There must be a real philosophy in all proverbs.  "Every dog has his day" is a significant one. It surely was for Pitchouné. He had his day. It was a glorious one, a terrible one, a memorable one, and he played his little part in it. He awoke at the gray dawn, springing like a flash from the foot of Sabron's bed, where he lay asleep, in response to the sound of the reveille, and Sabron sprang up after him. 

 Pitchouné in a few moments was in the center of real disorder. All he knew was that he followed his master all day long. The dog's knowledge did not comprehend the fact that not only had the native village, of which his master spoke in his letter to Miss Redmond, been destroyed, but that Sabron's regiment itself was menaced by a concerted and concentrated attack from an entire tribe, led by a fanatic as hotminded and as fierce as the Mahdi of Sudanese history. 

 Pitchouné followed at the heels of his master's horse. No one paid any attention to him. Heaven knows why he was not trampled to death, but he was not. No one trod on him; no horse's hoof hit his little wiry form that managed in the midst of carnage and death to keep itself secure and his hide whole. He smelt the gunpowder, he smelt the smoke, sniffed at it, threw up his pretty head and barked, puffed and panted, yelped and tore about and followed. He was not conscious of anything but that Sabron was in motion; that Sabron, his beloved master, was in action of some kind or other and he, a soldier's dog, was in action, too. He howled at fierce dark faces, when he saw them. He snarled at the bullets that whistled around his ears and, laying his little ears back, he shook his black muzzle in the very grin of death. 

 Sabron's horse was shot under him, and then Pitchouné saw his master, sprang upon him, and his feelings were not hurt that no attention was paid him, that not even his name was called, and as Sabron struggled on, Pitchouné followed. It was his day; he was fighting the natives; he was part of a battle; he was a soldier's dog! Little by little the creatures and things around him grew fewer, the smoke cleared and rolled away, there were a few feet of freedom around him in which he stood and barked; then he was off again close to his master's heels and not too soon. He did not know the blow that struck Sabron, but he saw him fall, and then there came into his canine heart some knowledge of the importance of his day. He had raced himself weary. Every bone in his little body ached with fatigue. 

 Sabron lay his length on the bed of a dried-up river, one of those phantom-like 

 Prev. P 29/96 next