“That was what I asked.  It was a bear.  The men who had been logging in the camp two months back had left a keg of maple-syrup and a half barrel of flour, and the bear broke into both—­successively—­and alternately.  He probably thought he was in bear-heaven for a while, but it must have gotten irksome.  For his head was eighteen inches wide when they found him, white, with black touches.  They soaked him in the river two days, and sold his skin for twenty dollars.  ‘Pretty good for devil skin,’ Rafael said.”

The Frenchman stared at me a moment and then leaned back in his chair and shouted laughter.  The greedy bear’s finish had hit his funny-bone.  And the three others stopped talking and demanded the story told over, which I did, condensing.

“I like zat Hurong for my soldier,” Colonel Raffre stated heartily.  “Ze man what are not afraid of man or of devil—­zat is ze man to fight ze Boches.”  He was talking English now because Colonel Chichely was listening.  He went on.  “Zere is human devils—­oh, but plentee—­what we fight in France.  I haf not heard of ozzers.  But I believe well ze man who pull me out in sheet would be as your guide Rafael—­he also would crip up wiz his rifle on real devil out of hell.  But yes.  I haf not told you how my Indian soldier bring in prisoners—­no?”

We all agreed no, and put in a request.

“He brings zem in not one by one always—­not always.”  The colonel grinned.  He went on to tell this tale, which I shift into the vernacular from his laborious English.

It appears that he had discerned the aptitude of his Hurons for reconnaissance work.  If he needed information out of the dangerous country lying in front, if he needed a prisoner to question, these men were eager to go and get either, get anything.  The more hazardous the job the better, and for a long time they came out of it untouched.  In the group one man—­nicknamed by the poilus, his comrades—­Hirondelle—­the Swallow—­supposedly because of his lightness and swiftness, was easily chief.  He had a fault, however, his dislike to bring in prisoners alive.  Four times he had haled a German corpse before the colonel, seeming not rightly to understand that a dead enemy was useless for information.

“The Boches are good killing,” he had elucidated to his officer.  And finally:  “It is well, m’sieur, the colonel.  One failed to understand that the colonel prefers a live Boche to a dead one.  Me, I am otherwise.  It appears a pity to let live such vermin.  Has the colonel, by chance, heard the things these savages did in Belgium?  Yes?  But then—­Yet I will bring to m’sieur, the colonel, all there is to be desired of German prisoners alive—­en vie; fat ones; en masse.”

That night Hirondelle was sent out with four of his fellow Hurons to get, if possible, a prisoner.  Pretty soon he was separated from the others; all but himself returning empty-handed in a couple of hours.  No Germans seemed to be abroad.  But Hirondelle did not return.