” added Tom.
Wedekind looked up suddenly.


THE OFFER
“Garrett,” he asked, “Tom told me you sent some of
the Yankee Doodle Glory ore samples to New York,
to a friend of yours who has a great chemical labora-
tory?”
"I did. There was that unknown metal which I
was unable to separate.”
“When did you send it?”
“On the seventh."
“And it reached New York on the eleventh ...".
“Or the twelfth, Wedekind.”
"Let's call it the twelfth.” Wedekind cupped his
chin in his hands. He was thinking deeply.. "To-
day is the fifteenth,” he went on. “Three days' differ-
ence. What's the name of your New York' friend ?”
"The chemist? Oh, Sturtzel. Conrad Sturtzel.”
“A German?"
“Yes. We studied together in Freiburg where I
took a post-graduate course. First-rate fellow. Very
clever. The right sort to find out all about that un-
known ingredient.” He rose. “Sorry I have to leave
you, gentlemen. And—Tom! Take that half-million
offer! By all means !".
"Don't you do anything of the sort!” Wedekind
said when Garrett had disappeared.
“Why not?” Tom was frankly astonished.
“Because . .. I'll be frank with you. Because
Sturtzel is a German, and because that very respect-
able and very honest firm of Johannes Hirschfeld
& Co...."
“You think they'd welsh ?”
"No. 'They'd pay you spot cash in good, minted
gold coin of the realm. It's because" — instinc-
tively he lowered his voice —"they are hand in glove
with the Deutsche Bank, with the German Govern-
ment. ..."


28
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"You don't trust the Germans any too much, do
you, Wedekind?”
"I don't!" There was veiled bitterness in the older
man's voice. “I know them. My brother Heinrich,
he writes to me-he asks me to ... Never mind-
never mind! But I tell you I know them. I know
their virtues. But I also know—the other side.
Tom,” he went on very insistingly, “don't you sell that
mine. If it's worth half a million to them, as a gam-
ble, a gamble, mind you ..."
"It's worth that same to me. I'm on. Sure. And
I'll have all the joy of developing the property, of
working it, of seeing my fortune grow. Why, Wede-
kind," he went on enthusiastically, "it's bully, per-
fectly bully! It makes me feel strong, and powerful,
and ..."
Wedekind made a hurried, anxious gesture. “You
don't own control, do you?”
"No. It's an even fifty-fifty split with ‘Old Man'
Truex.”
"And he told you he wanted nothing more to do
with the mine.” He rose. “All right. I'll talk to
him. Where does he stay?"
"Up at Eslick’s.”
“Wait for me here. I'll fix it up for y012.”
And when Wedekind, ten minutes later, reached the
old prospector's dusty, bare room in the Eslick, he
found him in the act of lighting his pipe with some-
thing that looked suspiciously like a twisted-up cable-
gram.
He looked up when Wedekind entered.
"Hullo," he said hospitably; "sit down and reach on
the shelf yonder. You'll find some liquor there that
ain't so bad.” He laughed. “Say, Wedekind, some
damn fool's tryin' to play a joke on me. Sends me a


THE OFFER
29
telegram from one of them furrin' places an' asks me
to sell him control of the Yankee Doodle Glory for
half a million ..."
“Who?”
"Don't know. Didn't look at the signature.”
Truex rammed the paper spill deeper into his blackened
pipe bowl. "An' I don't give two whoops in hell.
I'm through with the Yankee Doodle. I'm scared
of it.”
“That's just what I came here to talk to you about,"
said Wedekind, leaning across the table. “Lis-
ten ..."


CHAPTER VI
GETTING ON
“OLD MAN” Truex's conditions were the acme
of guileless simplicity.
All he wanted was to be left alone; for as he re-
peated over and over again with senile persistency, he
was scared of the Yankee Doodle Glory and "he didn't
want nothing more to do with it.”
At first he was all for accepting a small cash remu-
neration for his past services, and he wanted to give
to Tom the entire stock of the company, which in the
meantime had been incorporated, free of charge.
“Take it,” he said; "there ain't any strings at-
tached.”
But finally he was persuaded to accept one-half of
the net profits every month as his share, leaving con-
trol of the property in Tom Graves' hands.
“Now are you satisfied ?” he asked.
"Not yet," said Martin Wedekind, "for what's go-
ing to become of your half of the profits in case of
your death?”
Truex glared at him through his bushy eyebrows.
"I ain't goin' to kick the bucket for a long while
yet !” he growled.
"Sure. Let's hope so. But suppose you ..."
“Well, if I die, let Tom keep the whole lot.”
"Haven't you got any relatives, any family, old-
timer?” suggested the latter.
"No." Then, suddenly, as if remembering some-
30


GETTING ON
31
thing forgotten these many years: “Wait. By the
Immortal and Solemnly Attested Heck! I had a sis-
ter once, back in York State where I was raised.
Silly little goose! Ran away with some measly, fiddle-
scratchin', long-haired foreigner, and I ain't ever
heard of her nor seen her since. Maybe she had a
kid."
“What's her name?" inquired Tom.
“Sally. Sally Truex.”
"I mean her married name?"
“Can't think of it, pardner. Makes no difference,
though. I tell you what. If I die you just keep
what's due me and hand it over to Sally or Sally's
kids if they show up, see? Here!” He scrawled a
few rude words on a piece of paper and handed it to
Wedekind. "I guess that's good enough, ain't it?"
Wedekind read...
“It's going to be bomb-proof in a jiff,” he said, and
he sent the Club steward for Alec Wynn, the lawyer,
who was in the next room playing life pool.
Wynn came in a few seconds later, and Truex's will,
for it was no less, was duly and legally attested, wit-
nessed, and sealed.
“Shall I put it in my safe for you?” asked the
lawyer.
"I guess so," replied Truex, and Wynn left to finish
his interrupted game.
Truex sighed like a man who had successfully ac-
complished a herculean task. "Well, there we are all
cocked and primed! An' as to my share of the boodle
you just pay it in every month at the Old National
Bank. I've a bit of an account there, an' they'll send
me whatever I need when I write to 'em."
"Aren't you going to settle down, now you are
wealthy?” asked Tom.


32 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Me? God, no! I'm going to British Columbia up
the Elk River a-ways. A fellow told me last night
there's a splotch of sure-enough quartz land up yon-
der an' I want to have a dig at it.”
And so the old prospector packed his telescope grip
and was off to the border on the next Spokane &
Northern train, leaving Tom Graves entirely in con-
trol of the Yankee Doodle Glory.
Given Newson Garrett's report and Wedekind's
loyal help, he had little trouble in raising money for
the initial development work, and Gamble, the young
Pennsylvania engineer whom Wedekind had recom-
mended, went into the task with such speed, zest
and efficiency that within a few weeks even the most
doubting Thomas on the local mining stock exchange,
which met every forenoon in a room of the Hotel
Spokane appropriately and conveniently next to the
bar room, became convinced that the ore strike in the
Yankee Doodle Glory was not an elaborate hoax, with
a bait for suckers attached. Consequently there was
many a man who groaned at the remembrance that once
he had been the possessor of the prospect and that he
had been in a hurry to pass it on to the next greenhorn.
Contrary to the accepted and time-honored tradi-
tions of Northwestern mining men who have made
their fortunes unexpectedly and over night, who come
to town on a roaring, tearing celebration, who strike
the more unchecked components of local society with
the strength and enthusiasm of a flying blast and
gather around them a festive crowd of both sexes
primed with exuberance and thirst and expectation,
Tom Graves leaned instinctively towards the more
sober, the more conservative set of which Martin
Wedekind was the accepted leader.
he a been in a to the act miningd ove


GETTING ON
33
Not that he was a prig. He was what is known
as a "regular fellow" in want of a better, or worse,
word. Good-humored, good-natured, easy-going, gen-
erous, he had the gift of spreading about him a wave
of happiness and joy.
So it was not altogether because of his rapidly
growing bank account in the Old National that he was
elected a member of the Club and invited to the best
houses, both of proud Seventh Avenue and the more
humble North side—the eternal North side of every
Western town.
Of course mothers, mothers with daughters of mar-
riageable age, that is, are the same the world over,
and since Tom Graves was clean and straight and
decent besides being well-to-do, the coming Spokane
season was destined to witness a tug of war with Tom
as the matrimonial prize; Mrs. Ryan clucking tri-
umphantly when Tom danced the first one-step with
Virginia Ryan, Mrs. Plournoy marking down a trick
in her favor when the young Westerner led her daugh-
ter Cecily to the supper table.
But Tom was blind to all this byplay.
His heart was entirely taken up with Bertha Wede-
kind.
Dearer she was to him than the dwelling of kings,
and, although even in his range days he had always
been slightly dandyish, it was for her rather than for
himself that gradually he abandoned the more pro-
nounced horse-wrangling mode of dress and appeared
in the streets, the restaurants, and the salons of Spo-
kane in the garb of effete civilization—with a few
notable exceptions. For he still remained faithful to
his floppy, leather-encircled, alkali-stained stetson.
He still refused resolutely to wear either vest or gloves.


34
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
It trained menver, either ny a mining om
He still found it impossible to get rid of his straddling,
side-wheeling walk, the memory of saddle and bit and
dancing cayuse bred to the range game.
Meanwhile, the unknown ingredient of the Yankee
Doodle Glory had become the scientific sensation of the
hour.
Many a learned body, many a mining school, from
Columbia to Denver, either asked for ore samples or
sent trained men to make a personal examination of
the mine in the Hoodoos.
But nobody was able to discover the nature of the
foreign ingredient, not even Conrad Sturtzel, the Ger-
man chemist in New York, to whom Garrett had ap-
pealed and who had an international reputation.
Newson Garrett, though, had been right when he
had told Tom that the presence of the unknown metal
would not interfere with the mine itself. The under-
ground work progressed speedily and well. The ore
smelted without the slightest trouble, and though the
miners at first complained of the same sensations, like
an echo far-off that had scared “Old Man" Truex
away from the Hoodoos and into the uncharted wilds
of the Elk River district, they had no lasting ill con-
sequences, no consequences of any sort for that matter.
"It's simply as if you were sand-hogging in a tun-
nei below a river bed,” said Gamble, the engineer, and
even that Conrad Sturtzel explained by a lengthy ar-
ticle in the American Ore Age in which he proved,
very scientifically and long-windedly, that tunnels laid
at a certain pitch acted as reservoirs for tone waves
and that the foreign ingredient had of course nothing
whatever to do with the curious sensation; an opinion
which, since it was signed with Sturtzel's name, was
accepted by the scientific and mining world.
Thus the double marvel, the financial one of Tom's


GETTING ON
35
sudden rise to fortune and the scientific one of the
unknown metal, passed into the limbo of familiar
things when-it was late in May of the year Nineteen
Hundred and Thirteen, over fourteen months before
the outbreak of the gigantic Prussian Crime a new
sensation electrified Spokane society.
For Bertha Wedekind remarked, quite casually, at
the occasion of a supper dance given by her chum,
Virginia Ryan, that a friend of hers from Berlin was
coming to Spokane in a few days.
Virginia smiled superciliously. She had met a num-
ber of Germans and made no secret of the fact that
she considered them very worthy, very respectable, and
frightfully bad form.
"Oh-we'll try and be nice to him," she said.
Bertha smiled triumphantly.
“You won't have to try so very hard," she retorted.
"You see, my friend is an officer in a crack regiment,
my Uncle Heinrich's regiment. His name is Baron
Horst von Götz-Wrede, and you should see him in his
uniform-blue and silver! Perfectly gorgeous, my
dear!”
Virginia collapsed while Tom, who sat next to
Bertha, felt something tug at his heart-strings.
It was later in the evening, as he helped Mrs. Wede-
kind on with her coat, that the kindly old New Eng-
land woman put her thin, wrinkled hands on his shoul-
cers and said, with that sudden abruptness of hers,
that he needn't worry. "Young girls will be young
girls. But-they get over it !”
Tom was taken aback.
"Then you ... You know ...?" He stam.
mered.
“Of course. I am a mother, and I have eyes in
my head," she smiled, "though I do wear spectacles.”
that and said, "ther thin, "at the kindiped Mrs. We


36 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"But ..."
"Tom dear," said Mrs. Wedekind, "you are a nice
boy. I'd love dearly to have you for a son. ..."
"Or a son-in-law?” laughed Tom, with a return of
his old, happy humor.
"Yes, Boy dear. But you must go in and win her
by yourself. Bertha is stubborn."
"I'm stubborn myself,” rejoined Tom Graves; and
he bent abruptly and kissed the old lady on the cheek.


CHAPTER VII
BARON HORST VON GÖTZ-WREDE
BARON HORST VON GÖTz-WREDE was the exact op-
posite of the German accepted and perpetrated as typ-
ical by the comic sheets, the music halls, and the week-
lies with guaranteed over two and a half million cir-
culation.
He was neither short nor plump. His hair was not
honey-blond and brushed straight back from a square
and stubborn forehead; there was no supercilious up-
sweep of pointed, curled mustache, and his eyes were
neither watery blue nor glassed in by immense, pro-
fessorial spectacles. He smoked no ell-long, cherry-
wood stem, china-bowl pipe, nor did he dine exclu-
sively on such Teuton delicacies as sauerkraut, pickled
herrings, liver sausage, veal kidney roast with sour
gravy, and nut cake topped by whipped cream.
On the contrary, he was tall and lean and clean-
shaven, of a certain angular, feline grace; dark
enough to be an Italian with a dash of Moor; polite
enough to be a Frenchman of fiction, and dressed in a
pronouncedly and aggressively British style. His
clothes spoke of a Haymarket tailor, his neckties and
socks and blazers and hats of the Burlington Arcades.
He was good-looking, even striking-looking, with
his clean, trained down length of limb, his wide, supple
shoulders, his narrow hips, and his long, predatory
face that sloped wedge-shaped to a cleft chin.
Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede was a cosmopolite,


38
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
heavy-frinam Thore some ser
and he had a disconcerting habit of telling people so.
"Now, please don't take me for one of those fab-
ulous Prussian officers who have swallowed the ram-
rod with which they were beaten in school,” he said in
his precise, beautiful English to Miss Virginia Ryan
at the first dinner party given in his honor by the
Wedekinds. “I assure you that I don't begin my
morning prayer with shouting three times 'Hoch der
Kaiser! nor do I wind up the evening by getting dis-
mally drunk on blond beer and singing some senti-
mental ditty about 'Die Lore am Thore. I am,"
he looked into her heavy-fringed, blue, Irish eyes,
“well ... Don't you think that I could easily pass
for an American?”
“For an Englishman rather-I should say,” replied
Virginia Ryan.
"What's the difference?” laughed the Baron.
"English or American? It's one and the same, and I
..." He raised his voice slightly so that it carried
the length of the dinner table, “We Germans--have a
deep respect, a lasting admiration, even affection for
the Anglo-Saxon peoples.” He rose, glass in hand, as
if carried away by the surging feelings in his heart.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Pardon me I know it's—
oh—not the right thing to do, at such an informal lit-
tle party. But will you permit me to drink to-ah-
looking at the men behind the table, successful men of
the Northwest, hearty, well-fleshed, keen Americans
with a sprinkling of Britons and Canadians-"to you!
The Anglo-Saxons! First in freedom and achieve-
ment!"
The toast was taken up. Glasses clinked. Only
Tom Graves and Martin Wedekind sat silent and
moody.
There was no doubt that the Baron was a great so-
the
Her Americalference?»


BARON HORST VON GÖTZ-WREDE 39
pentle youe shall be turn the British
cial success. Too, a social lion. Seventh Avenue and
the North side, the Spokane Club and the Country
Club, native-born and Canadian-born, vied with each
other in entertaining the visitor, who was plentifully
supplied with money and had taken a suite at the new
Davenport. He spoke freely and ingenuously to the
reporters of the local and other Northwestern papers
who quizzed him for copy.
"My reasons for coming to America ? Oh, curios-
ity to see with my own eyes if the American women
run true to the charming specimens which we see in
Berlin, during the season; and anxiety—possibly
tinged by a little envy, but you must not print this,
gentlemen, if you please—to find out the secret for
America's colossal advance in international affairs.
For, gentlemen, I own up to it. We of my country are
envious of you, and just a little afraid. I hope to
Heaven that we shall always be friends—we Germans
--and you—and”—he turned with a smile to Bob
Defries, correspondent of the Victoria, B. C., Daily
Colonist—"you—Canadians—British !" and it was
natural that the Baron's words were freely printed,
quoted, and circulated.
He had brought letters along to Martin Wedekind
from the latter's brother in Berlin. Too, Bertha told
her father that the Baron and the younger comrades in
his regiment had been most attentive to her during
her stay in the German capital; and so Martin Wede-
kind was of necessity forced to play host-in-chief to
the Prussian officer.
It was only to Tom Graves that he spoke his real
mind.
"I don't like him," he said.
"Nor do I," growled Tom. "I like him about as
well as a cold in the head.”


40
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
And then both would be silent and look guilty. For
they were fair and just, and deep down in their hearts
they knew that there was no cogent reason for their
dislike. On the other hand, Tom was too honest to
hide the antipathy he felt, and when he met the Baron
he treated him in an abrupt, rasping manner which,
putting the odium as it were on him and not on the
other, only served to increase his dislike.
"Say, I feel like kicking him," he said one day to
Newson Garrett.
“Whom?”
“That foreigner with the unpronounceable, double-
barreled name! That German Baron with the hook
nose and the British accent and the atmosphere of
noble ancestors and the general culpability that goes
with it!”
"The ladies like him!” signed Garrett, who had a
tender spot in his heart for blue-eyed Virginia Ryan.
“Sure—and ..." Tom checked himself. "I was
going to say that he does the regular Young Lochin-
var dope, hands 'em out sob stuff copped from the
Ladies' Own Gazette, signed Jessica Pinkney and
written by a red-haired Mick with a pipe, three inches
of stubble, and an overdue board bill. But it isn't
fair. He isn't one of those sighing, ogling, hand-
kissing society corsairs. He—and I hate like the deuce
to own up to it-he's a sportsman, all right. And it
isn't only the ladies that like him. The men, too,
have fallen for him like weak-kneed nine pins ..."
"What are you going to do about it?" inquired
the logical assayist.
"Me? Nothing! I am going to shake the dust of
Spokane off my feet. Temporarily, that is. I'm go-
ing up to the Yankee Doodle Glory and have a squint


CHAPTER VIII
THE SECOND OFFER
It was a few days later and Tom Graves was sit-
ting side by side with Gamble in front of the latter's
cabin, contentedly rolling a brown paper cigarette,
looking out at the dipping, peaking mountains and
listening to the sounds of pickaxe and blast that
drifted across from the tunnel of the Yankee Doodle
Glory, where the miners had begun their early morn-
ing shift.
Directly below his feet lay the old stage route, long
disused, last memory of the gold seekers who had
once followed the glittering metal lure to the Hoodoos.
It was still in fairly good condition, ruts and grooves
apart, bottled up between rock ridges five hundred
feet high, their crevices giving foothold to stunted
pines, gnarled fir trees, and an occasional "bearberry"
bush, their bases sheltering thick, lacy growths of
young spruce. The rocks stood out sharply and
threateningly, like gloomy sentinels silhouetted against
the tight-stretched sky, while the road beneath lay
bathed in purple and umber light.
It was quite early in the morning. The shiver-
ing sun rays blinked through the pines and gilded the
opposite crags; they trickled down leisurely to a rib-
bon-shaped granite ledge and a sparkling little brook
fringed by bush and willow.
"Lonely country,” suggested Gamble, who was a


THE SECOND OFFER
43
recent arrival from some old, teeming Pennsylvania
mining town.
"Aha! Lonely. And safe,” replied Tom, lighting
his cigarette and sending a thick plume of smoke
straight up into the still air. “No trouble here in
the hills. I used to swear by the range. Still do.
But I guess old Truex is right. The hills are all
right, too. There is no meanness here, no cheating,
no swindling, no ..." And then, looking intently
through puckered eyes, "say, if there isn't somebody
coming! Down yonder! Along the old road !” and,
following Tom's outstretched finger, Gamble saw a
tiny, brown spot moving along rapidly between the
rock ridges.
"Can't see his face," went on Tom, who had fetched
a pair of field-glasses from the cabin, “but traveling
in considerable style, whoever he is.”
Gamble took the glasses.
- "You bet,” he replied; "some style!”
For the tiny, brown spot was a low buckboard
driven by one man, side by side with another, and
was filled to overflowing with pieces of luggage_two
Gladstone bags, a plaid roll, a canvas roll, a linen-
covered trunk, three guns in pigskin cases, a large
creel and fishing rod and a camera.
"Where do you think they are going?” asked
Tom.
"Must be coming here. The road leads to Goat
Peak. That's the end of it, and there's a pretty
smooth ascent from there up to this cabin.”
"I guess so. Wonder who it is, though,” replied
Tom and, half an hour later, while Gamble had walked
over to the Yankee Doodle Glory, his wonder grew
into surprise and his surprise into dull, unreasoning
anger.


44
.
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
For, around an outjutting, frayed rock that marked
the end of the Goat Peak Trail, followed by a lanky,
perspiring Palouse farmer youth, laden with most of
the pieces of luggage that had crowded the buckboard,
came Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede, smiling, debonair,
superbly sure of himself, with hand outstretched.
"I have heard so much about your free and open
Western hospitality that I decided to have a try at
it,” he laughed. "Here I am! My word!” he con-
tinued in his curiously British accents, "you don't
seem a bit glad to see me. Have I broken in on
the hermit's meditations about peace and the pure
life?"
Tom stiffened. Then, very quickly, he stepped for-
ward and shook the offered hand. For, after all, the
man of the Far West is very much akin to the desert
Arab in his peculiarly rigid code of honor, his pe-
culiarly sweeping code of hospitality; hospitality even
to the blood enemy who touches his tent ropes.
"Glad to see you.” He tried to give to the words
a ring of that welcome which, deep in his heart, he
knew to be missing. Then, pointing at the guns and
the fishing rod, “Come here for sport? Not much
game here, I am afraid, and the trout are as shy as
butterflies.”
The Prussian officer had paid off the young farmer
and sent him on his way. He turned to Tom with
a smile of utter, winning sincerity.
"Mr. Graves," he said, “I have been told by men
who know that you Westerners are jolly good poker
players, pretty hard to bluff, and so I shall put my
cards on the table, face up. Of course I am awfully
fond of sport and I'd be glad to pot one of your big-
horns. But my real reason in coming here was to
have a look at that famous mine of yours, the, Yan-
adde of hospita hiš tent Topthe words


THE SECOND OFFER
45
kee Doodle Glory. I have heard a lot about it, and
I am frightfully curious by nature.”
Tom was frankly astonished. He knew that the
sensation of the ore strike in his mine was no longer
a matter of absorbing interest to any one, and so he
said: "Why, that's ancient history.”
"Perhaps to you, the Americans. But not to ..."
The Baron checked himself quickly. He bit his lips
as if trying to cut off the word he had been about
to pronounce. He seemed strangely flustered for a
moment, and his English, usually so carefully modu-
lated, so ultra-British in every delicate shade of in-
flection, suddenly took on a thick, rasping, guttural
tang
"You see,” he stammered, “the papers say a good
deal about it, and ..."
Tom Graves took pity on the other's evident em-
barrassment. He had no idea why the man should be
ill at ease, and he dismissed the fact of it as some
mad, inexplicable, foreign idiosyncrasy.
“Sure,” he said, "that unknown metal. I get you,"
and he did not notice that the German, at the words,
had turned slightly pale and was studying him in-
tently from beneath his lowered eyelids.
"Well," Tom went on, "have a bit of breakfast, and
then I'll take you round to the diggings and you can
gopher about there to your heart's content.”
He said it laughingly. For all at once it had struck
him that he had every reason in the world to be glad of
the other's presence here in the Hoodoos. As long as
he was here, he was away from Bertha Wedekind, and
that was a point gained. And so, his native hospitality
fired by his love, his jealousy, his self-interest, Tom
set about preparing breakfast. He heated up the cof-
fee, threw half-a-dozen slices of fat pork sizzling into
na to the dis content: nad struck
then I'll t Tom went his lowered "ese studying


46
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
the skillet, and mixed the proper ingredients for that
Western culinary marvel prosaically called flapjacks.
"Here you are,” he said, when everything was fin-
ished and, passing to his guest the frying-pan filled
with pork, “have some mountain veal! And say~"
laughing, jovial, now thoroughly at his ease, “don't
dirty any more plates than you have to. Gamble and
I are taking turn and turn about, and this is my day
to cook and wash up and get messy generally. Fall
too, stranger !"
Breakfast finished, he took Baron von Götz-Wrede
to the mine tunnel and into the hands of Gamble while
he returned to the cabin, sat himself upon a stone,
and smoked, doing nothing successfully and bliss-
fully.
Late that night, after dinner, with their guest in
the back room hunting in his Gladstone bag for cigars,
Gamble turned to Tom Graves with a sudden, hurried
whisper.
"Did you say that fellow's an officer in the Ger-
man cavalry?”
"Sure. Why?”
"Well, he knows as much and more about mining
engineering than I do and, believe me, I am no slouch
at the game. He ..."
“Shut up!" whispered Tom.
But it was too late. The Baron had come into the
front room. He must have overheard the last sen-
tence, at least caught the sense and drift of it, for
he laughed, very much like a schoolboy surprised in
a naughty prank.
"I do know mines, don't I, Mr. Gamble?” he asked.
“Well, I am not ashamed of it. You see, we Prus-
sian army chaps, while we like our career, of course
get tired of drill, drill, drill all the time. We get


THE SECOND OFFER
bored to death with saber and lance and martingale.
We have to have relaxation of some sort, you know,
and I have always taken a great deal of interest in
what's going on in the bowels of the earth.”
“You're certainly some little expert," commented
Gamble admiringly, and the Baron inclined his head.
"German efficiency,” he replied, and it was difficult
to tell if he was poking fun at himself or at the
others.
Gamble went to bed early leaving Tom and his guest
in front of the blazing, crackling log fire. Tom was
sleepy and happy. He was about to doze off when
the German's words startled him into immediate and
full wakefulness:
“How much will you take for the Yankee Doodle
Glory?"
The American looked up sharply. “You want to
buy?"
“Yes. Outright. For cash. Name your figure,
Mr. Graves."
The latter did not like the other's abrupt, dragoon-
ing manner, and—he was a good poker player. He
folded his hands behind his head, kicked out his feet
towards the full warmth of the fire, and yawned
elaborately.
"I don't know as I want to sell," he said finally,
with utter carelessness. "I guess I'm sort of stuck
on these old Hoodoos. No. I don't know as I want
to sell powerfully bad.”
"Five hundred thousand ?" asked the Baron, taking
out check book and fountain pen.
Tom grinned mischievously. “Oh, you carry your
munition along, do you? Well, it's no go. I don't
want to sell. At least I don't know that I do ...
yet !"


48
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
“When will you know?"
"Perhaps next week. Perhaps never."
The Baron gave a short, impatient laugh. "I
thought you Americans were such quick, sharp busi-
nessmen.”
"I'm not a businessman. I'm an ex-cowpuncher,
and I've all the time in the world. Let's turn in."
"Verdamnit noch 'mal!” The Baron iapsed into
hectic, vituperative German. But he controlled him-
self. "I make that offer six hundred thousand," he
continued.
Tom Graves rose.
"Quit tilting the jackpot," he advised. "I'm not
playing;" and that was all the answer the other could
get out of him though that night. All the following
week he returned to the attack, periodically raising his
bid until he had reached an even million, and even
Tom kicked himself for a stubborn fool. “But,” as
he explained it afterwards, “I never sell when the
other fellow is too damned anxious to buy. It may
be punk business, but it's me!"
At the end of the week Tom decided to return to
Spokane.
"You can stay here. Gamble'll take good care of
you,” he told the Baron.
But the German said he would come along to town,
and all the way to Spokane he repeated his offer for
the Yankee Doodle Glory, raising his bid time and
again, and finally driving Tom into an access of Amer-
ican abruptness.
“Stow that nagging. You aren't my wife, nor my
mother-in-law, and you aren't even my side-kick. I
don't want to sell, and hell, brimstone, and damna-
tion can't budge me when I've made up my mind,
see?”


THE SECOND OFFER
49
Von Götz-Wrede choked down an angry word.
Then he was again his old, suave self.
"Well, never mind. I shall ask you just once
more ..."
“Look here! I told you I ..."
"Just once more ... before I leave Spokane.
You see, I shall leave here to-morrow night.'
"Oh, you're off?"
“Yes, my leave is over. Back to the regiment, and
the drill.”
Tom smiled. He thought of Bertha. Here was
one rival at least eliminated for good. So he essayed
a mild, white lie. “I'm mighty sorry to see you
go."
"And I am sorry to leave. I've had a ripping time.
Thanks for your hospitality, and if ever you come to
Germany ...”
"Me-to Germany?” Tom Graves laughed out
loud at the idea. "Say—I don't ..."
"You never know what may happen. Anyway,
if ever you happen to be in Berlin, look me up." He
was again the soul of sincerity. “We like men like
you over there. Strong men, big, powerful, daring,
upstanding; and there's one or two things you could
teach us ..."
"Nothing except riding a little pony,” smiled Tom.
"Exactly. And that's a lot. You see, I am in the
cavalry, call myself a good horseman, have ridden for
my regiment at Olympia, in London. But compared
to you ... My word !”
And the young Westerner, touched in his weak spot,
decided that the man was not so bad after all and
thought to himself that perhaps he would let him have
the Yankee Doodle Glory. There was really no sense
in not selling
You over there. Soul of since Berlin, 1001m. Anyway


50
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But, since he considered Martin Wedekind his men-
tor in all things financial, he ran out to the house in
Lincoln Addition that evening and put the case be-
fore his friend, in all its details, including the Baron's
extraordinary knowledge of mines and mining.
“Shall I sell?” he asked.
Wedekind shook his head. "No. Don't sell
to .
“To the Baron?”
"To any German! To anybody unless you know
exactly who and what he is. No, no! Don't you
ask me to give you any reasons. Just do what I tell
you, will you?"
"Sure!"
And so, the next day, when Herr von Götz-Wrede
called on him for his final decision he was met by such
a staunch, hard “No! I won't sell, and that's flat!"
that the German gave up.
"All right, Mr. Graves,” he said, waving a careless
hand. “All right. Only, please keep it to yourself.
Don't speak about that offer I made you. People
would think me slightly-oh-touched.”
“But why do you ...?"
"I am a rich man, I have hobbies, and I like to
gratify them. That's all. By the way,” shaking
hands again, "do come over to Germany and look
me up."
"No. I don't want to travel.”
"Don't be so provincial. Come on. You're a rich
man, a man of leisure. Do come. Promise me that
you'll come !"
“No!"
"I shan't take no for an answer.” He lifted a
threatening finger. "Honestly, unless you promise
me, I am going to stay right here in Spokane, and


THE SECOND OFFER 51
nag you every day about selling the Yankee Doodle
Glory!”
“All right, all right!" laughed Tom. "I promise !"
"You'll come this year?”
“Yes, yes, I promise anything you wish as long's
you shut up about that mine!"
"Thanks. That's corking. Here's my address.
'No. 67, Xantener Strasse, Berlin, W: I'll be mighty
glad to see you over there !"
And there was such a charming, sincere smile on
his lips and in his eyes that Tom decided all his for-
mer antipathy had been nothing but rank envy and
jealousy; and so he grasped the German's hand and
cried enthusiastically:
“You bet I'll come !"


CHAPTER IX
EASTWARD HO!
TOM GRAVES went abroad rather sooner than he had .
imagined he would at the time he had given his rash
promise to Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede.
And it was Bertha Wedekind's fault.
About a week after the German's departure, think-
ing there was now a clear field and no favors, he
decided to ask her once more to be his wife. She
had been nice to him the last few days and, being
in love and therefore self-centered, there was but one
construction he could put on her shifting mood-she
was beginning to like him better; rather, she was drift-
ing back into that chummy, simple sympathy, not un-
mixed by tenderness, that had been between them the
year before on the Killicott ranch, before she had
had her head turned by the Prussian officers whom
she had met at her uncle's house in Berlin.
It was on a Saturday night, and the Country Club
was giving its weekly hop. More than one couple,
tired of dancing, had sought the seclusion of the
great, sweeping veranda that framed the Club build-
ing on all sides to catch the breeze that boomed down
from far Hayden Lake, laden with the sweetness of
wood flowers and the tang of wet pine.
"Let's go out. I want to talk to you," said Tom,
and he was so masterful that Bertha took his arm
and went without a word.
She sat down on a rocker, and he remained stand-
52


EASTWARD HO!
53
ing in front of her, looming up square and heavy and
manly in the drifting moonlight.
"Bertha,” he said in a low voice, "a few weeks ago
when I was going to tell you that I love you, you
did not let me finish. You told me that you ...
"I told you that I would not marry you, nor any
other American.” She was not looking at him, but
studied her tiny, narrow foot, arching the instep.
“You will listen to me now," he went on. “You
see, I love you. I am mad about you, just plumb
mad. 1—why, girl, there isn't a thing in the world
I wouldn't do for you. Perhaps I am just a fool,
just a silly, superstitious fool. But last year, back
on the Killicott, when I looked at you, pretty and
dainty and well-educated and the daughter of a rich
man, when I looked at myself, just a poor horse
wrangler with not a cent in my jeans, nothing but
my sixty bucks or so to live on, I used to pray. Yes!
I prayed to God to give me money!"
"Tom.!”
“Wrong to pray for money, you think? Not a bit
of it! For when I prayed for money, I prayed for
what's best, what's most strong, most decent in
me! My love for you! You see, I'm not alto-
gether a sentimental jackass. I know that even the
truest love in the world can't make a go of it on sixty
bucks a month, that even the truest love in the world
has got to eat and drink and—” smiling and leveling
a shameless thumb at her dainty little dance frock
of lavender tulle, girdled with a shimmering length
of blue and silver brocade, “buy one of those things
once in a while. Wait," as she started to rise, “I
haven't finished yet. My words are-oh-sort of in-
adequate. If I had you out on the range now, with
the wind in my face and a little pony between my


54
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
knees, I guess I could speak to you. But here, with
these duds on-” ruefully indicating his sober black
and white dress suit, "well, I feel cramped and clumsy
and very much like a darn fool. But, don't you
see ..." and, suddenly, the inner worth, the inner
passion of the man, shone in his eyes. His words
caught the glamor that shone from youth, from love,
from courage, from revival of old hopes, raising of
new banners, and soared up to something closely re-
sembling a lyric pitch: "I worship you, dear! I
adore you like-like a queen! I love you soul and
heart and body! Why, girl, I hear your voice at
night, and it haunts me in my dreams. I've smelt the
open range in springtime when all the little unknown
flowers peep up overnight and make the air sweet and
soft-and you, your presence, leaves just such a
fragrance behind !” He gave a short laugh. “Talk
like a poet, don't I? But-you see, dear—I'm just
mad about you, just plumb mad!”
"You must fight against it,” said Bertha, with all
the priggishness of youth.
“Why should I? Haven't I got a right to love
you? Can I help that I love you?" and he went on,
reckless of speech, until his passion had spent itself.
Bertha gave a little sigh.
"Tom," she said, “I am fond of you. I like you
like a ..."
"If you say that you like me like a brother I am
going to do something reckless! I love you-nor do
I love you like a sister. I love you with a real, honest
flesh-and-blood love and ..."
"Tom!" She looked up and saw the expression in
his eyes. Instinctively she lowered her voice. "I am
sorry, Tom, very, very sorry. But ..." she made
a little gesture.


EASTWARD HO!
55
He clenched his fists that the knuckles stretched
white.
"It's no go, eh?” he asked. “It's because of
that ... that German Baron-damn him ...'
"You must not swear! I won't have it. You-
you are rude and ill-bred and ..."
"All right, all right!" Tom's temper was fast get-
ting the better of him. “I understand all right. Your
head has been turned by those—what does your father
call them?—those brass-souled, saber-rattling coy-
otes ..."
"Father doesn't know !"
"You bet your life he does! He knew them in his
youth. He hasn't got a bit of use for those brag-
ging, swaggering, square-head Dutch officers ..."
She rose, fire in her eyes.
"You are insulting me," she cried. “I am a Ger-
man myself !”
"Don't you believe it! You're a plain, every-day,
field-and-garden American-just like me, just like
your Dad—and that's one of the many reasons why
I'm so crazy about you."
"You—you are ..." The girl was near to cry-
ing. “I hate you, hate you!"
“All right. I guess you've made up your mind to
marry one of those jackanapes with their pink-and-
green monkey jackets, the lightning conductor spikes
on their helmets, their haw-haw manners and the bits
of window glass stuck in their eyes. You ..." quite
suddenly he recollected himself. He bent his head,
like a man submitting to the judgment of Fate. “I
beg your pardon, Bertha. I lost my temper.
God ... I love you so ..."
"I don't want to see you again ... Never !”.
“You won't!"
the many res
ing: "I havou are. you."


56
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
And he was off at a half run. He grabbed coat
and hat, jumped into a taxicab, and drove home.
There he took down the telephone receiver, called
for Pacific 6589, and startled Johnny Wall, the jolly,
plump little Canadian who directed the local fortunes
of the Atlantic steamship lines, out of a sound and
dreamless sleep.
“Get me a passage, Johnny! Immediately!”
“What are you talking about? Are you drunk ?"
"I am not. I am mad !”
"You sound like it ..." Wall was about to slam
down the receiver, when Tom begged him frantically
to wait.
"I'm not mad the way you mean. I am quite sober
and quite sane."
“Well-what do you want?”
"I want to go to Europe !".
"When?”.
"Immediately. Get me a ticket or whatever you
call the fool things. And, Johnny, not a word to
anybody. I am making a sneak!”
“All right, Tom. I'll fix you up. Come to my
office in the morning.”
And so, the next afternoon, after a visit to the
Old National Bank where he arranged with Donald
McLeod, the black-haired Scotch cashier, for trans-
mission of funds, he took train for New York. He
did not even say good-by to Martin Wedekind for
fear of running into Bertha.
But Wedekind found out about Tom's departure
just the same, for Johnny Wall blabbed, and when
Tom Graves, who had four days in New York be-
fore his steamer sailed, called at the steamship office
for his berth, he found there a special delivery letter
from Wedekind, wishing him luck on the journey,


EASTWARD HO!
57
and enclosing some lines of introduction to his brother,
Heinrich, in Berlin.
“I haven't seen Heinrich for years, in fact not since
I was a young lad," added Martin Wedekind. “I
did not like him then; he was the regular Prussian
incarnation of beef and brawn and damn your neigh-
bors' feelings and your neighbors' pet corns. I don't
think that thirty-odd years in the army have im-
proved him any. But he is a colonel of cavalry, and
since you are going to Europe, you might as well see
all the phases of life there. God bless you, my boy!"
Tom boarded the North German Lloyd liner Augs-
burg at noon, on Saturday.
An hour or two later, the steward handed him a
telegram from Spokane.
It read:
"Don't sell the Yankee Doodle Glory.
"(Signed) WEDEKIND.".


CHAPTER X
THE MEETING
from the town beyonchi his lif
“MISTER GRAVES!"
The voice was a woman's, low, musical, and irate;
and Tom turned quickiy.
It was the afternoon of the first day out. For
the first time in his life Tom was away from his na-
tive, Northwestern heath and confronted by a scene
that was not framed by lanky pine and frayed, ribbed
rock, by rolling sage land and green-thundering water-
fall, studded with little towns set flat, like jewels,
into the surrounding plains and straddling in an arro-
gant, devil-may-care manner in all the cardinal points
of the compass, as if to advertise to newcomers fresh
from the East that, if they would but wait a year or
two, the town would fill up and grow to the next
range, and even beyond.
For the first time in his life Tom felt the lap and
surge of salt water beneath his feet and so he had
been leaning over the top deck rail looking over the
great Atlantic that chopped towards the crooked,
peaked sky line with an immense roll; and, the ship
giving a ruffianly lurch at the same moment, he nearly
lost his balance and fell on the plank deck when he
recognized the speaker's face.
“Well! Bertha! I'll be eternally razzle-dazzled !”
He held out a big, honest hand to Miss Wedekind,
who stood there, dressed in short plaid skirt, low-
heeled brown shoes, tweed hat, and a silk blazer of
gold and black stripes.
58


THE MEETING
59
She waved the proffered hand aside. Her violet
eyes eddied up with a slow flame of anger.
"I don't want to shake hands with you!” she said.
"Eh?” Tom Graves did not believe his ears.
“Aren't you glad to see a face from home? Why,
say, I am plumb tickled to see you. I ..."
The girl stamped her foot.
"I am-oh-angry!" she cried. “Frightfully an-
gry! What do you mean by persecuting me, by fol-
lowing me when you know you are not wanted ?”
"Mempersecute-you?” stammered Tom. "Me-
follow-you?”
"Exactly! Don't play the stupid! I took the first
train for New York, the first steamship out of New
York, as soon as Uncle Heinrich cabled that his
mother, my grandmother, was sick, near death, and
wanted to see me once more. And here you ...
Have you no shame, no decency?"
"Say, Bertha,” stammered Tom. “Honest to God,
I don't know anything of what you're saying. I guess
I left Spokane a few days before you did. Why, I
spent half a week in New York, just fretting and
fuming to get away. Didn't your father tell you?”
“He did not! And I don't believe you! No, I do
not! You are insufferable. Can't you take no for
an answer? Do you think, do you imagine for a
moment, that you can win me by such silly, ill-bred,
rude persecution? Do you think you can bully me
into marrying you? Haven't you got any more man-
hood than that?”
“Look here, Bertha ..."
“You heard what I said, Tom Graves. And if you
dare say a word to me on board this ship, if you as
much as smile at me, I am going to complain to the
captain. There !” and she swept off while he looked


60
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
after her, cap in hand, scratching his red hair, amaze-
ment and grief and hurt pride in his honest features,
finally relieving his injured feelings by a tremendous;
Well, I'll be his injure pride in his red hair
tightly parted down thand) was her. His hair
"I say! Don't speak out your thoughts so freely,
my dear sir!" Another voice came to his ear, a man's
voice this time and frankly, aggressively British.
“Never say you'll be damned or anything as rash
as that before you've tried some of that ripping medi-
cine against it they sell down across the saloon bar,
what?"
Tom lɔoked up.
The speaker was a young man about his own age,
his own height, though a little broader. His hair (he
wore his cap in his hand) was honey-colored and
neatly parted down the center; his sack suit was
tightly tailored and of an extravagant, hairy, green
Harris tweed; his heavy brogues were topped by
brown cloth spats; and his face, round, rosy, blue-
eyed, open, was ornamented by a tiny mustache and an
immense, gold-rimmed monocle.
The final seal to this typical specimen of traveling
Briton was given by a short briar pipe clamped be-
tween his teeth; and when Tom Graves looked at
him, dazed, rather overcome, the Englishman con-
tinued:
"My name's Vyvyan, if you want to stand upon
ceremonies,” giving him his card.
Tom took it and read thereon:
"LORD HERBERT VYVYAN
Bury St-Edmonds.”
“Mr.—Bury St-Edmondş?” stammered Tom.
"Gad, no! That's my address, home in England.
Vyvyan—that's my name!"
im The final sciven by a when Tom
Englishma


THE MEETING
“Oh-mine's Graves—Tom Graves!”
Now, for the excuse of the young Westerner, be it
said that all his life, though he had met plenty of
Englishmen, in the Inland Empire, he had been fa-
miliar only with the two types who abound there: the
English worker, and the English wastrel.
The former are the men, men of all classes, who
come either direct to the Northwest or via Canada
and who, in spite of the fact that they are less ready
to take out their citizenship papers than the Continental
Europeans, mix with the native life, business and so-
cial, as oil mixes with oil, thus accounting for the fact,
never yet sufficiently dwelt upon, that though in the
United States there are German-Americans, Irish-
Americans, Italian-Americans, and what-not, there is
no organized, or unorganized, English-American
party, or vote, or even consciousness. The English-
man, he of the worker type, blends with the civic
and national life, and his son is altogether an Amer-
ican.
Tom had also met and drunk with and ridden with
his share of the second type of English, the wastrels,
mostly remittance men who had left their country for
their country's good and who received a quarterly
stipend from home as long as they remained abroad.
There was a vague rumor that some of them were the
sons of noblemen, earls and viscounts and so forth,
all called “dooks” for short by the gentry of the range,
and they were not bad fellows. At least they were
plucky.
But this man, Vyvyan, was decidedly not an Eng-
lish worker, and just as decidedly not an English wast-
rel-and: he was a lord; and Tom, out of the ingen-
uousness of his heart, blurted out a great, loud, tact-
less :


62
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
“Say, for the love of Mike, are you really a lord-
honest to God?”
“Right-oh !" came the cheerful reply.
"One of those guys who wear silly little crowns and
a whole lot of purple velvet and white fur?” pursued
Tom, remembering what he had learned in the movie
theaters of Spokane.
"Right-oh again!" Then, seeing that Tom was
studying him intensely: "I say, what's the matter?"
“Oh, nothing!" Tom scratched his head. “But I
always thought-have always been given to under-
stand that all lords are ... Oh..."
“Silly, damned jackasses ? Right-oh, the third
time! I am one. You have no idea what a silly ass
I am—and wait till you meet my first brother, the
Duke! Gad! And now, s'pose we go down and see
what the maritime Ganymede has to offer in the line
of mixed drinks.”
Half an hour later, sampling the third of a series
of cocktails, “there are three things I admired most
tremendously in America,” Vyvyan confided: “Your
way of preparing oysters, your way of mixing drinks,
and the way your women clothe their jolly little toot-
sies." Tom Graves had already formed a sincere lik-
ing for the young Englishman, and it was evident that
the latter returned the feeling
For, with frank and talkative naïveté, he had told
the American all about himself.
"I'm in disgrace,” he said; "that's why I am tryin
to perk up a bit alcoholically."
“In disgrace?"
“Right. You see, I am a diplomatist."
“You—a diplomatist?” Tom laughed at the
thought.


64
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
my Aroken into Liberith ev
thinking of the latter, he never thought of him as
anything but a straight American. But he found it
impossible to get on with those aboard the Augsburg.
They were mostly German-Americans from New
York, Missouri, and the Middle West, bound on a
visit to the Fatherland, and while the majority of
them wore tiny American flags in their buttonholes
and several had broken into hectic dithyrambs as the
ship passed the Statue of Liberty, they became less
American and more German with every league the
steamer throbbed across the Atlantic.
The first day out, a short, gray-haired, dyspeptic
butcher from Cincinnati said with a sigh of satisfac-
tion:
“Na, Gott sei Dank, noch ’ne Woche und dann sind
wir, wo es nicht jeder Lausekerl für seine Pflicht und
Schuldigkeit hält seinen Nachbarn ordentlich zu bemo-
geln!"-a nasty reflection on American business mor-
als, which was passed over with a smile as an exuber-
ance of homesickness, an exuberance, too, of Teutonic
humor.
Gradually, one by one, the American flags disap-
peared from buttonholes to be replaced in isolated
cases by the black-and-white of Prussia and the black-
white-red of the German Empire.
Three days out, a stodgy, immense, keen-eyed St.
Louis brewer, with diamonds in his cuff links, his shirt,
and his necktie (diamonds, as Tom said to himself,
earned and paid for in America) complained to the
third officer that the library in the reading-room con-
tained "noddings but Yankee drash. Vy don't you haf
some goot Cherman liderachoor instead of all dat
Yankee blödsinn? Somedings like de Gartenlaube, or
de Jugend, or Simplicissimus? You oughta haf been


THE MEETING
65
ashamed mit yourself calling dis one Cherman shib,
nicht wahr?”
Thus it grew. Thus they showed with what solem-
nity they. regarded the oath they had sworn at the
time when they had taken out final citizenship papers;
and on the fourth day out matters came to a head-—"a
jolly bloody head," as Lord Vyvyan commented.
For Tom Graves got into an argument with a pale,
pimply-faced New York bank clerk by the name of
Franz Neumann.
The latter addressed Tom in German. Tom
grinned, and said that he had only bought himself a
German grammar two days before the Augsburg had
left port, that he was working hard, but had not as
yet mastered more than about fifteen words. Where-
upon the clerk replied, talking raspingly through his
nose, that “Bei Gott! it was an infernal arrogance!
What did he mean by sailing on a German ship and
expecting the Germans to talk English to him? He
was a damned so-and-so, also thus-and-thus American
this-and-that ...".
An argument wound up by Tom's fist descending
in a cruel and thumping curve on Herr Neumann's
nose; by a running together of stewards and passen-
gers; a raising of voices and avenging Teutonic fists;
a blowzy Milwaukee ex-cook crying: “Ach! Dieser
brutale Amerikaner! Schmeisst den Kerl ins Was-
ser!” and, finally, Lord Vyvyan coming to the rescue,
leveling a few telling blows at the St. Louis brewer
who had made a rear-guard attack against the West-
erner, and leading the latter away with soothing words
and gestures :
"I say, have a drink, old top. Now ... No, you
won't,” as Tom, hearing the jeers of clerk and ex-cook
nose: a raislilwauker! Suyuyant the Scainst hing we
She lowey Amerikan, Lord blows attack a


66
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
and brewer, turned, eyes puckered, jaw set, fists going
like flails, “don't get excited. Odds are against you.
Can't lịck 'em all together. Lick 'em one by one, pres-
ently. Meanwhile, have a drink. Have two drinks.
Wow ... Steady she goes !”
Tom fell, panting, into a chair in the smoking
saloon.
"Hell!” he said. “I'm sorry that I ever gave that
fool promise to that German Baron!”
“What German Baron?”
“Von Götz-Wrede !"
"What promise?" the Englishman inquired after a
while, rather casually, looking into the amber depths
of his whisky-and-soda; and Tom told him.
Carried away, he told him everything that had hap-
pened since his partner, Truex, had sent him the tele-
gram with the cheering news that he had struck it
rich in the Yankee Doodle Glory. He mentioned the
unknown metal, the offer by cable of Johannes Hirsch-
feld & Co., in Berlin, the Baron's arrival in Spokane,
the second offer raised to a million cash, Martin Wede-
kind's warning, and his promise to visit Berlin.
“I s'pose you are on your way there now?” asked
Lord Vyvyan.
“Yes. I'm going to get through with it. I want
to get back home just as soon as I can ...".
“You'd better," said the Englishman, in a low voice,
half to himself; and Tom looked up sharply.
The Englishman was staring straight ahead. His
eyes, usually so round and innocent and ingenuous,
were keen, with a hard, curling glitter, like sun rays
on forged steel. His lips were compressed into a thin
line. The whole man seemed different, changed.
The next moment, noticing that Tom was looking
at him, he was his old self again. He screwed in his
Englishup sharlanea


THE MEETING
monocle. Something like a mask of silliness de-
scended upon his face.
"I say, old dear," he drawled, "let's have another
snifter, what?"


CHAPTER XI
THE WIRELESS
HOLDING on to one of the life-boats just the other
side of the wireless operator's hut on top deck, braced
against the pitch and roll with straddled feet and
standing aslant when the gathering wind came in fits
and starts, Tom Graves looked out into the west, where
the sun had died in a flat disc of unhealthy, decayed
brown to give way to a dense bank of olive-tinted
cloud that rushed down with the speed of a stage
drop, lay motionless upon the sea that was like dirty
oil, suddenly changing into a slow, immense roll that
sent the ship down a slope and up again.
A moment later, with savage rapidity, the full force
of the hurricane struck the Augsburg, and she pitched
crazily to leeward, taking a drunken lurch into the
inky void, straightening again, again tripping like a
bulky matron on a waxed dancing-floor, then riding up
with a certain measure of heavy, challenging grace.
The song of the whipped, tortured air came with a
gigantic roar and sob, and Tom, landsman from the
rim of his stetson to the curve of his knees where they
had gripped saddle leather, decided that discretion
was the better part of valor and that the smoking
saloon held warmth and comfort.
He turned to go.
Passing the wireless hut, the wind struck him in the
small of his back and he tumbled against the door.
68


THE WIRELESS
It was thus, quite by chance, that he overheard a scrap
of conversation which later on caused him to wonder
and speculate.
Inside the hut the ship's doctor, a young American,
was talking to the wireless operator.
"Sorry,” said the latter. “I know you are anxious
to send wireless waves to your best girl in New York.
But the thing's out of order."
“Out of order?"
"Yes. Has been for two days, and we won't be
able to fix it till we make Bremen. Makes no differ-
ence though. She's a sound old tub."
“Sure ..."
Just a scrap of talk, temporarily forgotten, yet
stored away in some back cell of Tom's brain, and
remembered an hour or two later when, as he was
washing in his cabin, Lord Vyvyan knocked at the
door, came in, sat himself on the edge of the narrow
bed, and begged the American to shake hands with
him.
"Sure," said Tom, complying. "What for?”
“To wish me luck. Regular, jolly, sizzling whirl-
wind of luck, old cock !"
“What's happened ?” laughed the Westerner. “Sat
in a poker game with that St. Louis brewer and held
a royal against his four o' the kind and copped his
wad?”
"Rather not. Much bigger. Guess again.”
"Fell in love?"
"My word, no! Can't afford to. I'm stony, you
know. But”-he rubbed his hands—“my brother,
the Duke, you know, did a damned rapid bit of wire
pulling. In again, out again! Chevied out of the
Washington embassy about a week ago for frightful
incompetence-and ..."


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
“What? Can your mysterious dope !"
“Chevied into a fat attachéship—where, d'you
imagine ?"
"Paris.”
"No. Berlin. Corkin'-what? Same bully old
place you're bound for. Just got my appointment by
wireless."
Tom looked up sharply.
“Did you say-by wireless ?”
"Right-oh. The Duke is a terribly modern sort of
chap. Takes to all these jolly new inventions like a
fish to water."
"Seems so," rejoined Tom dryly.
.
He remembered the scrap of conversation he had
overheard on top deck: “Wireless out of order. Has
been for two days.” There was no doubt that Vyvyan
was lying. But he decided to keep the knowledge to
himself. He had an idea that the diplomatic game
was the same as poker, and bluff, another word for
lying, is permissible, even virtuous, if you have sweet-
ened the pot to the tail end of your roll and have
hopes of filling an inside straight. And ... He cut
off his thoughts, and stretched out a hearty hand.
“Tickled to death, old man,” he said.
"So am I. Let's have a drink. By the way, are
you going straight from Bremen to Berlin?"
“Yes."
"Fine. We'll travel down together. I have to re-
port to the Embassy immediately. Frightful bore,
though.”
Twenty-four hours later, Bremerhaven came out of
the low, coiling shore fog in a neat checker-board pat-
tern of white and gray and bister brown, punctured
here and there by the spires of square churches, the


THE WIRELESS
71
solid bulk of some braggart warehouse, the rigging and
funnels and smoke-stacks of ships that rode breast-
high above the stone quays. It came stolidly, mas-
sively, German to the core, striking Tom's ears with
the cumulated sound waves of hundreds of lips speak-
ing a strange, guttural language that made him feel
homesick, and caused him to hold close to Lord
Vyvyan as to an anchor in a storm.
The farewells of passengers. An exchange of cards
and of promises, soon forgotten, to write, to call, to
keep in touch with one another.
Then the short ride to Bremen itself, through a
wedge-shaped stretch of rolling fields with plump Hol-
stein cattle that looked ridiculously small and ridicu-
lously tame to Tom's range sense, and through a sweep
of box-like suburban houses, each framed by a bit of
lawn that was almost English in its moist, pristine
greenness.
Bremen at mid-day. Bremen-clean-cut, hard, pre-
occupied, blending the tortured Gothic of ancient
Hanseatic buildings with the pinchbeck, stuccoed effi-
ciency of modern Germany.
“Haben Sie was zu deklariren?” a customs inspector,
in blue with narrow gold braid, truculently mustached
and bearded, asked of Tom.
Tom became flustered. The little German he had
learned flew away like rubbish in a wind, and he
looked appealingly at Vyvyan.
The latter laughed.
“Right!" he said. “I'll be dragoman,” and he ad-
dressed the official in fluent German for which after-
wards he apologized, really apologized, rather shame-
facedly.
"You see, old fellow," he said, "when I was a little


72
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
nipper they deviled my young soul with governesses
and Fräuleins and tutors and what-not. Taught me
Germin ..."
“And French?"
“Rather!"
“And a few more assorted lingoes ?” suggested Tom
dryly.
Vyvyan looked up quickly. But Tom was a poker
player. There was no twinkle in his eyes, only an
honest question, and the Englishman said that “Yes !”
He had quite a few languages at his command.
“But keep it under your hat,” he added. “I, well,
you wouldn't understand, being an American. But
we Englishmen, Englishmen like me, y'know ...
have the devil's own horror of being thought clever
or gifted. Not that I am clever,” he wound up hur-
riedly.
"Oh, no!" Tom's accents were ingenuous and sin-
cere.
“But I do speak languages. Can't help it. They
crammed me no end. Frightfully sorry and all that.
And now," turning to a taxicab driver dressed in
brown, red-faced and with a nose that beaked away
from the plump, shiny cheeks at a tremendously ex-
aggerated angle, “Nach dem Bahnhof! Rasch! The
next train for Berlin leaves in a few minutes,” he ex-
plained to Tom, "unless you want to stay over in
Bremen for a day or two?”
"No. I don't.”
Tom shook his head and his eyes followed Bertha's
lithe figure, dressed in a becoming greenish tweed, a
tiny toque pressed deep over her silken tresses. She
was accompanied by a tall, elderly man in the uniform
of the Uhlans of the Guard, in tightly fitting regi-
mentals of dark blue, a double stripe of crimson run-


THE WIRELESS
73
ning down the trousers and disappearing in the high,
lacquered riding-boots, crimson collar and plastron,
epaulettes of heavy twisted gold braid, and the
uhlanka, the helmet with its Polish top-piece that made
it look like a glorified mortarboard, tilted slightly
over the right eye. The saber, carried on a long
chain, clanked belligerently against the ground.
He turned when he heard Tom's unmistakable
American voice, and Tom saw a full, round, high-,
colored face, not unhandsome with its well-shaped lips
brushed by a small, iron-gray mustache, its long,
straight nose, and small ears set close against the head.
The officer bent from his great height and spoke
to Bertha. Tom saw her shake her head, as if an-
grily, turn, look at him, then whisper a quick word
to the German.
The latter gave a short laugh, patted her on the
shoulder, and walked up to Tom with outstretched
hand.
“You are Mr. Graves ?” he asked in English.
“Yes ... Sure ..."
“Charmed! Charmed!" The other saluted. "I
am Colonel WedekindColonel Heinrich Wedekind.
Martin's brother !!!


CHAPTER XII
COLONEL WEDEKIND
Tom was flustered.
He did not know what to say or how to behave
with Bertha a few feet away looking on very disdain-
fully and very impatiently, evidently intent on not rec-
ognizing him.
He turned for moral support to Lord Vyvyan-
who had slipped away. He saw his broad-shouldered
form disappear in the taxicab, the roof of which was
piled high with an assortment of extremely British-
looking luggage: from golf sticks to plaid roll, from
pigskin Gladstone bag to a bundle of canes and um-
brellas.
Tom's first idea was that Martin Wedekind must
have cabled to his brother in Berlin. He could
not have written, since Tom had taken the first steamer
out of New York, and so there would not have been
margin enough for a letter to go by the same ship,
reach the German capital, and give the Colonel time to
get to Bremen. Perhaps Martin Wedekind had in-
cluded the news of his coming in the wire advising
that of his daughter.
Tom was surprised at the thought. But he was
even more surprised when the Uhlan's next words
showed him that no such cable had been sent or
received.


COLONEL WEDEKIND
75
“Captain von Götz-Wrede told me you were com-
ing, Mr. Graves."
“But ... I didn't tell him when I was coming."
The Colonel laughed.
“My dear sir,” he said, "you didn't have to. The
famous owner of the no less famous Yankee Doodle
Glory coming to Germany! Why, sir, the names
on the passenger list have been cabled over here and
your intended visit has been duly heralded in certain
sections of our press. Charmed, my dear sir,
charmed !"
And when the young Westerner, in want of some-
thing better to say, mentioned that Martin Wedekind
in Spokane had given him a letter of introduction to
his brother, searched in his pocketbook, found the
note, ,and handed it to the German, the latter read
it, ejaculated once more his favorite slogan of:
“Charmed, my dear sir, charmed !” and linked his
arm familiarly through that of Tom's.
“I have a compartment reserved for myseif and
my niece. Please do me the honor of sharing it.”
Again Tom was not sure what to say. Lord
Vyvyan had driven off. He was in a foreign land,
for the first time in his life, and everything seemed
topsy-turvy to him. Even as simple an action as
calling a porter assumed the shape of an immense and
embarrassing predicament. He would have liked to
accept the Colonel's kindly offer.
On the other hand, there was Bertha, looking
through him with stony eyes.
What excuse could he give?
He only knew that he could not tell the officer about
the tiff he and the girl had had on shipboard. So
he took a deep breath like a man about to risk a
cold plunge, accompanied the other like a lamb led
h stony esive? - tell the


76
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
to the slaughter and positively quailed when Bertha
acknowledged his greetings with an icy word.
A short drive through the Bremen streets brought
them to the depot, where the Colonel excused him-
self for a few minutes to see about some telegraphic
messages he had to send off.
Tom was alone with Bertha. He looked at her,
and she looked at him. Both were silent, until Tom
could stand it no longer.
And he spoke:
"Say, Bertha!”
“Yes, Mr. Graves ?” haughtily.
He was going to go back to the old subject which
had caused the misunderstanding on shipboard, to ex-
plain, but when he opened his mouth, the first words
which came were:
"Say, I'm just crazy about you! Just plumb
crazy!”
The words were spoken. More came. He could
not restrain them. So he gave up the attempt and
surrendered himself to his passion, poured out in a
riotous torrent of speech, flavored with the deep, de-
cent, clean love that was his, flavored, too, with ti
tang of the range . . . and it sounded strange her.,
amidst the brassy, pompous, unpersonal efficiency of
the German railway depot, with the head station mas-
ter, in a military uniform, bullying the sergeant of
police, girded and armed like a warrior about to step
forth to savage combat, the sergeant bullying the
policemen, the latter transferring the compliment to
the public, who continued it on to the railway porters,
the latter passing the disciplinary buck to the cab
drivers who, seeing nobody whom they could bully
in safety, took it out of their horses' hides.


COLONEL WEDEKIND
77
Amidst the roar and riot of it Tom's words seemed
homely, simple. They seemed out of place and tinged
with a certain nostalgic melancholia, and it was per-
haps that which went to the young girl's heart and
caused her to droop her eyelids.
“Why, Tom,” she said, faltering a little, "you must
not ..."
"Mustn't I? You just bet I must! How do you
know what's going on in my heart, Bertha ? Say—
at times my love fairly, oh, chokes me, and ..." He
collected himself. He had spoken with a louder voice
than he had intended, and some of the Augsburg's
passengers had stopped and chattered, pointing and
giggling, amongst themselves. “And there's some-
thing else I got to tell you,” he went on in lower
tones. “I had no idea you were going to Germany.
I didn't mean to persecute you. Honest to God, I
didn't! Won't you believe me-please?”.
She looked at him. She saw the honest purpose,
; the honest dignity, the honest truth in his eyes, and
she inclined her head.
“Yes, Tom. I do believe you!"
er “Bully!" was his simple comment as he squeezed
g her hand. “And say, won't you ...".
The rest of his sentence was swallowed in the suck
and rush of the incoming train and a moment later
the Colonel returned, smiling, officious, over-polite,
and bundled the two young Americans into a first-
class compartment marked: "Reservirt."
The last Tom saw was Lord Vyvyan entering the
next carriage. He turned as if to address him, but
the Englishman winked rapidly and shook his head.
It was clear that he did not want the other to speak
to him or recognize him just then.


178
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But Tom did not mind.
For he sat next to Bertha, and with a little shy
pressure of her soft hand she told him that she had
forgiven him, woman like, for something he had not
been guilty of.


CHAPTER XIII
BERLIN
WHATEVER prejudices Tom Graves may have had
against Colonel Heinrich Wedekind disappeared dur-
ing his first twenty-four hours in Berlin and he told
himself that either the man must have changed to
his advantage during the long years when Martin had
not seen him, or that the latter must have been mis-
taken in his judgment of his brother's character.
For, if anything, Martin had warned Tom against
Heinrich in the special delivery letter he had sent care
of the steamship office in New York, and here was
the Colonel the very image of friendliness and con-
sideration.
True, the man was at times over-polite; with the
sort of politeness, different from the spontaneous
politeness of the American, which is the result of
broad, national kindliness, from the French, which
is a racial trait and a virtue bred by logic since it is
such an effort to a Latin to be rude, from the Eng-
lish, which is careless and supremely sure of itself,
from the Spanish, which is a marvelously delicate
art . .. With the sort of politeness which seemed
to have been scientifically and efficiently measured,
probed, manufactured, chiseled, clouted, and cut into
patterns, distributed by order of the Government,
drilled, and trained in a mathematical fashion, to-
gether with the three R's. A rectangular, a self-
conscious, a holier-than-thou politeness!


80
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But that apart, the man did everything in his power
to make Tom feel at home in a strange land.
For it was he who fell discreetly into a doze, in
the railway carriage, when he noticed the young
Westerner's naïvely clumsy attempts to speak to Ber-
tha in an undertone. It was he who steered him
through the throng and mazes of the Lehrter Bahn-
hof when the train arrived at the capital. It was he
who insisted, when Tom wanted to go to a hotel
recommended to him by the desk clerk of the New
York hotel where he had put up, that he would be
more comfortable in a little flat in the West end, on
the Kurfürstendamm.
"Snug little four room affair," said the Colonel,
“nicely furnished. Belongs to a friend of mine who
left town for six months or so and wants to sublet
it.”
"But," smiled Tom, "I'm not going to stay long
in Berlin."
“Na, na!" laughed the Colonel. “We're not go-
ing to let you get away from here for quite a while.
Better take the flat. It's complete in every detail,
and my friend has even left his English-speaking valet
behind.”
Finally Tom accepted, and an hour later saw him in-
stalled in a comfortable, compact apartment overlook-
ing the broad, pretentious boulevard known as Kur-
fürstendamm, which runs in a shiny sweep from the
Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniss Church to Halensee-a
generation ago a thickly wooded pine forest, to-day
the most swagger of swagger suburbs, a Berlin West-
chester.
The rooms were all the Colonel had said, and so
was the valet, a small, thin, clean-shaven man of about
thirty with a perfect command of the English lan-


BERLIN
81
guage, including even a working knowledge of Ameri-
can slang which he explained, rather apologized for,
when Tom asked him, by bowing and saying that
he had spent some time on the other side of the At-
lantic as valet to an attaché of the German Embassy
in Washington.
"Well, if that isn't bully!” exclaimed Tom. "Been
to America, have you? Why, that makes me feel
real home like. Here. Have a smoke,” opening his
cigarette case, “Mr ..?"
“Krauss!” said the man, bowing again.
"Cut out the wavy motion. You'll injure your
spine, Mr. Krauss."
“No, no—I beg your pardon-not Mister Krauss!
Just Krauss !" And he added: “May I venture to
suggest, sir, that valets are simply addressed by their
family names in Germany and”-he coughed dis-
creetly—“that a German gentleman does not offer his
cigarettes to a servant?”
"Don't he? Well—this American gentleman does,"
laughed Tom, good-naturedly.
But when Krauss blushed, positively blushed, shak-
ing his head in speechless embarrassment, Tom felt
sorry for him.
"All right,” he said. "Don't you worry. I'll
smoke it for you. And now ... What exactly are
you supposed to be good for?”
"Anything, sir, anything !"
"Pretty large order that, Krauss !"
“Yes, sir. I served in some of the best houses in
Berlin, sir.”
“You have ? All right. Let's try you. Know
how to make flapjacks?”
Krauss opened his eyes wide. “Flap ... Did
you say-flap ...?"


82
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Jacks! Sure. Flapjacks! No savvy? Cute lit-
tle yellow cakes, all hot and sizzlin', and drowned in
maple syrup? No? Well, I got to eat some or
bust!"
“Ah, it is food?"
"Sure. What d'you think it is ?”
The valet curdled his leathery features into a
smile.
"I can make a little of the French cuisine,” he sug-
gested.
“Not on your life! I ate that on board ship.
French cooking mixed up with German! Chicken
broth with prunes! Sour herring with chocolate
sauce! Little dimpled spring peas stuffed with gar-
lic! No! Flapjacks is what I want, and flapjacks is
what I'm going to get. Got flour in the kitchen, eggs,
sugar, milk, baking powder, syrup?"
“Yes, sir."
"Fine and dandy. Lead the way. I'll make 'em
myself !”
And to the German's evident horror, he took off
coat, vest, and suspenders, rolled his shirt sleeves to
the elbows, and invaded the shiny, immaculate kitchen,
whistling Casey Jones at the top of his lungs.
"Don't look so all-fired flabbergasted !” consoled
Tom. "I'm going to have a little party all by my-
self.” Suddenly he laughed. “Wait. Got such a
thing as a telephone in Berlin?”
“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.”
"Bully. Ring up Lord Vyvyan and tell him .
No!” he shook his head. ""I'm a darned fool. I for-
got to ask him his address."
The valet bowed. “Lord Vyvyan is at the Brit-
ish Embassy."
mysteries to the suspende the shiny i his lunes consoles


BERLIN
83.
laughed, anit' asleep by ane! Well-sim? Ring :D
"Sure. That's where he hangs out. But—" Tom
looked up sharply—“how in hell do you know?"
The valet coughed. He blushed a little.
“A—a telegraphic report in the Berlin papers,” he
murmured, “advising his appointment ...
Tom grinned.
"More wireless cabling without wireless ?” he
laughed, amused at the other's discomfiture. “Say!
Europe isn't asleep by a darned sight. She can sure
teach us Americans some! Well-scoot! Put a
poached egg in your shoe and beat it! Ring up
Vyvyan and tell him to come round here. Tell him
to bring along an appetite—and say—some whiskey.
Rye, Bourbon, or, at the worst, Canadian Club, un-
less there's some in the kitchen.”
Krauss hurried out while Tom busied himself with
flour and milk and baking powder. He was very
happy. Bertha had forgiven him. She had asked
him to call, and through the open window the warm
summer air brushed in, sweet with the scent of birch
trees and linden blossoms, and a great crimson sun
sinking slowly in the west.
“I beg your pardon, sir," came Krauss' voice from
the threshold.
"Sure. What is it?"
"Just as I stepped to the telephone, the bell rang.
It was Colonel Wedekind telephoning.”
“Yes?”
"He begs you to come to his house for dinner to-
night. At seven o'clock sharp, sir.”
“But I asked you to call up Lord Vyvyan!"
"I am sorry, sir. The Colonel wouldn't take no
for an answer."
“Did you tell him I was going to ask Lord Vyvyan?”.


84
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"No, sir. I didn't have à chance. He wouldn't
take no for an answer. Absolutely wouldn't. And
he says you are going to meet an old friend at his
house."
"An old friend? At his house? Well, I guess I'd
better go. We'll leave the flapjacks and Vyvyan for
to-morrow, Krauss.”
The latter bowed. “Yes, sir. Very good, sir."
Tom Graves went to his bedroom, where Krauss
had already opened the trunks and distributed their
contents.
“Say, Krauss,” went on Tom, "I guess they'll be
all dressed in their best soup and gravy at the Colo
nel's, eh?”
“Yes, sir. There will be mostly officers, and
they'll all be in full uniform, sir. May 1”-he
coughed—“may I suggest that you wear-ah, even-
ing dress?”
Tom glared at him.
"Say!” said he. “I know what to wear all right,
all right. You may have served in some of the best
houses in Berlin, but believe me I have danced in
some of the best houses in Spokane. I know. Those
little chocolate soldiers will all be in their best bib
and tucker, pink and raspberry and sky blue and juicy
green. And-decorations! I know. I've seen pic-
tures.” Suddenly he laughed. “Say! I got an
idea! A real, twenty-two carat, all-wool idea! I'm
going to do considerable honor to-night to my native
West !”
And he let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling war-
whoop which caused the irascible banker on the floor
below to speak to his man servant who in turn, knock-
ing discreetly at the back door of Tom's apartment,


BERLIN
85
to be told by Krauss that an American had taken the
place.
“Yes. Ein Amerikaner! Ein ganz wilder-a per-
fectly wild onunication cause against his la
The communication caused the irascible banker to
slam his clenched right fist against his left palm.
“Ach Gott!” he exclaimed. “Ein wilder Ameri-
kaner! Schrecklich!”
His servant bowed in silent sympathy. “The
American gentleman's valet told me that his master
is going to dine to-night with Colonel Wedekind of
the Uhlans of the Guard.”
The banker sat up straight.
"What?” he asked. “With Colonel Wedekind-in
the most exclusive military clique of Berlin ? With
Colonel Wedekind, the Emperor's friend? Then he
must be something very big in his own country, wild
or not wild. Minna !” he called to the other room
where his wife, large, elderly, not bad looking in a
blowzy, amorphous way, was reading the evening
paper. “Minna! Early next week we must send our
cards to the American gentleman upstairs ..." And
husband and wife fell to talking.
In the meantime, the wilder Amerikaner had fin-
ished dressing. He entered the taxicab which Krauss
had summoned, heard the valet give the driver the
Colonel's address- Dahlmann Strasse No. 67"-and
chuckled quietly to himself.
Once or twice he opened the light top coat he wore
and looked down at the lapel of his evening dress.
"Sure,” he mumbled, “I'm going to do consider-
able honor to-night to my native West!”


CHAPTER XIV
THE STRETCHING OF THE WEB
It was about five minutes after seven when the
Bursche, the Colonel's military servant, an immense,
chubby-faced, curly haired Pomeranian peasant lad
whose legs in their tight trousers looked like plump
sausages, whose chest beneath the crimson cloth plas-
tron was exaggeratedly round and extended, like a
pouter pigeon's, and whose hands in white cotton
gloves looked like those of a German edition of Fred
Stone in the rôle of the “Scarecrow," opened the
double doors of the Wedekind salon and announced
in a stentorian voice:
"Herr Graves !” which he pronounced as if it were
spelled “Graafase.”
Tom, a sunny smile on his face, stepped into the
room, shook hands first with the Colonel, who greeted
him effusively, with the Colonel's wife, a tall, raw-
boned woman in cut purple velvet and diamonds, with
a hooked nose, very intelligent black eyes, a fringe of
false reddish hair falling over her forehead, and the
voice of a grenadier, and was then introduced the
rounds of the company. There was one civilian, a
Professor Conrad Heffer, a small, spectacled man in
illy fitting evening dress and a crumpled white neck-
tie that had worked its way past the collar and was
threatening the professor's tiny, red ears. The other
guests were all officers and their wives, in full regi-
mentals, some in the uniform of the Uhlans, others
bely, wet purelligen
86


THE STRETCHING OF THE WEB
87
in the cream and silver of the Cuirassiers of the
Guard, and one dapper, bowlegged man in the crim-
son and gold of the Potsdam Hussars. All wore dec-
orations, and Tom, who held his left hand over his
lapel, chuckled to himself as he noticed it.
"Charmed! Delighted !” some of the officers said
in English, clicking their heels and bowing from their
waist lines in rectangular fashion.
Others gave German words of greeting ... And
even Tom knew that it was different from the Ger-
man he had heard on shipboard, on the customs pier,
and in the railway stations: it was snarling, cutting,
pronounced with a jarring twang:
“Grosse Ehre!”
“Ah! Kolossales Vergnügen!”
“Servus! Servus!"' from a South German.
Finally the Colonel introduced him to a short, broad-
shouldered gentleman sitting on a green plush sofa
at the other end of the room, very pompous and very
erect—"like some darned idol in a Chink joss house,”
thought Tom—who wore the uniform of a general
and whose breast outshone all the others in its splen-
dor of stars and medals.
Colonel Wedekind clicked his heels and bowed very
deeply.
“Königliche Hoheit-Royal Highness !” he said, in
an awestruck whisper, "permit me graciously to in-
troduce Mr. Graves, the American gentleman of whom
I spoke to you!” and, in Tom's ear: “His Royal
Highness, Prince Ludwig Karl, the Emperor's
cousin!”
His Royal Highness rasped something about
“Vergnügt!” while Tom, chuckling to himself for the
first time since he had entered the salon, took his left
hand from the lapel of his coat, exposing an enor-


THE STRETCHING OF THE WEB 89
1. vyan. to tell Krauss', an aston
von Götz-Wrede, the German officer who had wanted
to buy the Yankee Doodle Glory; and “Yankee Doodle
Glory” was the only word which Tom caught from
the flood of German which the young officer was
whispering to the Prince, causing the latter to come
out of his indignant trance and to wave a condescend-
ing hand in the direction of the young Westerner.
The Baron took Tom by the arm.
"I am so glad you kept your promise," he re-
peated. “It was awfully decent of you to break your
engagement with Lord Vyvyan.”
Tom was about to give an astonished reply, for he
remembered that Krauss had told him he had not had
a chance to tell the Colonel about the invitation to
Vyvyan. But his first surprise was quickly swal-
lowed in a second when the Baron, still blithely ram-
bling on, advised him jocularly to be careful how he
applied his "charming American sense of humor with
us stodgy Germans. We want you to like us, Graves,
and we'll take corking good care of you. We'll see
that you get into no more such Homeric scrapes as
vou did with that fellow Neumann aboard the Augs-
burg."
"Say!” This time Tom was amazed. He had
nearly forgotten about the little contretemps with the
bank clerk, and here it was being quoted at him on
his first day in Berlin. He was familiar with the
quickness and shrewdness of American reporters, but
it seemed that their German colleagues—for it could
not be anything else—had them beaten by many miles.
He was going to say something of the sort when
the German Baron, seeing the expression of surprise
in Tom's honest eyes and feeling instinctively that he
had been guilty of some error of judgment, quickly
and successfully changed the conversation. He
apply today, take ito no how


90
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
pointed at Bertha, who was just then coming into the
salon, a charming figure in her dress of white Chinese
crepe with a tunic of rose-pink chiffon, the whole
covered with a very spider's web of silver beads and
silver thread.
She was walking by the side of an old lady, dressed
in black, with snow-white hair and snapping brown
eye. I am not ay and leavup to Be
"I am not a jealous man,” lightly laughed the Baron,
walking away and leaving Tom a clear field.
The latter stepped up to Bertha as straight as an
arrow.
"Hello, Bertha!” he said. “You're a mighty com-
forting sight for sore eyes.”
The girl smiled.
“Grandmother,” she said, turning to the old lady,
“this is Tom Graves, a good friend of mine from
Spokane."
“Grandmother?” exclaimed Tom. "I thought-
why—” he stammered, hesitated, then went on in an
undertone. “I thought your grandmother was dan-
gerously ill ... Not expected to live—and that's
why you came over here in such a hurry!"
"It was a mistake, Tom,” she said. "Just a mistake
in the transmission of the cable. Some words were
misspelled.”
And the next moment the Bursche opened the doors
to the dining-room, announcing dinner :
"Abendessen is servirt, Frau Oberst!”
“Sounds good to me,” laughed Tom, tucking Ber-
tha's hand under his arm. "I'm as hungry as a
bear!”—and, unceremoniously, used to the free ease
of the West, utterly ignorant of the finely shaded
rules of etiquette, he walked into the dining-room just
one step ahead of His Royal Highness.


CHAPTER XV
ANONYMOUS
It was not as if Tom Graves had been slow-witted
or unobserving of what was going on about him.
No man of his ancestry, straight American, Scotch
and English, descendant of sturdy, independent, cour-
ageous, fairly well-educated people who for genera-
tions had not felt the pinch of want nor the lessening
of mentality that goes with it, who had lived away
from the reek of city slums yet away, too, from the
stultifying influence of meager, worked-out farms,
who following the keen call in their own brains, their
own imagination, had taken the trail of the ever-
broadening Western frontier from Virginia via Ken-
tucky, Kansas, and California to the Northwest; no
man of his bringing up and early surroundings, with
the sweep and tang of the open range about him, and
the range of a decade or so ago where often a man's
quickness of wit counted as much as his quickness on
the draw; no such man could be slow, could be en-
tirely unobserving.
What was wrong with him was a national Ameri-
can fault, rather habit, which blinded him to every-
thing that went on about him during this, his first,
visit abroad except his love for Bertha Wedekind and
the frivolous, shifting interests of the passing minutes.
A national habit which caused him to see for-
eigners entirely through the smoked, distorting spec-
91


92
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
tacles of provinciality and, in judging them, to ac-
cept certain cut-and-dried verdicts and well-defined
standards that were nearly always the result of frivo-
lous newspaper comment, of light fiction, of music-
hall catchwords, of a motion pictures director's abys-
mal ignorance, of smart, would-be witty remarks
coined by returned travelers!
Standards hoary with age! Standards more hoary
with lies! Yet standards accepted and repeated!
To Tom Graves (and small blame to him for be-
lieving it since the majority of his countrymen, in-
cluding even those who, thanks to a better education,
a better chance to see and compare, should have known
better, shared his belief) a Frenchman was a man who
wore a flat-brimmed, comical silk hat, white spats,
and a pointed beard, who gesticulated and shrugged
his shoulders, lived rather exclusively on pastry and
cloudy, opalescent absinthe, had neither manhood nor
stamina nor virtues—Verdun in those days was only
a geographical term!-and spent his hours.of leisure
fighting bloodless duels and flirting with the wife of
his most intimate friend. The typical Russian was
an enormous, bearded half-savage who ate candles,
got dismally drunk upon raw spirits, cailed his fel-
low Russian “Little dove!” and “Little brother!” and
amused himself by roasting Jewish babies on a spit.
And the German was simple, good-natured, naïve,
even stupid; a man who wept copious tears into his
beer glass, sang the Lorelei, and was as guileless as
the whitest, woolliest, softest baby lamb that ever
gamboled on the green.
Thus small blame to the young Westerner that he
did not notice what was going on below the surface
in Colonel Wedekind's dining-room, what had been
going on about him ever since he had taken ship and


ANONYMOUS
93
even before: in fact, ever since Newson Garrett had
discovered the presence of the unknown metal in his
assay of the Yankee Doodle Glory ore.
Tom was a stranger to the word Intrigue.
Of course he was aware of occasional lapses from
the straight and narrow path of truth on the part of
some as, for instance, when Baron Horst von Götz-
Wrede mentioned the broken engagement with Lord
Vyvyan although Krauss had told Tom that he had
not said a word about it to the Colonel. He had also
been taken a little aback that the Colonel knew he had
taken passage on the Augsburg, that von Götz-Wrede
was familiar with his fight on board ship, and that the
cable summoning Bertha from Spokane to Berlin
should have been so thoroughly distorted in trans-
mission.
But he dismissed and condoned it all as an instance
of European characteristics. Generally European;
not typically German any more. For to him all Euro-
peans were slightly mad.
"Otherwise,” as he explained to Bertha during din-
ner, “the poor simps wouldn't insist on living in Eu-
rope with all the Northwest to choose spots in for
their wigwams!"
One of the mad European characteristics--and for
this he had the man's own words at the time when
he had begged him not to speak about his stubborn
intention to acquire the Yankee Doodle Glory since
people might make fun of him—was the Baron's re-
turning to the subject when dinner was over and he
had drawn the horse wrangler into a corner of the
salon.
“Look here," replied the Westerner, "that subject
is taboo. You told me you would never speak of it
again if I came to Berlin.”


97
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
The Baron laughed.
“Did I?” he asked, lighting a cigar.
"You sure did, sonny!"
“Well—I can't help it. Here you are in my
clutches, helpless, what? And you must listen to
me."
“Why must I?”
"Because the Prince ..."
“The fellow with the decorations and the grouch?”
"The same. You see, this is not America. Ger-
many is not a Republic. A chap like myself simply
has to kowtow to a man like the Prince. I told him
quite casually about my trip to the West, mentioned
the Yankee Doodle Glory, and he ..." He was
silent, then went on in a whisper. “You know,"
touching his forehead significantly, “some of our Ger-
man royalty are slightly-oh ..
"Loco? Too much inbreeding. Just like horses.
Sure, I know."
"Well, there you are, Graves."
“What d’you mean there I am?"
"Mad or not, Ludwig Karl is a Prince of the Royal
House and a big man in the war office. He can make
me or break me. And he's got it into his head that
it's up to me to buy the Yankee Doodle Glory..
was a fool ever to have told him!”
"But why should he be so nutty about it? Fort
Lord's sake, pipe me the reason, man!”
"Because-well—the Prince is one of those thoti
ough paced Germans, not a cosmopolite like myself.
He thinks that whatever is German is right, and what-
ever is foreign is wrong."
Tom inclined his head. "No wonder the poor old
gink is loco!” he said with conviction.
“Yes, yes," agreed the Baron. “But that's the way
od a big man in he's got it intoodle Glory:n i


ANONYMOUS
95
the field lays and you must pardon me, old chap
he thinks that I, being a German, should be able to
persuade you, an American, to sell whatever I want
to buy. Sort of national conceit, I suppose. Na-
tional stubbornness, too."
"Well," laughed Tom, who had dined and wined
well, who felt in a generous mood, who was anxious
to finish the conversation and join Bertha, who was
talking to the dapper little Hussar. He had com-
pletely forgotten Martin Wedekind's warning. “You
and he are a pair when it comes to being as stub-
born as a mule. And I'm not a mule skinner.
Horses for mine. And so, just to oblige you,
I'll ..."
"You'll sell me the Yankee Doodle?” cut in the
Baron, quickly, excitedly.
Too quickly. Too excitedly.
For Tom knew poker. At once, watching the
other's features, he drew back a little. “Over anx-
ious," he said to himself, and then, in a loud voice:
“I'll let you know in the morning.”
The Baron studied the Westerner's calm, clean-
shaven face. He knew that it would be lost time to
argue any more to-night.
"I'll be at your place at ten in the morning sharp.
lnve a spare horse and we'll take a little gallop to-
er if you care."
**Fine and dandy! But-say!" Suddenly he re-
salembered the riders he had seen cantering down the
Kurfürstendamm from the windows of his apartment.
“None of your measly postage stamp saddles.
Either you get me a good old forty-pound stock sad-
dle with a horn to swing my leg over when I get
tired, or I'll ride that goat of yours barebacked, see?”.
An hour later Tom was in his flat. Two hours
later Tom out of yours over whenck sad-


yn
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
later he was sound asleep. Three hours later the jar-
ring ring of the telephone bell startled him wide awake.
He rushed out and took down the receiver.
“What?” he asked. “Say that again! I shouldn't
sell the Yankee Doodle Glory? Who's that talking ?
Who ...? Anonymous? Don't know a party by
that name, but your voice sounds darned familiar.
Oh-Anonymous isn't your name-you don't want to
tell me your name ... Oh! Look here, stranger,
I don't cotton to that sort o' thing—if you got a
square, decent reason for butting into my affairs, there
isn't a reason in the world why you shouldn't tell
me your name. Politics? Politics—hell! I mixed
up considerable in politics when my boss ran for
sheriff. What? German politics ? Say, what do
these Dutchmen know of politics ? Eh? More than
I think? ... All right, all right! Keep your hair
on, Mister Anonymous. Maybe I won't sell—yet!"
and he went back to bed.
He did not know that in the servant's room, hid-
den in the clothes press, there was another telephone
instrument connecting with his own, and that Krauss
had taken down the receiver and had listened to every
word of the conversation.


CHAPTER XVI
THE HORSEMAN
Tom's whole life, his whole philosophy, his whole
decency, was a rough fact reduced to rough order. A
simple man, he did not practice that maddening and
useless mental stenography known to the elect as
analytical psychology. He never dissected either his
own or other people's emotions. Always had he be-
lieved that every question in life could, and should,
be answered by a simple yes, or an as simple no; and
once the answer, positive or negative, was given, it
had to stand.
Thus, when he had gone back to bed that night,
he felt disturbed in his equanimity.
For the anonymous telephone message had recalled
to him Martin Wedekind's spoken and cabled warn-
ing not to sell the mine in the Hoodoos, and Martin
was his good friend, had proved himself his good
friend, besides being the father of the girl he loved.
On the other hand, he had led Baron von Götz-
Wrede to believe that it was his intention to part with
the property; and so here he was face to face with
a moral dilemma which, to his simple, clean-cut con-
science, threatened to assume very grave proportions.
He was, therefore, agreeably surprised when the
next morning at precisely ten o'clock the German
officer called on him and waved the whole perturbing
question away with a negligent gesture of his gloved
97


98
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
hand. The man seemed neither astonished nor in-
dignant.
"That's all right, Graves," he said. “Don't you
worry about it the slightest bit. I'll make my peace
with the Prince. I had rather an idea that,” and
a less ingenuous mortal than Tom Graves might have
noticed that at the words von Götz-Wrede gave a
slight wink in the direction of the immaculate
Krauss, who was busy with the breakfast dishes
"yes! I had rather an idea that you would change
your mind. Why not? People are always liable to
do that."
That last was a statement which jarred unpleasantly
on the Westerner, since a change of mind was the
very thing which clashed with his solid principles.
"But—but,” he stammered in a sort of flustered
self-defense. He was going to give his reason for
refusing to sell. But at once he remembered that
Martin Wedekind's warning, whatever its cause, was
sure to have been meant confidentially, while some
thing—he did not know what, but it was very com-
pelling-kept him from speaking of the anonymous
telephone message.
"IMI..." He was silent.
“Never mind, never mind,” smiled the officer.
"Forget about it and slip into your riding togs. My
man is downstairs with the horses and the brutes are
a bit fretful this morning."
Then as the other, greatly relieved, turned to the
door the German went on:
"By the way, people here ask me a raft of ques-
tions about my adventures in the wild West, and I
forgot the name of that old partner of yours. Comi-
cal old chap with whiskers and an eternal plug of
chewing tobacco bulging his right cheek.”


THE HORSEMAN
99
mea
lex.
uex.
“You mean Truex. "Old Man' Truex. But he
isn't my partner any more.”
"He... Ah!" The Baron's well-modulated
voice rose to a strangely high note, quickly changed
into a cough. “Sorry. Must have caught cold last
night.” Again he coughed. “Did you buy him out,
Graves?”
“You mean Truex?”
“Yes."
"Well, not exactly. We just signed a little agree-
ment,” and, led on by the other, who professed in-
terest in American business methods as well as great
admiration for American business shrewdness, he told
what had happened between him and the old pros-
pector.
"Bright chap, aren't you?" smiled the German.
“All your own idea ?”
“Lord, no! I'm a horse wrangler, not a money
wrangler. It was Martin Wedekind who tipped me
the wink.”
"Oh—the Colonel's brother?”
“Sure!” and Tom added that Truex had gone once
more into the wilderness, that he had left him con-
trol of the property, with the one stipulation that in
the case of his death his sister, if ever she should
turn up, or her children should inherit his share.
"Oh-Truex has a sister ?”
"Has—or had. She ran away years ago with some
foreign fiddler. 'Old Man' Truex don't know if she's
alive, don't even know her married name.”
“Very extraordinary, I'm sure," said the Baron.
Then, for after all he was trained to the special game
he was playing, he decided that even a man as bliss-
fully ignorant of international intrigue as the young
Westerner might suspect something if he overdid his
9129?!


100
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
interest in the family affairs of the old prospector.
So he asked Tom again to get into his riding things.
"All right. With you in a minute!”—and Tom
went to his bedroom while the German, as soon as
the door was closed, stepped up to Krauss and en-
gaged him in a whispered conversation in explosive
German.
Krauss bowed.
"Jawoll, Herr Hauptmann," he said. “I
shall ...”
Then, with a warning cough, he stepped quickly
· back and occupied himself once more with the break-
• fast dishes, for Tom was returning.
"Here I am-all cocked and primed!” he said, and
Baron von Götz-Wrede stifled an involuntary exclama-
tion of surprise.
For Tom, product of the West, loyal son of the
West for better or for worse, was dressed as he
would on the Killicott rangea sweat-stained stetson
tilted over his brow, a clean, gray flannel shirt show-
ing beneath his open threadbare coat that still bore
tell-tale stains of Idaho alkali, a horse-hair quirt
looped over his leather encircled wrist, and a pair
of ancient, blue drill trousers tucked into high-heeled
cowhide boots, stitched with an elaborate pattern and
ornamented with a pair of heavy Mexican silver spurs.
The Baron was himself again in a moment. But
he gave a silent prayer that not many of his com-
rades in the Uhlans of the Guard might use that
particular Sunday morning to stroll or ride down the
Kurfürstendamm towards Halensee and the Grune-
wald. He could imagine the jokes that would be
made, with himself and his wild Western friend as
targets, at regimental mess and Liebesmahl.
"All right,” he said in rather a weak voice. “Let's
ornahe Baron was prayer that Guard mi ide down th


102
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
mounted and followed, swearing under his breath.
Berlin was out in all its summer Sunday morning
glory.
The women were there, trying to copy the fine
feathers of Paris and Vienna, and the men trying to
ape those of New York and London. The army was
there in all its branches: Cuirassiers in cream and
silver, Gardes du Corps in white and gold, crimson
Hussars from Potsdam, brown Hussars from Elber-
feld, black “Death Head” Hussars from Dantzig;
Jägers in rifle green, gunners in sober dark blue, sap-
pers and men of the Service Corps, all clanking their
sabers truculently against the pavement, ogling the
women, twirling their mustaches, sure, if not of them-
selves as individuals, then of themselves as a caste. A
sprinkling of the navy was there, and a good deal of
the nursery: in large white or black enamel peram-
bulators wheeled by nurses from the old Slav colony
near Berlin that is called the Spreewald, heavy women,
in white corsages and aprons, pleated red skirts divulg-
ing massive ankles, with immense bonnets on their
heads that spread right and left like the wings of
airplanes, and talking their uncouth Wendish dia-
lect.
The police was there, armed and panoplied and
caparisoned like butchers with a penchant for homi-
cide, and dozens of pimply faced schoolboys, in tight
trousers and bowler hats, swinging canes like the
grown-ups, aping their elders who, in their turn, like
all good Germans, aped the British, and making
archaic, sentimental love to stodgy little girls who
looked up admiringly at the coming generation of the
Blond Beast.
Tom rode his horse now at an easy hand gallop, the
nearest approach to a lope of which the bay mare was


THE HORSEMAN
103
stuccoed, place, 2 of Chicago Preto
capable, and looked about him with wondering eyes.
It was all so different from what he had expected.
The Germany of which he had read, of which some
homesick Germans in the West had told him, was a
kindly land, a slow land, perhaps coated with a lot
of sentimental sugar pap, yet a land which you loved,
though at times it made you smile. He had also
heard of another Germany, a Germany of simple, pure,
naked strength, of stout walls built only for defense,
of a kind of ancient, barbarous, Teutonic contempt for
useless decorations, a land of bare stone, hard wood,
brick floors. Yet here was this great boulevard—“we
are proud of it," said Baron von Götz-Wrede. "It's
the finest in the world. Fifth Avenue? The Lake
Shore Drive? The Champs Elysées ? Pshaw!
They can't compare with it!”—and it was banal,
baroque, overloaded, stuccoed, shallow; like some im-
mense, second-rate watering-place, a cross between
Chicago without the clouting strength of Chicago, and
a Paris that was without its charm, that was en-
tirely, shamelessly cocotte.
Of Paris smacked the open-air cafés that were on
every block. They were filled to overflowing with
the élite of the Berlin West end: Assessoren, junior
judges, in all the crushing dignity of recently acquired
sheepskin; students with droll flat caps, sky blue and
pale green and hopeful lavender and virulent magenta,
insignia of the Corps or Burschenschaften, the 'var-
sity fraternities, to which they belonged, their faces
scarred and bloated, their paunches belying their
youth; stout bankers' and brokers' wives filling in
with pastry and heaped plates of strawberries and
whipped cream the time between their "second" break-
fast, which they had eaten an hour earlier and the
two o'clock Sunday dinner; more officers and "One


104
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Year Volunteers” of all the branches of the service;
laughing Americans, and Englishmen and Scots smok-
ing their short briars very much as in protest.
More passed down the street, talking stridently.
Whole families out for their Sunday promenade, the
pater familias in high hat and frock coat, the mother
in a rustling silk gown clashing horribly with heavy
boots and cashmere stockings, scolding the children.
Russians there were in exaggeratedly modern clothes;
a handsome Roman with the staring black eyes of
his race, making the shameless love of his race to
the blond, green-eyed Castilian woman who tripped by
his side on high, red Cuban heels; a Chinaman from
the Legation in embroidered peacock blue and looking
with conscious imperturbability through his } rn-
rimmed spectacles; a Lutheran clergyman with curl-
ing white side-whiskers and a dusty bowler hat; a
couple of “millionaire peasants” from Teltow, im-
mense gold chains spanning their fat, peaked stom-
achs.
People on foot. People on horseback. Many in
motor-cars of rakish shapes. A very few in carriages.
Berlin taking its swagger Sunday promenade in the
year 1913, proud of itself, enormously certain of the
fact that it was ahead of the rest of the world in
art and civilization and culture!
Berlin a twelve-month before a mad Kaiser, helped
by mad Junkers, mad professors, a mad army, a mad
clergy, assaulted the decencies of the world ... A
year before the free world rose in self-defense and
struck back at the crazed Beast!
Berlin, and warmth, and sunshine. Thousands
walking and riding and driving.
And there were few who did not turn and look after
the strange pair: the Baron in all the glory of his
en truck back and line and his did notill the s


THE HORSEMAN
105
regimentals, riding his mare very much like an Eng-
lish squire, and the Westerner, as free and careless as
the plains whence he had come, his legs dangling
loosely, without saddle, fanning his horse's steaming
nostrils with his stetson and letting out war-whoops
from time to time.
But few remarks were made. For the Baron wore
the uniform, the King's Coat that demanded respect;
and even Tom noticed it.
“Great little talisman, that mottled Joseph's coat of
yours, Baron,” he said; and the other replied in a
matter-of-fact voice: “Of course. I'm an army offi-
cer, you know—and these chaps-civilians, what?''
His lips went up in a contemptuous curl. The next
moment he gave a cry of fear, of warning:
“Look out, Graves! For God's sake ..."
An old lady, accompanied by a young girl, had tried
to cross the riding track. She had fallen. The young
girl stood above her, white faced, shielding the frail,
prone form against the two mares that came on at a
thundering, rushing gallop, frightened at the cries of
warning and horror that rose from the people on
the sidewalks.
Tom thought, weighed, measured, acted in the
tenth part ria second.
The Baron's mare had taken the bit between her
teeth; she was beyond control. And out flew Tom's
left foot, kicking the Baron's horse with mule-like
strength in the tender spot below the shoulder so that
the brute swerved, snorting, slid, swerved again and
passed to one side, barely grazing the old lady's
bonnet.
At exactly the same instant, unable to stay his own
horse or jerk it to one side, as the sharp kick had
shifted his weight and balance, he leaned well for-


CHAPTER XVII
THE OLD WOMAN SPEAKS
BERTHA left the room.
She had escaped without a scratch, and was off
to dress for a dinner dance to be given that night by
the bachelor officers of the Uhlans of the Guard, leav-
ing her grandmother alone with Tom Graves, who
had called, armed with a gigantic box of roses, violets,
and orchids, to inquire after the health of the two
ladies.
Old Mrs. Wedekind lay on the couch in her little
boudoir furnished in a style different from the usual
neo-German affair, crowded with ornaments that were
no decorations, and with decorations that were no
ornaments, with bulbous or angular monstrosities in
wood or metal that were the fruit of some diseased
artist brain from Berlin or Munich. The little octag-
onal, balconied room spoke of a former generation,
both more gentle and more sophisticated. There was
a simple rug of taupe and claret velvet, gray panelings
of carved tulip wood, a lightly frivolous touch in the
figures of women and tiny, paunchy cupids surrounded
by love trophies which filled the angles of the cor-
nices. There were some fine old enameled plates
framed in dark green velvet, frail Tanagra statuettes
and frailer tortoise-shell boxes; a mass of cushions
covered wit: sumptuous Byzantine dalmatics, and a
great Sèvres vase topped by a delicate, silvery spray
of guelder roses.
covered witi tortoise-shell bet, frail Tana
107


108
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Mrs. Wedekind was past eighty years of age and,
besides Heinrich and Martin, she had given birth to
four daughters all married to high ranking officials in
the judiciary and all mothers of large families of their
own. But she was still full of vitality, eagerly inter-
ested in what was going on in the world.
She smiled to herself as she lay there, studying
Tom's open, boyish features with her shrewd, snap-
ping old eyes that sparkled under bushy eyebrows,
above which rose a high, wrinkled forehead negli-
gently dusted with Rachel rice powder.
The daughter of a Westphalian nobleman, she had
married Martin's father, a Bürgerlicher, a commoner,
in the teeth of her family's aristocratic prejudices; and
she still belonged to a former generation that had
taken its cue from the best in Paris, that spoke
French by preference, and German with a faintly
French accent. The new Prussia rather bored her.
To her it seemed too much flavored, as she expressed
it, with kitchen, nursery, and sabers.
“New Prussią is frightfully bad form,” she would
say at times to\her intimates, and even to her son
Heinrich, who would invariably reply: “Yes, yes,
liebe Mutter, but please keep your opinion to yourself.
Don't forget ..."
“I know,” she would reply, with a malicious twinkle
in her eyes, "you are in the army and my respected
sons-in-law are Beamten, officials. And honestly,
Heinrich !-once in a while I forget that my father
was a Baron von Sierstorpff, and then I feel a good
deal of sympathy for the unwashed ruffians of the
French revolution. Now that precious Emperor of
yours ..."
“Mother! Mother! You are speaking of the All-
Gracious ..."


THE OLD WOMAN SPEAKS
109
"Fiddlesticks, Heinrich! The Barons of the house
of Sierstorpff are a much older and a much better
family than your Hohenzollern parvenus !”
In her youth she had been an enthusiastic horse-
woman, riding both to stag and fox hounds, and she
had told Tom how she admired his feat of that
morning.
"You saved my life, young man,” she said in her
sharp, didactic old voice, and when Tom shook his
head and mumbled something about it being not worth
mentioning, she replied :
"I do not think my life is much to bother about
either way. I am past the biblical limit-you see, as I
am getting older, I try to believe in the Bible, so as
to be on the safe side. But Bertha ... There's a
young life you saved ..."
And then, quite suddenly, she looked straight at
Tom Graves and went on:
“Young man, will you take the advice of an old
woman who is not quite as blind as her children like
to believe?”
"Sure.” Tom was embarrassed.
“Very well, then. Leave Germany."
"Why, yes. I wasn't going to live here. I'm going
back home, to Spokane."
"All right. Ġo. But don't dally. Leave just as
soon as you can.”
“But, Mrs. Wedekind !” Tom was both flustered
and hurt. "I know I'm a free and easy sort of chap.
I know that once in a while I say things I oughtn't,
and do things that I ..."
"It isn't that.”
“Well—what is it?"
"Don't ask me for my reasons, young man. Do
not quote me, either. I am telling you confidentially,


110
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
because I like you, and because you have saved my
life and Bertha's. Yet, if you should quote me, I
shall simply deny that I ever said a single word to you
on the subject. But take my advice!”
“But—why?"
She sat up on her couch, her fine old eyes sparkling
with intelligence and with a motherly sympathy for
the young horse wrangler.
"Mr. Graves," she said, "you are an honest man, a
simple man, a clean man. All considered virtues in
your native West, I have no doubt, and virtues once
in this Germany of mine. But to-day honesty and
simplicity are at a discount in Berlin. They are con-
sidered morganatic virtues, virtues on the left hand,
to be sneered at, to be meanly pitied, purposely mis-
understood. A simple man, a man of fine, square,
old-fashioned ideals-ein echter Ehrenmann, as we
say, rather, used to say in Germany—has no business
here!"
And she dismissed Tom, who for the first time in
his life, knowing neither why he did it nor how, bent
over a woman's hand and raised it respectfully to
his lips.


CHAPTER XVIII
LORD VYVYAN SPEAKS
A WEEK later--and it was a week crowded with
dinners and suppers and theater parties and dances,
with the tawdry, hectic frivolities of Berlin At Night
where Tom was usually the guest of Baron von Götz-
Wrede, who was trying, he said, to repay a fraction
of the splendid hospitality with which he had been
treated in Spokane-old Mrs. Wedekind's warning
was repeated.
Tom Graves had not seen very much of Lord
Vyvyan during the last days. Nor was it his fault.
He would have liked to introduce him into the gay
Set in which he was moving, had even suggested it to
the Baron, who shrugged his expressive shoulders and
said with a drawl, not a very cordial one, that of
course any friend of Tom's was welcome. Tom no-
ticed the lack of cordiality, but decided to overlook it,
for, as he put it in a letter to Martin Wedekind :
"Most of these young Prussian fellows seem to have
been born with a sneer on their faces. I guess they
can't help it. Must be merry hell to live in a country
where every man you meet is either your superior or
your inferior-never your equal!"
It was Lord Vyvyan's own fault that he had not
seen more of Tom since coming to Berlin, and he
explained that he was being kept frightfully busy at the
Embassy; said he fancied "Old Titmouse”-that's how
III


LORD VYVYAN SPEAKS 113
, “No, no, no! I'm rather a bit fussy about my
'baccy."
"Sure,” agreed Tom heartily. "I feel lost myself
when I can't get Duke's Mixture and brown paper.
Don't argue, Krauss. Get the cigars. A little fresh
air will do you good.”
Krauss left, and as soon as the outer door had
closed, Vyvyan turned to Tom.
"Graves," he said, without the slightest preamble,
"leave Berlin!”
"Gosh—there's that same old croaking again!”
“Again?” Vyvyan pounced on the word. “Did
somebody else warn you?”
"You bet. Seems to me I'm considerable pumpkins
here the way folks look after me.”
“Who warned you?" insisted the other.
“Old Mrs. Wedekind, the Colonel's mother--and,
believe me, she's a dear!” The words were out of his
mouth before he thought. Too late he remembered
that the old lady had asked him not to quote her.
Vyvyan looked very serious.
"Graves,” he said, “that woman is a good friend
of yours.”
"Sure. I know.”
"And, Graves,” continued the Englishman, rather
haltingly, being an Anglo-Saxon, thus wooden, flus-
tered, easily embarrassed when giving voice to an emo-
tion, "so am I-a good friend of yours !"
"You bet !" replied the Westerner, impulsively shak-
ing the other's hand.
They were silent. They knew that they were good
friends and that, though they had known each other
only a fortnight or so, though no chance had risen
through which to probe each other's heart and soul,
they utterly trusted one another. Yet, immediately,
that the old te he thought. The words werot


114
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Tom feſt that, in spite of it, there was to-night a slight
barrier of reserve between him and the Englishman,
and that it was of the latter's making. He felt it, and
said nothing. For he knew how honorable a mutual
reserve can be between friends, how it is the great,
deep, sudden silences that are the real proof of friend-
ship.
So he tried to change the conversation.
“I had a cable this morning from Spokane. A lit-
tle annoying ..."
"Never mind that,” said the Englishman, returning
to the first subject with the pertinacity of his race;
and, suddenly assuming his habitual drawl and slang:
“Graves, at times I am most frightfully bored with my
jolly, pig-headed old ancestors."
"Are you?"
"Rather! They made such a damnable blunder
when they gave you Colonial Yanks a chance to kick
-and incidentally lick us. Hang it, old chap-you
and I are of the same breed, the same blood, the same
decencies, the same jolly old saving prejudices. There
are some things you and I wouldn't do—simply be-
cause they aren't done. Well, I am not trying to gush.
I'm not that sort. But—I wish you were an Eng-
lishman!”
“I don't!” screamed the eagle.
"Don't be a silly, bloody jackass! I didn't mean
to offend you. But I wish-yes—I wish your nation
and mine would stop talking of what happened over
a hundred years ago. I wish Great Britain and
America would talk together frankly, act together-
and prevent together. I wish ..." He caught him-
self. “Never mind. I'm not the Prime Minister and
you're not the President. All I ask you is to get out
of Germany."


LORD VYVYAN SPEAKS 115
cuck the jolly oli since her grandeived, beggino me
"I won't."
“Why did you come here?”
"To-to.. I told you on board ship.”
"Right-oh!” said Vyvyan. “To keep your promise
to that German Baron—and to get away from a girl.”
“What of it?" asked Tom, a little belligerently.
"Oh-nothing much. Only, remember tellin' me
about the cable Miss Wedekind received, begging her
to hurry to Berlin, since her grandmother was about
to kick the jolly old bucket?”.
“Well?"
“Grandmother hasn't kicked the bucket yet! Grand-
mother is as hale as a four-year filly!"
“There was a mistake in the cable."
"Of course there was, Graves. That's what cables
are for-German cables—to make mistakes, to forge
words. That's how they bullied France into the War
of Seventy—by making a little mistake in a telegram.
I know.” Again he caught himself and returned to
the subject. “Graves,” he continued, “mistake or no
mistake-she received that message after you left
Spokane—and she is here!"
"Yes, yes.” The Westerner was getting irritated.
"Don't you think,” went on Vyvyan very gravely,
“that she was sent for—that she is being used, I mean,
like-oh-a bait? Like a web, to keep you here?”
“Me!" Tom laughed. “Gosh! I'm not of enough
importance.”
Not personally, perhaps. But there may be some-
thing you possess that is of importance.”
"Hell! I've got nothing in the world except a sense
of humor, good health—and the Yankee Doodle Glory
mine!”
"Right.” The Englishman jumped up. “Look
here. I'll tell you ..."


116
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
double hylsal of bassy, in inder
The next moment he was silent. He shook his
head.
“Sorry, old chap," he continued. "Can't tell you.
There was that silly old ass of a King George the
Third who split your nation and mine. I made one
mistake—in Washington—and I've learned my lesson.
Only remember!” He stepped up close to his friend.
"If ever you should get into trouble here in Berlin,
if by any chance your American Ambassador should
refuse to help you, or should be unable to help
you ..."
"Lord! I shan't get into any trouble. And why,
if I did, should our Embassy refuse to help?"
“Purely hypothetical, old dear! But, given the
double hypothesis—your trouble and your Ambassa-
dor's refusal or inability-remember that I work at
the British Embassy, in the Wilhelm Strasse, three
doors from Unter den Linden!”
“Unless," laughed Tom, "you yourself get into an-
other row with your people and get chucked, as you
did in Washington !”.
"Right. Bright lad!” said the Englishman, but he
was very serious. “There is always a possibility that
I..."
He drew a ring from his pocket and asked Tom
to examine it very thoroughly. Tom did. It was a
simple affair of silver with the figure of a grayhound
engraved on the round shield and above it the letters
B. E. D.
“Know that ring now?” asked Vyvyan.
“Yes."
“Remember if you'd see it again?”
“Yes."
“Positive ?"


LORD VYVYAN SPEAKS 117
17
“Yes, yes! Sure! Why?”
Vyvyan slipped the ring back in his pocket. .
“Just this,” he said. “If, I repeat, you should ever
get into trouble and your Ambassador can't help you,
if by that tinie I should have left Berlin, you must
go to the Bri.ish Embassy. Any time of the day or
the night. Once inside the building you must use your
own wits. You must find, somehow, without asking
too many questions, the man who has the duplicate
to this ring. Him you can trust. And nobody else.
Also, forget what I told you to-night!”.
Tom laughed. “Quite like an old-fashioned melo-
drama, with me as the villain, isn't it?”
"I hope you won't be the persecuted hero," smiled
Vyvyan, and then, to turn the conversation: “You
said something about à cable you got from Spokane?”
“Yes. Some mistake, I guess. Seems my old part-
ner, Truex, died up North, in the British Columbia
wilderness, about a week back, and a nephew of his
turned up, son of that sister who ran away with the
foreign fiddler. Seems he's trying to make a row.
Says I swindled old Truex. That really Truex
owned a controlling interest in the mine."
“What's the nephew's name?”
“Lehneke. Eberhardt Lehneke. Young German.
Hasn't been over there very long, the cable says.”
“Who sent you the cable?”
“Martin Wedekind.”
“And what are you going to do?''
"I'm going to fight the young cub and lick him. I
cabled straight back to Martin and to Alec Wynn,
my lawyer. Just some darned hold-up game. But,
believe me, I'll beat that young Mister Lehneke !"
“Gad!" said Vyvyan, with utter sincerity, "I hope


118
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
to God you will, Graves !” And he added, after a
moment's thought: “Don't you think you'd better go
back to Spokane and supervise the fight yourself?”
Tom shook his head.
"Vyvyan,” he replied, “I'm not going to leave Ber-
lin, happen what may, without ...
“Without?”
“Without Bertha! Bertha Wedekiad!"
The Englishman was studying the pattern of the
rug.
"Perhaps you are right,” he murmured, half to him-
self.


I20
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
felt the respect and admiration with which the civilians
regarded her martial companions.
Her former life in Spokane flashed up at such mo-
ments in sad, gray streaks of remembrance. At the
time it had been pleasant enough, she thought, with
the weekly hops at the Country Club, the horseback
rides in the evenings across Hangman's Creek and out
to Fort Wright, the quiet, simple, sunny summers
spent at Hayden Lake or on the Killicott ranch, the
plain-spoken, square-shouldered men, mining engi-
neers, ranchers, merchants, lawyers, and young Cana-
dian bank clerks from the local branch of the Bank
of Montreal, who called each other Tom and Dick
and Jack and Jim.
No! Back yonder there had been no romance, no
glamour, no clanking of sabers, no clicking of heels,
no kissing of hands, no whispering of: “Gnädigstes
Fräulein, Sie sehen ja ganz fabelhaft entzückend aus!”
no gay, challenging music of fife and drum.
Looking through the spectacles of her youthful
imagination, she admired and loved this new Berlin
which had sprung up, fungus-like, since the Franco-
Prussian War, which had been built up with the money
stolen from France. She was untrained in artistic
judgment, and she admired the broad, sweeping streets
framed by houses tumbled together of every style from
peaked Gothic to ultra-modern Sezession; the depart-
ment stores that tried to look like Florentine cathedrals
and the churches that tried to look like department
stores; the rococo palaces of the nouveaux riches dec-
orated with meaningless stucco ornaments and mon-
strous caryatides supporting nothing in particular; the
great public ballroom of the Behren Strasse, the Palais
de Danse that endeavored to go Paris one better by
using fifteen colors, clashing, cruel, hideous, where the


THE VOICE OF BERLIN
121
same French artist had used no more than three, per-
fectly blended.
Bertha was too young to understand the over-
emphatic, unæsthetic, bragging spirit of it all. She
was caught in the whirl of gayety.
And there was gayety in the Berlin of the Autumn
of the year Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen, nine
months before the War. A future historian may
some day call it the hysterical gayety that precedes
the coming of madness.
Madness of too sudden success!
Madness of a nation, over fed, oversexed, cursed
with national paranoia, intoxicated with the poisonous
wine of self-glory!
Laughing, screaming, shouting madness that wound
up in blood, and misery, and cruelties unspeakable-
and punishment!
All that autumn Berlin danced. Berlin flirted.
Berlin laughed. Berlin spent money like water. And
the clique in the Wilhelm Strasse, the rulers of Ger-
many, helped it along. They realized their own dan-
ger. They decided that there should be no national,
wholesale awakening to the fact that the huge busi-
ness colossus of modern Germany had feet of clay, a
heart that was hollow, and empty pockets, that over-
speculation had drained the imperial exchequer and
that the most gigantic national failure and bankruptcy
was imminent.
The exchequer must be filled. And there was but
one way to do it:
Conquest! Conquest by the sword!
In the meantime, until the blow was struck, swiftly
and successfully, the people of Germany must be kept
in good humor.
On with the dance !--was the dictum of the Wilhelm


122
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Strasse. Sing and drink and shout! Spend money!
Buy, buy, buy!
On with the whirl of gayety! ... Lest the people
see the misery, the terrible threat of failure and bank-
ruptcy that yawned at their feet like an abyss of Fate,
lest they see beneath the pomp and circumstance of
glittering uniforms and recognize the grinning skele-
tons ... Like symbolic shapes!
Horribly expressive of something!
Suggestive of—what?
And in the midst of it all, with the best in the land,
Bertha danced. Of course she saw a lot of Tom
for the young Westerner went everywhere, was in-
vited everywhere, and he, too, enjoyed himself. It
amused him to meet Princes of the blood and aristo-
crats, who boasted twenty-four quarterings on their
armorial shields. There was not the faintest shade
of snobbishness in him. But the surface of his mood
was exuberant. He felt an almost boyish delight,
tempered with whimsical humor, in his growing power
to comport himself correctly towards the elite of Ber-
lin—and his correctness spelled simplicity, manliness,
the natural, good-humored dignity of the free man
of the plains.
As such he was accepted by the young officers and,
if the truth be told, really liked,
Bertha, too, liked him, had always liked him, occa-
sional tiffs apart, with unquestioning fondness. But
rather with the sort of fondness one has for a beloved
and thoroughly satisfying domestic animal.
But love? Real flesh-and-blood love?
"No, Tom," she said, a little sadly, when, one Octo-
ber evening, he had asked her for the tenth time that
month to marry him and to retu;n with him to Spo-
kane. “I do not love you—and I shan't marry you."


THE VOICE OF BERLIN 123
“Still the same old reason, I guess ?” he smiled.
“What ever do you mean, Tom?”
“Go on! You know well enough,” he said rather
brutally. “You wouldn't marry me even if you loved
me ..
“Which I don't !"
“All right. But even if you did, you wouldn't
marry me. Because .
“Let's change the subject, Tom!"
"I won't! I repeat you won't marry me because I
am not wearing one of those cute, pea-green monkey-
jackets and because I don't drag three foot of pointed
steel behind me.”
“Well?" demanded Bertha belligerently, “suppose
you are right? What are you going to do about it,
Tom?"
"Do about it? Why! I am going to get me that
monkey-jacket and that bit of steel. That's all!”
And Bertha would not have laughed had she known
what had happened to Tom during the last couple of
days.


CHAPTER XX
WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME
Back in Spokane, about a week earlier, lawyer
Alec Wynn had paid a late call on Martin Wedekind.
“Well, Alec,” asked the latter, anxiously, “how's
it coming on?”
"Punk. Pretty damned punk. I am afraid that
Tom Graves has not a leg to stand on.”
"Oh, well, Alec, you're a lawyer, a professional pes-
simist. You're paid to look at the hopeless side of
life, you know.”
"No, Martin. It looks bad. Honest, it does !
Have a peep at this !” He opened his leather case and
took out a sheet of foolscap, sealed with the arms of
the Dominion of Canada. “An affidavit, executed in
regular form, attesting and swearing to 'Old Man'
Truex's death. Signed by the coroner of Crow's Nest
Pass, and by three witnesses !"
“Who are the witnesses ? Let's see !"
Alec Wynn pointed at the scrawling signatures.
“John Good..."
“The fellow who keeps that ramshackle hotel and
bar at the Crow's Nest ?
“Yes, Martin. The same.”
"He's a bad actor. Used to be a cattle rustle in
the old days before the Royal Northwestern cleaned
up the land.”
The lawyer inclined his head.
124


WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME 125
"Sure,” he said. "I know. Good gives the lie eter-
nal to his name. He's no good at all. Neither
are the other witnesses. See here! Arthur For-
sythe ..."
“That shyster lawyer from Fernie, B. C.?"
"Right-and Lawrence Walsh.”
“Who's he?"
“Chap from Berlin ..."
"Berlin!” cut in Wedekind excitedly.
“Berlin, Ontario,” laughed Wynn. "He isn't a
German. Walsh. Irish name, that! Came to West-
ern Canada about a year ago, and my brother Roy
had some rather unpleasant business dealings with
him.”
"So it seems that all the three witnesses are a
bit ..."
"Off color?” asked the lawyer. “Sure enough.
But the coroner believes them evidently. There's the
cold blooded legal fact. According to the regular
Canadian records Truex is dead. Slipped off his
horse, tumbled down a mountain-side, broke his neck,
and was buried.”
“Yes, yes!” Martin Wedekind rose and paced up
and down the room. “And yet,” he said, "some-
how ..."
"Somehow you don't believe that Truex is dead.
Somehow you think the whole thing is a cooked-up
game to cheat friend Graves !".
"Exactly!”
“But you can do nothing," continued Wynn, "un-
less tou produce the old prospector in the flesh.”
V dekind stopped in front of the lawyer.
"Axlec,” he said, “I have reasons, good, sound rea-
sons, for believing what I do believe-namely, that
Truex is alive, that Lehneke-or the party Lehneke


126
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
acts foris trying to do Tom out of the Yankee Doo-
dle Glory.”
“What are your reasons ?”
"I can't tell you, Alec."
“I always thought you and I were pretty good
friends."
“We are, Alec. But I can't tell you just the same.
Only—don't give in. Fight—that!" bringing his fist
down on the Canadian affidavit. “Get the body ex-
humed. Have a look at it.”
“Impossible !"
“How so?”
“Impossible without long legal rigmaroles," the
lawyer corrected himself. "They cost both time and
money."
"I'll supply the money, Alec !"
“Yes, yes. But the time. Who in Hades is going
to supply the time? You see, while you and I'd be
getting ready to carry that affidavit mess into the Pro-
vincial Supreme Court, Lehneke has Tom by the short
hair on his neck. Look at this !” And he flung a
long, legal-looking document on the table.
"See?” he continued. "Statement sworn to by the
German Consul-General in New York and declaring
that Eberhardt Lehneke is the only son and heir of
Paul Lehneke and Mary Lehneke, both deceased.
Also statement by the same Consul-General swearing
that he has on files in the consular archives a certif-
icate of marriage contracted between Paul Lehneke
and Mary Truex, only sister of 'Old Man' Truex, and
daughter of John and Priscilla Truex, native of
Oswego, N. Y. And birth certificate of Mary eh-
neke, née Truex—and half-a-dozen other paperees-
tablishing young Lehneke's position as Truex's heir
without the shadow of a doubt.”


WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME 127
“But ..."
“Wait! Here's still another paper to complete the
sweet circle. Look. An injunction handed down
this afternoon by the Supreme Court of the State of
Washington, making it incumbent upon Tom Graves
to give a complete accounting of ore taken, shipped
and sold from the Yankee Doodle Glory mine, in-
juncting his further working of the mine until the case
has been settled and turning over Tom's money in the
Old National to a receiver until that same date. Not
only that. Lehneke seems to be ace high back home
in Germany. For they even got busy there and put
their paws on Tom's money in the Deutsche Bank in
Berlin. I tell you Graves is in a rotten bad hole,
Martin !"
"Only for the time-being. I know that youngster.
I tell you he'll fight harder than ever.”
“I hope so. But meanwhile he's in Berlin, strapped
to his last ducat, I reckon. What in thunder is the
poor boy going to do?”
And exactly the same question was bothering Tom
a few days before his interview with, and his tenth
proposal that month to, Bertha.
"What am I going to do?” he asked himself, read-
ing over Alec Wynn's lengthy, detailed cablegram;
and then, with a smile, at another he had received
that morning and in which Martin Wedekind offered
to stake him to his ticket back to Spokane.
"Come straight home," Martin's cable wound up;
"up to you to fight.”
“I'll fight all right!" Tom's answer flashed back
across the Atlantic and the North American continent.
“But I am not coming back just now;" and it was just
after he had sent Krauss to despatch the cable that


WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME 129
"Shut up, and watch my smoke, Graves! What
you got to have to fight that Lehneke person is the
nervus rerum, money in other words ..."
“That's no news !”
"And I'm going to supply it. I'm going to be the
cute little bright-eyes who's going to plank down the
war chest!"
“You?” Again Tom laughed. He remembered
that the other had frequently told him how "stony''
he was, that he did not have a cent in the world and
had to depend on his brother, the Duke, for every-
thing. “You-help me? Like the blind helping the
lame!”
“Not at all. I have the makings, as you Americans
say.”
“Quit your bluffing. I know you're bust!”
"I am not!"
“You told me yourself that ..."
“Old aunt of mine went out. Died, I mean. Left
me oodles of cash.”
"Oh!" Tom's exclamation was frankly incredu-
lous; but Vyvyan slapped a check book on the
table.
“Stop arguing and doubting,” he said. "I'll write
you my check now. As much as you want. Enough
to fight that Lehneke person and to pay for all your
living expenses here. Just name your figure," and,
when Tom did not reply, only laughed, “how'll five
thousand guineas do for a starter?”
"Five thousand guineas? That's twenty-five thou-
sand. dollars, isn't it?”
"Rather a little better, old cock. More if you want
to. It'll be a pleasure.”
"Must have left you a mint o' money, that aunt of
yours.”


130 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Right. Splendid old dear, wasn't she?" He
waved the check book. “How much?”
But Tom shook his stubborn red head.
"I won't accept it,” he said.
"Don't be a silly goat. You have got to win that
case. You must give that Dutchman beans! Come
on. Let me write you that check," urged Vyvyan.
"I'll think it over.”
"All right, then. But I have to leave town for a
few days, and so-here!” He made out his check for
five thousand guineas on the British Linen Bank in
London. “It's yours to use if you want to while
I'm gone. Cash it at the American Express Com-
pany's local office."
"Wait,” said Tom, "I must ..."
"Receipt for it? Tommyrot!" And the English-
man was out of the room and the flat.
Tom looked at the check. .
"Mighty convenient aunt, that one of Vyvyan's,” he
said to himself, “and died at a mighty convenient
time. Well ..."
He heard a faint noise behind him and turned.
Krauss was standing there. His eyes were glued on
the slip of pink paper and, acting quite instinctively,
Tom put it in his pocket.
"Sent off that cable?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
"Well?”
"Baron von Götz-Wrede is calling."
"All right. Show him in,” said Tom; and a mo-
ment later the officer came into the room.
"Has Vyvyan been with you again?” were his first
words. “I just met him on the stairs."
“Yes," replied Tom.
"Do you like that drawling, supercilious Britisher ?”


WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME 131
"Sure.” Then, quickly, suddenly, Tom's temper
got the best of him. “Look here," he added, bellig-
erently, “I don't think it's anybody's damned busi-
ness with whom I choose to herd, see?”
“That's where you are wrong, Graves. It is my
business—as your friend!”
"Tickled to death you call yourself my friend.
But–Vyvyan's my friend, too, and ..:
“Let me explain!"
“All right, all right.”
“Vyvyan is an Englishman.”.
“What of that? What's wrong with Englishmen?”
"Wrong? Oh ... Nothing ...".
The man was silent. He was very quiet, a smile
playing on his handsome, dark features.
Then, with a terrible suddenness, a change came
over him. His eyes flashed fire. His flaring nostrils
dilated and quivered like those of a thoroughbred stal-
lion. He shot out his long, strong, hairy hands, ges-
ticulating, like clutching at an invisible, hated object.
His heart, his soul, his whole being seemed to acetify,
and all his well-trained, well-subdued emotions danced
away in a mad whirligig of passion.
"I tell you what's wrong with them!” he cried, his
voice peaking up to a high, broken screech. “These
English–these hypocritical, supercilious tradespeople
-dieses verdammte Krämervolk! ... Why, Graves
... Wherever you go, wherever you turn, Africa,
America, Asia, the South Seas, you find them squat-
ting in their damned, smug self-content! Their flag
is everywhere, their ships, their drawling, monocled
fools of younger sons, their prating clergy, their con-
temptible little, scarlet-coated army ... They are
eyerywhere ..."
"Sure,” laughed Tom, “they are everywhere. And
voice pear these byte Krämer herever


132
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
don't they do things right wherever they are? Don't
they govern well? Don't they give all the world, in-
cluding you Dutchmen, a fair chance to trade on equal
terms and make money wherever they are? Say, I
don't know much about politics, but just judging from
what I know of horses, I reckon you're jealous ..."
"I, a German, jealous of an Englishman?”
“You bet your boots. You're as jealous as hell.
- Otherwise you wouldn't curse them as you are doing
now and the next moment try to ape them.”
“We're not aping them!”
"Sure you are. I got eyes to see. There isn't a
man in this town who can afford to who don't turn
up his breeches when it rains in London. Look at
the names of your swell stores: Old England, Prince
of Wales, London House—and your hotels: the Bris-
tol, the Windsor, the Westminster. Why, man, I've
seen you ride. And you yourself try your darnedest
to ride like a Britisher!”
"I don't have to try! I do ride like them. I went
to the London horse show, at'Olympia, and ..."
Tom burst out laughing.
"Bit, didn't you?” he asked. “Caught you with
the goods, eh? Been to London and learned the
trick! Sure. That's just what I am saying ..."
And when the Baron worked himself into another
storm of passion, speaking about “dieser gemeine Eng-
lische Pöbel," Tom cut in with an impatient :
“Forget it. You talk like an old-fashioned Cleve-
land Democrat on the stump. What's the use ? You
aren't running for Congress, and I'm not Irish. The
days when you had to tweak the lion's tail to cop a
hatful of votes are gone. We're sane these days.”
"You mean to say that you Americans are satisfied
to sit still while the English ..."
but laughing asked. “Cand learned


WHAT HAPPENED BACK HOME 133
“Yep. We're satisfied with our own little block of
real estate—from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. We aren't hogs. We got
plenty and we don't envy our British cousins."
The German looked at Tom. There was an ex-
pression of utter astonishment on his aquiline face.
Then he laughed.
"Ever heard of Nietzsche?” he inquired.
“No. What is it? Sounds like a guy sneezing."
“Nietzsche was a writer," the German went on,
"and he wrote a book called Zarathustra. In that
book there is a passage which speaks of the Ear, big
as a man, on a slender stalk, and against the stalks
dangles a bloated soul-shallow, untrained, helpless.
And that soul, my friend, is the Anglo-Saxon world !"
"Nutty! Ab-so-lutely, completely hickory!" was
Tom's simple comment; and to wind up the argu-
ment, he added: “Anyway, Vyvyan is a pal o' mine.
Sit down. You look all excited. I'm going to get
you a drop of my private stock Bourbon.”
He walked out of the room. On the threshold he
brushed against Krauss, who was just coming in,
and he did not notice that the valet's nimble fingers
had rapidly dipped into his side pocket to come out
with a slip of pink paper.


CHAPTER XXI
THE TIGHTENING OF THE WEB
"KRAUSS,” said Baron von Götz-Wrede while Tom
was out of the room, and examining Lord Vyvyan's
five-thousand-guinea check, "you have done well. I
shall speak of you to ... You know ..."
"Thank you, sir.”
The officer gave him back the check, and the valet
was about to tear it up when the other stopped him.
"No, no! What are you doing, man?”
"I thought, sir, I would ..."
"Heavens, no! Put it back in Graves' pocket. Bet-
ter still, drop it on the floor-over there—near the
little taboret."
“Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann!” Krauss clicked
his heels. The check fluttered on the rug.
“That's right. No use having Graves suspect.
He's deliciously simple, our American friend. But
still ..."
"Any other orders, Herr Hauptmann?”
“No, Krauss. You stay with Graves."
“But-I beg your pardon, sir-if he has lost his
money ..."
"Not exactly lost yet, worse luck! Lehneke is
doing splendidly. So are the others. But the case
is not yet finally decided.”
“But ..." Krauss cut in again, anxiously; and
the Baron smiled condescendingly.
134


THE TIGHTENING OF THE WEB 135
“Krauss,” he asked, "have you ever known our
branch of the service to make a mistake?”.
“No, Herr Hauptmann!”
“You have worked for the service in America,
haven't you?”
“Yes, sir. Also in England, and in France.”
“Very well. You know the ropes. You know that
we are never caught napping. We are armed against
all contingencies. The army? The navy? To be
sure. They will do their share when the day
comes ..."
“Yes," whispered Krauss, "the day-der Tag!"
“But,” continued the other, “we our branch-are
the real people! Our names are unknown. We get
little thanks. But we are the heart of Germany. We
have the will, the brains, the clear-cut, cold efficiency.
Thus in the case of this delightfully simple young
American. He will ... Ah!” as Tom came back
with a bottle and two glasses, “Thanks! I need a
drink.”
"Say when,” smiled Tom, pouring.
“That's plenty.” Von Götz-Wrede raised his glass,
“Fill yours, Graves.”
"Sure. Never refused one yet."
“All right. And now—let me give you a toast !"
"Fire away!"
The Baron threw back his shoulders. His heels
came together sharply. He spoke in a ringing, me-
tallic voice:
"I drink to the newest officer in the invincible army
of our All-Gracious Sovereign Wilhelm the Second,
King of Prussia, Emperor of the Germans! I drink
to Lieutenant Tom Graves of the Uhlans of the
Guard !”
Tom put down his glass.


136 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Say!” he inquired. “What's biting you? What
sort o' hop have you been hitting? What's the big
joke?"
"Joke? There's no joke!"
The Baron walked up to him and put his hand on
his shoulder.
"Tom," he said in low, earnest accents, “be one of
us! Put on the blue and crimson of the Uhlans of
the Guard! Ride with us! Drink with us! Tilt
lances with us! Laugh with us! And—if such be
God's will—fight with us!"
“But—but ..." Tom was utterly dumbfounded.
“There are no Buts. We like you. We want you.
Come! Be our comrade in arms !”
"But”-stammered Tom—“I know nothing about
the army. I know nothing about ..."
"You can ride, man! There's no better horseman
in Germany than you. Why, how can you say no?
You are young and healthy. Can't you feel the glory
of it, the zest, the splendor of it? A soldier's life?
A cavalryman! A dashing Uhlan!"
For a moment he was silent. He tossed down the
whiskey.
Then he continued in an epic abandon, and deep
down in his heart he was sincere:
“The army, Tom! The cavalry! The right life
for a man like you, a man of the plains, a man on
horseback !"
From the distance, drifting up from the Kurfürst-
endamm, came the many sounds of a brigade march-
ing out to maneuver. Brasses and fifes and drums
brayed and shrieked and thumped their separate notes,
blending with the hollow tramp-tramp-tramp of drilled
feet, the low, dramatic rumbling of the guns, the


THE TIGHTENING OF THE WEB 137
feel it? The call of it war sthe curses and arm Wales!
neighing of horses, the scraping of lance butt and
sword scabbard on saddles.
* The Baron threw open the window.
“The army!” he went on. “God, man, can't you
feel it? Doesn't it give you a thrill? The tightened
reins! The call of the trumpets! The thunder of
the hoofs! And-if war should come—the shock
against the enemy's phalanx, the curses and the slash-
ings, the sudden numbness of the sword arm when
the steel strikes horse or rider! Empty saddles !
Dust! Blades that cross and slash and flicker! And
then the reeling victor's fist! Then the waving of
the enemy's captured pennant! Oh, the triumph, the
glorious, glorious triumph of it!"
He paused. He gripped Tom's hands.
“Come! Be one of us !” he added in a tense
whisper.
The young Westerner had been steadily thinking,
and the more he thought, the more fascinating seemed
the Baron's proposal.
It was not only the glamour of the army which
captured his imagination. He did think of it. As-
suredly. For he was young and eager.
Also there was his dry American sense of humor.
What a lark it would be! He, Tom Graves, horse
wrangler, in the blue and crimson of Prussia's crack
Uhlan regiment. Gosh! Martin Wedekind and Alec
Wynn and Newson Garrett and all the other fellows
back home would open their eyes some!
Herr Leutnant Tom Graves!
It was a scream!
Not only that. For there was Bertha. She was
always speaking about the army, the officers, the gor-
geous uniforms. Well-he studied himself compla-


138
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
cently in the mirror which hung between the win-
dows-he'd look all right in blue and crimson, with
gold epaulettes, and a trailing, clanking, crooked
cavalry saber.
And finally it would solve his financial difficulties.
He would draw regular pay and save enough to fight
the Yankee Doodle Glory litigation.
So there was no reason in the world why he should
say no. There was every reason why he should say
yes.
And he did say yes!
"Fine and dandy!” he cried enthusiastically. “I
am with you! You just bet your boots I am with
you!"
Then he had a sobering thought.
“Say, Baron,” he went on, "are you sure the thing
can be fixed ?”
"Of course. I have already talked to Prince Lud-
wig Karl. We are anxious, very anxious, to have
you in the army!”
And Krauss, who was standing in the doorway,
smiled. He said to himself that there at least the
Baron had spoken the unvarnished truth.


CHAPTER XXII
HERR LEUTNANT GRAVES
AFTER Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede had left Tom
found Vyvyan's check where Krauss had dropped it.
He had not missed it before. He picked it up and,
deciding that he would not need it now his immediate
future was assured, was about to tear it up when
there was a ring at the front door bell.
He had sent the valet out to get him some cigarettes,
and so he went to the door himself to admit a tele-
graph messenger.
He tipped him and opened the crinkly, manila en-
velope.
“Gosh,” he said, “it's raining cables to-day!”
He read. Then he gave a low whistle.
“Bully, Alec! Bully for you!”
He paused and looked at Lord Vyvyan's check.
“Damned lucky I didn't tear you up, you little rosy-
cheeked beauty. You'll come in mighty handy!"
For in a lengthy missive, regardless of expense,
lawyer Wynn had cabled that through a sudden change
there was now a first-rate chance for Tom to win
the Yankee Doodle Glory case, but that he must re-
mit at once a stiff sum of money, say five thousand
dollars. Wynn added that he would have asked Mar-
tin Wedekind for the amount, but the latter was out
of town. And he himself was strapped.
So Tom decided that he would use five thousand
dollars of Lord Vyvyan's check, give him back the
139


140
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
remaining twenty thousand, and repay the balance just
as soon as the case was settled.
He walked down the stairs and whistled for a taxi.
“American Express Company!” he said, speaking
in German. He had been making steady and con-
scientious progress in the mastering of the language.
“Mohren Strasse corner of Friedrich! Rasch!”—and
twenty minutes later he was leaning across the oak
counter of the local branch of the American Express
Company and explained matters to the little, black-
haired Welshman who presided over the cashier's cage.
“To be sure!” said the Welshman. “We know
Lord Vyvyan. We always honor his checks.”
“Always?” asked Tom, intrigued. “I thought his
aunt only died the other day.”
"Beg pardon, sir," replied the diplomatic, suspi-
cious cashier. "I know nothing about his Lordship's
deceased aunt. But the check is all right. What?
Yes, sir, I shall make the cable transfer."
He figured for a few minutes, asked Tom to sign
some papers, and gave him the rest of the money in
German bills.
"Don't mention it, sir. Thank you, sir."
Tom dismissed the waiting taxicab.
"I'll walk,” he said, and he struck out at a good
clip down the Leipziger Strasse, across the Potsdamer
Platz, towards the Westend.
The Berlin streets lay in the embrace of a golden
afternoon of late autumn, the pale sun still warm
with the glory of harvest, with no foretaste of win-
ter tang and winter sadness. The roofs of the great,
braggart department stores took on beauty for the
time-being, glittering in every shade of green and
blue and purple, like the plumage of some gigantic


HERR LEUTNANT GRAVES
141
peacock. The oak and beech trees bordering the
Spree dipped to the water in a rustling, shimmering
rain of yellow and crimson leaves; the spotless win-
dows of the many shops mirrored the cloudless even-
ing sky with a myriad rainbow facets; and even the
ugly, pompous statues that rose from every square,
were relieved with delicate sprays of color that touched
them with the gentle, mellowing hands of romance.
The streets were filled with people. Workmen in
brick-powdered clothes went past, smoking cheap
cigars. dinner pails swinging from their arms, dis-
cussing with loud voices the last editorial in the Vor-
wärts. Stalwart nurses wheeled their charges home
from the Tiergarten. Merchants and bankers purred
along in great motor-cars to join their families in an
open-air supper at the Zoological Gardens. Back of
the tennis court to the left of the Charlottenburg de-
pot, on a rough plat of ground, some high schoolboys
were playing football, not cleverly, but with a certain
lusty Teutonic zest, filling the air with riotous shouts.
Tom stepped amongst aristocrat and burgess and
student like a conqueror. His thoughts were with
Bertha—and the blue-and-crimson uniform of the
Uhlans. For, although there seemed a first-rate
chance now of his winning the Yankee Doodle litiga-
tion, he had made up his mind nevertheless to accept
the Baron's proposal.
Berthwould
It would be such bully fun. And—there was
He grinned good-naturedly as he was bumped into
by two arrogant “One Year Volunteer” privates of the
Maikäfer regiment of grenadiers.
"Wait, my lads!” he thought. "Just wait till I
get my uniform-my little monkey-jacket and my


142
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
pointed roasting spit! I'll make you toe the mark.
I'll teach you how to bump into people!”
And, stopping at the Gross Berlin American Bar,
where a morose, nostalgic ex-Coney Island barkeeper
was earning his living by introducing the gilded youth
of Berlin West to the mysteries and delights of trans-
Atlantic mixed drinks, he very much astonished that
worthy by waving a lofty hand when the man ad-
dressed him as: “Hullo, Tom, you old son-of-a-gun!
Have one on the house!" and by asking him, in mock
dramatic accents, to call him in the future: "Herr
Leutnant!"
"Say! Wot's eatin' o' you?” asked McCaffrey, the
barkeeper, to receive the mystifying reply, pronounced
in the horse wrangler's best German:
"Rechts um! Kehrt! Präsentirt das Gewehr!
Marsch! Marsch!”
“What d'ye think ye are?” demanded the aggrieved
McCaffrey. "A gol-dinged Prooshan lootinant?"
"Right!" snarled Tom, trying his best to copy
Colonel Heinrich Wedekind's martial accents. "Hoch
der Kaiser!”—and he swaggered out of the bar while
McCaffrey looked after him in speechless astonish-
ment.
When Tom reached his flat, he found it filled by
a jolly company.
Baron von Götz-Wrede was there, accompanied by
Colonel Wedekind, the little Hussar whose name was
Graf von Bissingen-Trotzow, the wizened professor
with the tiny, red ears, whom he had met that first
night at the Colonel's house, and half-a-dozen other
officers in glittering regimentals.
They greeted him with jokes and laughter and en-
thusiasm:
“Guten Abend, Herr Kamerad!"


HERR LEUTNANT GRAVES
143
“Ist ja ganz famos, Herr Kamerad!”
"Grossartig, Herr Kamerad!”
"Herr Kamerad!”
“Herr Kamerad!"'—and, again:
"Herr Kamerad!”
They shook his hands. They congratulated him,
themselves, the army, and Germany, until the Colonel
enjoined silence.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen, if you please !"
He turned to Tom and wished him luck in a few
well-chosen words, both in his own name and that
of the regiment.
“Thanks !” smiled the Westerner. “But I'm not in
the regiment yet. I guess there are some formalities."
“Everything is arranged. You will receive your
commission to-night, Mr. Graves.”
"To-night? Gee whizz! That's darned quick
work!"
“Isn't it?” replied the Colonel. “But Prince Lud-
wig Karl spoke a word in your behalf. To-night you
will be presented to His All-Gracious Majesty, der
Kriegsherr! To him personally you will give the oath
of fealty. Hurry into your dress clothes, my dear sir.
The audience with His All-Gracious Majesty will be
in an hour!”
Krauss helped Tom change, and ten minutes later
he was sitting by the side of the Colonel in the lat-
ter's motor-car. They drove through the Branden-
burger Thor, where the sentinels on duty jumped out,
presenting arms. The Colonel saluted. Tom waved
a negligent hand.
Up to the Alte Schloss they drove, where Tom was
taken in tow by a chamberlain in silken, black knee-
breeches, who led him through a long suite of rooms,
all furnished rather dingily in the style of two gen-


144
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
erations ago, and into an antechamber where he was
received by Prince Ludwig Karl.
The latter said something about: "Charmirt, mein
Herr, ganz charmirt!” and preceded Tom into a large,
octagonal salon.
Near the balconied window, sitting stiffly erect on
a hard chair, was a short, oldish man in the full
uniform of a field marshal, his chest blazing with
German and foreign decorations.
"His Majesty !" mumbled Prince Ludwig Karl, and
Tom looked curiously at the Prussian War Lord.
He beheld a lean, yellow, dissatisfied, rather morose
face, with large ears, and sagging lips brushed by an
upsweep of gray, martial mustache. With his blood-
shot, roving eyes, his haggard cheeks, his high, wrin-
kled forehead, he seemed to Tom like an old, weary
bloodhound.
The ceremony itself took little time. Tom bowed
and repeating word for word the oath of fealty, by
the terms of which, only half knowing what he was
saying, he bound himself to serve His All-Gracious
Majesty in peace and war, and to obey all orders,
then shook the Emperor's limp, hairy hand, and was
ushered out of the salon and the palace.
The Colonel was waiting outside.
“To-morrow I'll take you to my tailor to have you
measured for your uniform, Lieutenant Graves," he
said.
And it was thus that, the next day, to Bertha's bel-
ligerent question of what he was going to do about it,
he replied that he was going to get himself the monkey-
jacket and the bit of steel.
In fact, both had already been ordered from “Paul
Hoffman & Cie, Hoflieferanten, Purveyors to His
Majesty the King of Spain and His Majesty the King


HERR LEUTNANT GRAVES 145
of Sweden, Militäreffektenlieferanten" ... The lat-
ter a jaw-breaking noun which even Tom, in spite of
his rapidly improving German, could not translate as
“army tailors" without the help of the dictionary.


CHAPTER XXIII
TRUEX
On the afternoon of the day on which Alec Wynn
had sent his first, rather hopeless, cable to Tom--the
cable which within forty-eight hours of its arrival in
Berlin was destined to precipitate the young Westerner
head over heels into the iron web of the German army
-the lawyer entered his office in the Mohawk Block
to find there waiting for him a half-breed French
Canadian by the name of Baptiste Lamoureux, whom
he knew, unfavorably, from former occasions. He
had defended him more than once in the local courts
for minor offenses as well as for a couple of shooting
scrapes, and so Wynn's greeting was appropriate:
"Hello, Batis'! Going to croak somebody and com-
ing to me in advance to arrange for the proper alibi ?"
The Canadian laughed with a flash of even, white
teeth.
"No, M'sieu !” he replied. "M'sieu, I am a frien'
of yours!”
“Purely disinterested, I reckon.” By birth the law-
yer was a Southerner and all the years spent in the
Northwest had not been sufficient to make him drop his
North Carolinian phraseology.
"Alas, no, M'sieu! Disinterested? Ah! One must
eat an' sleep, hein?”
"Surely — and get one's nose full on occasion.
Batis', I appreciate your charming personality, but I
146


TRUEX
147
am a busy man. Close the door on the outside. I
have no time for either social intercourse or the swap-
ping of philosophical observations.”
"Sure Mike. But-ah”—Lamoureux winked rap-
idly one little beady black eye-"you would have time
if I whisper to you one, one tiny leetle word as to
M'sieu ‘Old Man' Truex. That no so, M'sieu?”
The lawyer dropped his forensic calm. He jumped
• up and took the other by the shoulder.
"Come through! What is it?"
"The information costs money. I tol you, M'sieu,
un pauv type comme moi ... I must eat an' sleep
an', as you say, occasionally get my nostrils full of
whiskey blanc!"
“How much, you damned rascal?”!
“M'sieu! M'sieu !” exclaimed the other. "You
must not misunderstand me. It is not for me, the
money. I-I am your frien'. Also am I a frien' of
M'sieu Graves. Once he help me an' I do not for-
get.”
“Well? Who wants the money then? Speak out,
man!”
Followed a long, tense, whispered conversation, the
lawyer making objection after objection, asking ques-
tion after question, all satisfactorily answered by the
Canadian.
Finally Wynn inclined his head. The man's story
seemed very convincing. If it was the truth, Tom
was sure to win the case.
“You are speaking the truth, Lamoureux ?” he
asked, glaring at the other with his piercing blue eyes.
"Yes, yes, M'sieu! I swear it by the dear Virgin !"
"All right. Wait.”
Came a frantic telephone call to Martin Wedekind,
whom he had left only an hour earlier.


148
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Martin has gone out of town,” Mrs. Wedekind said
across the wires.
“Where to? I must communicate with him!"
"I am sorry. He has taken the motor and his fish-
ing-tackle and you know he keeps his trout streams
ing-tacksecreto
reaching hin. Wedekindóraves, who
“That's so. No reaching him, I reckon. All right.
Thank you just the same, Mrs. Wedekind.”
And then the second cable to Tom Graves, who
acknowledged it, before the evening was out, by tele-
graphing five thousand dollars through the American
Express Company in Berlin to the lawyer's account
with the Merchants' and Traders' Bank.
“Quick work!” said Wynn, cashed the money,
rushed to the Spokane & Northern Railroad Depot and
took the next train for Nelson, B. C., accompanied by
Lamock in Berlin, res of his newrill stuff qu
Back in Berlin, Tom was very busy considering the
duties and pleasures of his new situation in life.
"You'll catch up to all that drill stuff quick enough,"
Baron von Götz-Wrede told him. “Saber and lance
you'll learn in no time ..."
"Shooting and riding I know. I'm a pippin at it if
I say it myself.”
"Rather. And as to the rest, you'll learn the ropes
very quickly. You'll make a first-rate cavalryman."
He slapped Tom on the shoulder.
"Tickled to death you think so."
"I know it. Of course," the German continued,
lighting a cigar, “there's the social life to be consid-
ered. You know the military keeps itself aloof from
the civilians. We have our own clique, our own in-
terests, our own etiquette, our own catchwords even.”
"Sure. I know."
"But perhaps you don't know that there is a great


TRUEX
149
deal of difference between the Guard regiments and
those of the Line. Our regiment belongs to the
Guard.”
Well?" in a Line regimes have all sort duties.
“An office Guard cannot obligations, unul have to keelt
"An officer in a Line regiment can live on his pay.
We of the Guard cannot. We have all sorts of un-
written laws, unwritten obligations, unwritten duties.
We pay for the regimental band. We all have to keep
a string of horses. We entertain a frightful lot. All
very expensive, very expensive. In fact-at all events
in the Uhlans-a chap must have at the very least sixty
thousand marks a year private income—that's fifteen
thousand dollars in your money, Graves."
“That's all right, sonny,” said Tom.
The German looked up, studying the other's open,
boyish features intently.
All morning he had spent at a certain office in the
Tauentzien Strasse near Jensen's department store,
which was labeled innocuously "Imperial German
Ethnological Survey Bureau," where large steel filing
cabinets were locked nightly behind double steel doors,
and where men seldom spoke above a whisper.
There he had studied certain reports, two of which
had come by cable from America, the third by tele-
graph from England, and all in' cipher code.
The first cable was signed by Ethnological Survey
Operator Lawrence Walsh, alias Grant Stickley, alias
Jacques Mersereau, drawing his pay as simply Number
789, a former resident of Berlin, Ontario, and at pres-
ent stationed at Fernie, B. C. According to him the
case of Eberhardt Lehneke versus Tom Graves, while
not yet completely settled, was nearly certain to be
decided in the former's favor. He added that Mr.
Alec Wynn, counsel for the defense, seemed to con-
sider the case hopeless since he had left town, accom-


150
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
panied by a French-Canadian Indian guide by the
name of Baptiste Lamoureux, to hunt mountain sheep
in the vicinity of Nelson, B. C.
The second cable, by the same Lawrence Walsh, had
arrived that morning and was a trifle less enthusiastic.
It said that Mr. Alec Wynn had suddenly returned
from British Columbia and, immediately upon his re-
turn, had had a long conversation with Mr. Jonathan
Small, Prosecuting Attorney of Spokane County.
Mr. Wynn had seemed to be in very good humor after
he had left the Prosecuting Attorney's office, but al-
though he, Walsh, Number 789, had gone through the
lawyer's files, correspondence, desk, trunks, and clothes
with minutest care, he had not been able to find out
anything whatsoever. Nor had Mr. Wynn made any
attempt to lift the injunction on Mr. Graves prop-
erty. It was the respectful opinion of Number 789
that Mr. Wynn was practicing that great American
game called Bluff.
The third message, the telegram from London, had
been sent by a certain Kurt Blumenthal, son of Israel
Blumenthal, the great Hamburg banker, and clerk,
thanks to the influence of his father, in the London
office of the British Linen Bank. Modestly calling
himself Number 554, he reported that the check for
five thousand guineas drawn by Lord Vyvyan in favor
of Mr. Tom Graves, about which he had been re-
quested to give information, had not been cashed or
presented for payment. Neither in the London office
of the bank nor in any of the provincial branches.
Here, then, was the situation, and it was a little
puzzling:
Mr. Wynn, in Spokane, seemed of cheerful mien,
but had brought no action to annul the injunction.
Tom was evidently not hard up in spite of the fact that
of the band of payment.lation, had no he had been
y of theher in the been caseen te


TRUEX
151
he had not yet cashed Lord Vyvyan's check, for Baron
von Götz-Wrede did not know that the check, cashed
in the Berlin office of the American Express Company,
had passed through intricate and peculiar channels.
A fair-haired, innocent-looking Englishman had erased
its entry in the ledger of the Express Company, had
forwarded it to another fair-haired, innocent-looking
Englishman in the London British Linen Bank who,
seeing a minute B. E. D. written in the upper left hand
corner, had taken it direct to a house in Whitehall
Street. There a patriarchal, white-haired, blue-eyed
gentleman had paid it in crinkling Bank of England
notes and had torn it into shreds, afterwards carefully
burning them to flaky ashes.
Yes. The thing puzzled the Baron. On the one
hand there was the report of Number 789, on the
other that of Number 554.
Thirdly, there was Tom's cheerful smile, his cheer-
ful admission, when told that he had to have a large
private income, that he knew it.
Thus the Baron decided to make assurance doubly
sure. It might mean money thrown out of the win-
dow. But the “Imperial German Ethnological Survey
Bureau” resembled the office in Whitehall Street in so
far that it kept no record of monies received or spent.
“Tom,” he said, “are you sure you're all right? I
mean—about that private income?”
"Don't you bother,” laughed the Westerner, who
had complete confidence in Alec Wynn and who knew
that the latter would not have asked him to cable the
money unless he had a first-rate chance of winning
the litigation. "I'm as right as rain.”
“You are-positive?".
“Yep.”
"But—" the German was momentarily nonplussed.


152
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
He wondered if the “deliciously simple” American
was less innocent than he seemed. He decided to put
one of his cards on the table, face up. “I say," he
went on, “I read something in the papers about a liti-
gation against the Yankee Doodle Glory ..."
"Sure. That's right. But I guess I'll win it with
flying colors."
"I hope you will. In the meantime ... well ...
I am still willing to buy the mine."
"Not on your life,” replied the horse wrangler.
"If my title to the Yankee Doodle is punk and I lose
the case, I'd hate like the devil to see you stuck. And
if my title's all right I don't want to sell. That's
pretty darned square logic, isn't it?”
And the Baron had to admit that it was.


CHAPTER XXIV
ALL DRESSED UP
To his new rankaron, and histance to secretoffman
the Colone.. of Bertha's aftly after ten, ered his unifo
Tom GRAVES wanted to surprise Bertha Wedekind
with his new rank and station, and so he had sworn
the Colonel, the Baron, and his other friends amongst
the officers of Bertha's acquaintance to secrecy.
Monday morning, shortly after ten, Paul Hoffmann
& Cie, Militäreffektenlieferanten, delivered his uniform
and full accouterments, and an hour later he was on
the street in all his pristine, blue-and-crimson glory
and, if the truth be told, feeling not the slightest bit
self-conscious. He had been excused from active duty
for the rest of the week and was entirely his own
master.
In front of the house he met Kurt Meissner, the
irascible banker who had the apartment below. The
man stared, open-eyed, open-mouthed. Tom grinned,
saluted, and went on his way.
He was in splendid humor. The tip of his sword
scabbard bumped behind him on the granite pavement.
He liked the sound of it. He felt like on that morn-
ing before he had won the broncho busting medal at
the Pendleton roundup: quite sure of himself, but
without the least conceit.
He turned down the Kurfürstendamm, and his first
stop was at the “Gross Berlin American Bar."
Even at that early hour the place was fairly well
153


154
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
rainer German Porstmar, a coal bat Tom
filled. There were a few sporting German men-about-
town talking to each other in English, very proud of
their London cut tweeds, and trying not to make wry
faces as the American cocktails trickled down their
beer-trained throats. There was furthermore a sprin-
kling of Americans and Englishmen; most of them
boxing and roller skates instructors, and jockeys and
trainers attached to the great racing establishments of
such German plutocrats as Baron von Oppenheim,
Prince Salm-Horstmar, and Freiherr von Matuschka-
Greiffenklau, the Silesian “coal baron.”
All the habitués of the bar knew Tom Graves. He
had bought them many a drink since he had come to
Berlin, had helped out more than one of the Anglo-
American contingent with loans of money. But at
first none there recognized him.
Finally it dawned upon Pat McCaffrey that the
dapper young Uhlan of the Guard was his country-
man from the Far West.
He leaned across the polished bar, breaking a couple
of whiskey glasses in his excitement.
"For the love o' Moses, King o' the Jews !” he cried.
“Go on home, Tom, an' take 'em off!"
“Take what off?”
“Them duds, man! That there uniform o'yourn!"
"I can't," answered Tom, a twinkle in his eyes.
"It's against the military regulations to wear civilian
dress without special permit."
“Tom! Tom, me boy!" implored the barkeeper,
while the Americans and Englishmen crowded round,
laughing, joking, and while the Germans, catching
on to what was the matter, made audible remarks
about “verfluchte Yankee Frechheit-cursed Yankee
insolence."


156 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
giving the clerk's ear a final, twisting pinch, and the
other complied and slunk out of the room.
By this time McCaffrey was arranging bottles and
glasses on the bar.
"This one's on the house,” he cried. “What's your
tipple, Tom, me boy ?”
But Tom shook his head.
“Got to keep as sober as a judge this morning, Mac!
Thanks just the same !"
“What's the matter? Callin' on yer best girl?”
“You said it!" came Tom's reply, and he walked
out to the street.
He hailed a taxicab, drove up to Colonel Wede-
kind's apartment, and gave his card to the Pomeranian
Bursche.
"Ach du lieber Herr Jesus!” was all that honest
peasant could utter, but the sight of the respected uni-
form galvanized him into action and he took Tom's
card.
A moment later, he bowed over the hand of Bertha.
She, too, was speechless.
But Tom had learned his experience in the “Gross
Berlin American Bar.” Instead of speaking he put
his army commission on the table and asked the young
girl to read.
She read, and looked up.
“Why, Tom dear!"
The latter grinned.
“See?” he said, triumphantly, "I got me my little
monkey-jacket. And here's my roasting spit !" draw-
ing his saber and making passes at an imaginary
enemy.
The girl laughed delightedly.
"Tom! Tom!” she cried. “I am so proud of you.


ALL DRESSED UP
157
an
en
And I'm proud of Germany for having chosen
you ..."
"Bully! Thanks for the compliments. Sounds
like the chairman of the Democratic Party introducing
me to a gathering of hicks. And now, just to finish
up in style, aren't you proud of Spokane, of America,
for having given birth to as dashing a warrior as me?
Say!” he went on, very seriously, “aren't you proud
of America—just the least little bit ?”
"No. You're a German now, too, Tom. As I
am!"
“Get off, kid! You're not German, and neither am
I! Not on your life! We're both Americans !
Three cheers!” he shouted, "three cheers for the
American Eagle! May he scream for all time to
come ..."
“Don't let the Eagle scream so loud,” came a voice
from the door.
The Colonel's mother had come into the room. She
studied Tom with her snapping old eyes, and her voice
was threaded with delicate malice.
“So you did not take my advice?”
“What advice?" asked Bertha.
“Nothing for frivolous young ears,” replied her
grandmother, and then to Tom, in an undertone:
“Well, since you refused to leave Germany when I
told you, since you insisted on staying here, you did
the right thing. It is better to hunt with the hounds
than to run with the hares.”
“What—what d'you mean?” stammered Tom.
“That!” replied Mrs. Wedekind, touching his epau-
lettes, “and that !” pointing at his sword. “In Ger-
many you must be a soldier-you must belong to the
ruling caste—the hounds who hunt! Only-don't


158
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
forget that the American Eagle is no more in your
life. From now on it is the German Eagle, young
man! You are a German!" .
"I am not !” stoutly declared Tom, but he discovered
before the month was out that Mrs. Wedekind had
spoken the truth.


CHAPTER XXV
DER DEUTSCHE
TOWARDS the end of the week Lord Vyvyan re-
turned to Berlin and called on Tom. He was not a
bit surprised to see the latter in a German uniform
which rather disappointed the horse wrangler.
"Papers spoke of it,” the Englishman said casually,
dropping into a chair. "The Daily Mirror brought
your picture, flanked by that of the latest Pimlico wife
beater and the most recent Celtic poet. Must have
snapped you when you weren't looking—and labeled
you: ‘Only American cowboy who goes to sleep to
the lullaby of Hoch der Kaiser!'"
"I don't," laughed Tom.
"Don't you?" Vyvyan drawled the words. He was
a little stiff, a little reserved, in spite of his jocularity,
and Tom was conscious of a disagreeable feeling that
was almost sharp mental pain. Too, there was a cer-
tain mockery in the way in which the Englishman
studied his uniform through the concave lense of his
monocle.
"Well, there you are, old cock. All in purple and
fine linen like a regular bally hero," went on Vyvyan
as stiffly as before. “How's your litigation coming
on?”
Tom welcomed the turn in the conversation. So
he explained what had happened, how he had used
five thousand dollars to comply with Alec Wynn's
159


160
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
cabled demand, and drew the remaining sum from his
pocketbook.
Vyvyan waved the money aside.
"You'll need all the dough you can lay your hands
on," he said. “Life in the Uhlans will cost you a
pretty bloomin' penny.”
“Yes. That's what Baron von Götz-Wrede says."
“Well, keep the money. I don't need it."
Tom looked up. Less and less he liked the tone
and manner of the Englishman, but he said to him-
self that he must be mistaken. There was no reason
in the world why his friend should bear him any ill
will.
So he replied very heartily:
“Thanks. I'd be very glad to keep the money for
a short time. It'll help me a whole lot."
"Keep it just as long as you care to.”
The Englishman rose.
"Wait a moment,” said the Westerner; "there's just
one little condition.”
"Oh?" came the Britannic exclamation.
“ 'Oh,' is correct! I expect to win that suit, and
if I do I am going to give you a block of stock in the
mine.”
“Heavens, no!"
"It's only fair, Vyvyan.”
No, no, no! I have very special reasons why I
do not want an interest in the Yankee Doodle." He
looked at Tom. Quite suddenly his reserve melted.
He smiled; and, under his breath, he added: “No!
It wouldn't be playin' the game."
"I won't take no for an answer," said Tom, and
he was so stubbornly insistent that finally Vyvyan,
though still protesting, signified his acceptance.
They dined together at the “Auster-Meyer” restau-


DER DEUTSCHE
161
at he had I saved comand, Grand
rant and it was over coffee and Grand Marnier that
the Englishman thawed completely and, with British
outspokenness, gave his friend his reasons why at
first he had been so stiff and reserved.
"It's that uniform of yours," he said. "I don't
like it on an American."
“Shucks! It's only a lark !"
"A lark? Nothing is a lark in Germany. Every-
thing here is done for a reason, a cause, an ulterior,
well-thought-out end!” Vyvyan was very serious.
“Remember, Tom, a few weeks ago when I said I
wanted to take you into my confidence?”
"Yes. Sure I remember.” Impulsively he took the
other's hand. “Say, old man, if I can help you ...
Any time ..."
Vyvyan was silent. It was evident that he was
going through a mental struggle. Finally he shook
his head, and, as in Tom's apartment, he said half to
himself: "No! It wouldn't be playin' the game.
It's what a German would do. I can't. I fancy I'm
a fool.”
"Don't be so mysterious," said Tom.
The Englishman refilled his liqueur glass.
"Tom,” he went on musingly, “that time, a few
weeks ago, when I wanted to take you into my con-
fidence there was that old barrier-built by King
George and his silly ass ministry over a hundred years
ago, during the American Revolution. Now there's
another barrier between you and me.”
“What?” Tom was utterly surprised.
“Yes. Another barrier. The uniform you are
wearing.”
"That bit of blue-and-red cloth won't make any
difference to you and me. How the devil can it?”
Vyvyan smiled.


102
162
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
waiter, phe Winters the rhyings
“We'll see. But-will you promise me one thing,
Tom?"
“You bet—if it helps you!”
"It's just this. Don't ever sell the Yankee Doodle
Glory to a German!"
"Well—I haven't won my case yet.”
“But—s'pose you do?”
"All right, Vyvyan. I promise.” He leaned across
the table. “Say—it's you who sent me that anony-
mous telephone message the night of my arrival in
Berlin, eh?”
“Maybe.”
Vyvyan called the waiter, paid, and he and Tom
took a taxicab and drove to the Wintergarten to see
the Guerrero bend her graceful body to the rhythm
of Spanish music, to hear Max Bender sing slangy
Berlin obscenities that sent the audience into roars of
laughter, and to applaud the antics of Buck Melrose,
the eccentric American tumbler.
The performance over, they decided to have a night-
cap at the Tauben Strasse Casino, but on the street
they came face to face with Colonel Heinrich Wede-
kind.
Very stiffly he returned the Westerner's salute, but
when the latter was about to walk on by the side of
his friend, he stopped him.
“Lieutenant Graves !"
Tom turned, surprised.
“Yes, Colonel?”
"A few words with you, Lieutenant !"
There was not a trace of the usual suavity and
friendliness in the Colonel's voice. The words popped
out, clipped, short, metallic, snarling, arrogant.
“But, say—Colonel!” stammered Tom.
"Was fällt Ihnen denn ein?” came the sharp reply.


164
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
was inclined to ascribe the whole scene to a drop too
much to drink when the German suddenly said:
"Lieutenant Graves. Let's get to business. I
look with great disfavor on your friendship with Lord
Vyvyan. That is why I ordered you to your quar-
ters. In the future you will cease associating with
the Englishman.”
Tom shook his head.
“Nothing doing,” he replied. “Vyvyan is my pal.”
Again the Colonel flared up.
“What's the matter with you?" he rasped out.
"What do you mean by addressing me in that man-
ner?” .
“What manner?”
“That American slang of yours. Speak German to
me, understand ?”
“Say,” drawled Tom, “what's wrong with Ameri-
can slang? Isn't it good enough for you?”.
"Do not argue, sir, do not argue! How dare you
contradict me? Well-you must give up Lord
Vyvyan.” He rose and buckled on his sword.
Never before, since he had grown up, had Tom
Graves come face to face, as it were, with the word
Must. It was not contained in the dictionary of his
life. He was willing to be proved wrong, to be shown,
to be persuaded, to do the right thing as quickly as
he saw that it was right.
But ... “Musť?
He said so.
"Don't you give me any of that Must dope," he
said. “There's no Must in my makeup. Might as
well talk Siwash to me!"
Colonel Wedekind had turned purple with rage.
His eyes blazed, his mustache bristled like that of an
can slariot argue, Well-you- ed on his swot had Tom


166
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Poole," he said, "you old Oregonian web-foot, I
am in a hell of a mess and I got to have help.”
Help to Poole meant money, and he was careful by
nature.
"I am sorry, Tom,” he said, a little less cordially,
“I'm bust myself.”
"I'm not asking you for money. I want protec-
tion.”
"Protection—you? And from whom?"
"I got into a row with my Colonel. Krauss, that's
my valet, says I'm going to be court-martialed sure
pop. So here I am. This is the American consulate.
Go ahead and do what the tax-payers back home chip
in their little jitneys for."
Poole cleared his throat.
“Tom," he said, "the American Consulate cannot
protect you."
"Eh? queried Tom incredulously, "what're you giv-
ing us? Didn't you hear me say that I am in a pickle
up to my fetlocks?”
“Yes. I heard you all right. But-Tom-you are
not an American."
“What?"
“You are a German! Ein Deutscher!”
“Get off your perch! I didn't take out any citizen-
ship papers."
"You didn't have to. You got your commission in
the army. Swore fealty to the Emperor, didn't you?”
"Sure. Well?"
“That little ceremony changed you automatically
into a German subject. Tom,” he added, “I am
sorry.”
“So am I, Poole. Damned sorry, to put it mildly!"
And he left the Consulate a sadder and wiser man.


CHAPTER XXVI
THE ARMY
Velocked at ealed -with-martial.certainty go
The days passed, rounding into the swing of the
week. But no spurred, booted, helmeted orderly
knocked at Tom's door to hand him the dread blue
envelope, sealed with red, of the summons to
Militärgericht, to court-martial.
The waiting, the period of uncertainty got on Tom's
nerves, and he turned to Krauss for an explanation.
"I have served my three years in the army, sir,"
replied the valet, "and I found it to be a velvet hand
in an iron glove. You never know what to expect
-velvet or iron.”
"Well, I know what I'm going to give them if they
drive me too far. Neither velvet nor iron. Just a
good, plain, old-fashioned mule kick!" .
But he felt less brave than his words. It was not
that he was afraid. Not for himself, that is, for he
did not understand that complicated emotion called
Fear. He was thinking of Bertha. He had donned
the blue and crimson of the Uhlans really more for
her sake than for any other reason.
And to lose it now! To be court-martialed, perhaps
disgraced ?
Why, Bertha was a proud girl, quick, high spirited.
She would look upon him with contempt. It would
be the end of his love dream—the end of everything
worth while in his life, he added bitterly.
167


168
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
And so he was greatly relieved when on a Tuesday,
quite early in the morning, Baron von Götz-Wrede
called on him and told him that cavalry riding school
drill was on.
“You're detailed to it, Graves," he said.
"Me? Gosh. There's nothing they can teach me
about a pony."
"I know," smiled the other. “Nor are you going to
be taught. You are going to teach us, the other
chaps."
“Bully," cried Tom, and he accompanied the Baron.
The riding school of the Uhlans of the Guard was
a great, square, frowning brick barrack in the North-
ern part of the town, the ancient part of Berlin, way
beyond the Janowitzer Bridge, which, many genera-
tions ago, at the time of Frederick the Great, had been
the center of Prussian fashion.
To-day it is gray and hopeless and sad. Mile
upon mile of jerry-built houses, covered on the out-
side with stucco, that panacea against all the social
and hygienic evils of Berlin, but inside the inside
which the foreign tourist never sees—hotbeds of dirt
and vice and degeneracy. Poor students live side by
side with laborers, with the countless "police licensed"
prostitutes of the capital, with underpaid, underfed
clerks. A police station, presided over by a red-faced,
bullying, saber rattling sergeant is every five blocks,
and on every corner there is a Destille or Stehbierhalle
-a low drinking den. It was in similar surroundings
that the Parisian conceived the germs for the great
French Revolution that, over night, swept away the
cobwebs of Crown and Bourbonism with the clouting,
unwashed, impatient fist of Democracy. Not so in
the stuccoed slums of Berlin.
Not the slums of liberty gloriously, terribly in tray-


THE ARMY
169
ail. Only the slums of hopeless misery, choking in
their own stench and despair.
Liberty, Democracy, healthy Revolution, can only
come to Germany from the outside!
It was in that quarter that the Uhlans had built
their new riding school, their new, immense stables
that were far better than the tenements surrounding
them.
Inside, the first man whom Tom Graves saw was
Colonel Heinrich Wedekind.
Tom saluted. The Colonel returned the greeting,
then talked to the Westerner in an easy, friendly man-
ner as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened,
and the Baron, seeing both Tom's belief and astonish-
ment, whispered to him not to mind "Old Ironside”
(that was Wedekind's nickname), as he was liable to
have martinet fits at times, and there was never any
harm done.
Tom was shown through the stables, and the warm
reek, the neighing, stamping horses made him forget
his uniform. He was himself again, the horse wran-
gler, the rider, the free man of the plains born and
bred to the game of hoof and saddle and quirt.
With zest he entered upon his new duties. Too,
with absolute mastery. There was nothing about a
horse that he did not know. He did not belong to
the older generation of Westerners who broke a horse
and, incidentally, its spirit. Tom trained them, with
gentle voice, with infinite patience, with knowing hand
and a certain sense of humor that seemed to estaba
lish a link between man and animal.
And thus he taught the others.
“Back up there !” he yelled to a fussy old major
who was pressing his fat knees into a bay mare's


170
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
withers. “This isn't a contest of strength between
you and the horse! No, no! This isn't the way to
make a horse go! Let your legs swing loose. What?
Never rode on a long stirrup? Well, here's where you
are going to start !”.
And, waving aside the stable sergeant who came
running up, he himself lengthened the stirrup leathers
and adjusted the saddle girth.
He clacked his tongue.
“Get up, major! There-down on your seat ...
Down, I say! Don't hold on to the reins like that!
My God, why do you have to have martingales in this
benighted country?”.
Again, to a young lieutenant:
“Don't lose your nerve, sonny. I'll show you.
Got such a thing as a straight bit? No? All right!”
He turned to a farrier sergeant.
"Here. Take this and flatten it out. This way—
hammer down the corners. Make it an inch shorter.
And look out for the leather slips !"
Thus all morning, and that night, at mess, a con-
sensus of opinion amongst the younger officers would
have established the fact that Tom Graves, ex-horse
wrangler, was the most popular man in the Uhlans
of the Guard.


CHAPTER XXVII
THE STATEMENT
THE STATEMENT
TOM GRAVES discovered that Baron von Götz-
Wrede had not been guilty of exaggeration when he
had said that an officer in the Guards must have
a private income of at least fifty thousand marks a
year.
The demands upon his pocketbook were heavy and
incessant.
His uniforms alone, and there were over a dozen
of them, from simple fatigue and stable uniform to a
gorgeous affair used for parade drill, cost more than
Tom back home would have spent for clothes in a life-
time. His full dress sword was a hammered, chiseled,
engraved work of art worth its weight in silver.
Then there were the horses, those for himself as
well as for his Bursche and his stable boy, the latter
two new acquisitions. And the horses were not the
shaggy, round-eyed range ponies one can pick up at
a bargain in the West after roundup. These animals
were thoroughbreds, English, Arab, Kentucky, and
Hungarian, and they cost a thoroughbred price.
He had to subscribe to the band fund, the regi-
mental charity fund, the mess fund, the Liebesmahl
fund, and half-a-dozen others. He had to entertain
lavishly. Thus the sum which Vyvyan had advanced
him melted like snow in a Northwestern chinook wind,
and it was not many weeks before he saw the tail end
of his roll.
The Baron must have guessed something of the sort.
171


172
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"I'll buy that mine of yours," he said time after
time, with wearying Teutonic persistency, thinking
that repetition was synonymous with argument;
chiefly one day, late in November when Tom had
been initiated into the delights of baccara at a pri-
vate Club for Guard officers and high Prussian offi-
cials called sardonically: “Verein der Harmlosen-
Association of the Innocent," where, finding out that
all his poker training did not help him a whit in a
pure game of chance, he had dropped over eight thou-
sand marks to the little Hussar, Graf von Bissingen-
Trotzow.
So it was with an ear-shattering whoop of relief
that early one morning he opened and read a long
cablegram, signed Alec Wynn, which brought the
startling news that Truex was not dead, that the liti-
gation against the Yankee Doodle Glory had been dis-
missed, that Lehneke was in jail, and that once more
Tom was on the high crest of prosperity.
“Wedekind and I are celebrating to-night!" wound
up the lawyer's message. “I'll add the cost of it to
my fee.”
"Go to it!" Tom cabled back. "I shall do some lit-
tle celebrating myself at this end!”
He did.
First he telephoned to Vyvyan, who congratulated
him, but was unable to attend the festivities. Then
he gathered about him a baker's dozen of chosen
spirits of his regiment.
The celebration began with a dinner at Dressel's,
progressed through the half-dozen layers of the Berlin
night-life-layer-cake, from a look-in at the latest
Metropol Theater Review where, typical of the Ger-
man capital, the American actress, Madge Lessing,
was the female lead, and Giampietro, an Austrian ex-


THE STATEMENT
173
tweente serenades thack blood; to press, at Bissiwest-
ch into cividance at one ials, on their
cavalry officer, the male lead, to the newest Cabaret
where the long-haired artist at the piano, a cross be-
tween Paul Verlaine and Ernest Dowson, trilled pas-
sionate serenades that would have curdled both County
Council and Comstock blood; to wind up in a rapid,
impromptu switch into civilian dress, at Bissingen-
Trotzow's apartment, and a dance at one of the West-
end all-night places where stout provincials, on their
annual spree, were opening wine, where cocottes from
all the world had their nightly rendezvous, and where
a Bavarian orchestra was trying hard to bring Teu-
tonic order and efficiency into the disorderly, synco-
pated swing and rhythm of the latest American rag-
time tune.
Results: a headache and a brown taste, and a none
too pleasant word when early the next morning (Tom
thanked his stars that it was a free day, without stable
or drill duties) Krauss announced Baron von Götz-
Wrede.
“For the love o' Mike, Baron," Tom said weakly,
holding his tousled red head, "don't speak to me!
Have a heart. I have a feeling like ..."
"I know. Wait. I'll mix you something that will
touch the right spot,” laughed the other. He went to
the kitchen door and spoke a few words to the valet
who, a few minutes later, brought in a steaming cup
of coffee cut with kirsch.
"Swallow that !” commanded the Baron.
“You're the doctor!" Tom drank the steaming,
aromatic mixture, blinked his eyes, smiled, and sat up.
"Say,” he continued, “and you're a great little doctor.
I'll call you in again. Thanks for coming.”
“I had to come. Matter of duty. You see, I am
the adjutant of the regiment ..
"Sure. Say—is old Wedekind kicking up again?


THE STATEMENT
175
“Sign here," said the Baron, after Tom had filled
out the rubrics under his supervision. “That's right!"
He turned the paper:
“And now sign here, Tom."
Again Tom signed his name.
“Thanks," said the Baron, “that's finished. Sorry
to have bothered you.” He returned the document to
his case. “Go back to sleep, old man. Au revoir !"
and he left.
All the rest of that week Tom Graves had not a
single moment in which to see any of his friends, not
even Lord Vyvyan or Bertha Wedekind. He was on
duty mornings and afternoons, and had furthermore
been detailed to special lectures every evening, includ-
ing Sundays, at the Kriegsschule—the War School-
in the Dorotheen Strasse.
It was a typically German experience through which
he was passing.
Whatever Baron von Götz-Wrede's ulterior reasons
for suggesting an army career to the Westerner, what-
ever the ulterior reasons of Colonel Wedekind, of
Prince Ludwig Karl, of the Emperor himself for con-
firming the Baron's choice and granting the gazetting,
now that Tom actually was in the army, the army pro-
ceeded—tried to proceed-to Prussianize him, his
speech as well as his limbs, his thoughts as well as his
unborn thought-germs, his very imagination, his very
morality, his very prejudices. He had entered the
crunching maw of the great machine—the greatest,
for sheer, cold-blooded, soulless efficiency, the world
has yet seen—and it was up to the machine, to the
trained engineers who directed its destinies, to turn
Tom into the finished product, the stiff, rectangular,
disciplined Prussian pattern.
The machine, the engineers, began by calmly assum-


THE STATEMENT
177
“The cavalry are the eyes of the army," said the
Major sententiously. “But what earthly good are eyes
without nerves to register what they see, brain cells
to store the knowledge away, without hands and arms
and legs and feet to obey the nervous reaction of the
brain cells? Furthermore,” he went on, “what chance
has the bare hand against the hand armed with
machinery?”
“Sure,” admitted Tom. “But, Gee! I am a cavalry-
man. No getting away from that. Let somebody
else act the part of the hand, the machine.”
“No. In modern warfare nobody knows what
might happen."
"Go on! Who's talking of war?"
"I am!” the Major replied succinctly. “That's what
we are here for, Lieutenant Graves. The army isn't
all cakes and ale and glittering uniforms and parade
reviews in front of visiting royalty. War may
come ..."
“Not if I can help it!"
“You won't be consulted. And if war comes, no-
body, I repeat, knows what might happen. Just
suppose your squadron is rushed in suddenly, on
foot ...
"Not on foot ?" groaned the Westerner.
“Yes. On foot. Suppose you are rushed in to
support a brigade of infantry. Suppose the day is
critical. Suppose the battle, the whole campaign, the
very fate of the Empire, depends on the defense of a
certain bridge head. For hours it has been shelled.
Nearly destroyed. Nearly taken. The sappers and
miners have been decimated. The infantry barely
holding its own. The reserve is cut off by a vicious
barrage fire. But your squadron has been scouting,
is there, in direct communication, direct support.


178
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Then it would be up to you, Lieutenant Graves, to do
the sappers' work. Up to you and your squadron.
That's why you must familiarize yourself with ma-
chinery.”
He pointed to the blue print on the table.
"Now—as to this lifting-jack," he recommenced his
lecture in dry, academic accents, and Tom bent his red
head and listened.
But it was of no use. He could not understand, try
as he might. His was not the mind to grasp and
retain mechanical and scientific details. In every
other respect he was a good officer. He knew horses,
of course, and had mastered quickly and thoroughly
the art of saber and lance. Too, he was an excellent
squadron leader, for he had the natural knack of the
free Westerner, the “good mixer,” to make people
obey him without bullying them, and he got on splen-
didly with the privates and the non-coms. It was the
same with his brother officers. Of natural dignity,
not to forget natural humor, clean and straight and
square, he was socially easy and sympathetic.
But machinery? The machinery of modern war-
fare?
"Auf Ehrenwort, Herr Kamerad!" snarled little,
rosy-cheeked Ensign Baron von Königsmark, recently
graduated from the Lichterfelder cadets school and
gazetted to the Uhlans of the Guard, "if ever you
should have special reasons for quitting the army in a
hurry and there was a ninety horse-power Rolls-Royce
at your door, all gassed up and ready to leap, you
wouldn't know which button to push.”
"Right, young fellow,” grinned Tom. "I'd rather
have one horse-power, as long as it's a horse of flesh
and blood and bone, than ninety horse-power of steel
hav Right, you which bude up and


THE STATEMENT
179
and spark plugs. I'm the original little man on horse-
back!”
The result was that finally, at least in that one par-
ticular, the Prussian war machine gave in. Tom was
released from special lectures, and was detailed alto-
gether to stable duties, where he made supremely good.
Thus his evenings were his own, and he spent more
than half of them with Bertha.
Regularly he proposed to her. Regularly she re-
fused him. And the next day he would come right
back to the attack with a certain affectionate defiance.
"All your fault, Bertha,” he said, when she ob-
jected laughingly; "you want to turn me into a Dutch-
man, and I have learned the first trick of their game.
I've become pig-headed, see? Therefore—will you
marry me, Bertha ? I'm just plumb crazy about you!"


CHAPTER XXVIII
HAMBURG-TACOMA
A Few days later Tom received a letter from Alec
Wynn in detailed explanation of the cable that the suit
against his ownership of the Yankee Doodle Glory had
been thrown out of court.
First the lawyer described the visit of Baptiste
Lamoureux, the French-Canadian half-breed, to his
office. Together, as soon as Tom had wired the five
thousand dollars, they had taken the train to Nelson,
B. C., where they had met a friend of Baptiste, an-
other half-breed by the name of Jean Marie Trudeau,
a trapper, who had returned a few days earlier from
a look at his traps in the Elk River country, where
Truex had prospected and where he had supposedly
found his death. The three of them had left Nelson
on horseback, and had struck across the hills. With
the utmost silence and caution, the trapper guiding,
they had dropped into a cup-like valley where they
had come face to face with ....
“With Truex," the letter went on, “alive, tied,
gagged, and as mad as a hornet—and watched by a
two-gun ruffian. But we had the drop on him, re-
leased 'Old Man' Truex, who at this writing is still
swearing terrible cuss words, and turned Mister Ruf-
fian over to the sheriff at Nelson. The trapper, who
had come across the thing by accident, received two
leased
o terrible queriff at N
180


HAMBURG-TACOMA
181
and a half thousand dollars, so did Baptiste, and on
last accounts they are both still painting Nelson, B. C.,
a rich crimson. I returned straight to Spokane, and
had a talk with the Prosecuting Attorney. Of course
the case was clear. Truex had been kidnapped, and
the coroner as well as the three witnesses had been
bribed and had perjured themselves. But at first we.
kept quiet. We did not say a word to Herr Eberhardt
Lehneke or his side-kicks. You see, we wanted to
catch him good and for keeps. In certain respects, we
succeeded. In another, we failed.
“As to the latter, while we got the coroner and the
three witnesses by their short hair, we found it impos-
sible to establish legal connection between them—the
kidnapping, the fake burial, the perjured statement-
and Lehneke. Those fellows must have been paid
darned well, for they absolutely refused to implicate
their principal. Too, his papers seemed all right. We
had to accept them as such, since there were the
several sworn statements of the German Consul-
General in New York who, thanks to his office, is
above suspicion.
"On the other hand, Herr Lehneke made one little
mistake. He was too all-fired impatient. You see,
the mine had been turned over to a receiver, Seafield
Granahan, until the case was completely settled. There
was an injunction against your working it. But, as
long as the litigation was not finished one way or the
other, the same injunction applied to Lehneke. He
had no right to work the mine.
“But he did, with the connivance of Granahan, the
receiver, who also must have been thumpingly well
bribed.
"Lehneke mined some of the ore, treated, and
shipped it. We jugged both him and Granahan and


HAMBURG-TACOMA
183
“Say," he gave judgment, "these Dutchmen aren't
half as smart as they imagine.”
“Aren't they?” drawled the Englishman.
"Exactly! Greedy pigs, that's what they are.
Forever trying to cop all the world's trade by fair
means or foul. But once in a while their greed sort
of absquatulates with their gray matter."
“Ah-dry up!” Tom gurgled into his glass. “We
know you're in the Consular line of easy job and got
to look after the dollar-squeezing end of the diplomatic
game. But what do we care?”
"Well,” replied Poole, "you and I are both from the
Wild and Woolly. And this ... Well, I don't want
to bore you , ." He folded the paper and put it in
his pocket.
“What is it?" asked the Englishman.
Poole laughed.
“Just what I told you. Once in a while the Ger-
mans overshoot their mark. You see, the paper says
that the German Government has decided to subsidize
a line of steamships, fast steel freighters, half-a-dozen
of 'em owned by the H. A., to run between Hamburg
and Tacoma, through the Suez Canal, stopping at
Singapore and Hongkong for coal.”
"Well?" asked Tom.
"Heavens, man!” went on the Vice-Consul, “there
isn't enough direct business between Hamburg and
Tacoma to subsidize a measly tramp boat. Govern-
ments only pay subsidy to compete with foreign ships.
ind what great foreign line goes direct from Europe
to the Northwestern ports? Why, it's ridiculous. It's
a great, big, reeking, nickel-plated commercial bull!
Yes-these Butchmen sure overreach themselves once
in a while. Hullo?” to Vyvyan, who had risen and
had taken his coat and hat, "leaving us?"


CHAPTER XXIX
PERSONA NON GRATA
The telephone bell cut through Tom's revery with
a jarring, acrid twang.
Lazily, half reluctantly, he turned from the open
window where he had been sitting, since his return
from the “Gross Berlin American Bar," pleasantly
shivering in the sudden chill of autumn leaping into
winter. It was such a long, still night. Few people
roamed the streets of the Westend. A glittering veil
of stars was flung across the crest of the night, and a
sweet smell was in the air, a mixture of far-off snow
and decaying leaves.
Tom had filled his lungs with it. It had made him
think of home, his own country, the Northwest.
Dr-rr-rrr came the telephone bell again, with an im-
patient, accusing note. Tom left the window. He
took down the receiver. Next door, in the valet's
room, Krauss, too, was gluing his ear to the hard
rubber tube.
“Hello."
"Hello, hello," came the voice from the other end of
the line. “Is that you, Tom?”.
“Yes. Who's that?”
“Vyvyan. Got to see you at once.”
“Why—I thought you told me you had important
business ..."
"Exactly! That's why I got to see you. And I
don't want that nosy servant of yours to hang 'round
and listen.”
“Ah-keep your shirt on. Krauss is in his little
185


186 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
chaste dada, dreaming of blond beer, a blond breakfast
roll, and a blond hausfrau.”
“All right. Be straight over.”
Fifteen minutes later a motor-car purred to a stop
in front of the apartment house. There was a ring-
ing of bells, angry, impatient voices, a drawing of
bolts and slamming of heavy doors, and Vyvyan came
into the flat.
"Sure Krauss is asleep?"
"You bet. Convince yourself if you do not be-
lieve me.”
“That's just what I'll do. Where is his room?"
“There—to the left," said Tom, pointing; and the
Englishman walked over on tiptoe, pressed his ear
against the door, and listened.
There wasn't a sound.
Very cautiously he opened the door. The electric
light from the hall danced into the room, sharply out-
lining the valet's face. The man was sleeping the
sleep of the just, breathing rhythmically and peace-
fully. Only, as soon as the Englishman had closed
the door again, the sleeping man groped underneath his
pillow, drew out a long, silk-covered rubber tube that
disappeared in the direction of the wall, and inserted
the narrow orifice in his right ear.
"Well, what's biting you?” Tom asked his friend,
back in the other room.
Vyvyan looked the Westerner up and down, with
cutting, sneering contempt.
"I tell you what's biting me,” he replied, his voice
at first low, then leaping up extraordinarily strong, all
his habitual British phlegm suddenly dancing away in
a whirlwind of temper. “You are a damned, double
crossing, traitorous ..."
"Hold on! Back up your horse!" Tom's words


PERSONA NON GRATA
187
came in a deep, soft, feline purr. “Don't you say
things for which you might be sorry afterwards !"
"I? Sorry? My God, I'm only sorry for you, you
damned ..."
“Vyvyan,” cut in the Westerner in that same soft
purr, “I gave you warning!"
“Warning of what?”
“That I am going to lose my temper in exactly three
seconds—unless you behave and tell me straight what
is the matter!”
The Englishman.looked at him in silence for a min-
ute. His Adam's apple worked up and down like a
ball in a fountain. He seemed to swallow his rage as
if it were some nauseating drug, choking him.
Then he spoke. And his voice was quite cold, quite
Passion he spokeauseat
“All right. I know that Germany is a swine of a
land. I know that the rulers of Germany hold the
charming belief that the rest of the world is a dirty,
decadent shrub that must be mulched with caked blood
—and that the German sword will supply that same
blood. I know that Germany intends to ...".
“For the love o' Mike, what are you driveling
about?”
"Wait. You asked me to explain. And I am doing
it. I know that Germany is an ugly beast ready to
jump at the throat of civilization the moment the word
is said, the moment the leash is slipped. I know how
they are working here, for that one end, blood and
conquest and booty, with all their might, their energy,
their strength. I know Germans. They believe.
They obey. They think that whatever is told them
by their master is the truth. But you, man ..."
“What have I got to do with it?".
"You're an American, an Anglo-Saxon, a free man,


PERSONA NON GRATA
191
“Going away for long?"
“Right-oh! Don't s'pose I'll ever come back again
to Berlin.”
"What?" Tom was astonished. “You mean—you
are leaving for good?"
"Exactly. The Ambassador – 'Old Titmouse'
chevied me. Just as I got chevied from Washington.
For frightful incompetence. Oh, well ... I fancy
my brother, the Duke, will have to pull a few more
wires."
He finished packing, and shook hands with Tom.
"Sorry," he said. "I like you. Well-good-by."
Then, suddenly lowering his voice: "And-don't for-
get-if ever you are in trouble, if ever your own peo-
ple at the American Embassy should refuse to help
you ..."
"Yes, yes," replied Tom. "I remember. I have to
find the guy with the ring. All right.”
He drove to the station with his friend, and thence
to the regimental barracks.
"Looking blue," was Baron von Götz-Wrede's greet-
ing. "Anything wrong?”.
"Yes. My friend Vyvyan has left Berlin. The
Ambassador chucked him.”
"Oh, no, he didn't!" laughed the Baron. “The
German Government demanded His Lordship’s imme-
diate recall. His Lordship is persona non grata with
His All-Gracious Majesty the Kaiser.” He put his
hand on the Westerner's shoulder. “You see,” he
went on, “I know. That's why I warned you against
Vyvyan. Awfully good for you that he has been sent
away.”
"I'm not sure of that,” mumbled Tom under his
breath.


CHAPTER XXX
STORM CLOUDS
THE year drew to its close. Christmas came with
snow thudding softly, with jingling sleigh bells, with
motley gifts packing the shop windows, with glittering
trees.
Came the New Year-Nineteen Hundred and Four,
teen—and the Uhlans of the Guard celebrated it with
a Liebesmahl, worthy of Lucullus, to which not only
the officers of the other crack cavalry regiment came,
but even the Emperor himself, Prince Ludwig Karl,
and the Crown Prince.
The long table at the Hotel Adlon, where the feast
was being given, was a mass of crystal and silver,
broken here and there by banks of fern and violets,
and by tall gold holders with miniature pennants-
souvenir regimental pennants, each inscribed in gold
letters with the name and date of some historic vic-
tory: “Rossbach,” “Lützen,” “Belle Alliance," "Metz,”
"Königsgrätz,” "Sedan,” “Gravelotte," "Leipzig” ...
The list seemed endless.
Tom was at the far end of the table, with the
younger officers, but he had sharp eyes and could see
the length of the room. He studied the Emperor's
face. Again, as at that other time when he had seen
him, the man reminded him of an old, weary blood-
hound.
Tom shivered a little. He was not an imaginative
192


STORM CLOUDS
193
facing citemenetren of
man, but something unpleasant had touched his soul.
He raised his glass of sparkling Moselle and drained it.
The next moment his neighbor, the little, rosy-
cheeked Ensign Baron von Königsmark, nudged him
in the ribs.
“Graves! Graves!” he whispered.
Tom looked up from the depths of his wine glass.
All had risen to their feet. They stood at attention,
facing the Emperor who, his face flushed with wine
and excitement, had got up in his turn.
"Meine Herren Offiziere !" the Emperor boomed.
Then hushed, tense, dramatic silence through which
the Emperor's words rattled and cracked and thudded
like machine-gun bullets.
Tom had steadily improved his knowledge of the
German language. But he could not understand every-
thing the War Lord was saying.
Yet here and there a word, a whole sentence, stood
out. And he understood—the words at least.
As always, when the Emperor had been drinking,
the mysticism, the religious half-madness in his soul,
rose to the surface. It blended with his soldier's soul
and peaked to a very terrible, a very sinister apex:
"The world—the world outside of Germany—is
Babylon !" cried Wilhelm. “Remember the words in
the Bible—Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city!
And again Babylon shall fall ... To the touch of
the German sword ...”
Then, later on:
"I see the angels of the Euphrates let loose! An-
gels with breaths of flame, with eyes of flame, with
hearts and souls and hands of flame! I see them,
with their flaming swords of vengeance, rushing upon
the weak, decadent, Western world ... The world
that preaches the ungodly, accursed sermon of free-


194
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
dom for the people and by the people! The angels-
the angels of vengeance-the German angels—descend
and smite Europe and drown a third part of all her
people in blood! They stifle and trample and kill with
glowing feet the enemies of Him, our God, our old
German God, which is, and which was, and which is
to come! The sun is overcast with sable blackness!
The stars fall from the firmament upon the earth!
Upon the earth blazing in a most frightful conflagra-
tion! The sea is blood! The fish and all the crea-
tures of the oceans choke with blood! The world, for
its own salvation, must be absterged by a lotion of
blood—and it is our duty, our shining privilege, our
German privilege to obey the voice of our God, the
German God! It is our right to smite the ivory
towers of Babylon, to ..."
“What the devil is he talking about?" Tom asked
in an undertone.
"War! War!" The little Ensign's voice was
hoarse with a great, unnatural emotion. His china-
blue eyes blazed. His small, white hands opened and
shut spasmodically.
“Stewed !” was Tom's silent comment. “Stewed to
the gills, the whole darned lot of them, including the
Emperor," and he succeeded in taking French leave
and returned to his apartment.
There was no more Liebesmahle, no more jolly mess
gatherings, as the new year swung into line. The
army, from Count Moltke down to the last recruit,
passed into a stage of feverish work, and Tom was
kept busy, often late into the night, judging the cav-
alry mounts that came in endless streams from Silesia,
the Rhine Province, and East Prussia.
More horses came. Some from Russia, little shaggy
brutes that reminded Tom of the Western cayuses;
kept busy;ts that camend East Prus Russia, litt


STORM CLOUDS
195
sleek-coated, unbroken ruffians from the South Amer-
ican plains; English thoroughbreds and handsome,
long-tailed stallions from Turkish studs; squat, bow-
legged Mongolian ponies; heavy-boned Belgian and
French mares. All the world sent horses, and Tom
was in his element. He had been made chief remount
officer for the military district of Berlin, and he did
not mind the extra work. He enjoyed it rather. It
was his old job of the Killicott, magnified a thousand
times.
“You see,” he said to Bertha one of the rare eve-
nings when he was off duty, “it gives me an additional
reason, this work, for sticking to Germany and the
army.”,
"What's the other reason?” asked the girl.
“You. I won't go home without you."
“Why not?” she asked mischievously, well knowing
what the answer would be.
And it came.
“Because life away from you isn't worth the living!
Why, girl, I know you don't care for me ..."
“But I do, Tom. I love you like a ..."
“Stop it!” cried Tom. "Here's that brother again.
Cut it out. It makes me mad clear through. I want
you to love me like I love you, the right way, the good
way, the regular flesh-and-blood way. I don't give a
rap for that brother and sister stuff. I want love!
The sort that kisses and likes it, by Gosh!”
She laughed.
"I have always thought you were a dear, Tom, and
you are. I almost wish I could kiss you."
"Right here's where your wish is going to be grati-
fied,” came his quick reply, and he took her in his
arms and kissed her full on the mouth.
“Tom, Tom! You mustn't ..." She tore her-


STORM CLOUDS
197
Another change came into the wording of the res-
taurant menus. French was barred from them, by
unofficial, but forceful, imperial edict, and this edict,
ridiculous, petty, was obeyed by the people with abso-
lute, granite, Teutonic seriousness.
Tom laughed.
“Say,” he confided to Bertha, “I've always been as
fond of spaghetti as a Wop. But when it comes to
calling them Hohlmehlnudeln, I pass. I wonder if
they are going to Prussianize the word 'steak.'”
But it was not only in mean, small details that
Berlin was changing. Almost it seemed as if beneath
the clean pavement of the streets a gigantic, barbaric
soul was beating against the fetters of the West, of
civilization, of humanity, as if this soul was about to
break the fetters, to push outwards into the world with
a crackle of forged steel, to flash its sinister message
to the far lands.
Strength! Efficiency! The Iron Fist!
These were the shibboleths of the hour; and ever,
more and more, their passion, their challenge, their
brutal, satanic leer, grew and bloated.
Months later, when the armed citizenry of France
and Britain were battling heroically against the in-
vader, certain of the scenes which at the time he had
not understood, came back to Tom, like fragments of
evil dream that trouble the sun peace of waking day.
He remembered, for instance, one definite picture.
A crisp winter day; the wind rustling the bare trees
of Unter Den Linden; a crowd of students leaving the
Pschorr Bräu Restaurant for the University; brokers
hurrying on their way to 'Change; a file of Grenadiers
of the Guard goosestepping down the street to relieve
the watch on the Pariser Platz; a few late tourists
looking into the shop windows or issuing from the
re, their band bloat citizenry.


198
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
swinging portals of Hamburg-America or North
German Lloyd; a chilly, orange sun flaming poignantly.
Tom recalled it all vividly. Also the man he saw
swinging around the corner of the Wilhelm Strasse:
A certain Mr. Trumbull, an American newspaper cor-
respondent, who had a rare knack for foreign political
intrigues and who would have made supremely good
but for a thirst that never left him.
Tom had met him several months earlier, before he
had joined the army.
"Hullo, Trumbull!” he greeted him, hand out-
stretched.
Trumbull was the worse for drink, but he steadied
himself.
“Tom,” he said, picking his words with alcoholic
precision, “I'd rather be damned than shake hands with
you.”
"Why?” laughed Tom. “What's the matter? Isn't
my hand clean enough for you?”
"It is not!” hiccoughed the other. "It is spotted
with blood. I know-even if those silly fools of dip-
lomats are as blind as new-born puppies;" and he stag-
gered down the street while the Westerner looked after
him, shaking his head, and muttering something
about D. T.'s.
Then there was another memory. A Sunday din-
ner at the house of the little professor with the tiny
red ears whom he had met at the Colonel's and whose
name was Kuno Sachs.
Dinner was over. Tom had been talking to Bertha.
She had excused herself to say a few words to her
hostess. Tom saw a group of the younger officers
gathered about the professor in the latter's smoking-
room.
Sachs was holding forth, in a high, shrill voice, his


CHAPTER XXXI
THE INSULT
In the morning the new battle standard of the
Uhlans had been solemnly presented by the Emperor,
accepted in the name of the regiment by the assem-
bled officers in parade uniforms, after which special
service, Doctor Emanuel Dryander in the pulpit, had
been held at the Cathedral, across from the Schloss.
In the evening Prince Ludwig Karl, the honorary
Chief of the regiment, was giving a supper to finish
the celebration in his palace near Potsdam that over-
looked the placid surface of the Havel Lake.
Tom had been officer of the day at stables and so
it was late, nearly eleven o'clock, when he arrived.
He walked briskly from the railway station to the
palace that towered to the night sky in a baroque,
hectic mass of Prussian Eighteenth Century rococo
with here and there a reminder of the grim old me-
diæval stronghold from which it had emerged, which
it had superseded—some huge, barred windows, look-
ing incongruously frowning; an immense arch gaping
across the blotched shadows of the inner courtyard;
a mean, starved chapel, elbowing a great marble stable,
and giving the impression of a huddled beggar; and,
of course, the little black and white striped wooden
houses of the sentinels.
Tom surrendered helmet and overcoat and entered
the great ballroom, where the celebration was being
held.
202


THE INSULT
203
4.
The room, its walls covered with paintings stolen
by the Prince's father from French châteaux in the
war of Eighteen Hundred and Seventy, its ceiling
painted by Tiepolo, stolen during the same war and
transported bodily, was immense; but not only the
officers of the Uhlans, but also those of the other
crack regiments stationed in Berlin, Potsdam, Span-
dau, and Köpenick, besides a great many high Govern-
ment officials, had been invited, and so the room was
well filled.
Supper was over but for an immense buffet run-
ning the length of one wall, where liveried servants
ladled out the famous moselle and brandy punch of
the Uhlans. The guests had split into numerous lit-
tle groups, and Tom, with a smile and a nod here and
there to friends and acquaintances, joined a knot of
officers that had gathered around Colonel Heinrich
Wedekind.
They had all been drinking heavily and they greeted
Tom boisterously.
The Westerner shook hands and was about to raise
the goblet of punch that little Ensign von Königs-
mark had brought him when a hand snatched the
glass away and sent it crashing on the marble mosaic
foor.
“You can't drink with us!” said a raucous voice.
Tom turned.
“What the devil ... ?”
He looked. The man who had snatched the glass
away, who had spoken the words, was Baron Horst
von Götz-Wrede.
Tom was slow at taking offense. His first thought
was that the man must have been drinking. Then he
reconsidered.
For the Baron was perfectly sober. In fact, had


204
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
only just come in. The uhlanka was still on his head,
the silver gray cape, lined with crimson, across his
shoulders. The insult had been deliberate—and for
a cause.
The little Ensign had turned very pale. He liked
the American.
"Baron” he stammered in his high, childish voice,
"Baron von Götz-Wrede ..."
Then the Colonel interfered:
“Gentlemen! I beg of you! Please—no private
quarrel here, in the Prince's palace ..."
Already some of the other groups had heard and
seen. They rushed over to find out what had hap-
pened. Excited voices asked questions, to be an-
swered by other questions.
“What's the matter?”
“Was ist denn los?"
"Aber, meine Herren,” from a white mustached old
Colonel, "was fällt Ihnen denn ein?”
Tom was the quietest of them all. He smiled at
the little Ensign.
“Thanks, young fellow," he whispered. “You
aren't such a bad little chap.” Then, to the Baron,
in an even voice: “Go ahead and explain—if you
can !”
There was hushed silence, the tense silence of ex-
pectancy, of waiting for something.
Then the Baron's words, harsh, sibilant, snarling :
"Herr Leutnant Graves! You will remember that
some time ago the German Government subsidized a
line of fast steamships to run direct from Hamburg
to Tacoma, coaling at Singapore and Hongkong."
"Sure," replied Tom, puzzled. “What's that to me
-or to you?”


THE INSULT
205
"The very first ship of this line, on its return trip
to Hamburg, put into Hongkong to coal.”
“Well?”
“The British authorities there, through some legal
chicanery, have held up the ship. They refuse to give
clearance papers. And—bei Gott!—it's the work of
your English friend, Lord Vyvyan, and your own
work, you damned Yankee traitor!"
There was another silence. The little Ensign
clutched Tom's arm convulsively, but the latter shook
him off. He stepped straight up to the Baron.
"Herr Hauptmann!” he drawled, icily, “I don't
know what the devil you're talking about. I have
nothing to do with your subsidized steamships nor
with the harbor authorities of Hongkong. Also I
don't give a damn about your calling me a Yankee.
But I object to being called a traitor, see?”.
And his fist suddenly clenched and crashed straight
between the Baron's eyes, sending him reeling to the
floor.
The next moment pandemonium broke loose.
Voices. Questions. Exclamations. Hands gestic-
ulating. More officers running up and closing in.
More questions. The Prince himself asking excitedly
More que happened. Ensign kept
Only the little Ensign kept his equanimity. He
took the Westerner by the arm and rushed him to
the door.
“Go to your quarters, Graves,” he said.
"What for? I won't run away. If he wants some-
thing from me ...'
“Yes, yes. That's just it! You struck him! You
gave him a deadly insult! You must go to your quar-
ters at once! You must wait for his seconds !"


206
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Oh?” smiled Tom. “A duel, is it?"
“Natürlich!”
By this time they had reached the street.
“I say, Graves,” stammered von Königsmark.
“You know, I like you”-he blushed like a girl-
"may I be your ..
"My second? You bet your life, kid !"
And he shook the young ensign's hand.


CHAPTER XXXII
THE DUEL
THE little Ensign, Baron von Königsmark, though
he had only been gazetted a few months earlier, proved
to Tom as the Stadtbahnzug, the suburban train, rat-
tled through the night towards the Friedrichstrasse
depot, that he was very familiar with duels and their
etiquette.
"Yes," he replied to the Westerner's amused ques-
tions, “at the Cadets School I was principal and sec-
ond at several affairs of honor .
“My sainted grandmother!” cried Tom. “You
don't mean to say that you little snut-nosed brats at
school ..."
“We already wore the King's Coat!" the Ensign
cut in a little stiffly, while Tom murmured weakly:
“Holy Mackerel !"
"We must have another second," continued von
Königsmark gravely, after the other's mirth had
subsided. “Some friend of yours, a countryman by
preference. Whom would you suggest, sir?”
"Well. Let's see."
Tom scratched his head. Quite suddenly his lack of
real friends, now that Vyvyan was gone, struck him
very forcibly. McCaffrey? Impossible. And so
were the American and English jockeys who fore-
gathered at the “Gross Berlin American Bar.”
A German, then! But—who? He shook his head.
207


208 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Gosh! he said to himself, he had no friend amongst
the Germans, not a single one with the possible ex-
ception of the little Ensign, now it had come to a
show-down.
By this time the train had pulled into the station,
and Tom had an idea.
"I'll get Poole,” he said, “our web-foot Oregonian
Vice-Consul. Won't he be surprised? Oh, boy!”
and he went to the station telephone booth and
startled his countryman from sleep.
But it appeared that the latter was not only sur-
prised, but also indignant.
"What?" came his voice across the wire after Tom
had explained what he wanted of him. “I—to be
your second ? Preposterous! Absolutely preposter-
ous! Remember that I am in the service of the
American Government! Why, man, the Big Boss
back in Washington would have my scalp!"
Poole rang off while Tom returned to the waiting-
room.
"What luck?” queried the Ensign.
“Nothing doing."
Tom felt dejected and just a little homesick. He
turned to go when, coming from the station res-
taurant, he saw Trumbull, the American newspaper
correspondent who, recently, had refused to shake
hands with him.
The man was for passing by without a word, but
Tom stopped him, explained his predicament in a few
words, and Trumbull broke into laughter.
"Sure," he said, “I am your man. I'll be there with
bells. What's the next thing on the bill o' fare?” he
asked the Ensign.
The latter explained that he would telephone out
to the Prince's palace, see if the Baron was still there,


210 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But" Lan politichoused niton too, Theyli't
only helping you because you were an American-
once ..."
“I am still!” cried Tom heatedly.
Trumbull waived the point.
“Never mind. I just ask you to take my tip, that's
all."
“But why? For God's sake, why?”
Trumbull gave a cracked laugh.
"Never mind,” he said. “I'm only a hopeless
drunkard with a fixed idea. They'll tell you so in
Park Row-in Washington too, for that matter. I'm
just plain bughoused when it comes to Germany and
German politics. Don't you believe a word I say.
But”-he gripped Tom's shoulder-"shoot straight!"
A moment later the Ensign came out of the tele-
phone booth and reported with a great deal of busi-
ness-like precision and, too, a certain well-pleased sat-
isfaction that he had arranged the meeting with the
Baron's seconds and that they must hurry.
"See you as soon as we get through,” he said to
Tom. “I suppose it will be pistols. So you had bet-
ter eat a good breakfast and top it off with a tumbler
of brandy neat. Beer, preferably English stout, is
all right for sabers, but when it comes to the little old
pop guns brandy is the ticket, Herr Kamerad.”
He saluted and was off, together with Trumbull,
while the Westerner drove home through the waking
streets of Berlin.
Krauss met him at the door.
One look at him convinced Tom that, somehow, the
man knew what had happened perhaps, he thought
a moment later, what was going to happen. For the
valet's face was gray, haggard, deeply lined. His
eyes stared anxiously, as at some terrible specter of
night, and Tom smiled rather bitterly.
man knew what what was going to deeply lined. Hun


THE DUEL
211
Everything suddenly seemed very clear—and he had
been all sorts of a cursed fool.
Warning? Why, he had been warned right and
left, but he had not even taken the trouble to look
more closely, to understand.
The Web!
Who was it had spoken about the Web?
Oh, yes! Lord Vyvyan—to be sure!
And other people, too. Martin Wedekind. And
old Mrs. Wedekind, Martin's mother. And Trumbull
-and ...
"Well, Krauss,” he asked finally, “what's wrong?"
Krauss stared at him. He tried to speak. Could
'not. Rather, dared not.
He was a tool, a tiny wheel in the great, cold-
blooded, crunching machinery of the German Secret
Service. They had clouted and stamped him into a
number, a drab, gray, monotonous pattern, cuttingly
efficient, soulless, hard.
But ...
Suddenly he spoke, very rapidly, as if afraid
that thought, deliberation, might stop his flow of
words; and he blushed very much as the Ensign had
blushed.
“Leave Germany, Lieutenant,” he cried. “I shall
help you. Please leave ...
Tom shook his head. He put his hand on the ser-
vant's shoulder.
“Krauss," he said, in a low, tense voice, “I thank
you. You aren't so bad. But—you cannot serve two
masters. And your master is ...”
“You !"
"Not a bit of it! Your master is Germany. I know
-now. It took me a long time to see. I guess I
am very much of a damned fool. But I know now.


212
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Just you brew me a cup of coffee and,” he remem-
bered the Ensign's advice, “bring the brandy bottle.”
At seven o'clock his seconds returned, looking very
grave.
“Stiff conditions," said Trumbull.
“Of course!” Von Königsmark inclined his head.
“It was a deadly insult, you know.”
"Well,” said Tom, "don't scare me to death. What
is it? Bricks at a hundred yards?”.
"Six shooters at twenty paces,” rejoined Trumbull,
"continuous fire after the umpire has counted Three
until one of you two is dead or completely disabled.
Simultaneous firing. I insisted on that. They were
going to give their man first shot-said he was the
insulted party. But I held out.”
Tom smiled.
"Thanks,” he replied. “I guess I'll wing me my
little bird. It's a cinch.”
Trumbull was excited. “Don't you be so all-fired
sure. Remember what I told you ...” But he did
not say any more, for Tom, with a warning cough,
had indicated the Ensign, who had stepped to the
window.
The latter was very nervous. Every few seconds
he looked at his watch.
“We meet at nine o'clock in a little clearing in the
Grünewald just the other side of St. Hubertus," he
said. “We'll have to leave here soon. If there are
any letters you want to write ..."
"No, no, not to a soul,” replied Tom. Then he
reconsidered.
He did not believe in heroics. Nor in sugary senti-
mentalities. On the other hand, he was too natural,
too simple a man to be afraid of his emotions. He
loved Bertha. There was the one great, all-important


214
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
into the snow-clad solitudes of the Grünewald. The
woods were silent and crisp, sweet with running shad-
ows and the slanting beams of the chilly winter sun.
Far on the edge of the horizon a flush of gold and
amethyst was fading into pale blue.
They stopped at St. Hubertus. The old-fashioned
road-house was still asleep, with here and there, on
the upper floor, a yellow light flickering and leering
behind silken window blinds. A circular driveway
led up to the massive, cast-iron gates of the little pine
park which surrounded the house. Beyond it was the
garage.
“Wait for us,” said the Ensign to the driver.
“We'll be back after a while."
He walked ahead, the other two following, Trum-
bull talking in an undertone to his countryman.
The Westerner did not reply. He hardly listened.
His thoughts were of home. Back there, twenty miles
the other side of the Killicott, was just such a pine
forest as this one, with just the same cool peace and
quiet. He remembered a day, two years ago, when
he had ridden through it by the side of Bertha. He
remembered how still it had been—he could have heard
the breathing of a bird, the dropping of a loosened
pine needle.
And the same chilly, distant sun in a haze of gold
and silver, and its fitful rays weaving checkered pat-
terns through the lanky trees.
“Here we are, gentlemen,” came the Ensign's voice,
and Tom looked up.
They had arrived at the clearing. At the farther
end was Baron von Götz-Wrede, smiling, debonair,
talking nonchalantly to his seconds—the Hussar, and
another young captain of cavalry whom Tom did not


216 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Foul! Foul!” cried the Hussar, threatening the
Westerner with the Baron's pistol, which he had
picked up.
The young Ensign knocked it aside.
“Your own man shot foul!” he replied feverishly.
“He shot first . .. at the word Two. I saw it.
Didn't he, Major? I appeal to you, Major!”
Trumbull gave a strange, cracked chuckle. “You
just bet he shot foul. There's no discussing that
point-at least”-his voice rose challengingly—“if
these gentlemen speak the truth! If their uniform
allows them to speak the truth!”
"Mein Herr!'' yelled the Hussar.
"Dry up,” replied Trumbull. “You can't threaten
me worth a whoop in hell. I am not afraid of you,
you crimson-coated jackanapes ..."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please !” implored the Um-
pire. “Never mind. Don't you see?” pointing at the
doctor, who was busying himself over the Baron's
prostrate, unconscious form.
The surgeon looked up, with supreme professional
calm.
"He isn't dead,” he said.
Tom had not spoken a word. Now he laughed,
"Didn't think he would be," he rejoined. “I know
I should have killed him, but, somehow, I couldn't
do it. Just a couple of flesh wounds, eh, doctor ?”
“Yes. You got him ..."
“I know," grinned Tom. "I got him through both
wrists. That's what I aimed at. Sure!"
He turned to the Ensign.
'Well,” he went on, “this is my first affair of-
what d'you call it?"
"Honor !”
"Hm!” Tom scratched his head. "Affair of


THE DUEL
217
honor. What the devil would you say was an affair
of dishonor? Never mind. But I don't know the
ropes. Put me wise. What is the next thing to do?”
“Go home. Wait until you hear from the Colonel,”
replied the Ensign.
"All right. Home it is.” He took his seconds'
arms. "Let's get back and have a bite of breakfast.”
11, regi-
that you
ave your
soul. I
lictively,
tricks-
) valu-
has re-
a con-
hind


CHAPTER XXXIII
THE NOOSE IN THE WEB
WHEN, around noon, Krauss announced Colonel
Heinrich Wedekind Tom Graves looked forward to
an acrimonious scene, and was therefore surprised, in
a way relieved, when the officer, who was in full
uniform, the uhlanka on his head, saber trailing, dec-
orations blazing on his breast, the silver sash of for-
mal occasions running from shoulder to waist, saluted
stiffly and showed by his first words that he had no
ter tion of mentioning the ugly words that had been
i
pire.
ned that morning across the telephone.
. bin hier in Sachen der Ehrenangelegenheit
Pron Ihnen und Herr Baron von Götz-Wrede,
The
1utnant-I have called on you in the matter of
calm.
w ir of honor between you and the Baron," was
e ing speech.
prostorninorm, hier inng across my words
Tom, Colonel?”
iniu will consider yourself under arrest for the
Theing. Stubenarrest, we call it in the army.
it is, you will remain in your rooms, under parole,
so you hear from the court-martial.”
- Tom smiled. He was not very much troubled. He
knew that duels amongst officers and students and
generally the gentry were condoned in Prussia, in fact
hushed up, hardly ever mentioned except by the liberal
or radical and, occasionally, the catholic press.
He said something of the sort, laughingly, but the
Colonel remained perfectly serious.
218


THE NOOSE IN THE WEB | 219
"Herr Leutnant,” he replied, "you are righi. We
do not make much fuss over a bloodless duel or one
where a participant has only been wounded.”
“Well?”
"But Germany needs officers. The Emperor has
given strict orders that the death of an officer in a
duel must be thoroughly investigated-sharply pun-
ished.”
Tom was startled.
“Death of an officer? What are you giving me?"
The Colonel rose.
"Herr Leutnant,” he replied, "I regret to inform
you that Baron von Götz-Wrede died from the ef-
fect of his wounds a little over an hour ago and ...
“You're crazy, man,” cried the Westerner. "I only
disabled him. Shot him through both wrists. What
are you trying to do? Scare me? Look here ..."
The Colonel's gloved hand commanded silence. He
rose.
“The Baron died,” he said. "The official, regi-
mental inquest is this afternoon. I repeat that you
are on parole until then. You will not leave your
apartment nor try to communicate with a soul. I
may be allowed to add,” he wound up vindictively,
“that you needn't try any of your American tricks
that you needn't try to telephone to your so valu-
able friends at the British Embassy. Central has re-
ceived instructions to listen in on your telephone con-
versations.” And he left, his saber rattling behind
him, while Tom muttered savagely to himself:
"Sure. I get you all right. I know what that
parole dope amounts to. Parole? Hell! You got
your jackal, Krauss, to watch over me! Trying to
catch me with the goods, eh?”.
He paced up and down.


220
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
His thoughts were in a whirl.
Why? It wasn't credible. It wasn't possible.
He knew a thing or two about flesh wounds. He
had had experiences out West, as a boy, before peace
had come to the range.
And the surgeon had said that the Baron was not
dead, that the wounds were not dangerous.
What was it then?
A-frame up?
No!
He had changed his earlier ideas about Germany
and the Germans. No more he believed in the kindly,
rather stolid folk that heretofore had been the Teu-
tonic prototype in his provincial, American imagina-
tion. He had learned better since then. But he told
himself that even soulless German efficiency would
stop at killing one man, the Baron, so as to get him,
Tom, into the clutches of the law...
Too, why this deliberate intent to get him?
Vyvyan had spoken about the Yankee Doodle
Glory. There was some secret mixed up with that
cursed mine in the Hoodoos. The Hoodoos! Rightly
named!
But—the Germans owned the mine to all intents
and purposes. They had their own engineers, at
work. They controlled the output!
What then had happened?
Perhaps blood poisoning had set in.
No! The Baron was the very picture of health
and strength. Blood poisoning wouldn't kill him in
such a short time.
Perhaps ...
Up and down, up and down, he paced. Only one
thing was clear: Somehow, the Baron had died from
the flesh wounds, which he had inflicted on him; and,


THE NOOSE IN THE WEB
221
with the realization, Tom became conscious of a sharp
regret in the back cells of his brain.
He had not meant to take a life. Of course, the
other had shot foul, had fired at the signal Two, had
tried to murder him. Still, the man was a German,
an officer obeying orders, whose slogan, for right or
wrong, was “Zu Befehl—at your orders !”; and, some-
how, the Westerner found it in his big, generous heart
to forgive.
No, no, before God-he had not meant to take a
human life!
Tom felt utterly alone. In all those teeming Ber-
lin millions there was not one soul he could trust,
not one friendly hand that would stretch out to grasp
his, to pull him from the mire.
Poole? Tom smiled bitterly. Poole was the Vice-
Consul, a good enough fellow to drink and joke with,
but scabbed with official dry rot, scared to death of
losing his pull back home.
Bertha ? Old Mrs. Wedekind?
No. He was not the sort to hide behind a woman's
skirt, and even if he wanted to, there was Krauss on
watch.
Krauss! And how many others? All thin, steely,
inexorable meshes in the Web that was about his feet!
He clenched his fists until the knuckles stretched
white. He saw red.
In that hour a terrible, corroding hatred of Ger-
many, of all that Germany stood for, was born in
Tom Graves' soul.
He stepped to the window and looked out. The
streets were covered with a thin, flaky layer of April
snow, but people were hurrying in all directions, rosy,
plump, well fed. A squadron of Dragoons cantered
to the West, towards Halensee, their triangular pen-


222
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
nants fluttering in the low wind, their lance butts
creaking against the saddle leather, their sabers flicker-
ing like evil cressets. He heard the snarling voice of
the squadron leader :
“Rechts! Rechts! Angaloppirt!”
The army-the army—and again the army! Guns
and sabers and pistols and horses !
And why? What for? What was the idea in back
of it?
Pomp and circumstance?
No! A nation, an efficient, thinking nation like
the German, did not drain its financial blood just for
show and glitter!
He remembered the Emperor's speech at the time of
the flag celebration—the little professor's words,
other things he had heard, from the lips of Colonel
Wedekind, the Baron, even the young Ensign. Empty
boastings, silly vaporings, he had thought them at the
time.
God above! How he hated them! And what a
fool he had been—what a cursed, cursed, purblind
fool!
And Krauss ?
There was another of 'em. He rushed to the cor-
ridor. He'd get his hands round that fellow's throat.
He would squeeze, squeeze. There would be one
of them gone to perdition anyway. Not that the
desire to kill was articulate, deliberate. Rather, an
instinct, an overpowering, unthinking impulse ....
But he stopped on the threshold.
For he saw that the outer door was ajar. He heard
voices soft, yet very tense, very excited.
One was that of Krauss, talking through the crack
in the door:


226. THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But, suddenly, a change seemed to have come over
her. She was ...
Crushed! Yes. That was the word.
He drew in his breath. Again his hatred against
Germany, all things German, surged through his soul
like a crimson, murderous wave.
He controlled himself.
"Tell me what has happened,” he said, his words
coming one by one, staccato, very distinct.
“I will, Tom," and she said that for many weeks
past she had wanted to go home.
"But I don't mean to tease you—but, dear, you
told me that ..."
"I know. I was stubborn and foolish-and-I-
what do the Chinamen call it? Yes. I wanted to
save my face. Before everybody. Before you.
Even before myself. I did not want to own up to
it that my heart was simply crying for home, simply
choking with the desire of it. I guess I must have
been homesick ever since Christmas. Perhaps it was
the Christmas feeling that started it. You know-
back home—at Christmas-mother-father ..."
"Sure, child. I know.”
She dried her eyes.
"I told uncle. "And he said yes. He would get
me my ticket. Any time I wanted."
“Well?”
“I asked him time and again. But always he made
some excuse. He told me the ship was crowded.
Another time that he had forgotten. Again that the
Uhlans were giving a dance and that I was specially
invited. Then I wrote home to father, and asked
him to send me money for the ticket.”
“Why didn't you do that in the first place?”.
“Uncle and aunt asked me not to. They said that


228
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Sure.” He inclined his red head. “Go on, child.
What did grandmother do?"
"I guess she must have cabled at once. For this
morning she received a letter, and in it was one for
me asking me to rely absolutely on you. Father seems
to be afraid for me—of something. He doesn't say
of what. I suppose he thinks I'm just a silly little
goose-and," she sobbed, "he is right. I have been
so foolish, so frightfully, frightfully obstinate! He
writes that I must be very careful, very silent, very
circumspect. He, too, says, just like grandmother,
that I would not understand, because I am an Amer-
ican. And, Tom dear,” she added with a pathetic lit-
tle sigh, “I always imagined that I was so thoroughly
German!”
Tom could not suppress a smile.
“Little error of judgment,” he said. "Happens in
the best regulated families. What else did your Dad
say?"
"He enclosed another letter in grandmother's—for
you. Grandmother believes he must have been afraid
to write to you direct.”
Tom gave a little exclamation of approval.
"Some little gray matter your father's got! All
right. Let's have his letter to me."
Bertha gave it to him, and he read.
“Dear Tom,” wrote Martin Wedekind, "you must
come back to America as soon as possible together
with Bertha. She is safe with you, and with nobody
else. She must not go alone. I would come to Ger-
many myself, but I have every reason to believe that
that would make matters worse. I doubt, in fact,
that the Germans would let me cross the frontier.
Tom, it's up to you. You are in the army, but you


BERTHA SPEAKS
229
Gowways am when : At Once I to buy the y
must get out of it. I rely upon you implicitly. I.
know that you love Bertha, that, somehow, you will
succeed.
“Let me explain to you everything as far as I can.
"Over a year ago, shortly after Newson Garrett
assayed the Yankee Doodle Glory ore and discovered
the unknown ingredient which at the time made such
a stir in the scientific world, I received a letter from
my brother Heinrich. He asked me to remember that
I am a German by birth, that Germany never forgets
her sons, that I owe everything to Germany, my blood,
my training, my education. He wound up by beg-
ging me to assist Baron von Götz-Wrede, who was
coming to the West, if he wished to buy the Yankee
Doodle Glory mine. At once I became suspicious.
I always am when a German, chiefly an officer or a
Government official, asks me to remember that I am
a native of Germany. There is always a reason for
that bit of clanking sentimentality, and that reason
is always fishy. So I decided to be careful, the more
so as Newson Garrett told me that he had sent spec-
imens of the ore to a German chemist in New York
for further examination, as you had received a cable
from Johannes Hirschfeld & Co. in Berlin offering
you a tremendously big price for the mine, and as
Truex, too, had received a similar cable.
“So, instead of helping the Baron, I put obstacles
in his way.
"Then you went to Europe. A day later came the
cable from my brother with the news that my mother
was very sick and wished to see Bertha before she
died. Naturally I let my daughter go. When, later
on, I discovered that my mother was well, that the
cable had been misspelled in transmission, I thought
it strange, but not enough to worry over. Then came


230
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
the Lehneke affair. You joined the army. Shortly
afterwards the affair was settled in your favor. But
I did not feel relieved. I was not a bit surprised
when Gamble got his walking papers and German en-
gineers took charge of the Yankee Doodle Glory out-
put. I know how they do things in Germany and
had no way of warning you.
"I did not know why the Germans wanted the mine.
I do not know now. I only know they do want it,
and they have it.
“So I resigned myself to the fact of it until yes-
terday, the thirtieth of April, Nineteen Hundred and
Fourteen, I received my mother's cable asking me to
see to it that Bertha returned to America at once.
I had not had a line from Bertha for weeks. I can
imagine the reason. I repeat, I know Germany.
"I was for going straight over when, just as I was
about to arrange about tickets, I received a visit from
a German who refused to give his name. But his
words were succinct, to the point.
"He told me that a subsidized German steamship
line was running from Tacoma to Hamburg, via
Hongkong. He told me that the British authorities
at the latter place had refused clearance papers to the
first steamer. Therefore the German Government
wished succeeding steamers to sail under the Amer-
ican flag, since they were sure that the British would
not interfere with the Stars and Stripes. He asked
me to play dummy, and he offered me two hundred
thousand dollars spot cash for the job.
"I refused, flatly. For the man was not a German-
American, a plain business man, but the home-grown,
home-bred product, short spoken, impudent, rasping.
In other words, a German official specially sent for
the purpose of seeing me, of offering me money for
1


BERTHA SPEAKS
231
calmit
nly, their last
something that, at first sight, did not seem to pay-
them, the Germans. And I always mistrust a German
carrying gifts. He is rather like the Greek of history
in that respect. So, I repeat, I refused.
“But my visitor smiled. He told me very calmly
that I would have to come to terms. I asked why,
and he replied, still very calmly, that my daughter
would be held a hostage in Germany until I agreed.
“Yes, Tom! A hostage! In this, the Twentieth,
the civilized Century!
“Even then I refused. You see, Tom, I love my
daughter. But, too, I love America. I owe every-
thing to America. My roots are here, my soul, my
heart, my very secret being—and—I do not trust Ger-
many. I don't know what it is. But I just feel that
I would do wrong in doing what my unknown visitor
asked me to.
"I did not give him all these reasons. I simply
showed him to the door. He bowed in the regular,
stiff Prussian fashion. He said that it would be quite
useless for me to try to go to Germany, to rescue my
daughter-for that is what it amounts to—and I know
that he is speaking the truth. Thus I rely on you,
Tom. It is up to you. You must do it, somehow.
You must, Tom! (The words were heavily under-
lined.)
"I am afraid to address these lines to you. Your
mail will be watched from now on. So I am writing
to my mother and enclosing this letter, as well as one
for Bertha. I don't think Heinrich will interfere with
mother's mail. He is nearly as scared of her as he is
of his superior officers."
Tom looked up.
“How did you manage to get here?” he asked.


232
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
alwayse to commun. I know. form in Berlinas told by
Bertha smiled.
"Oh, it was a regular escapade. You know, here-
tofore I have never been out alone. I was told by
uncle that it was not good form in Berlin. And I
believed him. Now I know. He did not want me to
be able to communicate with anybody, and so I was
always either with him, or with aunt, or with some
of the officers. To-day, after the letter came, my
dressmaker came to the house, and I”-she smiled
through her tears—“I grabbed her coat, rushed out of
the room, locked her in, and was out of the house
down the back stairs before anybody knew what was
happening."
“Bully for you, kid!” applauded Tom. “There's
the right American spirit. And now—watch your
Uncle Dudley. I'll get you out of Germany all right.
Come along. We'll go ...” Suddenly he was silent.
“What is the matter, Tom?"
"I_1_” Tom was making a painful effort to
choke back his words.
But she remembered the valet's words, how he had
told her he could not let her in, that it was against
his orders.
“Tom!” she cried. “Tom! Tell me!"
His hands opened and shut spasmodically. Then
he told her. He had to. There was no way out
of it.
“Bertha,” he said, “I am under arrest. I am going
to be tried by court-martial ..."
"For what?”
“I don't know. Manslaughter, I guess. Perhaps
murder. God knows."
“Murder—you ..."
“Yes. There was a duel. I shot ..."
“Whom? Whom, Tom?"


BERTHA SPEAKS
233
himself hell of a pickie's where, and
"Baron von Götz-Wrede. I killed him. No, no!"
as he saw that she was about to collapse. “Don't give
way, honey! You've been so bully, so brave. Don't
give way now. Everything'll be all right. Come
with me."
He grabbed his uhlanka and his silver gray cape,
and accompanied her out to the corridor. Already his
hand was on the door-knob when he heard Krauss'
voice in back of him.
"Herr Leutnant! I have orders to ..."
"Sure. I know. And this time I guess there's no
persuading you to be influenced by your decent in-
stincts, your kindly impulses?”
The valet blushed.
"I regret, Herr Leutnant. Somebody may come
perhaps the Colonel himself ..."
"And then you'd be in a hell of a pickle. All right.
Here's where I turn Prussian—and here's where you
give in to the unanswerable Prussian argument !" and
he whirled quickly, clenched his fist, and drove it
straight to the other's jaw.
The man fell like a tree cut away from the support-
ing roots.
"Here, Bertha," commanded Tom, "lend a hand.”
Bravely the girl helped, and between her and Tom,
two minutes later Krauss was in his room, on his cot,
securely tied and gagged.
They went down the stairs as if nothing had hap-
pened and hailed a taxicab.
“Where to?" asked the driver.
Tom was going to say the American Consulate.
But he remembered his former experiences. It would
be all right to give the girl to Poole's protection, but
there was Martin Wedekind's injunction that she must
not travel alone, that it was up to Tom to bring her.


234
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
For a moment he was puzzled.
Then, quite suddenly, he thought of Vyvyan, of
Vyvyan's warning, of Vyvyan's ring—the little sim-
ple silver affair with the figure of a grayhound en-
graved on the round shield and above it the letters :
B. E. D.
"To the British Embassy!” he directed the driver.
“Just as quick as you can!”


CHAPTER XXXV.
BACK FIRE
By the time the machine reached the Leipziger
Strasse it was fairly late. The sidewalks were
packed with a homing throng of clerks and girls from
banks and counting-houses and department stores.
Trucks and motor-cars, often driving three abreast,
busses and surface cars, clanked and hooted down the
main roads, splitting here and there to deliver their
freight, human or otherwise, in the Southern and
Western suburbs. The white-gloved policemen had
their hands full, and Tom fretted as his taxicab was
caught in a crush at the corner of the Wilhelm Strasse.
By this time the inquest must be nearly over.
Somebody might call at his house, perhaps try to
reach it by telephone. He was playing the game by
a dangerously narrow margin.
He breathed a sigh of relief when finally the ma-
chine made the corner and purred down the Wilhelm
Strasse, past the stolid, gray bulk of the Agrarian
Bank, past the red sand-stone monstrosity of the Ber-
liner Bank, past the Radziwil Palace and the back
entrance to the Chancellor's park, and he felt very
much like a Moslem pilgrim when he beholds the sa-
cred Kaaba standing out above the yellow Arabian
desert, or a nervous skipper who makes port after a
stormy crossing, when the British Embassy came into
view, a beautiful little marble building, cool and white
235


236
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
and gleaming, pagan in its utter Greek simplicity.
The taxicab stopped.
"Na-hier sind wir ja, Herr Leutnant !" came the
driver's jovial voice, and Tom jumped out, giving
Bertha a helping hand.
It was now very dark. The trailing, swift shadows
of April were dropping like a cloak-grim, portentous
and Tom shivered a little, involuntarily.
“Come on, Bertha. We've no time to waste, and
I've got to find me my unknown friend inside."
Already he had crossed the sidewalk. Already his
foot was on the first step of the short flight of stairs
that led up to the main entrance of the Embassy when,
suddenly, there was a rush that carried him off his
feet, away from the girl.
Tom swore, looked, hit.
Half-a-dozen men had jumped from the shadowy
gateway of the bank building that was next to the
Embassy. They were officers all. Some were of the
Uhlans, men he knew, others were infantrymen whom
he had met casually.
He heard the Colonel's voice:
“Get him. He's dangerous. No, no don't kill
him !" as a saber flashed free, gleaming evilly in the
flickering light.
Somebody had blown a whistle. A platoon of
policemen came panting up at double quick step.
They drew a cordon around the scene, screening it
against the excited, curious crowd that poured up the
street and from neighboring houses.
A window opened in the Embassy.
"What is the matter?” inquired a woman's voice,
anxious, in English.
Nobody answered. There was no time. For Tom
kept his assailants busy. He had left his saber at
Uhlans, me casually: a's voice: No, no.don in the


BACK FIRE
237
home, but his fists flew out, right and left, right and
left, up and down, like flails. One man went down. ,
Another, cursing :
"Der Kerl ist ja verrückt!”
"Das ist ja ganz unerhört ..."
And again Tom's fist descended, taking toll. He
fought silently, shrewdly, with a certain savage, ring-
ing joy in his heart.
He heard Bertha's stifled outcry; and he redoubled
his blows.
"Damn you!”—as a man grabbed him around the
neck, from the back, and his foot kicked sideways and
up-and a howl of pain.
But the odds were against him. The flat of a saber
struck his right elbow, paralyzing it. He fought on
with his left, blindly. That, too, was disarmed.
Somebody hit him in the face. Blood squirted, half
blinding him; and the last thing he saw as he was
being dragged towards the cab that was still at the
curb, was Colonel Wedekind. He was holding Ber-
tha by both arms, pressing the elbows back until they
touched each other. The girl's lips were tightly com-
pressed, but she did not utter a sound. Somebody
had called another taxicab, and a young lieutenant
of infantry was holding the door open.
The Colonel forced the girl inside. He addressed
the lieutenant in a snarling, cutting voice:
"See her home, Baron von Blitzewitz. Let nobody
near her. Watch over her until my return. No ex-
cuse, no loop-hole! She is your prisoner, and you
are responsible. Understand ?”.
“Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!"
Lieutenant von Blitzewitz saluted, clicked his heels
and entered the car, which purred away while the
Colonel turned to the Westerner.


BACK FIRE
239
fense that. No mercy will be shown you. And som
ah-I shall be considerate enough not to press all the
minor charges against you: The breaking of your
parole, resistance to arrest, striking your superior of-
ficer—" he touched rather gingerly his right eye that
was framed in prismatic green and heliotrope where
the horse wrangler's fist had come into contact with
it. “I give you fifteen minutes to pack your trunk.
“Hauptmann von Quitzow! Leutnant von Bayer-
lein!” He turned to the two officers. “You will
watch the prisoner while he packs. Krauss !” to the
valet who had appeared on the threshold, “help Lieu-
tenant Graves. Quick! Fifteen minutes! No more !"
"Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!"
The two officers marched the Westerner into his
bedroom, Krauss following, where Tom rapidly threw
the necessary articles into his trunk.
Krauss helped loyally.
"Sorry, old fellow," whispered Tom as, both bend-
ing over the trunk, his head touched that of the valet.
“Didn't mean to hit you so hard.”
Krauss mattered an indistinct, tearful reply, and
Tom put his hand in his pocket, came out with a hun-
dred mark banknote, and pressed it surreptitiously into
the other's hand.
A minute later he straightened up.
"All ready, gentlemen," he said. "Lead on. By
the way”—to von Quitzow, whom he knew fairly well
from riding drill —"what's going to happen?"
Von Quitzow shook his head sadly. He was a tall,
very fat, red-faced Junker from East Prussia who, a
musician by nature, had only entered the army be-
cause his father had forced him. He was a good
enough officer, who took his duties seriously, but, un-


CHAPTER XXXVI
SPANDAU
THE gray, frowning walls of Spandau fortress
swallowed Tom. Cut off he was from the world out-
side, in a small, neatly furnished room with bathroom
attached, the windows doubly barred with steel, the
doors, too, of steel and patrolled day and night by
armed sentries. The food was good and plentiful,
the treatment courteous but severe. Each day he was
allowed three hours for exercise on the Kasernenhof,
the barrack yard.
“I regret it,” General Unruh, who commanded the
officers' prison wing of the fortress, explained to him.
“As a rule, the officers here are allowed complete lib-
erty. Are put on parole. But I understand that you
broke parole in Berlin. Tut mir leid!”
Tom resigned himself to the inevitable. With his
clear, simple mind he thought the situation over from
the start to the probable finish.
The court-martial would come soon, and he had de-
cided to play there a certain card. He would speak
out, straight out. He would tell everything that had
happened, exactly, without omitting a single detail,
not only as to the duel, but also as to Bertha Wede-
kind and the reason why he had broken parole. For
he had begun to realize that, at the very best, he was
in for a term of years in Festung. Thus he would
be unable to do what Martin Wedekind had asked him
to-to see Bertha home to Spokane personally.
241


242
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
theret session, knew that at might hatraight from 11
He would therefore do the next best thing. He
would raise such a row that the Germans simply would
not dare double cross.
Yes! He would give it to them, straight from the
shoulder, regardless of what might happen to him.
Of course he knew that court-martials were held in
secret session, but something of the evidence given
there was certain to leak out, into the outside world,
the press, the ear of some sharp American newspaper
correspondent, perhaps Trumbull, and the American
Government would automatically be forced to act so as
to protect Bertha.
There was no doubt of it, and so Tom awaited the
summons for court-martial with impatience. He was
anxious about Bertha, terribly anxious. He was al-
lowed neither mail nor newspapers. He had no idea
what was going on in the outside world, and he
fretted.
There were times when he regretted the lost hopes,
the lost promises of his young, vigorous manhood,
when he cursed the mine in the Hoodoos—the Yankee
Doodle Glory which was at the bottom of all his trou-
bles. But he controlled himself with a will. He could
not afford to break down, for there was the girl he
loved, the girl he must get out of the German Eagle's
clutches—and so he waited, waited, for the court-
martial summons.
At times he asked General Unruh, who shrugged his
shoulders.
"Lieutenant Graves," he said, smiling with his lips,
"never in all my long experience as fortress prison
commander have I seen anybody as anxious to stand
trial as you. You must be very certain that you are
going to get off scot-free !"
“Well—but when will they try me?"
y which wne in the Ho vigorous mons


SPANDAU
243
"Can't say, I'm sure. You will have to compose
yourself in patience."
And Tom did.
Very few visitors were allowed near him, and these
only in the presence of the General or some other
high-ranking officer. The little Ensign came. Too,
von Quitzow, and one or two others. They muttered
banalities and went on their way. No—they said, one
and all—they had not seen a sign of Miss Wedekind.
The Ensign understood that she was down with severe
illness; nobody was allowed near her.
And Tom waited, week after week, for the court-
martial summons that did not come. He had an idea
that they were trying to break his nerve, and he gritted
his teeth and forced himself to be quiet.
Outside, late winter changed suddenly into early
spring. Green leaves of crocus and tulip sweeped out
overnight in the cement-framed grass vlot next to
General Unruh's quarters. The song beds returned
from the South. The trees were clad : , the delicate
tracery of the new foliage. Even the drab, square
Julius Tower that was said to house Prussia's mys-
terious golden war chest, was touched and softened by
lacy sprays of color where ivy and vine crept up from
the sandy Brandenburg soil.
Thus May passed with soft winds and the virginal
pink of hawthorn blossoms, and June came, with the
first crass heat of summer, with the sunset sky of sum-
mer that was like a great, tropical moth, crimson and
orange, its wings barred with black when a thunder-
storm boomed overland all the way from the chilly,
foggy Baltic.
And still he waited, with no word from Bertha, no
summons to the court-martial that should decide his
fate and hers.


244
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
front of the pres day he spent adipped into th
Every evening he paced up and down the cement
walk in front of the prison wing, between armed sol-
diers. The rest of the day he spent at his window,
looking out over the fortifications that dipped into the
ground like gopher holes, suddenly, threateningly,
where a sunken gun emplacement frowned its unseen
challenge, farther on, to the east, flattened out into
an immense, gray, dusty drill ground; and as the days
passed into the cycle of weeks, this drill ground was
used more and more. Nervous and swarming it was,
like a beehive.
Not only were the artillery men busy with the lim-
bers and the steel thills of their gray-and-blue field
guns, but also with sappers and cavalry and infantry.
Wherever Tom looked, miniature battles were in
progress.
All one morning a dozen heaped batteries practiced
drum fire with blank shells until Tom thought his ears
would burst under the roar and slam and clank of the
continuous salvos, wailing as the shells left the barrels
and rushed on, madly crashing as they thumped down
to their targets. The same at night, varied by star
shells, flashing and vanishing in an intolerable orange
haze, leaping and flickering up, then down, then along
the ground in a gamut of flame. And again the deaf-
ening sequence of shells, overlapping, stretching into
one unceasing roar, throbbing to the firmament like
a gigantic drum, with triangular sheets of white, bril-
liant light flaring to the zenith, and countless projec-
tiles rushing through the air with a noise as the tear-
ing of silk.
Or a sudden, terrible silence--more terrible than
the inferno of sounds that had preceded it—and a
young officer's voice, high, shrill, foolish, frightfully
inadequate:


SPANDAU
245
“Battery! Over there!"
A non-commissioned officer's echoing voice":
“Zu Befehl, Herr Leutnant!"
And once more the latter's order : "Barrage! Ten
rounds gun fire! Fire-fire!”—and the crash, the
roar, the whining and wailing of tortured steel smit-
ing tortured earth.
The drum fire over, platoons of infantry or dis-
mounted cavalry would be put through their paces.
During his months in the army Tom had taken part
in maneuvers and military reviews and was more or
less familiar with the surface of ordinary tactics. But
the drill which he watched day after day from his win-
dow was new to him.
At times, indeed, the old traditional Prussian for-
mation, the attack by massed phalanx, grenadiers
charging, shoulder to shoulder, relying on brawn and
weight to crush the enemy's opposition regardless of
the cost in blood to their own men, was followed.
But at other times the lines were deployed, in a thin
loop, very much—Tom thought-as Western range
riders, spread, fan-like, when cattle stampede.
Scouts these, the nerves of the army. Then an-
other barrage, plopping and splashing unexpectedly in
a screen of fire that melted from scarlet and gold to
livid purple, and specially picked troops—he heard
General Unruh call them Stosstruppen, shock troops
-were sent forward, without rifle or bayonet, armed
instead with trench knife and hand grenade, fused for
instant action.
Over and over again they would be hurled forth.
Drill was incessant, discipline even more merciless than
usual. Men who fell from exhaustion were kicked
and cuffed and belted by the non-coms while the offi-
cers turned their heads, pretending not to see.
insteare sent forward them Stossked troops


246
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
thoot;, again her the First maikäfer Grerew days.
No newspaper correspondents, no photographers, no
civilians of any sort were allowed near the parade
ground; and the troops that were trained did not re-
main the same. They changed every few days. On
a Monday it would be the Maikäfer Grenadiers, forty-
eight hours later the First Mecklenburg Regiment of
Foot, again East Prussian fusiliers, until it seemed
that the whole North Germany army corps were pass-
ing through the Spandau mill.
Formerly Tom would have smiled. But not now.
Formerly he would have said to himself that the
German army was only the glitter, the vanity, the
imagination of the nation concretely realized in color
and pomp, very much like a cowboy who swaggers
into town, his chaps dyed a violent vermilion. But
now he saw the army as a working body, a pitiless,
never-resting machine, and at times his thoughts
swerved away from the figures, drilling out there in
the heat and dust, and winged to the German homes;
the homes where these men must have been born and
bred. Puppets they were, puppets of an armed, rasp-
ing, insolent, ruling caste. But they had women and
children; mothers and sisters and sweethearts.
And what were these women thinking? What were
they doing? Were they entirely inarticulate, like
Siwash squaws? And what, then, of civilization, and
progress, and culture, and Christianity?
Thus Tom pondered—Tom, who was simple no
more. He asked himself what it was all about, and
he was afraid of finding the answer.
Still the days passed, with no news from Bertha,
no summons to court-martial, until one Saturday
morning the General came to his room and told him
that a visitor was there to see him.


248
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
over Mrs. Wedekind's right hand while she, at the
same fraction of a moment, passed a tiny envelope to
Tom. He slipped it up his sieeve.
Then came a banal conversation, lasting several min-
utes, at the end of which Mrs. Wedekind rose, shook
hands with both men and went to the door.
"Thanks for having come," said Tom. “You don't
know when my court-martial's going to come off, do
you?”
Mrs. Wedekind looked straight at him.
"Lieutenant Graves,” she replied, “I have no idea.
But at times I imagine that the Prussian army just
now is too—ah—busy to waste precious days on such
an altogether charming and altogether worthless young
American like yourself!" And she swept out with an
old-fashioned curtsy, followed by the still blushing
von Quitzow, who had not caught the peculiar inflec-
tion of her parting speech.
Tom had. But he had no time to think about it
right then. For there was the envelope which she had
given him.
He tore it open, took out a slip of paper, read.
There were just a few lines, from Bertha.
“I am waiting, waiting!” she wrote. “Waiting for
you! Come to me, dear. I need you. I want you.
Every night I pray for you. Bertha.”
That was all. But Tom kissed the letter. He felt
a hot tear running down his cheek, and he was not
ashamed of it.
Late that evening, and again the next morning, Mrs.
Wedekind's words came back to him ... “The army
just now is too busy to waste precious days on you!"
Directly bordering on the military prison was the


CHAPTER XXXVII
VIEW-HALLOO
JUNE swung to its end with a great, brassy avalanche
of heat, the sudden heat of North Prussia that, re-
flected by the Brandenburg sand dunes as by a glacier,
dried up the trees and grasses and caused the very birds
to open their beaks and gasp for air.
Cooped up in his room the greater part of the day,
Tom felt the heat badly. All his life he had taken
a great deal of physical exercise, mostly on horseback,
and the confinement, in spite of the daily evening stroll,
began to tell on him. Physically, not mentally, for he
knew that he must bear up.
Impatient he was when, as the days passed, there
was no more news from Bertha except an occasional
word from Ensign von Königsmark that he had seen
her drive down Unter den Linden, in a carriage,
hedged in on either side by her uncle and her aunt.
Nor was he summoned to court-martial. Forgotten
he seemed by the whole world.
Outside, on the dusty Spandau drill ground, the
troops were still at their eternal training, running,
leaping, charging, shooting, sweating, the officers curs-
ing the non-coms, the latter passing on the compliment,
plus kicks, to the privates. The work was feverish,
incessant.
Even Captain von Quitzow, who was now altogether
251


VIEW-HALLOO
253
plane, with every haversack and sabretache! With
every last ounce of strength and discipline and effi-
ciency and patriotism! We will hurl it all, all into
the finishing fight!"
Tom laughed.
"Cut out the Fourth of July dope,” he said, "it's got
whiskers,” but, secretly, his uneasiness increased.
Towards the end of that week, watching from his
window as usual, he was surprised to see a generous
sprinkling of strange uniforms amongst those of the
Germans.
There were some tall, very slight men, with peaked,
coquettish caps, short, tight white tunics braided pro-
fusely with gold, and high lacquered riding-boots.
Others in tailed, bottle-green jackets with leather
shorts and leggings, and bow-legged cavalrymen in
black with bright orange plastrons. Still others were
olive complexioned men, very silent, with beady eyes,
high cheek bones, and a long, swaggering stride. They
were mostly dressed in black. Black, too, was the
frogging and the fur on their tunics, black their tall,
fur caps. Still others were short men, extremely
broad and heavy, gnarled looking like peasants, in light
blue uniforms with a great deal of vermilion and
silver.
“Austrians,” explained von Quitzow when Tom ap-
pealed to him, "also Turks and Bulgarians.”
"Why," smiled the Westerner, "if you're so all-
fired set on fighting all the world, what's the big idea
of putting all these foreign ginks wise to your mili-
tary preparations ?”
The Captain raised a didactic hand.
“They are our friends, our brothers-in-arms. Their
sovereigns are the friends of His All-Gracious Majesty
the Kaiser.”


254
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
“Seems to be hard up for friends," mumbled the
irrepressible Tom.
window horse whichaps it was to make ,
Thus Tom composed his soul in peace, until one day
(and afterwards he could never quite explain why he
did it; perhaps it was a calling, calling back to the
range life, the free life, the zest and sweep and tang
of the open; perhaps it was an overpowering desire
to see Bertha, to speak to her, to make sure that she
was all right; perhaps it was the suggestion of the
saddled horse which had stopped directly beneath his
window)-until one day his patience snapped, sud-
denly, jarringly.
It had been another day of maneuvering, charges
and counter-charges, the phutt-phutt of machine guns,
the deeper notes of great guns and trench mortars
warming up to the task.
A regiment of cavalry had been thrown into the
iron game. They came on, straight, lances at the
carry, thundering across the heat-baked drill ground.
They rode mostly new mounts, not yet broken to the
roll and sob of the guns, and many reared, bucked,
plunged, threw their riders and danced on, fretting,
foaming, mad, in all directions.
There was one horse in particular-a great, black
half-hunter with broad back and streaming tail. A
stout General was riding it, spurring and whipping it
on brutally. Tom was watching from the window of
his room with his keen eyes.
He was anxious—more for the horse, than for the
man. He clenched his fists.
"Stop, you fool!” he said under his breath. “Leave
those spurs be! That isn't the way ...
Then there was a cry, followed by shouts, yells,
hectic words of warning. The half-hunter, maddened
Tunced, threw
all directions. warra great,
A


VIEW-HALLOO
255
Everybophe war game washed out and an the hall
to frenzy, took the bit between its teeth, sailed along
like a ship under canvas, cleared at a magnificent jump
a shiny, blue-gray gun barrel, and threw its rider, head
foremost, amongst the caissons.
More cries. Then a voice:
“Lieber Himmel! Der Prinz!”
And Tom knew. The rider was Prinz Ludwig
Karl of Hohenzollern, cousin to the Emperor, and
he was not surprised at the excitement which fol-
lowed.
A staff officer blew a whistle. A trumpet called.
Everybody ran to the spot where the Prince lay pros-
trate. The war game was forgotten. Even the sen-
try outside Tom's room rushed out and away.
Tom, half turning, saw him run down the hall as
fast as he could. The next moment, turning back to
the window, he saw directly beneath it the Prince's
horse standing there, trembling in every limb, great
brown eyes half-glazed with fright and pain, saddle
slipped a little to one side.
And Tom thought and acted in a fraction of a
second.
Out of the room! Down the hall! Past the outer
sentry, who saw nothing but a flash of blue and crim-
son uniform!
Quickly his hands busied themselves with the saddle
girth. The saddle came off-and Tom was up and
away!
Nobody paid any attention to him. They were
crowding around the Prince, and Tom, on horseback,
was the Tom he had been on his native range-master
of himself, the animal, the dust and stones that flew
away to right and left as the horse, feeling the rider's
softly strong hand, hearing his caressing voice, leaped
on with a great gathering of speed-on to Berlin!


256
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
All afternoon and evening Tom rode. It was
around midnight when he turned into the outer sub-
urbs, and it was then that a realization of his des-
perate position came to him.
The Web!
He remembered Vyvyan's words.
And what did the Web want of him-stretching,
knitting, crushing, looping ...?
His property, his mine, the Yankee Doodle Glory,
for whatever mysterious reasons ?
Why, they had that. They had cheated him out of
it. The meshes of the Web were about it, tightly,
crushingly, like the slimy, merciless arms of a giant
octopus.
And what else did the Web want?
Tom gave a bitter laugh. He knew. No use try-
ing to fool himself.
His life!
That was the stake!
Well—he'd fight for it!
They had tried to get him by every means in their
power. They had not even stopped short of murder,
for there was that duel—the Baron's shot before the
umpire's word to fire. He had fooled them and, by
God! he'd fool them again.
But how? What could he do? To whom could
he turn?
If before he had been in danger of his life, he was
doubly so now. For now he was an outlaw. He had
committed the worst crime on the Prussian military
calendar. Everybody's hand would be against his.
And—who could help him?
Bertha ? Old Mrs. Wedekind ?
No! That wasn't his sort of a game. He could
not compromise women, endanger them.


VIEW-HALLOO
257
t be ablis sword ne of his aich had"|
Vyvyan? Was away.
The man with the silver ring? That, too, was hope-
less. By this time the Spandau authorities would
know of his get-away, and the British Embassy, judg-
ing from his former experience, was the very place
they would watch most carefully.
Poole? The man would faint of fright, would not
lift his little finger to help him.
He had not a cent in his pockets, nothing but the
uniform. Not even his saber, which had been taken
away from him at the time of his arrest. And an of-
ficer without his sword was an object of suspicion.
He might be able to get into communication with Mc-
Caffrey. The barkeeper was sure to lend him clothes
and money. Here was his chance to get out of Ger-
many.
And then he thought of Bertha. Without her he
could not leave the country. Could not. Would not!
What then?
The first thing to do would be to get rid of his horse.
So he turned west, back to the beginning of the Span-
dau road, dismounted, and slapped the animal smartly
across the withers. Silently he prayed that the horse
might be a "homer," the sort that, allowed to travel
free, makes straight for the accustomed stable, not to
forget the accustomed oats.
"Thank God !” he whispered, as the horse whinnied
softly, and was off to the west, towards Spandau, at
an easy, graceful canter.
On foot Tom returned to the suburbs, crossed them,
reached the Westend.
Then the courage of despair came to him. Also
memories.
Back home, in the West, when he had been a boy,
there had been a famous Bad Man, Silvertongue


258
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Charley by name. Charley had not killed very often.
His argument had usually been more mild, yet more
subtle, more persuasive, and (Tom laughed suddenly)
somehow it would be appreciated in Germany, for
here they fought with the same weapon—as in the
case of Martin and Bertha Wedekind.
He walked on, turned into the Dahlmann Strasse,
and rang the night bell of the Colonel's apartment.
The door was opened, he walked upstairs, and the
sleepy Bursche let him in.
“I want to speak to the Colonel, at once. Most
important,” he snarled.
“Zu Befehl, Herr Leutnant!"
The Bursche left, and Tom looked rapidly about
him. He needed a weapon.
There was the Colonel's writing-desk. He tried
drawer after drawer until finally he found what he
wanted—a heavy cavalry revolver. He made sure
that it was loaded.
The next moment the Colonel came in, dressed in
pajamas and slippers.
His first word was a curse, a terrible threat:
“What d'you mean, Lieutenant Graves ? Himmel-
donnerwetter! Who let you out of Festung?
Who ..."
"Shut up!” drawled Tom, and up came his gun to
emphasize the command. “No, no!" as the Colonel
was about to bluster again, “this time I hold the win-
ning ace—and I'm going to rake in the pot. I tell
you what you are going to do. You are going to
dress, under my supervision. You are going to give
me all the money in the house, call Bertha, very gently,
without waking up the rest of the household, and then
you are going to accompany both of us downstairs,
enter a taxicab, drive with us to the station. There


VIEW-HALLOO
259
Bertha is going to buy the tickets. A private com-
partment, for the frontier, see?"
“But ..."
“Didn't I tell you to shut up, you bastard ?" Tom
took a firmer hold on his gun. "I'm going to be right
close to you straight through. We'll walk arm in
arm, ride arm in arm, and, by God! eat arm in arm-
and you'll always feel this little bit of steel pressing
into your ribs. Nobody'll know. That big silver-
gray uniform cape of mine—and yours—will hide that
part all right, all right. And—no fooling-my finger
itches. I've got a peculiar disease called Trigger-
fingeritis where I was raised. Get me, don't you?
Now—lead on! First we'll go to your room and have
you dressed for the slaughter."
Tom's argument was persuasive. Silently, without
saying a word, without making an unnecessary gesture,
the Colonel preceded him to his dressing-room, arm
in arm with him, on the way, obeying the pressure of
the revolver, telling the Bursche to go back to bed, and
put on his uniform.
"Now we'll call Bertha," Tom went on. “Where
is her room?"
“Over there.” The Colonel pointed.
"All right.” Tom pressed the revolver into the
small of the other's back. “Call her. Be careful
what you say. If this is somebody else's room, God
help you !”
"Bertha, Bertha,” whispered the Colonel, and then,
a little louder: “Oh, Bertha !"
“Yes, Uncle?" came a sleepy voice.
“Come here a moment.”
There was a rustle of clothes and a few seconds
later Bertha appeared, in a loose dressing-robe, her
hair a curly, unruly, shimmering mass.


260
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
She was still half asleep.
“What is the matter?” Then, seeing Tom: “Why
-Tom ... ?!
“No time to explain," replied the Westerner.
“You've got to get into your clothes quickly. Throw
some things into a bag. We're going to take a little
trip ..
"A little trip?"
“Yes. To the French frontier. The three of us.
They kidnapped you, those darned Dutchmen, held you
as a hostage, eh? Well, two can play at the same
game, by Ginger, and ..."
Very suddenly the Colonel twisted and turned, was
about to shout for help, and Tom brought up his gun.
"No, you don't!” he said in a low, minatory voice.
“Look out. This thing's going to go off sure !”
And then, just as he was about to fire: “Oh, my
God !"
For the Colonel, agile in spite of his weight, had
rapidly shifted his position, had picked up Bertha, was
holding her against his breast, like a shield.
Wedekind laughed.
"Shoot, why don't you?”
"I— God da—"
“Don't swear in the presence of a lady," sneered the
German. “The winning card? Have you? I am
afraid you have been a little too previous." He raised
his voice to a shout: “Franz! Franz!” he called the
Bursche. “Come in here~no, wait-bring the jani-
tor with you and a couple of other stout fellows.
Bring some ropes, too, while you're about it. We've
got a wild American in here."
And, five minutes later, when Tom was stretched on
the leather couch in the Colonel's study, tied, helpless,
the German said:


CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL
THERE was no doubt of the verdict from the mo-
ment Tom entered the large, gray court-room of the
Kriegsgericht, armed guards on either side and an
officer with drawn saber walking ahead, straight
through the Captain Prosecutor's indictment, the hear-
ing of the witnesses all telling the same tale, his re-
fusal to avail himself of the services of a Kriegs-
gerichtadvokat, a military lawyer, his refusal even to
answer a single one of the questions put to him by the
Captain Prosecutor and the three Generals who acted
as judges, to the moment when the presiding judge,
General von Kanitz, rose, put on his helmet, and
announced with a clear voice that defendant was guilty
of insubordination, killing a brother officer in a duel,
breaking out of Festung, insulting a superior officer,
threatening him with death, and trying to kidnap him.
The punishment, according to the Prussian Military
Law Code, paragraph 578, reënforced by paragraphs
789 and 452, and doubly reënforced by paragraphs
661, 107 and 322, was—Death!
The times being what they were, the enemy beyond
the frontier preparing for war, the General went on,
defendant must show cause at once for reopening the
case or setting aside the judgment or registering an
appeal.
The Pade, paragta doubly rentals
and 452 322, wanat they w the
fendantier preing what Death forced
262


در دی۔
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
his shoidow high up on that were filtering
On there
"All river.
as then he drew barhanded by a dekind, ac
Finally he fell asleep, and it was the rattle of the
keys in the steel door that startled him into wakeful-
ness.
· Haggard rays of sunlight were filtering in through
the window high up on the wallwell—he shrugged
his shoulders-soon there would be darkness. The
fight was over.
"All right. I'm all ready for the last act,” he said
as the door opened.
Then he drew back in surprise. He had expected
armed sentries commanded by a Captain. But only
two men came in: Colonel Wedekind, accompanied
by Ensign Baron von Königsmark who, note-book and
pencil ready to hand, was evidently acting as the for-
mer's secretary.
“What's up?" asked Tom. -"Going to court-martial
me all over again? You can only murder me once,
you know.”
Then he gave a cry of utter amazement. For the
Colonel smiled. He shook Tom's hand.
"Guten Morgen, Herr Leutnant!” he said affably.
And, before Tom knew what to say, the German
went on:
“Well, did the confinement and the court-martial
cool your hot blood a little?”
i “Cut out the heavy sarcasm,” replied Tom. "It
isn't your line."
į “Sarcasm? Not a bit of it. Only,” he smiled,
"I do believe that loneliness, confinement, and a good
scare is the best medicine in the world for an impa-
tient young cavalier like you. And now,” he mo-
tioned to the Ensign, who at once got busy with note-
book and pencil, taking down the words, “Lieutenant
Graves !"
"Well?” asked Tom, who knew less than ever what


THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL
265
to make of the other's ingratiating manner. "What's
up? Can it be that you've conscience troubles and
that you're sorry for that bit of-oh-Montana justice
you pulled off yesterday in the court-martial? Hang
your prisoner first, and try him afterwards?”
"No, no,” Wedekind went on in the same affable,
half-playful manner. "I have a proposition to make
to you, and I wish you would think about it very seri-
ously. In fact, I am sure you will not say no.”
: "Don't you count your chickens before they're
hatched-every darned, fluffy one of 'em," drawled the
Westerner.
"Ah!" smiled the Colonel. “I see that you have
kept your old jesting mood, even in the face of death.
Charming, perfectly charming, my dear sir !"
“Well?"
Something caused Tom to look at the Ensign. His
head was bent over the note-book, his pencil busily
scratching. But there was something in the boy's at-
titude, in the vivid blush that mantled his forehead,
which convinced Tom that he was uneasy. Perhaps
he was ashamed of the Colonel's suave, hypocritical
manner. Perhaps he knew that the latter had set
some artfully prepared trap, had knotted another noose
in the Web
All right. He would be careful, decided Tom, and
he looked inquiringly at Wedekind, who continued :
"I am speaking in the name of the army, the Gov-
ernment, the Emperor himself. We are willing to-
na, sagen wir 'mal-squash all these disagreeable
court-martial proceedings against you. We are even
willing to accept your resignation from the army with
honor, and to pay you liberally, more than liberally,
for the Yankee Doodle Glory."
"Gosh! What's the use of paying for a thing after


THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL
267
"Oh? Pretty sure I would accept, eh?”
The Colonel smiled.
“My dear sir, remember the firing squad. Of course
I am sure!"
Tom was thinking rapidly. Suddenly he smiled to
himself. He considered that more than one can play
at the ancient game of double cross.
"Colonel,” he said, “I have half a mind to close on
that deal ..."
"Delighted, delighted, my dear sir!" Wedekind
rose. He was pleasurably excited. Fervently he
shook Tom's hands. “Why, it's splendid. Ganz
famos! Of course we will all be sorry to see you
leave Germany. But it will be for your own best
interests. Why-everybody likes you here. Only
this morning Baron von Götz-Wrede told me that
you ..."
The words were out. He could not choke them
back.
There was a pall of utter silence, broken by Tom's
incredulous:
“Von Götz-Wrede? I thought he was dead!"
“Let me explain, my dear sir," the Colonel cut in,
clumsily. “The Baron ..."
"A frame-up, eh?” continued Tom, icily. “A dirty,
stinking trick to get me, eh?”.
"No, no! Please let me explain. I will ..."
"Lieutenant Graves is right !"
It was the little Ensign speaking. All during the
interview he had felt in his inner conscience the piti-
less Prussian discipline fighting against a fierce desire
to blurt out the truth whatever the consequences.
And he did so now, with a sort of hot, angry boy-
ishness:
"I am sorry, Colonel,” he said. "I am afraid I am


THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL
269
many, I have a lever on your emotions, my dear sir.
You will be afraid topardon me-try to deceive us.
No, no! I know your condition !"
The Colonel had been right in his guess. But Tom
had not been a poker expert for nothing. Before this,
about to play a pat hand, he had suddenly changed his
mind and bought cards after watching the other man's
draw.
That's what he did now.
“You're wrong, Colonel,” he said. “I am fond of
your niece. I don't deny it. But her returning to
America with me wasn't the condition I want to make.
You see, I do not want to return to America myself.”
“What? You ..."
"Sure. Don't you understand ?" Tom's voice came
strong and clear and sincere. “I like Germany. I am
mad about the army, the uniform, the chance to see a
bit of a bully old scrap. I guess, horses apart, I
haven't been much good as an officer in the past. But
I'll try my darnedest in the future, Colonel. Give me
another chance. Let me stick to Germany and the
Uhlan's! That's my condition !"
Tom had succeeded beyond his hopes. The Colonel
shook his hands again and again, pump-handle fashion.
"Grossartig! Kolossal!” he bellowed. “I shall
speak of it to His All-Gracious Majesty. The Father-
land needs men such as you. Why”—with a severe
side glance at the little Ensign-"you can set an exam-
ple in patriotism to many a native-born Prussian.”
He clicked his heels and saluted. “I thank you in the
name of the Uhlans, in the name of the army, the
name of the Emperor. And now-let's go back to
business—your condition is accepted.”
He drew some papers from his pocket. Tom read
through them. They were an official bill of sale of


THE COLONEL'S PROPOSAL
271
Vyvyan the names of certain ships that had recently
changed names, flags, and ownership?
Why there was the little silver ring with the letters
B. E. D.


CHAPTER XXXIX
B. E. D.
end plunged three once morcon Götz
That afternoon, it was the second of July, a little
over five weeks before the Germans tore up the Scrap
of Paper and plunged the world into a cauldron of
blood, Tom Graves was free once more.
At the door he was met by Baron von Götz-Wrede,
whose right wrist had healed and whose left was still
in a sling, and who acted as if nothing out of the way
had happened, as if the whole episode, from the orig-
inal insult to his faked-up death, had been nothing but
an amiable idiosyncrasy—on the Westerner's part,
well understood. He told Tom that all officers' pri-
vate residence permits had been canceled.
“You'll have to live at barracks with the rest of
us, old fellow. The army is frightfully busy, putting
a polish on itself.”
“I know."
The other had spoken the truth, and Tom was
aware of it. It was not because he was under suspi-
cion that he had to move his traps to a bare ten-by-
twelve square of cement, varnished wood, and iron
cot in the Uhlan barracks. For all the other officers
lived there too, from the Colonel down to the youngest
Ensign just gazetted from the Lichterfelde Cadets
School. Drill was continuous, pitiless, as he had
watched it from his window at Spandau. Long, dusty
272


B. E. D.
273
ing, sulphurte of terrible, wish grinding. Yet, under-
rides in the morning. Knock off at noon for a bite,
followed by lance and saber drill. Then special in-
struction in various subjects, examinations in French,
map making, and kindred topics. More drill until
supper time, and nearly every night, after taps, a final
lecture by picked, spectacled Siaff officers on the tech-
nique and tactics of war.
There was little time even for talk. Yet, under-
lying the silent, steady, harsh grinding, Tom caught
the faint note of terrible, bitter excitement, the stink-
ing, sulphurous smoke of a hidden combustion soon
to leap into crimson and orange flame, a suppressed
sucking and roaring and belching like an underground
furnace driven by some gigantic, artificial draught.
The very air of the barrack yard seemed surcharged
with an elemental, brutal activity that was intense, in-
exhaustible, tragic.
Hectic whispers rose at times from groups of offi-
cers—whispers that were yearning, again pleading,
again, with ferocious suddenness, stabbing to a savage,
insupportable note, like the expectant, hysterical cries
of worshipers at a bloody shrine about to behold
the pomp of some dreadful, mysterious ceremonial.
Eager to see it. Yet afraid.
They were like so many machines, these Prussian
officers about him, like piece goods turned out of a
racial sweat-shop. Yet, somehow, very subtly, they
preserved their individuality, though trying to hide it,
as if ashamed. It was in their faces, their expressions,
as they listened to the Staff officers' instructions.
Colonel Wedekind would look straight ahead, his
square, ruddy face composed into angular lines, like
those of a vicious Roman Emperor with a touch of
Manchu. Baron von Götz-Wrede seemed nervous, yet
insolent, forever curling his dark mustache with the


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Wir sind in Deutschland, Herr Leutnant," would
be her invariable comment, and Tom grinned and
obeyed.
There was, therefore, nothing except banalities he
could talk to the girl, and he hoped that his eyes
would tell her the message that was in his soul.
It did not take him long to discover a way by which
he might let Lord Vyvyan know the German inten-
tions as to the line of freighters which, with his name
as a dummy, had been transferred to American reg-
istry after a change of names—and of other small
details," as the Colonel had said. And, later on,
thinking about the chain of events, it would strike him
as strange, as portentous, as fitting of the new era,
that it was a bit of casual, loose American slang, of
that typically transatlantic slang which will ever remain
an unfathomable secret to the uninitiated, that saved
the situation, that, in the final reckoning, perhaps
saved the whole world from the iron heel, the soulless
efficiency, the blood-stained brutality of Kaiserism, and
Prussianism, and Junkerism–from the Trinity of
Crime.
It came about in this way.
Tom understood the impossibility, since he was
shadowed, of going to the British Embassy and find-
ing there the man who had the duplicate of Vyvyan's
ring. His incoming and outgoing mail, too, was sure
to be thoroughly scrutinized and examined.
But—there was McCaffrey. There was the blessed
slang of the New World.
One day (and he made a point of telling Baron von
Götz-Wrede about it) he ordered a saddle from Lon-
don, enclosing in his letter Bank of England notes
which, again in the Baron's presence, he had pur-
chased at the Deutsche Bank.


B. E. D.
277
The Baron saw him slip the notes in the letter and
mail it, but he did not notice that Tom palmed two
of the crisp, white pound sterling certificates.
That night, in his room, Tom wrote a few words,
dealing with the names of certain ships, Walla Walla,
Seattle, Carson City, Salt Lake City, Santa Rosa, and
Denver, on a slip of paper a little smaller than the
English bank-notes, marked across it in red ink: “For
B. E. D.," and pasted the two sterling notes together
with the slip of paper between, in such a manner that
a tiny edge of it showed above the margin of the notes.
This done, he asked for leave, was granted it, and
went over to the “Gross Berlin American Bar,” where
he bought many rounds of drink for the English and
American jockeys and trainers who frequented the
place, paying for them at the end of each round.
Finally he bought one more, put his hand in his
pocket, and laughed.
“Sorry, Mac,” he said, “I'm bust."
"All right. I'll chalk it up, Graves."
"Not on your life. Wait—I have some English
money. Take it?”
"Sure," said the barkeeper, and Tom brought out
the double Bank of England note.
He looked at it critically. Then he looked at Mc-
Caffrey, long, quizzically, with a faint wink in his left
eye, faintly, interrogatively returned by his Coney
Island compatriot.
"Mac,” he drawled, in home slang, "pipe this case
note. It's as phoney as a salted mine."
He tossed it across the bar, with another wink, and
McCaffrey picked it up and examined it.
"Sure," he said, “it's phoney all right, all right. I
don't want it, young feller.”
"Nor I. I make you a present of it. Stick some-


278
1 112
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
body else with it. Say—I tell you what to do. Try
and palm it off on one of the guys from the British
Embassy. That would be a hell of a joke”-and he
winked again.
“You bet.” McCaffrey pocketed the note. “I'll do
that little thing for you.” He turned to the people
lined up against the bar. “What'll you have, gents ?
This one is on the house!"
Tom returned to barracks.
He had risked a long shot. But, somehow, he felt
sure that it would hit the target.


CHAPTER XL
WAR!
It came suddenly, over night, crashing like an iron
fist into the teeth of the world, the Western world,
France, England, Belgium, the United States; the stu-
pid, decent, happy, purblind world that had caviled
and jested and thrown the mud of doubt when the
chosen amongst its peoples had spoken words of warn-
ing, that had branded the seers as liars, the prophets
a6 panicky fools; that had refused to believe what it
had feared to believe; that, poisoned with the deliber-
ate propaganda of forty years, refused to believe even
now, even after the steely, inexorable fact of War
hurled across its frontiers, crashing, roaring, maim-
ing, torturing, killing.
It started with a tense, dramatic whisper that
changed, in twenty-four hours, to a savage, clarion call
of triumph, as the gray-green hordes trampled the fair
fields of Belgium and blackened the crime in the Ger-
man soul with the blacker crime of the German fist.
It came unrelenting, disdainful, bestial, smashing
the standards of the gray, swinging centuries, smash-
ing the God-made, man-made standards of civilization
and honesty and decency.
On it came in the rolling boundlessness of crazy
ambition, bruiting afar the thunder word of a mad
nation, led by a mad Kaiser, reëchoing it from the
east to the west of Europe, and beyond, from the
279


280
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
heights of Quebec to the matted jungles of Central
Africa.
It wakened the fog-bound cities of the North with
the sweep of it.
It chilled the golden-souled cities of the West with
the steel of it.
It rolled over the sad marshes of the East like a
sheet of smouldering fire, yellow, burning, inexorable.
It thundered against the hope of all the world and
killed that hope with the laughter of Satan, the
Cursed, laughing into nothingness God's cosmic code.
War!
The war of a snake's fang and a tiger's claw!
The war of poison and rape and murder and dis-
ease!
German War!
It struck Berlin like a typhoon.
The night before there had been whisperings—yes!
-also nervousness, fear, tense, shuddering expectancy.
Crowds paraded the streets, looking up anxiously
at the flickering lights—cressets of evil—that shone
behind the windows of the Imperial Schloss, the War
Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Chancellor's Palace.
"War? Out of the question! Ausgeschlossen!
Ganz unmöglich!”
Then, in the morning, the fact of it, crimson-
stained, irrevocable !
In ten minutes the news had swept over Berlin;
dipping eastward from the Emperor's Schloss to the
wholesale district that clutters around the Alexander
Platz and speeding up innumerable hands busy with
needle and thread and gray-green uniform cloth;
swinging beyond the drab, dusty flats of Treptow and
causing burly foremen in overalls to curse the beery
stained, 17 minutes from clutters as ble handi form
and


WAR!
281
slowness of their workmen, who were riveting bolts
into gun caissons or trimming airplane wings into
aluminum frames.
North it surged, to Moabit, with the message to
countless factories:
“Get ready! Get ready! The minutes spell vic-
tory! They spell the Fate of the Nation!”
And trip-hammers thudded; bit-braces zummed; der-
rick-cranes hoisted away; dynamos throbbed; piling-
gins shook and drummed; gudgeons slid into shafts;
gas engines hissed and stuttered; pliers bit and
wrenched and cut.
West traveled the news, echoing in the villas of
merchants and bankers and brokers, sending them
frantically to the long-distance telephones, there to
rush orders to their correspondents on the stock ex-
changes of Frankfort and Munich and Vienna:
“Buy German Consols !"
“Buy Prussian State Railways !"
“Sell French Government Bonds !"
"Sell Russian Petroleum !”
“Sell Belgian Industrials !”
Remembering the secret orders received weeks ago
from the Ministry of Commerce for just such an
emergency; then cabling across to New York and
Chicago with similar orders, supplemented later in
the day by other, stranger ones:
“Buy Bethlehem Steel !”
"Buy Remington Arms!”
“Buy U. S. Steel Commons !"
Still on rushed the news, to Spandau, Magdeburg,
Köpenick, Frankfort-on-the-Oder and many more of
that spider web of small towns that cluster about Ber-
lin, causing the division freight superintendents and
the division passenger superintendents of the Imperial


WAR!
283
simply a glorious, shining adventure, a cumulated, lat-
ter-day memory of all the great men who had clouted
German history to the final apex: Herman the
Cheruscan, Friedrich Barbarossa, Prince Blücher,
Moltke, Bismarck!
A stern duty, this war. A thundering, eternal
right. But one that would be seen to by the army
already mobilized—they were swinging down the
streets like an immense gray-green snake with innu-
merable, bobbing heads-a million and a half men.
Only the peace strength of conscripts, with perhaps
an additional thirty or forty reserve divisions-just to
stay in the background in case of emergencies.
Second line reserve? Third line? The men of the
Landwehr in the prime of their years? The logy,
bearded, retired burgesses of the Landsturm?
Nonsense!
This was a little saber rattling escapade for the
beardless youth of Germany. For, of course, the
whole thing would be a military promenade, breakfast
in Brussels, lunch in Paris, back in Berlin for a late
dinner and theater. The fighting would be over in a
few weeks, meanwhile life at home would run in the
same smooth channels.
“Yes. A military promenade, meine Herren Com-
militonen,' said the red-faced chairman of the Borus-
sia fraternity of students who had met as usual over
their morning Schoppen at the Pschorr Restaurant.
“We will take Paris and Calais. France will cede us
the rest of Lorraine. Belgium will submit peacefully.
Russia ? Pooh! Afterwards we will speak a few
words to those damned English and Americans. Gen-
tlemen! I drink to His All-Gracious Majesty, the
War Lord!"
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” came the alcoholic


WAR!
285
"It's damned good business," opined the bankers and
merchants. “Remember that last Brazilian Govern-
ment order for locomotives? The Yankees got that.
And that railway from Pekin to Shensi? The Chinese
Government accepted a British tender. War will
change all that. We shall insist on a clause in the
final peace terms which will ..."
“But neither England nor America are in this war,"
came the voice of doubt.
"Of course not. They're afraid of us, diese ver-
fluchten, hypokritischen Schweinehunde. And just
because they are afraid, we Germans shall dictate to
them whatever we please ..."
“Yes. Quite right. Just wait till our troops have
entered Paris !”
Paris !
That was the slogan, the guerdon, the grail.
"Nach Parison to Paris !”
They clenched their hairy fists. They smacked their
sagging lips. They exchanged lecherous, meaning
winks.
Why, there were women in Paris. French women.
They had read about them. They had seen pic-
tures.
Too, there were art treasures, cellars filled with vin-
tage wines, the best of food, everything worth while
in life.
Loot!
Why, it was theirs! Paris was an oyster to be
opened at the mere kick of their booted, spurred toes!
"Nach Paris!"
Crudely the boast was chalked on every troop train
that snorted away from the Lehrter Railway Depot
bound for the Northwest, for Belgium. For the road


WAR!
287
"Oh, just to make doubly sure. That's our Ger-
man way. Anyway, we're past thirty-three, you and
I, we won't have to fight. The war will be over in
a month, before they'll have time to muster us in."
“I don't know about that. There are rumors ..."
“Don't believe them. Foreign propaganda. Eng-
lish lies!”
“Still ... Listen !” as a newspaper boy ran past,
shouting his wares. “Here, boy! The Berliner
Zeitung!”
“What is it?"
“What does that head-line say?”.
“Wait. Don't crowd so.”
“Yes-go on--read—”.
“The Belgians ...".
“Surrender? Submit?”
“No, no! Gott im Himmel! They resist! They
fight!"
"Damned fools! We'll eat 'em up!"
“But England—Sir Edward Grey sent an ultimatum
-yesterday ...
"Bluff! The English won't fight. India would re-
bel, Ireland, Canada, South Africa ...".
Yet, for all their brave boastings, they were begin-
ning to get nervous. The war was becoming a per-
sonal issue as, hour after hour, more reservists were
called to the colors, by letter and telegram and tele-
phone and newspaper advertisements and big placards
pasted on the walls and those advertising columns,
typical of Berlin, called Litvas-säulen.
In each city ward the office of the district military
inspector was packed with an anxious mob shouting
Gestions:
“When? When, Herr Oberst?"


288
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"At once! Second and third reserves called out!
Go to the barracks of your old regiments. You will
find everything ready there, your uniforms, your
rifles, your side arms. All numbered. Alles klappt!
That is the Prussian way!”
Then the chorus, once more enthusiastic, terrible
in its overwhelming, unreasoning, racial conceit:
“Yes. That is the Prussian way!" And the
crowd, arm in arm, marching out on the sun-bathed
streets, swinging along in the old, rectangular goose
step they had learned years ago when they were with
the colors, and singing at the top of their lungs:
"Lebt whol, Ihr Mädels und Ihr Frauen,
Und schafft Euch einen Andren an ..."
And on they rolled to the barracks, each man to
the cupboard which was painted with his number.
They passed reservists, already in uniform, on their
way, on foot, on horseback, and then every one would
laugh and wave hands and handkerchiefs to those,
the vanguard, who rode away triumphantly in the
sunshine, women and children paralleling the march-
ing columns on the sidewalks, crying, laughing, sing-
ing, shouting, throwing flowers and cigarettes.
The Uhlans of the Guard, too, were receiving their
quota of reservists and Tom, who was on duty,
watched them arrive, waited till they had donned their
uniforms, then picked out horses and saddles for them.
He, Captain von Quitzow, and young von Königs-
mark, promoted two days earlier to a second lieuten-
ancy, were the only officers left at barracks. All the
field officers, Colonel Heinrich Wedekind included, had
been ordered to Metz an hour earlier to confer with
the commanding General of the cavalry brigade of the
First Army Corps; the squadron leaders had been


290
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
He was silent. He looked at her thin, trembling
hands, at her fringe of white hair beneath the spidery
lace cap. For a moment he felt strangely, almost
cruelly young. Then he looked into her eyes. He
saw that the little malicious twinkle had given way
to an expression of sympathy, of love even, and at
once the difference in age between him and her seemed
to vanish.
“Mrs. Wedekind," he said, "I have come here to
ask you to ..." he faltered, was silent. He did not
know how to put his request into words; and she gave
a short, bitter laugh.
"You have come here,” she said, “because you are
young and in love-and, therefore, selfish, terribly,
terribly selfish!”
“Please—please ..."
"No use denying it, my boy. And why should
you? Love is glorious, love is selfish. It is the way
of love. I-I know ...".
Suddenly, as Tom looked, she seemed to grow very
old. Her eyes became dim. Her words came mum-
bling:
“They—my son, the army, Prussia, the Emperor-
they think that force dominates the world. But they
are wrong. It is love which dominates, love which
rules. And ..."
Once more her words were clear and distinct:
"You want my help, don't you? To help you and
Bertha to get out of Germany, out of the Eagle's
clutches?”
“Yes," murmured Tom, “I want you to ..."
“Do not tell me,” she interrupted. “I could not
listen to you. It would be treason. I am a German.
But”—she put her wrinkled old hand on Tom's arm-
"it may interest you to hear that I have decided to


292
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
the Fatherland-right or wrong!” She drew herself
up. “And the Fatherland is at war.” She threw
open the window. “Listen!”
From the street, a great, zumming chorus rose,
swelling, bloating, ever increasing, singing the old
German battle hymn with a hundred thousand throats:
“Lieb' Vaterland, magst ruhig sein ...
Fest steht, und treu, die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein”-
Then, with dramatic suddenness, the song broke off.
There was utter, terrible silence—hushed, strained, as
of a thousand unspoken questions.
Somebody, an officer of the Cuirassiers, came run-
ning around the corner. He was waving a newspaper.
Tom looked from the window, Mrs. Wedekind by his
side. The crowd had turned like one man and was
staring at the officer.
“What—what has happened?” Mrs. Wedekind's
voice trembled.
And then the answer, from the street, as the Cuiras-
sier shouted it at the silent, questioning mob:
"England! England has declared war!”—and, at
once, a chorus of cries, of shouts, of hysterical yells:
“England! The traitor nation!''
"To hell with England !”
“Gott strafe England !”
And, clear above the roar, a single, high-pitched
voice stabbing out:
"On to the British Embassy! Kill the English!
Kill them!”
The shout was taken up. The crowd, the Cuirassier
leading, rolled on like a maelstrom, and Tom grabbed
cape and uhlanka and saber.
A moment earlier, he had felt prey to a certain
doubt, a certain fear. Now he saw a chance.
sier Englandtus of ore it or nati


THE MOB SPEAKS
295..
Horses, then. One for Bertha, one for himself.
And how could he get them?
All the fast horses, for days past, had been picked
and entrained for the Northwest, the Belgian fron-
tier, where three divisions of cavalry were supposed
to make a flanking sweep through the rolling Belgian
fields under General von Manteuffel. Too, the Rus-
sian border had absorbed thousands and thousands of
picked animals as a mounted counterweight against
the expected Cossack onrush. On the Metz-Verdun
sector the War Lord was pinning his faith on incessant
bombardment, followed up by countless waves of in-
fantrymen. Of course, there was some cavalry there,
too. But no picked, fast horses.
All that Tom had gathered during the last few days
when the officers of the Uhlans had talked about it
excitedly, had complained rather bitterly that their
regiment, the best in the Guards, had been robbed of
its finest mounts and was being sent to Metz, where
there would be no chance for a dashing, clashing
charge.
He would get to Metz all right. He would take the
midnight train, the same by which he supposed Mrs.
Wedekind and Bertha would travel. He would have
to, since a later train would not get him there in time,
and since he doubted that old Mrs. Wedekind would
have more than one chance to bring Bertha to him.
He imagined in fact that she would proceed to St.
Mary's Church directly from the depot, before the
Colonel knew that the two women had left Berlin.
There was yet another danger. That morning he
had received orders to leave Berlin for Metz, together
with Captain von Quitzow, on the next day. Further-
more, the latter was expecting him back at barracks
to-night.


THE MOB SPEAKS
299
it. Stones and bricks and sticks were hurled. Win-
dows broke with a crash.
A woman cried hysterically.
Again the police advanced, this time using their
sabers to good effect. The mob was hurled back, but
not before a few of them had succeeded in battering
down the doors to get inside the Embassy ... to
be immediately thrown out by athletic Englishmen,
attachés and flunkeys battling loyally side by side.
All the invaders were flung out on the street except
one-a man in a Uhlan uniform, who, sorely beset
by a young Englishman on the left and another on the
right, suddenly shouted in unmistakable American:
“Say! Cut it out! I'm not a punching-bag--nor
am I a Dutchman!"
“I should say you aren't!" came the noways cordial
rejoinder. “You're a disgrace to your country, to
America”—a statement accompanied by another severe
cuff—"and”—a blow_"what the devil do you mean
by ..."
“Cut it out!” Tom yelled again, defending himself
as best he could. “I am looking for-for”-and, side-
stepping a particularly vicious right to his jaw, he
blurted out: “I am looking for the guy with the
B. E. D. ring!"
There was silence-broken the next second by a
drawling, familiar voice:
“Hello, hello, hello!”
Tom turned. There, in the doorway, stood Vyvyan,
and the Westerner, relieved, amazed, gave a stammer-
ing, gasping exclamation:
"Well, I'll be ..."
"Right-oh!" Vyvyan turned to the young attachés,
who had again laid hold of Tom. “It's all right, dear
chaps! This gentleman's a friend of mine. He's the


300
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
chap who sent McCaffrey to us with the warning about
the steamship line—the changed names and rigging
and all that sort of rot. Remember?"
“Yes.”
“To be sure,” wonderingly.
“Very well. Then don't biff him any more." He
turned to Tom. “Come along up to my room.”
Arrived there, to the Westerner's first question,
Vyvyan replied that he had never left Germany. That
time when he had been sent away as persona non grata,
he had turned straight round on the Holland frontier
and had come back to Berlin.
"I have been here ever since, doing my little bit."
“So you got my message about the transfer of those
ships to American registry?”.
"Right-oh. Thanks awfully. We spoiled that lit-
tle German game. Tell you all about it some other
time. And now-what can I do for you?”
The Westerner explained, and Vyvyan inclined his
honey-colored head.
"Certainly I'll help you. I'll get you some sort of
motor-car.”
"No, no. You didn't get me, Vyvyan. I don't
know a darned thing about machinery. Between you
and me, I'm afraid of it. A horse-that's what I've
got to have—two horses. One for Bertha, and one
for me."
Vyvyan smiled.
"You won't have to drive,” he said.
“Won't I though?”
“Of course not. I shall sit at the wheel.”
“You?"
“Yes. I am coming with you."
“Why?”
And Vyvyan explained that the German Govern-


306
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
But-Germany? New Germany ?
Why ... There was that respectable middle-aged
woman, there was the pimply schoolboy, the spectacled
professor ... And all mouthing mean obscenities,
polluting the very God in whom they professed to be-
lieve.
Yes! America, too, had faults, but (Tom smiled
as he coined the phrase) they were such damned de-
cent faults !-while these ... He shivered a little.
“Hurry up!” he said to the driver, as the crowd
thinned, farther north where, in the drab, reeking ten-
ements that clustered around the barracks, the martial
enthusiasm decreased proportionately with the misery
of the people who lived there.
Tom did not know how excited he was, and it was
this very ignorance of his own emotions which helped
him to dovetail minutely each tiny detail of his plans,
to switch promptly when circumstances necessitated
it, from the moment the machine stopped in front of
the barracks.
A dozen or so men in dingy, peaked sweaters were
standing at the curb, looking up at the great building.
“Our turn to-morrow,” said one rather hopelessly,
with a malevolent glance at Tom's uniform; and a
woman of the streets, blowzy, enormous, vulgar, spat.
A policeman ordered her brutally on her way.
Tom paid the driver, was about to dismiss him, then,
rapidly reconsidering, asked him to come back in ten
minutes and wait.
Inside the barracks the reservists, tired out with the
strenuous drill of the last twelve hours, had thrown
themselves down wherever they could to snatch a few
hours of sleep before the morning when the long, gray
troop trains would carry them to the frontier. Some
were writing messages of farewell to friends and fam-


308
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
she lives quite a ways out in the Westend, and ...”
Tom's mind worked quickly.
"I get you. Want to have a last shot at that Grieg
whatever-you-call-it, and perhaps give her pouting lips
a farewell smack, eh? And here you are, in charge
of the barracks, orders and all that ..."
“Yes, yes!” replied the other breathlessly.
"All right. Forget the orders. Forget Colonel
Wedekind. He'll never find out. I'll look after
things. Go on and hug your girl. No, no,” as von
Quitzow stammered objections and thanks all in the
same breath, "it's perfectly 0. K.! Run along and
play. You needn't come back till the wee, sma' hours.
I won't give you away.”
A great, naïve smile overspread the Junker's round
face.
“Thanks!” he bellowed, buckled on his saber, and
ran out of the room.
“Item Number One!” Tom checked it off on his
fingers. “And now, what next? To be sure! We'll
try the same sugar pap on my servant.”
He rang the bell and his Bursche, a squat, yellow-
haired Mecklenburg lad, appeared, clicking his heels.
"Hans," said Tom, “I won't need you any more
to-night. You have leave—all night leave. Go on
and kiss your Gretchen!”
Came another bellow of Teutonic thanks :
“Vielen, vielen Dank, Herr Leutnant!”
"Same to you and many of 'em!” murmured the
Westerner after the servant had left, checked off the
.second item as satisfactorily disposed of, and turned
to the third.
He thought for several minutes, then he took a piece
of paper, scribbled furiously, went out to the street and
spoke to the taxicab driver, who had returned.


TOWARDS THE FRONTIER
309
“Shoot along to the next telegraph station and send
off this message, as fast as you can. Served your
three years in the army ?”
"Yes, Herr Leutnant !”'
"All right. Then you know how to obey."
“Yes, Herr Leutnant !”
“Very well. Listen. Take this message, have it
telegraphed as I said, but don't you dare look at the
contents. Militärgeheimniss — military secret — you
understand? Too, you tell the chap at the telegraph
office he's to forget every word of the message as soon
as he has ticked it off. Tell him to keep no record of
it if he values his skin. It's in code, but there are
dozens of spies about. My man," continued Tom,
quoting shamelessly from one of Colonel Wedekind's
favorite slogans, "I rely upon you, the army does, the
Emperor !"
“Zu Befehl, Herr Leutnant !" came the enthusiastic
reply, and the driver purred away while Tom called
after him to return in half an hour.
He grinned mischievously.
"I, the army, the Emperor! Bully old high sign,
that. Wait till I get back home to Spokane and put
my brother Elks wise to it!"
In his room once more he went rapidly through his
belongings, slipped whatever official papers he had,
such as his commission, his transfer to war school, and
his appointment as regimental remount officer, in his
despatch bag, and changed into a serviceable field uni-
form of grayish green. He put on uhlanka and cape,
girded himself with saber and a brace of heavy-caliber
cavalry pistols; then, after a moment's deliberation,
smiling softly to himself, he packed a leather case with
his Mexican spurs, his range quirt, an additional long,
sweeping full-dress uniform cape of silver gray lined
aty pinself n steengedi,


TOWARDS THE FRONTIER
311
"I'se gwine to leave yo’, honey,
Su' I is!”...
he hummed, remembering an old minstrel song, went
down the stairs, entered the cab, and told the driver to
go to the depot. He reached there at eleven, ate a
comfortable meal at the station restaurant, and strolled
out on the platform looking for his friend.
A moment later he found him, nonchalantly
sprawled on a bench in the waiting-room, reading a
late newspaper. The man seemed utterly fearless,
utterly sure of himself, and Tom, too, realized that
there was little danger. The German war machine
was efficient, but, as nearly always in the case of too
much efficiency, it was utterly unprepared to cope with
an emergency not contained in the proper statistics
and text-books. Later on, the fact of it was destined
to be demonstrated on a large scale when forty years'
unceasing, ultra-efficient preparation broke down, at
the very gates of Paris, before-not cannons and rifles,
for in that the Germans had an overwhelming advan-
tage, but before the calm faith in the souls of the
individual French, Belgian and British soldiers that the
world must remain sound.
To-night, the same apparatus of efficiency broke
down before the poker sense, in a way the sense of
humor, of two Anglo-Saxons.
"Guten Abend, Herr Kamerad!" snarled the Eng-
lishman, and the American returned the salute and sat
down by his side. Together, without speaking, they
looked out on the platform.
It was crowded with officers of all ranks and all
regiments, Prussians, Bavarians, Badensers, Saxons,
and a sprinkling of Austrians and Hungarians. Some
of them were in their cups and exchanging drunken
boasts; others had endless conversations with women


312
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
of all classes—their wives and sisters and mothers,
but also their mistresses, and even with women of the
underworld, rank, vicious, unmistakable. The coming
of war had finally shattered the fiber of their moral
life, their moral perceptions, their moral prejudices.
For once, being potential heroes, looked up to by all
classes, even the grumbling Liberals and the discon-
tented Radicals, as defenders of the Fatherland and
conquerors of Belgium, Britain, France, and the world
in general, they felt free to do exactly what and how
they pleased.
And they did.
To-night the uniform was an excuse for license,
where formerly it had been only one for arrogance
and stiff, rectangular class consciousness.
A white-haired General was walking arm in arm
with a notorious soubrette of the Metropol Theatre.
Two infantry lieutenants, beardless, rosy-cheeked,
pitifully young, just gazetted, took turns in kissing a
middle-aged, overdressed cocotte of the Tauentzien
quarter.
And there were other similar scenes, the decent
women, the mothers and sisters and wives, seeming not
to see, or not to mind.
"Nasty, lascivious beast—this Prussian war ma-
chine," murmured Vyvyan. “Gad! I shiver when I
think of the women of France and Belgium!"
"Wow there!" whispered 'Tom, gripping the other's
arm, "steady! Steady, old hoss!"
But his own lips quivered as he saw Mrs. Wedekind
and Bertha move slowly through the throng towards
the waiting train.
"Let's go!” said Vyvyan. “I've bought the tickets
and greased several official hands. I've a coupé re-
served for us. That's one thing you can do in Ger-


METZ
315
to the first ship of the line, bound from Tacoma to
Germany, they tried to transfer the line to American
registry, first through Wedekind by holding his daugh-
ter as a hostage, then, Wedekind refusing to be bul-
lied, through you?”
"Yes!” laughed Tom. "All these several and many
Why's! Also—why did you get that sudden wireless
appointment to Berlin when the wireless was bust?
Why did they have you recalled as persona non grata?
Why did you make me promise not to give up the
mine? Why ...".
"Oh! You did catch on to one or two things,
what?" It was the Englishman's turn to laugh.
“Well—the answer to all these Why's is the unknown
metal in the Yankee Doodle Glory!"
"That stuff that scared Truex, affected the sense
of hearing of the workers, puzzled Newson Gar-
rett ...
"And did not puzzle the German chemist-wasn't
Conrad Sturtzel his name?-in New York! Right-oh,
old dear. You have it !”
"Except,” said Tom, "what the fool metal is sup-
posed to be good for. They ran, tried to run, that
line of steamers to ship the ore, didn't they?”.
“Go to the head of the class !”
"But ..."
"The answer is Great Britain, Sea Power !"
Lord Vyvyan went on to say that Germany, prepar-
ing for war, had always lulled itself into the blissful
belief that Great Britain would repeat the blunder of
Eighteen Hundred and Seventy, would sit tight on its
money bags, and watch, nervously, selfishly, with pro-
tests, but without telling deeds, the dismemberment of
France. France crushed, new iron and coal fields an-
nexed, Germany would then have consolidated her


320
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Any more declarations of war?”
"Is it true that England has mobilized all the Cen-
tral African gorillas and put them into kilts?” And
ringing laughter, and more questions, rather more
serious.
But they hardly listened to Vyvyan's replies, though
the latter, in his role as “Berliner" officer, succeeded
in being every bit as drawling and inane as he had
been in his native language when the Westerner had
first met him aboard the Augsburg. Their questions
were really only meant rhetorically—boasting, arro-
gant questions that were supposed to answer them-
selves—all about German preparedness, German great-
ness, German invincibility, German triumph. All
about the German Herren Nation—the Fate-chosen
Race of Masters, of Supermen!
For that day, with the scent of blood in their nos-
trils, the ruling caste of Prussia was keyed to its
Race of Ma German Hebility, Germess, German
tril For that afters, of Serren Natitman triuman grea
highest, Shruling caste the scent of
Tom clenched his fist. Savage they seemed to him,
but, too, childish and, somehow, whining, as if not
quite sure of themselves in spite of their brave, clank-
ing words.
There was a little infantry lieutenant sitting across
from him—wizened, silly, a vacant, fatuous smile curl-
ing his thick, cherry-red, sensuous lips. He was
speaking about himself, as a chosen specimen of the
ing his mini wizened, silly, atty lieutenant sit
Face of Sabout himseyred, se
A wave of nauseating disgust swept over the Amer-
ican. Pleading a headache, he closed his eyes. At
his left, the two General Staff officers were conversing
in a sibilant, dramatic undertone.
"That Thionville plan is a bluff,” said the one. “I
tell you it's going to be ..."
"Verdun? Has the Crown Prince ...".


322
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
"Sure. But ... Say, 'member when I fell asleep
on the train ?”
"Rather. You snored damnably.”
"Well, it was a fake snore. I was listening. Yes,
sir, I stole your thunder, my Secret Service friend!
I was listening to those two staff officers."
Vyvyan looked up excited.
“What did they say?"
“They said that the proposed attack from Thionville
against Verdun is only a feint, a bluff. The real at-
tack is going to be launched direct from Metz. They
say they're going to catch the French with their boots
off !”
“They will not!"
“You said something there, young fellow. You
just bet they will not—if you get the motor-car, and
can drive as I can ride!”
And they shook hands and parted, the Englishman
turning north, the American, despatch case and leather
bag swinging from his left arm, saber truculently
bumping against the ground, turning south, towards
the Marienkirche-and Bertha.


324
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
girls of aand officers, stiled with soldim
regimentals, and a few Austrians, curiously ill at ease.
Nobody paid any attention to Tom.
Arrived at the corner where the sacristy, newly
built, jutted triangularly, he saw Mrs. Wedekind on
her granddaughter's arm. She made a hopeless, fiat
gesture of finality with her mittened hand, then dis-
appeared in a throng of peasant women in shorts skirts
and clumsy, winged bonnets, Lorrainers all, talking in
a mixture of French and German, some crying as if
their hearts would break.
A moment later Tom was by Bertha's side.
"Walk slow," he whispered, tucking her arm in his;
and she understood without asking him the reason.
For the streets were filled with soldiers, privates and
non-coms and officers, strolling about with women and
girls of all classes, all talking in tense, hectic under-
tones—like a last flaring of passion, a last calling out
of a man's senses to a woman's, before the morrow, the
battle, death.
Tom, clean to the marrow, sensitive, felt the silent
surging of emotions. It embarrassed him. The more
so as there was something he had to tell Bertha, some-
thing of which he had thought when, back in the Uhlan
barracks, he had packed his leather case.
And he did not know how to put it into words.
She noticed his silence and finally she asked him
what was the matter.
"Bertha,” he whispered, "you know I love you bet-
ter than all the world ..."
“Tell me about your love after we're safely across
the frontier," came her mischievous reply.
"You just bet I will. But ... Say ... For-
give me for what I'm going to tell you, and for the
love o' Mike don't misunderstand me!”—and he told
her in a hushed, halting whisper what was on his mind.


THE BLUFF
325
“Don't you see, honey?" he wound up. 'It's the
only way. Why—it's—the thing, the one thing they
wouldn't suspect. It was so in Berlin, these last few
days, and look!" pointing at the amorous couples,
some disappearing down dark alleys, others turning
suddenly, after rapid whispers, into houses. “It's-
safe!"
She gave a little choked laugh.
"Tom, dear,” she said, apropos of nothing it seemed
to him, “I know German-gentlemen. I talked to lots,
and lots talked to me, and I am so very, very glad that
you are ..."
“What?”
"Just Tom! Just plain, clean, square, American
Tom! Come," as he was going to branch into fur-
ther explanations. “I know exactly. There's the
place for us-over yonder !” indicating a small, drab,
mean hotel not far from the Archbishop's palace.
Bravely she preceded him into the dirty lobby.
Bravely she overlooked the frowzy desk clerk's leering
words of greeting, not even turning her head when
Tom asked for a room and was given the key.
"Is there a back entrance?" the Westerner asked the
clerk. “You see ..." he halted, stammering, and the
clerk continued the sentence for him:
“I understand, Herr Leutnant. A jealous, elderly
husband, nicht wahr?”
"T'es, yes. Where is the back entrance-exit, rather
- 2 case ..."
“To the left from your room, down the corridor,
stairs leading into the side street. Thank you, Herr
Leutnant !” as Tom planked down a ten-mark piece,
adding another for tip. "Shall I show you the way?"
"Never mind,” replied the American, walking up an
uncarpeted, dusty flight of stairs to the room.


326 : THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
There he gave Bertha another string of whispered
instructions—and his leather bag.
“I'll wait here,” he said.
“But-my hair? I got some manicure scissors in
my hand-bag. I'll cut it off !”
"Don't you dare. If you do I'll never propose to
you again-except, perhaps, three times. You pile
that mane of yours up as high as you can. The rest'll
be O. K. They'll think you some little shrimp of an
Ensign just gazetted.”
“Tom!” she exclaimed indignantly, but he pushed
her inside the room and waited in the corridor.
A few minutes later she came to him, looking for
all the world what Tom had said she would, like a
pitifully young Cadet just commissioned, because of
the stress of war. She had put on the extra regimen-
tals which Tom had taken along, and the silver-gray
cape hid her from her neck to her feet, completely cov-
ering her dress. Her tiny shoes were drowning in
Tom's riding-boots, the uhlanka was tilted at a rakish,
perilous angle across her smooth forehead.
"Hullo, Puss in Boots !” laughed Tom; then,
gravely: “Be careful. Don't swing your feet or those
fool boots'll drop off. Here, take my arm!” leading
her down the back stairs and into the side street which,
luckily, was pitch black and deserted.
Luck continued with them. They met few people,
and these mostly frightened, nervous Lorraine civil-
ians, torn between fear of their German masters and
the undying hope that soon again the gay soldiers of
France would come marching and singing across the
frontier. Due west they proceeded, as Vyvyan had
told Tom, within sight of the fortifications, where they
were stopped by an armed sentry.


THE BLUFF
327
Tom pulled out his regimental papers and waved
them beneath the soldier's snub nose.
“Was fällt Ihnen denn ein?” he snarled in his best,
most explosive German. "Here-look at the seal.
Look at His All-Gracious Majesty's signature, you
mutton head! Off with you! Rechts um! Kehrt!”
And the sentry was so flustered that he forgot com-
pletely to ask for the password.
The whole scene was typical of the entire German
system. Not only of the exaggerated discipline, ac-
companied by brutalities, which frightens what little
original common sense they may be blessed with out
of the heads of the privates, but also illustrative of
another fact. For the Germans were so pleased with
their own spies, many of them fearless, daring men,
and with the results obtained that, through sheer, con-
temptuous, sneering cocksureness, they frequently
overlooked the possibility that the Allied nations, too,
might have clever Secret Service men in their employ.
Later, this was changed. Later, came the spy hunts
from one end of Germany to the other, came acid skin
tests on the frontier.
But this was the second day of war. The machine
was still too cocksure, as said above, too stiff, too
creaking, and Tom, side by side with Bertha, tripping
in her enormous cavalry boots, stepped away from the
sentry «nd out into the night.
Th y reached the Hohenzollernwarte a few minutes
latri. Vyvyan was there, peering into the dark, and
he yet darker shadow of a clump of beech trees
om saw the dim outline of a rakish, low-slung racing
car.
The Englishman laughed when he saw Bertha.
“My word,” he said, “you're the best-looking little


THE BLUFF
329
oo meet the shis right.miesed. The Othey deploy Amer-
Just as the mounted man was closing in, as his lance
was about to come down on the occupants of the car,
the Westerner had ducked, swerved to the right,
jumped from the ground like a cat, and caught the
frenzied, galloping horse around the neck. He swung
himself up. The double weight acted on the horse like
a brake. The Uhlan cursed. But his long lance was
useless in a body-to-body fight, and before he could
reach into his boot for his carbine, Tom had drawn his
revolver and shot him through the head.
The man fell sideways out of the saddle and to the
ground, twirling grotesquely, and, in the twinkling of
the moment, Tom tore the lance from the dying man's
grasp, shifted it to his left hand, let the reins drop
loose, relying on the pressure of his knees, and turned
to meet the shock of the Colonel and the other private,
revolver in his right.
He shot once, and missed. The others, trained cav-
alrymen, changed their tactics. They deployed to
right and left, shooting as they galloped past the Amer-
ican, one bullet going clear through Tom's uhlanka-
he felt it singeing his hair—the other missing him by
an inch.
They brought their horses to a stop, turned, and
again deployed right and left. But this time Tom was
ready for them. He remembered his old training.
His former craft came back to him: the craft of the
round-up!
As they came on, this time drawing in a little closer
to either side so as to make more sure of their aim,
very suddenly he turned his horse, swerved in the sad-
dle, and bent low. His left hand, armed with the
lance, shot out. It caught the Colonel in the throat,
killing him instantly, while the revolver in his right


THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
· spoke twice, each shot hitting the mark. The private
fell out of the saddle, onto the ground. He lay there,
curled up, like a sleeping dog.
It was then, with the three men dead at his hands,
that a great, sad reaction came upon the American.
It was War! Now, for the first time, he completely
realized the grim tragedy of it. The killing of men!
The spilling of blood!
His lips worked. He felt nausea rising in his throat.
But he controlled himself.
He turned his horse to the west. Over there lay
Verdun, and he knew the road, had studied it in War
College. There had been a special course.
Less familiar he was with the northern road that
dipped into the direct Verdun approach twenty miles
beyond: the Thionville road where the feint attack of
the Germans was meant to give the Metz army corps
a chance to catch the French defenders napping.
Well, he would have to trust Vyvyan to do that part.
Vyvyan and Bertha—they had the motor-car, while
he was a man on horseback ...
A man on horseback-once more! Like out West,
home, on the range! Riding through the night, with
the stars and the moon to guide him!
And he rode!
He rode as he had never ridden before!
bihe Germans was the French detuvyan to do


CHAPTER XLV
OVER THE BORDER
rhaps for theher battle that, of the French
THE Jaganath of war was moving its wheels,
sharply, pitilessly. On it rolled towards the frontier
(there was now none except a line of blood where men
had died) and crossing it near Gravelotte, pausing
perhaps for the breathless fraction of a second to pon-
der on that other battle that, there, forty-four years
earlier, had seen the flower of the French cavalry
slaughtered by the overwhelming cannons of the Teu-
ton invader.
Tom rode in the wake of the scouting parties, guided
by the stars—“just like back home," he thought, "when
I used to go after rimmed cattle."
The ground was uneven, broken by clumps of trees,
then, beyond Gravelotte, rising in layer upon layer of
ragged rock, again dipping into valleys and bottom
farms that had been deserted by the peasants.
"Sorry, old girl,” he said to the mare, as he spurred
her down a sharp hillside, “don't mean to hurt your
feelings, but you got to do it! Wow there!”—and,
forcing the horse to squat on its hind quarters like a
dog, he made it slide through the loose sand and gravel
in a sitting posture, pulling the mare sharply to her feet
and jerking her to a gallop, without waiting for breath,
as soon as level ground was reached again.
He grinned to himself. “Well,” he said in the gen-
eral direction of the evening star, "I've seen a lot of
331


OVER THE BORDER
333
to climb like a cat! Taking a fallen tree at a long,
lean jump! Swerving to escape the shock of a bat-
tery that came suddenly looking out of the dark !
Slipping down the gravel bank of a broad stream, spur-
ring the animal to breast the swirling water, till his
hands were raw with the pulling of the reins, his
knees numbed with the gripping of the saddle.
Suddenly he laughed.
A saddle! A silly, light, postage stamp saddle!
And he dismounted, he loosened the girth, he
chucked the saddle into a clump of bushes.
He patted the horse's glistening, sweat-studded neck.
"Now we'll do some real riding!” he said, and he
vaulted up, his legs dangling like an Indian's, his
flesh thrilling to the touch of the horse's flesh.
And he rode! On!
Faint from the distance, the direction of Verdun,
boomed a steady, dramatic roar, the big guns slashing
into the war game. A splotch of whirling white shell
stabbed the opaque black of the heavens. And on he
rode, at a short gallop, as, the hills coiling higher, the
ground became broken with splintering, treacherous
stones. He could not see them. He felt them.
Sensed them. He was bred to the free range, the
open.
As he drew nearer the supposed lines of the French,
the thought came to him that the French outposts
might not like his uniform, that they might shoot on
sight.
"Holy Moses !” he soliloquized. "Cheerful little
prospect. But,” he laughed grimly, “better to die by
a French bullet than be strangled to death by the
German Web! Git up there, old girl," as the mare
shied at a puddle glistening in the moonlight.
Another short rest. And again he sent the horse


334 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
to a long, stretching gallop, on and on and on!
The lines of an old poem came back to him. He
had been made by his father to learn it by heart.
Had hated it, as boys will. Yet had never forgot-
ten it.
Now here, in a foreign land, riding through the
night, away from the Germans, on to the French, the
truth of the poet's words struck him with an almost
physical blow:
"Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away."
“Twenty miles away,” murmured Tom. "But, by
Ginger, we'll make it. Git up there!"
As he rode on he met with no more German outposts
or marching columns, since the skeleton divisions that
were making the feint attack from Thionville had de-
ployed to the north while the Metz divisions that were
expected to smite the French lines in front of Verdun
with a sudden, massed, unexpected blow, were still far
in the rear.
Yet, occasionally, there was the sharp, thin flash and
staccato report of a rifle, hurriedly fired and immedi-
ately echoed by other flashes and reports, showing that
scouting parties of the opposing armies must have
come into contact with each other.
Once the terrible hysteria of overstrained nerves,
of overtaxed waiting and expectancy must have struck
one of the Metz brigades, for quite suddenly, from the
east one of their field batteries belched into action,
shooting at nothing in particular. A great gun gave





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