The Forest of Swords | Page 4

and dangerous, where the Apache dwelled,
and by day in a fleeing city, with none to restrain, he might be no less
ruthless.
But John felt only friendliness for them all. He believed that common

danger would knit all Frenchmen together, and he nodded and smiled at
the watchers. More than one pretty Parisian, not of the upper classes,
smiled back at the American with the frank and open face.
Before he reached the Basilica a little rat of a young man stepped
before him and asked:
"Which way, Monsieur?"
He was three or four years older than John, wearing uncommonly tight
fitting clothes of blue, a red cap with a tassel, and he was about five
feet four inches tall. But small as he was he seemed to be made of steel,
and he stood, poised on his little feet, ready to spring like a leopard
when he chose.
The blue eyes of the tall American looked steadily into the black eyes
of the short Frenchman, and the black eyes looked back as steadily.
John was fast learning to read the hearts and minds of men through
their eyes, and what he saw in the dark depths pleased him. Here were
cunning and yet courage; impudence and yet truth; caprice and yet
honor. Apache or not, he decided to like him.
"I'm going up into the lantern of the Basilica," he said, "to see if I can
see the Germans, who are my enemies as well as yours."
"And will not Monsieur take me, too, and let me have look for look
with him through those glasses at the Germans, some of whom I'm
going to shoot?"
John smiled.
"If you're going out potting Germans," he said, "you'd better get
yourself into a uniform as soon as you can. They have no mercy on
franc tireurs."
"I'll chance that. But you'll take me with you into the dome?"
"What's your name?"

"Pierre Louis Bougainville."
"Bougainville! Bougainville! It sounds noble and also historical. I've
read of it, but I don't recall where."
The little Frenchman drew himself up, and his black eyes glittered.
"There is a legend among us that it was noble once," he said, "but we
don't know when. I feel within me the spirit to make it great again.
There was a time when the mighty Napoleon said that every soldier
carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack. Perhaps that time has come
again. And the great emperor was a little man like me."
John began to laugh and then he stopped suddenly. Pierre Louis
Bougainville, so small and so insignificant, was not looking at him. He
was looking over and beyond him, dreaming perhaps of a glittering
future. The funny little red cap with the tassel might shelter a great
brain. Respect took the place of the wish to laugh.
"Monsieur Bougainville," he said in his excellent French, "my name is
John Scott. I am from America, but I am serving in the allied
Franco-British army. My heart like yours beats for France."
"Then, Monsieur Jean, you and I are brothers," said the little man, his
eyes still gleaming. "It may be that we shall fight side by side in the
hour of victory. But you will take me into the lantern will you not?
Father Pelletier does not know, as you do, that I'm going to be a great
man, and he will not admit me."
"If I secure entrance you will, too. Come."
They reached side by side the Basilique de Sacré-Coeur, which crowns
the summit of the Butte Montmartre, and bought tickets from the porter,
whose calm the proximity of untold Germans did not disturb. John saw
the little Apache make the sign of the cross and bear himself with
dignity. In some curious way Bougainville impressed him once more
with a sense of power. Perhaps there was a spark of genius under the
red cap. He knew from his reading that there was no rule about genius.

It passed kings by, and chose the child of a peasant in a hovel.
"You're what they call an Apache, are you not?" he asked.
"Yes, Monsieur."
"Well, for the present, that is until you win a greater name, I'm going to
call you Geronimo."
"And why Zhay-ro-nee-mo, Monsieur?"
"Because that was the name of a great Apache chief. According to our
white standards he was not all that a man should be. He had perhaps a
certain insensibility to the sufferings of others, but in the Apache view
that was not a fault. He was wholly great to them."
"Very well then, Monsieur Scott, I shall be flattered to be called
Zhay-ro-nee-mo, until I win a name yet greater."
"Where is the Father Pelletier, the priest, who you said would bar your
way unless I came with