The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer, by
Percy Keese Fitzhugh
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Title: Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer
Author: Percy Keese Fitzhugh
Illustrator: R. Emmett Owen
Release Date: October 8, 2006 [EBook #19495]
Language: English
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[Illustration: TOM TURNED ON HIS SEARCHLIGHT AND SAW A GERMAN SOLDIER,
HATLESS AND COATLESS. Frontispiece (Page 8)]
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
BY PERCY K. FITZHUGH
AUTHOR OF
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT, TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP, TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER,
TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY R. EMMETT OWEN
PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK.
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Copyright, 1918, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface vii
I. For Service as Required 1
II. Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 8
III. The Old Compass 14
IV. The Old Familiar Faces 20
V. Getting Ready 25
VI. Over the Top 36
VII. A Shot 45
VIII. In the Woods 50
IX. The Mysterious Fugitive 57
X. The Jersey Snipe 62
XI. On Guard 68
XII. What's In a Name? 73
XIII. The Fountains of Destruction 79
XIV. Tom Uses His First Bullet 84
XV. The Gun Pit 89
XVI. Prisoners 97
XVII. Shades of Archibald Archer 105
XVIII. The Big Coup 111
XIX. Tom is Questioned 119
XX. The Major's Papers 127
XXI. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere 133
XXII. "Uncle Sam" 140
XXIII. Up a Tree 150
XXIV. "To Him That Overcometh" 156
XXV. "What You Have to Do--" 162
XXVI. A Surprise 169
XXVII. Smoke and Fire 175
XXVIII. "Made in Germany" 184
XXIX. "Now You See It, Now You Don't" 194
XXX. He Disappears 205
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PREFACE
It was good advice that Rudyard Kipling gave his "young British soldier"
in regard to the latter's rifle:
"She's human as you are--you treat her as sich
And she'll fight for the young British soldier."
Tommy Atkins' rifle was by no means the first inanimate or dumb thing to
prove human and to deserve human treatment. Animals of all sorts have
been given this quality. Jack London's dog, in _The Call of the Wild_,
has human interest. So has the immortal _Black Beauty_.
But we are not concerned with animals now. Kipling's ocean liner has
human interest--a soul. I need not tell you that a boat is human. Its
every erratic quality of crankiness, its veritable heroism under stress,
its temperament (if you like that word) makes it very human indeed. That
is why a man will often let his boat rot rather than sell it.
This is not true of all inanimate things. It depends. I have never heard
of a steam roller or a poison gas bomb being beloved by anybody. I
should not care to associate with a hand grenade. It is a matter of
taste; I dare say I could learn to love a British tank, but I could
never make a friend and confidante of a balloon. An aeroplane might
prove a good pal--we shall have to see.
Davy Crockett actually made a friend and confidante of his famous gun,
_Betsy_. And _Betsy_ is known in history. It is said that the gun crews
on armed liners have found this human quality in their guns, and many of
these have been given names--_Billy Sunday_, _Teddy Roosevelt_, etc.
I need not tell you that a camp-fire is human and that trees are human.
The pioneers of old, pressing into the dim wilderness, christened their
old flintlocks and talked to them as a man may talk to a man. The
woodsman's axe was "deare and greatly beloved," we are told.
The hard-pressed Indian warrior knelt in the forest and besought that
life-long comrade, his bow, not to desert or fail him. King Philip kept
in his quiver a favorite arrow which he never used because it had
earned retirement by saving his own life.
What Paul Revere may have said to his horse in that stirring midnight
ride we do not know. But may we not suppose that he urged his trusty
steed forward with resolute and inspiring words about the glorious
errand they were upon?
Perhaps the lonely ringer of the immortal bell up in the Old South
steeple muttered some urgent word of incentive to that iron clanger as
it beat against its ringing wall of brass.
So I have made _Uncle Sam_, the motorcycle, the friend and companion of
_Tom Slade_. I have withheld none of their confidences--or trifling
differences. I dare say they were both weary and impatient at times.
If he is not companionable to you, then so much the worse for you and
for our story. But he was the friend, the inseparable associate and
co-patriot of _Tom Slade, the Dispatch Rider_.
You will not like him any the less because of the noise he made in
trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire
wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin
can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound
with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you
are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had
better not read this book.
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
CHAPTER I
FOR SERVICE AS REQUIRED
Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road sped the dispatch-rider. Out
of the East he had come, where the battle line runs between blue
mountains and the country is quiet and peaceful, and the boys in khaki
long for action and think wistfully of Picardy and Flanders. He was a
lucky young fellow, this dispatch-rider, and all the boys had told him
so.
"We'll miss you, Thatchy," they had said.
And "Thatchy" had answered characteristically, "I'm sorry, too, kind of,
in a way."
His name was not Thatchy, but they had called him so because his thick
shock of light hair, which persisted in falling down over his forehead
and ears, had not a little the appearance of the thatched roofs on the
French peasant's cottages. He, with a loquacious young companion, had
blown into the Toul sector from no one seemed to know exactly where,
more than that he had originally been a ship's boy, had been in a German
prison camp, and had escaped through Alsace and reached the American
forces after a perilous journey.
Lately he had been running back and forth on his motorcycle between the
lines and points south in a region which had not been defiled by the
invader, but now he was going far into the West "for service as
required."
That was what the slip of paper from headquarters had said, and he did
not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they
would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood
of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that
undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War
Council at Versailles. But Thatchy did not mind that kind of talk.
West of Revigny, he crossed the old trench line, and came into the area
which the Blond Beast had crossed and devastated in the first year of
the war. Planks lay across the empty trenches and as he rode over first
the French and then the enemy ditches, he looked down and could see in
the moonlight some of the ghastly trophies of war. Somehow they affected
him more than had the fresher results of combat which he had seen even
in the quiet sector he had left.
Silently he sped along the thirty-mile stretch from Revigny to Châlons,
where a little group of French children pressed about him when he paused
for gasoline.
"Yankee!" they called, chattering at him and meddling with his machine.
"Le cheveu!" one brazen youngster shouted, running his hand through his
own hair by way of demonstrating Thatchy's most conspicuous
characteristic.
Thatchy poked him good-humoredly. "La route, est-belle bonne?" he asked.
The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing
at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of
explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and
Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.
"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take that one," he said more
to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word
_salient_ took a chance on _nose_ and jumped up and down in joyous
abandon, calling, "Bump le nez--le _salient_!" apparently in keen
appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.
He rode away with a clamoring chorus behind him and he heard one brazen
youngster boldly mimicking his manner of asking if the roads were good.
These children lived in tumble-down houses which were all but ruins, and
played in shell holes as if these cruel, ragged gaps in the earth had
been made by the kind Boche for their especial entertainment.
A mile or two west of Châlons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a
makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the
remnants of the former span.
On he sped, along the quiet, moonlit road, through the little village of
Thibie, past many a quaint old heavily-roofed brick cottage, over the
stream at Chaintrix and into Vertus, and along the straight, even
stretch of road for Montmirail. Not so long ago he might have gone from
Châlons in a bee-line from Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck
out like a huge snout now, as if it were sniffing in longing
anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it
and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting
from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons
passed by in the quiet night, moving southward. He knew now what it
meant to go into the West. One after another they passed in deathlike
stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the
moonlight. As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns
in the north. Many stretchers, borne by men afoot, followed the wagons
and he could hear the groans of those who tossed restlessly upon them.
"Look out for shell holes," he heard someone say. So there were
Americans in the fighting, he thought.
He ran along the edge of the hills now on the fifteen-mile stretch to
Meaux, where he intended to follow the road northward through Senlis and
across the old trenches near Clermont. He could hear the booming all the
while, but it seemed weary and spent, like a runner who has slackened
his pace and begun to pant.
At Meaux he crossed the path of another silent cavalcade of stretchers
and ambulances and wounded soldiers who were being supported as they
limped along. They spoke in French and one voice came out of an
ambulance, seeming hollow and far off, as though from a grave. Then came
a lot of German prisoners tramping along, some sullen and some with a
fine air of bravado sneering at their guards.
The rider knew where he was going and how to get there and he did not
venture any inquiries either as to his way or what had been going on.
Happenings in Flanders and Picardy are known in America before they are
known to the boys in Alsace. He knew there was fighting in the West and
that Fritz had poked a big bulge into the French line, for his superiors
had given him a road map with the bulge pencilled upon it so that he
might go around it and not bump his nose into it, as he had said. But he
had not expected to see such obvious signs of fighting and it made him
realize that at last he was getting into the war with a vengeance.
Instead of following the road leading northwest out of Meaux, he took
the one leading northeast up through Villers-Cotterets, intending to run
along the edge of the forest to Campiegne and then verge westward to
the billet villages northwest of Montdidier, where he was to report.
This route brought him within ten miles of the west arm of the salient,
but the way was quiet and there was no sign of the fighting as he rode
along in the woody solitude. It reminded him of his home far back in
America and of the woods where he and his scout companions had camped
and hiked and followed the peaceful pursuits of stalking and trailing.
He was thinking of home as he rode leisurely along the winding forest
road, when suddenly he was startled by a rustling sound among the trees.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in pursuance of his general instructions
for such an emergency, at the same time drawing his pistol. "Halt!"
He was the scout again now, keen, observant. But there was no answer to
his challenge and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits, peering into the
tree-studded solitude, waiting.
Then suddenly, close by him he heard that unmistakable sound, the
clanking of a chain, and accompanying it a voice saying, "Kamerad."
CHAPTER TWO
AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
Tom Slade, dispatch-rider, knew well enough what _kamerad_ meant. He had
learned at least that much of German warfare and German honor, even in
the quiet Toul sector. He knew that the German olive branch was
poisoned; that German treachery was a fine art--a part of the German
efficiency. Had not Private Coleburn, whom Tom knew well, listened to
that kindly uttered word and been stabbed with a Prussian bayonet in the
darkness of No Man's Land?
"Stand up," said Tom. "Nobody can talk to _me_ crouching down like
that."
"Ach!" said the voice in the unmistakable tone of pain. "Vot goot--see!"
Tom turned on his searchlight and saw crawling toward him a German
soldier, hatless and coatless, whose white face seemed all the more pale
and ghastly for the smear of blood upon it. He was quite without arms,
in proof of which he raised his open hands and slapped his sides and
hips. As he did so a long piece of heavy chain, which was manacled to
his wrist clanged and rattled.
"Ach!" he said, shaking his head as if in agony.
"Put your hands down. All right," said Tom. "Can you speak English?"
"Kamerad," he repeated and shrugged his shoulders as if that were
enough.
"You escape?" said Tom, trying to make himself understood. "How did you
get back of the French lines?"
"Shot broke--yach," the man said, his face lapsing again into a hopeless
expression of suffering.
"All right," said Tom, simply. "Comrade--I say it too. All right?"
The soldier's face showed unmistakable relief through his suffering.
"Let's see what's the matter," Tom said, though he knew the other only
vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the
light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which
was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his
suffering was the raw condition of his wrist where the manacle
encircled it and the heavy chain pulled. It seemed to Tom as if this
cruel sore might have been caused by the chain dragging behind him and
perhaps catching on the ground as he fled.
"The French didn't put that on?" he queried, rather puzzled.
The soldier shook his head. "Herr General," said he.
"Not the Americans?"
"Herr General--gun."
Then suddenly there flashed into Tom's mind something he had heard about
German artillerymen being chained to their guns. So that was it. And
some French gunner, or an American maybe, had unconsciously set this
poor wretch free by smashing his chain with a shell.
"You're in the French lines," Tom said. "Did you mean to come here?
You're a prisoner."
"Ach, diss iss petter," the man said, only half understanding.
"Yes, I guess it is," said Tom. "I'll bind your foot up and then I'll
take that chain off if I can and bind your wrist. Then we'll have to
find the nearest dressing station. I suppose you got lost in this
forest. I been in the German forest myself," he added; "it's
fine--better than this. I got to admit they've got fine lakes there."
Whether he said this by way of comforting the stranger--though he knew
the man understood but little of it--or just out of the blunt honesty
which refused to twist everything German into a thing of evil, it would
be hard to say. He had about him that quality of candor which could not
be shaken even by righteous enmity.
Tearing two strips from his shirt, he used the narrower one to make a
tourniquet, which he tied above the man's ankle.
"If you haven't got poison in it, it won't be so bad," he said. "Now
I'll take off that chain."
He raised his machine upon its rest so that the power wheel was free of
the ground. Then, to the wounded Boche's puzzled surprise, he removed
the tire and fumbling in his little tool kit he took out a piece of
emery cloth which he used for cleaning his plugs and platinum contact
points, and bent it over the edge of the rim, binding it to the spokes
with the length of insulated wire which he always carried. It was a
crude and makeshift contrivance at best, but at last he succeeded, by
dint of much bending and winding and tying of the pliable copper wire
among the spokes of the wheel, in fastening the emery cloth over the
fairly sharp rim so that it stayed in place when he started his power
and in about two revolutions it cut a piece of wire with which he tested
the power of his improvised mechanical file.
"Often I sharpened a jackknife that way on the fly-wheel of a motor
boat," he said. The Boche did not understand him, but he was quick to
see the possibilities of this whirling hacksaw and he seemed to
acknowledge, with as much grace as a German may, the Yankee ingenuity of
his liberator.
"Give me your wrist," said Tom, reaching for it; "I won't hurt it any
more than I have to; here--here's a good scheme."
He carefully stuffed his handkerchief around under the metal band which
encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to
receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch
again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding
it upon the edge of the concave tire bed.
If the emery cloth had extended all the way around the wheel he could
have taken the manacle off in less time than it had taken Kaiser Bill to
lock it on, for the contrivance rivalled a buzzsaw. As it was, he had
to stop every minute or two to rearrange the worn emery cloth and bind
it in place anew. But for all that he succeeded in less than fifteen
minutes in working a furrow almost through the metal band so that a
little careful manipulating and squeezing and pressing of it enabled him
to break it and force it open.
"There you are," he said, removing the handkerchief so as to get a
better look at the cruel sore beneath; "didn't hurt much, did it? That's
what Uncle Sam's trying to do for all the rest of you fellers--only you
haven't got sense enough to know it."
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD COMPASS
Tom took the limping Boche, his first war prisoner, to the Red Cross
station at Vivieres where they had knives and scissors and bandages and
antiseptics, but nothing with which to remove Prussian manacles, and all
the king's horses and all the king's men and the willing, kindly nurses
there could have done little for the poor Boche if Tom Slade, alias
Thatchy, had not administered his own particular kind of first aid.
The French doctors sent him forth with unstinted praise which he only
half understood, and as he sped along the road for Compiegne he wondered
who could have been the allied gunner who at long range had cut Fritzie
loose from the piece of artillery to which he had been chained.
"That feller and I did a good job anyway," he thought.
At Compiegne the whole town was in a ferment as he passed through.
Hundreds of refugees with mule carts and wheelbarrows laden with their
household goods, were leaving the town in anticipation of the German
advance. They made a mournful procession as they passed out of the town
along the south road with babies crying and children clamoring about the
clumsy, overladen vehicles. He saw many boys in khaki here and there and
it cheered and inspired him to know that his country was represented in
the fighting. He had to pause in the street to let a company of them
pass by on their way northward to the trench line and it did his heart
good to hear their cheery laughter and typical American banter.
"Got any cigarettes, kiddo?" one called.
"Where you going--north?" asked another.
"To the billets west of Montdidier," Tom answered. "I'm for new service.
I came from Toul sector."
"Good-_night_! That's Sleepy Hollow over there."
From Compiegne he followed the road across the Aronde and up through
Mery and Tricot into Le Cardonnois. The roads were full of Americans and
as he passed a little company of them he called,
"How far is ----?" naming the village of his destination.
"About two miles," one of them answered; "straight north."
"Tell 'em to give 'em Hell," another called.
This laconic utterance was the first intimation which Tom had that
anything special was brewing in the neighborhood, and he answered with
characteristic literalness, "All right, I will."
The road northward from Le Cardonnois was through a hilly country, where
there were few houses. About half a mile farther on he reached the
junction of another road which appeared also to lead northward, verging
slightly in an easterly direction. He had made so many turns that he was
a little puzzled as to which was the true north road, so he stopped and
took out the trusty little compass which he always carried, and held it
in the glare of his headlight, thinking to verify his course.
Undoubtedly the westward road was the one leading to his destination for
as he walked a little way along the other road he found that it bent
still more to the eastward and he believed that it must reach the French
front after another mile or two.
As he looked again at the cheap, tin-encased compass he smiled a little
ruefully, for it reminded him of Archibald Archer, with whom he had
escaped from the prison camp in Germany and made his perilous flight
through the Black Forest into Switzerland and to the American forces
near Toul.
Archibald Archer! Where, in all that war-scourged country, was Archibald
Archer now, Tom wondered. No doubt, chatting familiarly with generals
and field marshals somewhere, in blithe disregard of dignity and
authority; for he was a brazen youngster and an indefatigable souvenir
hunter.
So vivid were Tom's thoughts of Archer that, being off his machine, he
sat down by the roadside to eat the rations which his anxiety to reach
his destination had deterred him from eating before.
"That's just like him," he thought, holding the compass out so that it
caught the subdued rays of his dimmed headlight; "always marking things
up, or whittling his initials or looking for souvenirs."
The particular specimen of Archer's handiwork which opened this train of
reminiscence was part and parcel of the mischievous habit which
apparently had begun very early in his career, when he renovated the
habiliments of the heroes and statesmen in his school geography by
pencilling high hats and sunbonnets on their honored heads and giving
them flowing moustaches and frock coats.
In the prison camp from which they had escaped he had carved his
initials on fence and shack, but his masterpiece was the conversion of
the N on this same glassless compass into a very presentable S (though
turned sideways) and the S into a very presentable N.
The occasion of his doing this was a singular experience the two boys
had had in their flight through Germany when, after being carried across
a lake on a floating island while asleep, they had swum back and
retraced their steps northward supposing that they were still going
south.
"Either we're wrong or the compass is wrong, Slady," the bewildered
Archer had said, and he had forthwith altered the compass points before
they discovered the explanation of their singular experience.
After reaching the American forces Archer had gone forth to more
adventures and new glories in the transportation department, the line of
his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him
no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom,
whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's
sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too,
though he had to be careful always to remember that it was the "wrong
way round."
"He'll turn up like a bad penny some day," he thought now, smiling a
little. "He said he'd bring me the clock from a Paris cathedral for a
souvenir, and he'd change the twelve to twenty-two on it."
He remembered that he had asked Archer _what_ cathedral in Paris, and
Archer had answered, "The Cathedral de la Plaster of Paris."
"He's a sketch," thought Tom.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES
"That's the way it is," thought Tom, "you get to know fellers and like
'em, and then you get separated and you don't see 'em any more."
Perhaps he was the least bit homesick, coming into this new sector where
all were strangers to him. In any event, as he sat there finishing his
meal he fell to thinking of the past and of the "fellers" he had known.
He had known a good many for despite his soberness there was something
about him which people liked. Most of his friends had taken delight in
jollying him and he was one of those boys who are always being nicknamed
wherever they go. Over in the Toul sector they "joshed" and "kidded" him
from morning till night but woe be to you if you had sought to harm him!
He had been sorry, in a way, to leave the Toul sector, just as he had
been sorry to leave Bridgeboro when he got his first job on a ship.
"That's one thing fellers can't understand," he thought, "how you can be
sorry about a thing and glad too. Girls understand better--I'll say that
much for 'em, even though I--even though they never had much use for
me----"
He fell to thinking of the scout troop of which he had been a member
away back in America, of Mr. Ellsworth, the scoutmaster, who had lifted
him out of the gutter, and of Roy Blakeley who was always fooling, and
Peewee Harris. Peewee must be quite a boy by now--not a tenderfootlet
any more, as Roy had called him.
And then there was Rossie Bent who worked in the bank and who had run
away the night before Registration Day, hoping to escape military
service. Tom fell to thinking of him and of how he had traced him up to
a lonely mountain top and made him go back and register just in time to
escape disgrace and punishment.
"He thought he was a coward till he got the uniform on," he thought.
"That's what makes the difference. I bet he's one of the bravest
soldiers over here now. Funny if I should meet him. I always liked him
anyway, even when people said he was conceited. Maybe he had a right to
be. If girls liked me as much as they did him maybe _I'd_ be conceited.
Anyway, I'd like to see him again, that's one sure thing."
When he had finished his meal he felt of his tires, gave his grease cup
a turn, mounted his machine and was off to the north for whatever
awaited him there, whether it be death or glory or just hard work; and
to new friends whom he would meet and part with, who doubtless would
"josh" him and make fun of his hair and tell him extravagant yarns and
belittle and discredit his soberly and simply told "adventures," and yet
who would like him nevertheless.
"That's the funny thing about some fellers," he thought, "you never can
tell whether they like you or not. Rossie used to say girls were hard to
understand, but, gee, I think fellers are harder!"
Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road he sped, the dispatch-rider
who had come from the blue hills of Alsace across the war-scorched area
into the din and fire and stenching suffocation and red-running streams
of Picardy "for service as required." Two miles behind the straining
line he rode and parallel with it, straight northward, keeping his keen,
steady eyes fixed upon the road for shell holes. Over to the east he
could hear the thundering boom of artillery and once the air just above
him seemed to buzz as if some mammoth wasp had passed. But he rode
steadily, easily, without a tremor.
When he dismounted in front of headquarters at the little village of his
destination his stolid face was grimy from his long ride and the dust of
the blue Alsatian mountains mingled with the dust of devastated France
upon his khaki uniform (which was proper and fitting) and his rebellious
hair was streaky and matted and sprawled down over his frowning
forehead.
A little group of soldiers gathered about him after he had given his
paper to the commanding officer, for he had come a long way and they
knew the nature of his present service if he did not. They watched him
rather curiously, for it was not customary to bring a dispatch-rider
from such a distance when there were others available in the
neighborhood. He was the second sensation of that memorable night, for
scarcely two hours before General Pershing himself had arrived and he
was at that very minute in conference with other officers in the little
red brick cottage. Even as the group of soldiers clustered about the
rider, officers hurried in and out with maps, and one young fellow, an
aviator apparently, suddenly emerged and hurried away.
"What's going to be doing?" Tom asked, taking notice of all these
activities and speaking in his dull way.
Evidently the boys had already taken his measure and formulated their
policy, for one answered,
"Peace has been declared and they're trying to decide whether we'd
better take Berlin or have it sent C.O.D."
"A soldier I met a couple of miles back," said Tom, "told me to tell you
to give 'em Hell."
It was characteristic of him that although he never used profanity he
delivered the soldier's message exactly as it had been given him.
CHAPTER FIVE
GETTING READY
Tom wheeled his machine over to a long brick cottage which stood flush
with the road and attended to it with the same care and affection as a
man might show a favorite horse. Then he sat down with several others on
a long stone bench and waited.
There was something in the very air which told him that important
matters were impending and though he believed that they had not expected
him to arrive just at this time he wondered whether he might not be
utilized now that he was here. So he sat quietly where he was, observant
of everything, but asking no questions.
There was a continuous stream of officers entering and emerging from the
headquarters opposite and twice within half an hour companies of
soldiers were brought into formation and passed silently away along the
dark road.
"You'll be in Germany in a couple of hours," called a private sitting
alongside Tom as some of them passed.
"Cantigny isn't Germany," another said.
"Sure it is," retorted a third; "all the land they hold is German soil.
Call us up when you get a chance," he added in a louder tone to the
receding ranks.
"Is Cantigny near here?" Tom asked.
"Just across the ditches."
"Are we going to try to take it?"
"_Try_ to? We're going to wrap it up and bring it home."
Tom was going to ask the soldier if he thought there would be any chance
for _him_, though he knew well enough that his business was behind the
lines and that the most he could hope for was to carry the good news (if
such it proved to be) still farther back, away from the fighting.
"This is going to be the first offensive of your old Uncle Samuel and if
we don't get the whole front page in the New York papers we'll be
peeved," Tom's neighbor condescended to inform him.
Whatever Uncle Samuel was up to he was certainly very busy about it and
very quiet. On the little village green which the cottage faced groups
of officers talked earnestly.
An enormous spool on wheels, which in the darkness seemed a mile high,
was rolled silently from somewhere or other, the wheels staked and bound
to the ground, and braces were erected against it. Very little sound was
made and there were no lights save in the houses, which seemed all to be
swarming with soldiers. Not a civilian was to be seen. Several soldiers
walked away from the big wheel and it moved around slowly like one of
those gigantic passenger-carrying wheels in an amusement resort.
Presently some one remarked that Collie was in and there was a hurrying
away--toward the rear of the village, as it seemed to Tom.
"Who's Collie?" he ventured to ask.
"Collie? Oh, he's the Stormy Petrel; he's been piking around over the
Fritzies' heads, I s'pose."
Evidently Collie, or the Stormy Petrel, was an aviator who had alighted
somewhere about the village with some sort of a report.
"Collie can't see in the daylight," his neighbor added; "he and the
Jersey Snipe have got Fritzie vexed. You going to run between here and
the coast?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do," said Tom. "I don't suppose I'll go
over the top, I'd like to go to Cantigny."
"Never mind, they'll bring it back to you. Did you know the old gent is
here?"
"Pershing?"
"Yup. Going to run the show himself."
"Are you going?"
"Not as far as I know. I was in the orchestra--front row--last week. Got
a touch of trench fever."
"D'you mean the front line trenches?" Tom asked.
"Yup. Oh, look at Bricky!" he added suddenly. "You carrying wire,
Bricky? There's a target for a sniper for you--hair as red as----"
"Just stick around at the other end of it," interrupted "Bricky" as he
passed, "and listen to what you hear."
"Here come the tanks," said Tom's neighbor, "and there's the Jersey
Snipe perched on the one over at the other end. Good-_night_, Fritzie!"
The whole scene reminded Tom vaguely of the hasty, quiet picking up and
departure of the circus in the night which, as a little boy, he had sat
up to watch. There were the tanks, half a dozen of them (and he knew
there were more elsewhere), covered with soldiers and waiting in the
darkness like elephants. Troops were constantly departing, for the front
trenches he supposed.
Though he had never yet been before the lines, his experience as a rider
and his close touch with the fighting men had given him a pretty good
military sense in the matter of geography--that is, he understood now
without being told the geographical relation of one place to another in
the immediate neighborhood. Dispatch-riders acquire this sort of extra
sense very quickly and they come to have a knowledge of the lay of the
land infinitely more accurate than that of the average private soldier.
Tom knew that this village, which was now the scene of hurried
preparation and mysterious comings and goings, was directly behind the
trench area. He knew that somewhere back of the village was the
artillery, and he believed that the village of Cantigny stood in the
same relation to the German trenches that this billet village stood to
the Allied trenches; that is, that it was just behind the German lines
and that the German artillery was still farther back. He had heard
enough talk about trench warfare to know how the Americans intended to
conduct this operation.
But he had never seen an offensive in preparation, either large or
small, for there had been no American offensives--only raids, and of
course he had not participated in these. It seemed to him that now, at
last, he was drawn to the very threshold of active warfare only to be
compelled to sit silent and gaze upon a scene every detail of which
aroused his longing for action. The hurried consultation of officers,
the rapid falling in line in the darkness, the clear brisk words of
command, the quick mechanical response, the departure of one group after
another, the thought of that aviator alighting behind the village, the
sight of the great, ugly tanks and the big spool aroused his patriotism
and his craving for adventure as nothing else had in all the months of
his service. He was nearer to the trenches than ever before.
"If you're riding to Clermont," he heard a soldier say, apparently to
him, "you'd better take the south road; turn out when you get to Airian.
The other's full of shell holes from the old trench line."
"Best way is to go down through Estrees and follow the road back across
the old trench line," said another.
Tom listened absently. He knew he could find the best way, that was his
business, but he did not want to go to Clermont. It seemed to him that
he was always going away from the war while others were going toward it.
While these boys were rushing forward he would be rushing backward. That
was always the way.
"There's a lot of skeletons in those old trenches. You can follow the
ditches almost down to Paris."
"They won't send him farther than Creil," another said. "The wires are
up all the way from Creil down."
"You never can tell whether they'll stay up or not--not with this
seventy-five mile bean-shooter Fritzie's playing with. Ever been to
Paris, kid?"
"No, but I s'pose I'll be sent there now--maybe," Tom answered.
"They'll keep you moving up this way, all right. You were picked for
this sector--d'you know that?"
"I don't know why."
"Don't get rattled easy--that's what I heard."
This was gratifying if it was true. Tom had not known why he had been
sent so far and he had wondered.
Presently a Signal Corps captain came out of Headquarters, spoke briefly
with two officers who were near the big wire spool, and then turned
toward the bench on which Tom was sitting. His neighbors arose and
saluted and he did the same.
"Never been under fire, I suppose?" said the captain, addressing Tom to
his great surprise.
"Not before the lines, I haven't. The machine I had before this one was
knocked all out of shape by a shell. I was riding from Toul to----"
"All right," interrupted the captain somewhat impatiently. Tom was used
to being interrupted in the midst of his sometimes rambling answers. He
could never learn the good military rule of being brief and explicit.
"How do you feel about going over the top? You don't have to."
"It's just what I was thinking about," said Tom eagerly. "If you'd be
willing, I'd like to."
"Of course you'd be under fire. Care to volunteer? Emergency work."
"Often I wished----"
"Care to volunteer?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"All right; go inside and get some sleep. They'll wake you up in about
an hour. Machine in good shape?"
This was nothing less than an insult. "I always keep it in good shape,"
said Tom. "I got extra----"
"All right. Go in and get some sleep; you haven't got long. The wire
boys will take care of you."
He strode away and began to talk hurriedly with another man who showed
him some papers and Tom watched him as one in a trance.
"Now you're in for it, kiddo," he heard some one say.
"R. I. P. for yours," volunteered another.
Tom knew well enough what R. I. P. meant. Often in his lonely night
rides through the towns close to the fighting he had seen it on row
after row of rough, carved wooden crosses.
"There won't be much _resting in peace_ to-night. How about it, Toul
sector?"
"I didn't feel very sleepy, anyway," said Tom.
He slept upon one of the makeshift straw bunks on the stone floor of the
cellar under the cottage. With the first streak of dawn he arose and
went quietly out and sat on a powder keg under a small window, tore
several pages out of his pocket blank-book and using his knee for a
desk, wrote:
"DEAR MARGARET:
"Maybe you'll be surprised, kind of, to get a letter from me. And
maybe you won't like me calling you Margaret. I told Roy to show
you my letters, cause I knew he'd be going into Temple Camp
office on account of the troop getting ready to go to Camp and I
knew he'd see you. I'd like to be going up to camp with them, and
I'd kind of like to be back in the office, too. I remember how I
used to be scared of you and you said you must be worse than the
Germans 'cause I wasn't afraid of them. I hope you're working
there yet and I'd like to see Mr. Burton, too.
"I was going to write to Roy but I decided I'd send a letter to
you because whenever something is going to happen the fellows
write letters home and leave them to be mailed in case they don't
get back. So if you get this you'll know I'm killed. Most of them
write to girls or their mothers, and as long as I haven't got any
mother I thought I'd write to you. Because maybe you'd like to
hear I'm killed more than anybody. I mean maybe you'd be more
interested.
"I'm going to go over the top with this regiment. I got sent way
over to this sector for special service. A fellow told me he
heard it was because I got a level head. I can't tell you where I
am, but this morning we're going to take a town. I didn't have to
go, 'cause I'm a non-com., but I volunteered. I don't know what
I'll have to do.
"I ain't exactly scared, but it kind of makes me think about home
and all like that. I often wished I'd meet Roscoe Bent over here.
Maybe he wrote to you. I bet everybody likes him wherever he is
over here. It's funny how I got to thinking about you last night.
I'll--there goes the bugle, so I can't write any more. Anyway,
you won't get it unless I'm killed. Maybe you won't like my
writing, but every fellow writes to a girl the last thing. It
seems kind of lonely if you can't write to a girl.
"Your friend,
"TOM SLADE."
CHAPTER SIX
OVER THE TOP
The first haze of dawn was not dispelled when the artillery began to
thunder and Tom knew that the big job was on. Stolid as he was and used
to the roar of the great guns, he made hasty work of his breakfast for
he was nervous and anxious to be on the move.
Most of the troops that were to go seemed to have gone already. He
joined the two signal corps men, one of whom carried the wire and the
other a telephone apparatus, and as they moved along the road other
signal corps men picked up the wire behind them at intervals, carrying
it along.
Tom was as proud of his machine as a general could be of his horse, and
he wheeled it along beside him, keeping pace with the slow advance of
his companions, his heart beating high.
"If you have to come back with any message, you'll remember
Headquarters, won't you?" one asked him.
"I always remember Headquarters," said Tom.
"And don't get rattled."
"I never get rattled."
"Watch the roads carefully as we go, so you can get back all right.
Noise don't bother you?"
"No, I'm used to artillery--I mean the noise," said Tom.
"You probably won't have much to do unless in an emergency. If Fritzie
cuts the wire or it should get tangled and we couldn't reach the airmen
quick enough you'd have to beat it back. There's two roads out of
Cantigny. Remember to take the south one. We're attacking on a mile
front. If you took----"
"If I have to come back," said Tom, "I'll come the same way. You needn't
worry."
His advisor felt sufficiently squelched. And indeed, he had no cause to
worry. The Powers that Be had sent Thatchy into the West where the
battle line was changing every day and roads were being made and
destroyed and given new directions; where the highway which took one to
Headquarters one day led into the lair of the Hun on the next, and all
the land was topsy-turvy and changing like the designs in a
kaleidoscope--for the very good reason that Thatchy invariably reached
his destination and could be depended upon to come back, through all the
chaos, as a cat returns to her home. The prison camps in Germany were
not without Allied dispatch-riders who had become "rattled" and had
blundered into the enemy's arms, but Thatchy had a kind of uncanny extra
sense, a bump of locality, if you will, and that is why they had sent
him into this geographical tangle where maps became out of date as fast
as they were made.
The sun was not yet up when they reached a wider road running crossways
to the one out of the village and here many troops were waiting as far
up and down the road as Tom could see. A narrow ditch led away from the
opposite side of the road through the fields beyond, and looking up and
down the road he could see that there were other ditches like it.
The tanks were already lumbering and waddling across the fields, for all
the world like great clumsy mud turtles, with soldiers perched upon them
as if they were having a straw ride. Before Tom and his companions
entered the nearest ditch he could see crowds of soldiers disappearing
into other ditches far up the road.
[Illustration: SHOWING WHERE THE AMERICANS WERE BILLETED: CANTIGNY,
WHICH THEY CAPTURED AND THE ROUTE TAKEN BY TOM AND THE CARRIERS. ARROWS
SHOW THE AREA OF ATTACK.]
The fields above them were covered with shell holes, a little cemetery
flanked one side of the zigzag way, and the big dugouts of the reserves
were everywhere in this backyard of the trench area. Out of narrow,
crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which
the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead of them.
"We'll get into the road after the boys go over and then you'll have
more room for your machine. Close quarters, hey?" Tom's nearest
companion said.
When they reached the second-line trench the boys were leaving it, by
hundreds as it seemed to Tom, and crowding through the crooked
communication trenches. The wire carriers followed on, holding up the
wire at intervals. Once when Tom peeped over the edge of the
communication trench he saw the tanks waddling along to right and left,
rearing up and bowing as they crossed the trench, like clumsy, trained
hippopotamuses. And all the while the artillery was booming with
continuous, deafening roar.
Tom did not see the first of the boys to go over the top for they were
over by the time he reached the second-line trench, but as he passed
along the fire trench toward the road he could see them crowding over,
and when he reached the road the barbed wire entanglements lay flat in
many places, the boys picking their way across the fallen meshes, the
clumsy tanks waddling on ahead, across No Man's Land. As far as Tom
could see along the line in either direction this shell-torn area was
being crossed by hundreds of boys in khaki holding fixed bayonets, some
going ahead of the tanks and some perching on them.
Above him the whole district seemed to be in pandemonium, men shouting
and their voices drowned by the thunder of artillery.
His first real sight of the attack was when he clambered out of the
trench where it crossed the road and faced the flattened meshes of
barbed wire with its splintered supporting poles all tangled in it.
Never was there such a wreck.
"All right," he shouted down. "It's as flat as a pancake--careful with
the machine--lift the back wheel--that's right!"
He could hardly hear his own voice for the noise, and the very earth
seemed to shake under the heavy barrage fire which protected them. In
one sweeping, hasty glance he saw scores of figures in khaki running
like mad and disappearing into the enemy trenches beyond.
"Do you mean to let the wire rest on this?" he asked, as his machine was
lifted up and the first of the wire carriers came scrambling up after
it; "it might get short-circuited."
"We'll run it over the poles, only hurry," the men answered.
They were evidently the very last of the advancing force, and even as
Tom looked across the shell-torn area of No Man's Land, he could see the
men picking their way over the flattened entanglements and pouring into
the enemy trenches. The tanks had already crossed these and were rearing
and waddling along, irresistible yet ridiculous, like so many heroic mud
turtles going forth to glory. Here and there Tom could see the gray-clad
form of a German clambering out of the trenches and rushing pell-mell to
the rear.
But it was no time to stand and look. Hurriedly they disentangled a
couple of the supporting poles, laying them so that the telephone wire
passed over them free of the barbed meshes and Tom, mounting his
machine, started at top speed along the road across No Man's Land,
dragging the wire after him. Scarcely had he started when he heard that
wasplike whizzing close to him--once, twice, and then a sharp metallic
sound as a bullet hit some part of his machine. He looked back to see
if the wire carriers were following, but there was not a sign of any of
them except his companion who carried the apparatus, and just as Tom
looked this man twirled around like a top, staggered, and fell.
The last of the Americans were picking their way across the tangle of
fallen wire before the German fire trench. He could see them now and
again amid dense clouds of smoke as they scrambled over the enemy
sandbags and disappeared.
On he sped at top speed, not daring to look around again. He could feel
that the wire was dragging and he wondered where its supporters could
be; but he opened his cut-out to get every last bit of power and sped on
with the accumulating train of wire becoming a dead weight behind him.
Now, far ahead, he could see gray-coated figures scrambling frantically
out of the first line trench, and he thought that the Americans must
have carried the attack successfully that far, in any event. Again came
that whizzing sound close to him, and still again a sharp metallic ring
as another bullet struck his machine. For a moment he feared least a
tire had been punctured, but when neither collapsed he took fresh
courage and sped on.
The drag on the wire was lessening the speed of his machine now and
jerking dangerously at intervals. But he thought of what one of those
soldiers had said banteringly to another--_Stick around at the other end
of it and listen to what you hear_, and he was resolved that if limited
horse power and unlimited will power could get this wire to those brave
boys who were surging and battling in the trenches ahead of him, could
drag it to them wherever they went, for the glorious message they
intended to send back across it, it should be done.
There was not another soul visible on that road now nor in the
shell-torn area of No Man's Land through which it ran. But the lone
rider forged ahead, zig-zagging his course to escape the bullets of that
unseen sharpshooter and because it seemed to free the dragging, catching
wire, affording him little spurts of unobstructed speed.
Then suddenly the wire caught fast, and his machine stopped and strained
like a restive horse, the power wheel racing furiously. Hurriedly he
looked behind him where the sinuous wire lay along the road, far
back--as far as he could see, across the trampled entanglements and
trenches. Where were the others who were to help carry it over? Killed?
Alone in the open area of No Man's Land, Tom Slade paused for an instant
to think. What should he do?
Suddenly there appeared out of a shell hole not twenty feet ahead of him
a helmeted figure. It rose up grimly, uncannily, like a dragon out of
the sea, and levelled a rifle straight at him. So that was the lair of
the sharpshooter!
Tom was not afraid. He knew that he had been facing death and he was not
afraid of what he had been facing. He knew that the sharpshooter had him
at last. Neither he nor the wire were going to bear any message back.
"Anyway, I'm glad I wrote that letter," he muttered.
[Illustration: TOM WAS SURPRISED TO FIND HIMSELF UNINJURED, WHILE THE
BOCHE COLLAPSED INTO HIS SHELL HOLE.]
CHAPTER SEVEN
A SHOT
Then, clear and crisp against the sound of the great guns far off, there
was the sharp crack of a rifle and Tom was surprised to find himself
still standing by his machine uninjured, while the Boche collapsed back
into his shell hole like a jack-in-the-box.
He did not pause to think now. Leaving his machine, he rushed pell-mell
back to the barbed wire entanglement where the line was caught,
disengaged it and ran forward again to his wheel. Shells were bursting
all about him, but as he mounted he could see two figures emerge, one
after the other, from the American trench where it crossed the road, and
take up the burden of wire. He could feel the relief as he mounted and
rode forward and it lightened his heart as well as his load. What had
happened to delay the carriers he did not know. Perhaps those who
followed him now were new ones and his former companions lay dead or
wounded within their own lines. What he thought of most of all was his
extraordinary escape from the Boche sharpshooter and he wondered who and
where his deliverer could be.
He avoided looking into the shell hole as he passed it and soon he
reached the enemy entanglements which the tanks had flattened. Even the
flat meshes had been cleared from the road and here several regulars
waited to help him. They were covered with dirt and looked as if they
had seen action.
"Bully for you, kid!" one of them said, slapping Tom on the shoulder.
"You're all right, Towhead!"
"Lift the machine," said Tom; "they always put broken glass in the
roads. I thought maybe they'd punctured my tire out there."
"They came near puncturing _you_, all right! What's your name?"
"Thatchy is mostly what I get called. My motorcycle is named _Uncle
Sam_. Did you win yet?"
For answer they laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and repeated,
"You're all right, kid!"
"Looks as if Snipy must have had his eye on you, huh?" one of them
observed.
"Who's Snipy?" Tom asked.
"Oh, that's mostly what _he_ gets called," said someone, mimicking Tom's
own phrase. "His rifle's named _Tommy_. He's probably up in a tree
somewheres out there."
"He's a good shot," said Tom simply. "I'd like to see him."
"Nobody ever sees him--they _feel_ him," said another.
"He must have been somewhere," said Tom.
"Oh, he was _somewhere_ all right," several laughed.
A couple of the Signal Corps men jumped out of the trench near by and
greeted Tom heartily, praising him as the others had done, all of which
he took with his usual stolidness. Already, though of course he did not
know it, he was becoming somewhat of a character.
"You've got Paul Revere and Phil Sheridan beat a mile," one of the boys
said.
"I don't know much about Sheridan," said Tom, "but I always liked Paul
Revere."
He did not seem to understand why they laughed and clapped him on the
shoulder and said, "You'll do, kiddo."
But it was necessary to keep moving, for the other carriers were coming
along. The little group passed up the road, Tom pushing his wheel and
answering their questions briefly and soberly as he always did. Planks
had been laid across the German trenches where they intersected the road
and as they passed over them Tom looked down upon many a gruesome sight
which evidenced the surprise by the Americans and their undoubted
victory. Not a live German was to be seen, nor a dead American either,
but here and there a fallen gray-coat lay sprawled in the crooked
topsy-turvy ditch. He could see the Red Cross stretcher-bearers passing
in and out of the communication trenches and already a number of boys in
grimy khaki were engaged in repairing the trenches where the tanks had
caved them in. In the second line trench lay several wounded Americans
and Tom was surprised to see one of these propped up smoking a cigarette
while the surgeons bandaged his head until it looked like a great white
ball. Out of the huge bandage a white face grinned up as the little
group passed across on the planks and seeing the men to be wire
carriers, the wounded soldier called, "Tell 'em we're here."
"Ever hear of Paul Revere?" one of the Signal men called back cheerily.
And he rumpled Tom's hair to indicate whom he meant.
Thus it was that Thatchy acquired the new nickname by which he was to be
known far and wide in the country back of the lines and in the billet
villages where he was to sit, his trusty motorcycle close at hand,
waiting for messages and standing no end of jollying. Some of the more
resourceful wits in khaki even parodied the famous poem for his benefit,
but he didn't care. He would have matched _Uncle Sam_ against Paul
Revere's gallant steed any day, and they could jolly him and "kid" him
as their mood prompted, but woe be to the person who touched his
faithful machine save in his watchful presence. Even General Pershing
would not have been permitted to do that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE WOODS
Beyond the enemy second line trench the road led straight into Cantigny
and Tom could see the houses in the distance. Continuous firing was to
be heard there and he supposed that the Germans, routed from their
trenches, were making a stand in the village and in the high ground
beyond it.
"They'll be able to 'phone back, won't they?" he asked anxiously.
"They sure will," one of the men answered.
"It ain't that I don't want to ride back," Tom explained, "but a
feller's waiting on the other end of this wire, 'cause I heard somebody
tell him to, and I wouldn't want him to be disappointed."
"He won't be disappointed."
The road, as well as the open country east and west of it, was strewn
with German dead and wounded, among whom Tom saw one or two figures in
khaki. The Red Cross was busy here, many stretchers being borne up
toward the village where dressing stations were already being
established. Then suddenly Tom beheld a sight which sent a thrill
through him. Far along the road, in the first glare of the rising sun,
flew the Stars and Stripes above a little cottage within the confines of
the village.
"Headquarters," one of his companions said, laconically.
"Does it mean we've won?" Tom asked.
"Not exactly yet," the other answered, "but as long as the flag's up
they probably won't bother to take it down," and he looked at Tom in a
queer way. "There's cleaning up to do yet, kid," he added.
As they approached the village the hand-to-hand fighting was nearing its
end, and the Germans were withdrawing into the woods beyond where they
had many machine gun nests which it would be the final work of the
Americans to smoke out. But Tom saw a little of that kind of warfare
which is fought in streets, from house to house, and in shaded village
greens. Singly and in little groups the Americans sought out, killing,
capturing and pursuing the diminishing horde of Germans. Two of these,
running frantically with apparently no definite purpose, surrendered to
Tom's group and he thought they seemed actually relieved.
At last they reached the little cottage where the flag flew and were
received by the weary, but elated, men in charge.
"All over but the shouting," someone said; "we're finishing up back
there in the woods."
The telephone apparatus was fastened to a tree and Tom heard the words
of the speaker as he tried to get into communication with the village
which lay back across that shell-torn, trench-crossed area which they
had traversed. At last he heard those thrilling words which carried much
farther than the length of the sinuous wire:
"Hello, this is Cantigny."
And he knew that whatever yet remained to be done, the first real
offensive operation of the Americans was successful and he was proud to
feel that he had played his little part in it.
He was given leave until three o'clock in the afternoon and, leaving
_Uncle Sam_ at the little makeshift headquarters, he went about the town
for a sight of the "clean-up."
Farther back in the woods he could still hear the shooting where the
Americans were searching out machine gun nests and the boom of artillery
continued, but although an occasional shell fell in the town, the place
was quiet and even peaceful by comparison with the bloody clamor of an
hour before.
It seemed strange that he, Tom Slade, should be strolling about this
quaint, war-scarred village, which but a little while before had
belonged to the Germans. Here and there in the streets he met sentinels
and occasionally an airplane sailed overhead. How he envied the men in
those airplanes!
He glanced in through broken windows at the interiors of simple abodes
which the bestial Huns had devastated. It thrilled him that the boys
from America had dragged and driven the enemy out of these homes and
would dig their protecting trenches around the other side of this
stricken village, like a great embracing arm. It stirred him to think
that it was now within the refuge of the American lines and that the
arrogant Prussian officers could no longer defile those low, raftered
rooms.
He inquired of a sentinel where he could get some gasoline which he
would need later.
"There's a supply station along that road," the man said; "just beyond
the clearing."
Tom turned in that direction. The road took him out of the village and
through a little clump of woods to a clearing where several Americans
were guarding a couple of big gasoline tanks--part of the spoils of war.
He lingered for a few minutes and then strolled on toward the edge of
the denser wood beyond where the firing, though less frequent, could
still be heard.
He intended to go just far enough into this wood for a glimpse of the
forest shade which his scouting had taught him to love, and then to
return to headquarters for his machine.
Crossing a plank bridge across a narrow stream, he paused in the edge of
the woods and listened to the firing which still occurred at intervals
in the higher ground beyond. He knew that the fighting there was of the
old-fashioned sort, from behind protecting trees and wooded hillocks,
something like the good old fights of Indians and buckskin scouts away
home in the wild west of America. And he could not repress his impulse
to venture farther into the solitude.
[Illustration: TOM SLIPPED BEHIND A TREE AND WATCHED THE MAN WHO PAUSED
LIKE A STARTLED ANIMAL.]
The stream which he had crossed had evidently its source in the more
densely wooded hills beyond and he followed it on its narrowing way up
toward the locality where the fighting seemed now to be going on. Once a
group of khaki-clad figures passed stealthily among the trees, intent
upon some quest. The sight of their rifles reminded Tom that he was
himself in danger, but he reflected that he was in no greater danger
than they and that he had with him the small arm which all messengers
carried.
A little farther on he espied an American concealed behind a tree, who
nodded his head perfunctorily as Tom passed, seeming to discourage any
spoken greeting.
The path of the stream led into an area of thick undergrowth covering
the side of a gentle slope where the water tumbled down in little falls.
He must be approaching very near to the source, he thought, for the
stream was becoming a mere trickle, picking its way around rocky
obstacles in a very jungle of thick underbrush.
Suddenly he stopped at a slight rustling sound very near him.
It was the familiar sound which he had so often heard away back in the
Adirondack woods, of some startled creature scurrying to shelter.
He was the scout again now, standing motionless and silent--keenly
waiting. Then, to his amazement, a clump of bushes almost at his feet
stirred slightly. He waited still, watching, his heart in his mouth.
Could it have been the breeze? But there was no breeze.
Startled, but discreetly motionless, he fixed his eyes upon the leafy
clump, still waiting. Presently it stirred again, very perceptibly now,
then moved, clumsily and uncannily, and with a slight rustling of its
leaves, along the bank of the stream!
CHAPTER NINE
THE MYSTERIOUS FUGITIVE
Suddenly the thing stopped, and its whole bulk was shaken very
noticeably. Then a head emerged from it and before Tom could realize
what had happened a German soldier was fully revealed, brushing the
leaves and dirt from his gray coat as he stole cautiously along the edge
of the stream, peering anxiously about him and pausing now and again to
listen.
He was already some distance from Tom, whom apparently he had not
discovered, and his stealthy movements suggested that he was either in
the act of escaping or was bent upon some secret business of importance.
Without a sound Tom slipped behind a tree and watched the man who paused
like a startled animal at every few steps, watching and listening.
Tom knew that, notwithstanding his non-combatant status, he was quite
justified in drawing his pistol upon this fleeing Boche, but before he
had realized this the figure had gone too far to afford him much hope of
success with the small weapon which he was not accustomed to. Moreover,
just because he _was_ a "non-com" he balked at using it. If he should
miss, he thought, the man might turn upon him and with a surer aim lay
him low.
But there was one thing in which Tom Slade felt himself to be the equal
of any German that lived, and that was stalking. Here, in the deep
woods, among these protecting trees, he felt at home, and the lure of
scouting was upon him now. No one could lose him; no one could get away
from him. And a bird in the air would make no more noise than he!
Swiftly, silently, he slipped from one tree to another, his keen eye
always fixed upon the fleeting figure and his ears alert to learn if,
perchance, the Boche was being pursued. Not a sound could he hear except
that of the distant shooting.
It occurred to him that the precaution of camouflaging might be useful
to him also, and he silently disposed one of the leafy boughs which the
German had left diagonally across his breast with the fork over his
shoulder so that it formed a sort of adjustable screen, more portable
and less clumsy than the leafy mound which had covered the Boche.
With this he stole along, sometimes hiding behind trees, sometimes
crouching among the rocks along the bank, and keeping at an even
distance from the man. His method with its personal dexterity was
eloquent of the American scout, just as the Boche, under his mound of
foliage, had been typical of the German who depends largely upon
_device_ and little upon personal skill and dexterity.
The scout from Temple Camp had his ruses, too, for once when the German,
startled by a fancied sound, seemed about to look behind him, Tom
dexterously hurled a stone far to the left of his quarry, which diverted
the man's attention to that direction and kept it there while Tom,
gliding this way and that and raising or lowering his scant disguise,
crept after him.
They were now in an isolated spot and the distant firing seemed farther
and farther away. The stream, reduced to a mere trickle, worked its way
down among rocks and the German followed its course closely. What he was
about in this sequestered jungle Tom could not imagine, unless, indeed,
he was fleeing from his own masters. But surely open surrender to the
Americans would have been safer than that, and Tom remembered how
readily those other German soldiers had rushed into the arms of himself
and his companions.
Moreover, the more overgrown the brook became and the more involved its
path, the more the hurrying German seemed bent upon following it and
instead of finding any measure of relief from anxiety in this isolated
place, he appeared more anxious than ever and peered carefully about him
at every few steps.
At length, to Tom's astonishment, he stepped across the brook and felt
of a clump of bush which grew on the bank. Could he have expected to
find another camouflaged figure, Tom wondered?
Whatever he was after, he apparently thought he had reached his
destination for he now moved hurriedly about, feeling the single bushes
and moving among the larger clumps as if in quest of something. After a
few moments he paused as if perplexed and moved farther up the stream.
And Tom, who had been crouching behind a bush at a safe distance, crept
silently to another one, greatly puzzled but watching him closely.
Selecting another spot, the Boche moved about among the bushes as
before, carefully examining each one which stood by itself. Tom expected
every minute to see some grim, gray-coated figure step out of his leafy
retreat to join his comrade, but why such a person should wait to be
discovered Tom could not comprehend, for he must have heard and probably
seen this beating through the bushes.
An especially symmetrical bush stood on the brink of the stream and
after poking about this as usual, the German stood upon tiptoe,
apparently looking down into it, then kneeled at its base while Tom
watched from his hiding-place.
Suddenly a sharp report rang out and the German jumped to his feet,
clutched frantically at the brush which seemed to furnish a substantial
support, then reeled away and fell headlong into the brook, where he lay
motionless.
The heedless current, adapting itself readily to this grim obstruction,
bubbled gaily around the gray, crumpled form, accelerating its cheery
progress in the narrow path and showing little glints of red in its
crystal, dancing ripples.
CHAPTER TEN
THE JERSEY SNIPE
Tom hurried to the prostrate figure and saw that the German was quite
dead. There was no other sign of human presence and not a sound to be
heard but the rippling of the clear water at his feet.
For a few moments he stood, surprised and silent, listening. Then he
fancied that he heard a rustling in the bushes some distance away and he
looked in that direction, standing motionless, alert for the slightest
stir.
Suddenly there emerged out of the undergrowth a hundred or more feet
distant a strange looking figure clad in a dull shade of green with a
green skull cap and a green scarf, like a scout scarf, loosely thrown
about his neck. Even the rifle which he carried jauntily over his
shoulder was green in color, so that he seemed to Tom to have that
general hue which things assume when seen through green spectacles. He
was lithe and agile, gliding through the bushes as if he were a part of
them, and he came straight toward Tom, with a nimbleness which almost
rivalled that of a squirrel.
There was something about his jaunty, light step which puzzled Tom and
he narrowed his eyes, watching the approaching figure closely. The
stranger removed a cigarette from his mouth to enable him the better to
lay his finger upon his lips, imposing silence, and as he did so the
movement of his hand and his way of holding the cigarette somehow caused
Tom to stare.
Then his puzzled scrutiny gave way to an expression of blank amazement,
as again the figure raised his finger to his lips to anticipate any
impulse of Tom's to call. Nor did Tom violate this caution until the
stranger was within a dozen feet or so.
"Roscoe--Bent!" he ejaculated. "Don't you know me? I'm Tom Slade."
"Well--I'll--be----" Roscoe began, then broke off, holding Tom at arm's
length and looking at him incredulously. "Tom Slade--_I'll
be--jiggered_!"
"I kinder knew it was you," said Tom in his impassive way, "as soon as I
saw you take that cigarette out of your mouth, 'cause you do it such a
swell way, kind of," he added, ingenuously; "just like the way you used
to when you sat on the window-sill in Temple Camp office and jollied
Margaret Ellison. Maybe you don't remember."
Still Roscoe held him at arm's length, smiling all over his handsome,
vivacious face. Then he removed one of his hands from Tom's shoulder and
gave him a push in the chest in the old way.
"It's the same old Tom Slade, I'll be---- And with the front of your
belt away around at the side, as usual. This is better than taking a
hundred prisoners. How are you and how'd you get here, you sober old
tow-head, you?" and he gripped Tom's hand with impulsive vehemence.
"This sure does beat all! I might have known if I found you at all it
would be in the woods, you old pathfinder!" and he gave Tom another
shove, then rapped him on the shoulder and slipped his hand around his
neck in a way all his own.
"I--I like to hear you talk that way," said Tom, with that queer
dullness which Roscoe liked; "it reminds me of old times."
"Kind of?" prompted Roscoe, laughing. "Is our friend here dead?"
"Yes, he's very dead," said Tom soberly, "but I think there are others
around in the bushes."
"There are some enemies there," said Roscoe, "but we won't kill them.
Contemptible murderers!" he muttered, as he hauled the dead Boche out of
the stream. "I'll pick you off one by one, as fast as you come up here,
you gang of back-stabbers! Look here," he added.
"I got to admit you can do it," said Tom with frank admiration.
Roscoe pulled away the shrubbery where the German had been kneeling when
he was struck and there was revealed a great hogshead, larger, Tom
thought, than any he had ever seen.
"That's the kind of weapons they fight with," Roscoe said, disgustedly.
"Look here," he added, pulling the foliage away still more. "Don't touch
it. See? It leads down from another one. It's poison."
Tom, staring, understood well enough now, and he peered into the bushes
about him in amazement as he heard Roscoe say,
"Arsenic, the sneaky beasts."
"See what he was going to do?" he added, startling Tom out of his silent
wondering. "There's half a dozen or more of these hogsheads in those
bushes. As fast as this one empties it fills up again from another that
stands higher. There's a whole nest of them here. See how the pipe from
this one leads into the stream?"
"What's the wire for?" said Tom.
"Oh, that's so's they can open this little cock here, see? Start the
thing going. Don't pull away the camouflage. There may be another chap
up here in a little while, to see what's the matter. _Tommy'll_ take
care of them all right, won't you, _Tommy_?"
"Do you mean me?" Tom asked.
"I mean your namesake here," Roscoe said, slapping his rifle. "I named
it after you, you old glum head. Remember how you told me a feller
couldn't aim straight, _kind of_" (he mimicked Tom's tone). "You said a
feller couldn't aim straight, _kind of_, if he smoked cigarettes."
"I got to admit I was wrong," said Tom.
"You bet you have! Jingoes, it's good to hear you talk!" Roscoe laughed.
"How in the world did you get here, anyway?"
"I'll tell you all about it," said Tom, "only first tell me, are you the
feller they call the Jersey Snipe?"
"Snipy, for short," said Roscoe.
"Then maybe you saved my life already," said Tom, "out in No Man's
Land."
"Were you the kid on that wheel?" Roscoe asked, surprised.
"Yes, and I always knew you'd make a good soldier. I told everybody so."
"_Kind of?_ Tommy, old boy, don't forget it was _you_ made me a
soldier," Roscoe said soberly. "Come on back to my perch with me," he
added, "and tell me all about your adventures. This is better than
taking Berlin. There's only one person in this little old world I'd
rather meet in a lonely place, and that's the Kaiser. Come on--quiet
now."
"You don't think you can show _me_ how to stalk, do you?" said Tom.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON GUARD
"You see it was this way," said Roscoe after hie had scrambled with
amazing agility up to his "perch" in a tree several hundred feet distant
but in full view of the stream. Tom had climbed up after him and was
looking with curious pleasure at the little kit of rations and other
personal paraphernalia which hung from neighboring branches. "How do you
like my private camp? Got Temple Camp beat, hey?" he broke off in that
erratic way of his. "All the comforts of home. Come on, get into your
camouflage."
"You don't seem the same as when you used to come up to our office from
the bank downstairs--that's one sure thing," said Tom, pulling the
leaves about him.
"You thought all I was good for was to jolly Margaret Ellison, huh?"
"I see now that you didn't only save my life but lots of other fellers',
too," said Tom. "Go on, you started to tell me about it."
It was very pleasant and cosy up there in the sniper's perch where
Roscoe had gathered the thinner branches about him, forming a little
leafy lair, in which his agile figure and his quick glances about
reminded Tom for all the world of a squirrel. He could hardly believe
that this watchful, dexterous creature, peering cautiously out of his
romantic retreat, was the same Roscoe Bent who used to make fun of the
scouts and sneak upstairs to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office;
who thought as much of his spotless high collar then as he seemed to
think of his rifle now.
"I got to thank you because you named it after me," said Tom.
"And I _got to thank you_ that you gave me the chance to get it to name
after you, Tommy. Well, you see it was this way," Roscoe went on in a
half whisper; "there were half a dozen of us over here in the woods and
we'd just cleaned out a machine gun nest when we saw this miniature
forest moving along. I thought it was a decorated moving van."
"That's the trouble with them," agreed Tom; "they're no good in the
woods; they're clumsy. They're punk scouts."
"Scouts!" Roscoe chuckled. "If we had to fight this gang of cut-throats
and murderers in the woods where old What's-his-name--Custer--had to
fight the Indians, take it from me, we'd have them wiped up in a month.
That fellow's idea of camouflaging was to bury himself under a couple of
tons of green stuff and then move the whole business along like a clumsy
old Zeppelin. I can camouflage myself with a branch with ten leaves on
it by studying the light."
"Anybody can see you've learned something about scouting--that's one
sure thing," said Tom proudly.
"_One sure thing!_" Roscoe laughed inaudibly. "It's the same old Tommy
Slade. Well, I was just going to bean this geezer when my officer told
me I'd better follow him."
"I was following him, too," said Tom; "stalking is the word you ought to
use."
"Captain thought he might be up to something special. So I
followed--_stalked_--how's that?"
"All right."
"So I stalked him and when I saw he was following the stream I made a
detour and waited for him right here. You see what he was up to? Way
down in Cantigny they could turn a switch and start this blamed poison,
half a dozen hogsheads of it, flowing into the stream. They waited till
they lost the town before they turned the switch, and they probably
thought they could poison us Americans by wholesale. Maybe they had some
reason to think the blamed thing hadn't worked, and sent this fellow up.
I beaned him just as he was going to turn the stop-cock."
"Maybe you saved a whole lot of lives, hey?" said Tom proudly.
Roscoe shrugged his shoulder in that careless way he had. "I'll be glad
to meet any more that come along," he said.
It was well that Tom Slade's first sight of deliberate killing was in
connection with so despicable a proceeding as the wholesale poisoning of
a stream. He could feel no pity for the man who, fleeing from those who
fought cleanly and like men instead of beasts, had sought to pour this
potent liquid of anguish and death into the running crystal water. Such
acts, it seemed to him, were quite removed from the sphere of honorable,
manly fighting.
As a scout he had learned that it was wrong even to bathe in a stream
whence drinking water was obtained, and at camp he had always
scrupulously observed this good rule. He felt that it was cowardly to
defile the waters of a brook. It was not a "mailed fist" at all which
could do such things, but a fist dripping with poison.
And Tom Slade felt no qualm, as otherwise he might have felt, at hiding
there waiting for new victims. He was proud and thrilled to see his
friend, secreted in his perch, keen-eyed and alert, guarding alone the
crystal purity of this laughing, life-giving brook, as it hurried along
its pebbly bed and tumbled in little gushing falls and wound cheerily
around the rocks, bearing its grateful refreshment to the weary, thirsty
boys who were holding the neighboring village.
"I used to think I wouldn't like to be a sniper," he said, "but now it
seems different. I saw two fellers in the village and one had a bandage
on his arm and the other one who was talking to him--I heard him say a
long drink of water would go good--and--I--kind of--now----"
The Jersey Snipe winked at Tom and patted his rifle as a man might pat a
favorite dog.
"It's good fresh water," said he.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
In Tom's visions of the great war there had been no picture of the
sniper, that single remnant of romantic and adventurous warfare, in all
the roar and clangor of the horrible modern fighting apparatus.
He had seen American boys herded onto great ships by thousands; and,
marching and eating and drilling in thousands, they had seemed like a
great machine. He knew the murderous submarine, the aeroplane with its
ear-splitting whir, the big clumsy Zeppelin; and he had handled gas
masks and grenades and poison gas bombs.
But in his thoughts of the war and all these diabolical agents of
wholesale death there had been no visions of the quiet, stealthy figure,
inconspicuous in the counterfeiting hues of tree and rock, stealing
silently away with his trusty rifle and his week's rations for a lonely
vigil in some sequestered spot.
There was the same attraction about this freelance warfare which there
might have been about a privateer in contrast with a flotilla of modern
dreadnaughts and frantic chasers, and it reminded him of Daniel Boone,
and Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett, and other redoubtable scouts of old
who did not depend on stenching suffocation and the poisoning of
streams. It was odd that he had never known much about the sniper, that
one instrumentality of the war who seems to have been able to preserve a
romantic identity in all the bloody _mélée_ of the mighty conflict.
For Tom had been a scout and the arts of stealth and concealment and
nature's resourceful disguises had been his. He had thought of the
sniper as of one whose shooting is done peculiarly in cold blood, and he
was surprised and pleased to find his friend in this romantic and noble
rôle of holding back, single-handed, as it were, these vile agents of
agonizing death.
Arsenic! Tom knew from his memorized list of poison antidotes that if
one drinks arsenic he will be seized with agony unspeakable and die in
slow and utter torture. The more he thought about it, the more the cold,
steady eye of the unseen sniper and his felling shot seemed noble and
heroic.
Almost unconsciously he reached out and patted the rifle also as if it
were some trusted living thing--an ally.
"Did you really mean you named it after me--honest?" he asked.
Roscoe laughed again silently. "See?" he whispered, holding it across,
and Tom could distinguish the crudely engraved letters, TOMMY.
"--Because I never had anything named after me," he said in his simple,
dull way. "There's a place on the lake up at Temple Camp that the
fellers named after Roy Blakeley--Blakeley Isle. And there's a new
pavilion up there that's named after Mr. Ellsworth, our scoutmaster. And
Mr. Temple's got lots of things--orphan asylums and gymnasiums and
buildings and things--named after _him_. I always thought it must be
fine. I ain't that kind--sort of--that fellers name things after," he
added, with a blunt simplicity that went to Roscoe's heart; and he held
the rifle, as the sniper started to take it back, his eyes still fixed
upon the rough scratches which formed his own name. "In Bridgeboro
there was a place in Barrell Alley," he went on, apparently without
feeling, "where my father fell down one night when he was--when he'd had
too much to drink, and after that everybody down there called it Slade's
Hole. When I got in with the scouts, I didn't like it--kind of----"
Roscoe looked straight at Tom with a look as sure and steady as his
rifle. "Slade's Hole isn't known outside of Barrell Alley, Tom," he said
impressively, although in the same cautious undertone, "but _Tom Slade_
is known from one end of this sector to the other."
"Thatchy's what they called me in Toul sector, 'cause my hair's always
mussed up, I s'pose, and----"
"The first time I ever saw you to really know you, Tom, your hair was
all mussed up--and I hope it'll always stay that way. That was when you
came up there in the woods and made me promise to go back and register."
"I knew you'd go back 'cause----"
"I went back with bells on, and here I am. And here's _Tom Slade_ that's
stuck by me through this war. It's named _Tom Slade_ because it makes
good--see? Look here, I'll show you something else--you old hickory
nut, you. See that," he added, pulling a small object from somewhere in
his clothing.
Tom stared. "It's the Distinguished Service Cross," he said, his longing
eyes fixed upon it.
"That's what it is. The old gent handed me that--if anybody should ask
you."
Tom smiled, remembering Roscoe's familiar way of speaking of the
dignified Mr. Temple, and of "Old Man" Burton, and "Pop" this and that.
"General Pershing?"
"The same. You've heard of him, haven't you? Very muchly, huh?"
"Why don't you wear it?" Tom asked.
"Why? Well, I'll tell you why. When your friend, Thatchy, followed me on
that crazy trip of mine he borrowed some money for railroad fare, didn't
he? And he had a Gold Cross that he used to get the money, huh? So I
made up my mind that this little old souvenir from Uncle Samuel wouldn't
hang on my distinguished breast till I got back and paid Tom Slade what
I owed him and made sure that he'd got his own Cross safely back and was
wearing it again. Do you get me?"
"I got my Cross back," said Tom, "and it's home. So you can put that on.
You got to tell me how you got it, too. I always knew you'd make a
success."
"It was _Tommy Slade_ helped me to it, as usual. I beaned nine Germans
out in No Man's Land, and got away slightly wounded--I stubbed my toe.
Old Pop Clemenceau gave me a kiss and the old gent slipped me this for
good luck," Roscoe said, pinning on the Cross to please Tom. "When
Clemmy saw the name on the rifle, he asked what it meant and I told him
it was named after a pal of mine back home in the U.S.A.--Tom Slade.
Little I knew you were waltzing around the war zone on that thing of
yours. I almost laughed in his face when he said, 'M'soo Tommee should
be proud.'"
So the Premier of France had spoken the name of Tom Slade, whose father
had had a mud hole in Barrell Alley named after him.
"I _am_ proud," he stammered; "that's one sure thing. I'm proud on
account of you--I am."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FOUNTAINS OF DESTRUCTION
As Tom had the balance of the day to himself he cherished but one
thought--that of remaining with Roscoe as long as his leave would
permit. If he had been in the woods up at Temple Camp, away back home in
his beloved Catskills, he could hardly have felt more at home than he
felt perched in this tree near the headwaters of the running stream; and
to have Roscoe Bent crouching there beside him was more than his fondest
dreams of doing his bit had pictured.
At short intervals they could hear firing, sometimes voices in the
distance, and occasionally the boom of artillery, but except for these
reminders of the fighting the scene was of that sort which Tom loved. It
was there, while the sniper, all unseen, guarded the source of the
stream, his keen eye alert for any stealthy approach, that Tom told him
in hushed tones the story of his own experiences; how he had been a
ship's boy on a transport, and had been taken aboard the German U-boat
that had torpedoed her and held in a German prison camp, from which he
and Archer had escaped and made their way through the Black Forest and
across the Swiss border.
"Some kid!" commented Roscoe, admiringly; "the world ain't big enough
for you, Tommy. If you were just back from Mars I don't believe you'd be
excited about it."
"Why should I be?" said literal Tom. "It was only because the feller I
was with was born lucky; he always said so."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Roscoe sarcastically. "_I_ say he was mighty
lucky to be with _you_. Feel like eating?"
It was delightful to Tom sitting there in their leafy concealment,
waiting for any other hapless German emissaries who might come, bent on
the murderous defilement of that crystal brook, and eating of the
rations which Roscoe never failed to have with him.
"You're kind of like a pioneer," he said, "going off where there isn't
anybody. They have to trust you to do what you think best a lot, I
guess, don't they? A feller said they often hear you but they never see
you. I saw you riding on one of the tanks, but I didn't know it was you.
Funny, wasn't it?"
"I usually hook a ride. The tanks get on my nerves, though, they're so
slow."
"You're like a squirrel," said Tom admiringly.
"Well, you're like a bulldog," said Roscoe. "Still got the same old
scowl on your face, haven't you? So they kid you a lot, do they?"
"I don't mind it."
So they talked, in half whispers, always scanning the woods about them,
until after some time their vigil was rewarded by the sight of three
gray-coated, helmeted figures coming up the bank of the stream. They
made no pretence of concealment, evidently believing themselves to be
safe here in the forest. Roscoe had hauled the body of the dead German
under the thick brush so that it might not furnish a warning to other
visitors, and now he brought his rifle into position and touching his
finger to his lips by way of caution he fixed his steady eye on the
approaching trio.
One of these was a tremendous man and, from his uniform and arrogant
bearing, evidently an officer. The other two were plain, ordinary
"Fritzies." Tom believed that they had come to this spot by some
circuitous route, bent upon the act which their comrade and the
mechanism had failed to accomplish. He watched them in suspense,
glancing occasionally at Roscoe.
The German officer evidently knew the ground for he went straight to the
bush where the hogshead stood concealed, and beckoned to his two
underlings. Tom, not daring to stir, looked expectantly at Roscoe, whose
rifle was aimed and resting across a convenient branch before him. The
sniper's intent profile was a study. Tom wondered why he did not fire.
He saw one of the Boches approach the officer, who evidently would not
deign to stoop, and kneel at the foot of the bush. Then the crisp,
echoing report of Roscoe's rifle rang out, and on the instant the
officer and the remaining soldier disappeared behind the leaf-covered
hogshead. Tom was aware of the one German lying beside the bush, stark
and motionless, and of Roscoe jerking his head and screwing up his mouth
in a sort of spontaneous vexation. Then he looked suddenly at Tom and
winked unmirthfully with a kind of worried annoyance.
"Think they can hit us from there? Think they know where we are?" Tom
asked in the faintest whisper.
"'Tisn't that," Roscoe whispered back. "Look at that flat stone under
the bush there. Shh! I couldn't get him in the right light before. Shh!"
Narrowing his eyes, Tom scanned the earth at the foot of the bush and
was just able to discern a little band of black upon a gray stone there.
It was evidently a wet spot on the dusty stone and for a second he
thought it was blood; then the staggering truth dawned upon him that in
shooting the Hun in the very act of letting loose the murderous liquid
Roscoe had shot a hole in the hogshead and the potent poison was flowing
out rapidly and down into the stream.
And just in that moment there flashed into Tom's mind the picture of
that weary, perspiring boy in khaki down in captured Cantigny, who had
mopped his forehead, saying, "A drink of water would go good now."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TOM USES HIS FIRST BULLET
It had been a pet saying of Tom's scoutmaster back in America that you
should _wait long enough to make up your mind and not one second
longer_.
Tom knew that the pressure of liquid above that fatal bullet hole near
the bottom of the hogshead was great enough to send the poison fairly
pouring out. He could not see this death-dealing stream, for it was
hidden in the bush, but he knew that it would continue to pour forth
until several of these great receptacles had been emptied and the
running brook with its refreshing coolness had become an instrument of
frightful death.
Safe behind the protecting bulk of the hogshead crouched the two
surviving Germans, while Roscoe, covering the spot, kept his eyes
riveted upon it for the first rash move of either of the pair. And
meanwhile the poison poured out of the very bulwark that shielded them
and into the swift-running stream.
"I don't think they've got us spotted," Tom whispered, moving cautiously
toward the trunk of the tree; "the private had a rifle, didn't he?"
"What are you going to do?" Roscoe breathed.
"Stop up that hole. Give me a bullet, will you?"
"You're taking a big chance, Tom."
"I ain't thinking about that. Give me a bullet. All _you_ got to do is
keep those two covered."
With a silent dexterity which seemed singularly out of keeping with his
rather heavy build, Tom shinnied down the side of the tree farthest from
the brook, and lying almost prone upon the ground began wriggling his
way through the sparse brush, quickening his progress now and again
whenever the diverting roar of distant artillery or the closer report of
rifles and machine guns enabled him to advance with less caution.
In a few minutes he reached the stream, apparently undiscovered, when
suddenly he was startled by another rifle report, close at hand, and he
lay flat, breathing in suspense.
It was simply that one of that pair had made the mistake so often made
in the trenches of raising his head, and had paid the penalty.
Tom was just cautiously crossing the brook when he became aware of a
frantic scramble in the bush and saw the German private rushing
pell-mell through the thick undergrowth beyond, hiding himself in it as
best he might and apparently trying to keep the bush-enshrouded hogshead
between himself and the tree where the sniper was. Evidently he had
discovered Roscoe's perch and, there being now no restraining authority,
had decided on flight. It had been the officer's battle, not his, and he
abandoned it as soon as the officer was shot. It was typical of the
German system and of the total lack of individual spirit and resource of
the poor wretches who fight for Kaiser Bill's glory.
Reaching the bush, Tom pulled away the leafy covering and saw that the
poisonous liquid was pouring out of a clean bullet hole as he had
suspected. He hurriedly wrapped a bit of the gauze bandage which he
always carried around the bullet Roscoe had given him and forced it into
the hole, wedging it tight with a rock. Then he waved his hand in the
direction of the tree to let Roscoe know that all was well.
Tom Slade had used his first bullet and it had saved hundreds of lives.
"They're both dead," he said, as Roscoe came quickly through the
underbrush in the gathering dusk. "Did the officer put his head up?"
"Mm-mm," said Roscoe, examining the two victims.
"You always kill, don't you?" said Tom.
"I have to, Tommy. You see, I'm all alone, mostly," Roscoe added as he
fumbled in the dead officer's clothing. "There are no surgeons or nurses
in reach. I don't have stretcher-bearers following _me_ around and it
isn't often that even a Hun will surrender, fair and square, to one man.
I've seen too much of this '_kamarad_' business. I can't afford to take
chances, Tommy. But I don't put nicks in my rifle butt like some of them
do. I don't want to know how many I beaned after it's all over. We kill
to save--that's the idea you want to get into your head, Tommy boy."
"I know it," said Tom.
The officer had no papers of any importance and since it was getting
dark and Tom must report at headquarters, they discussed the possibility
of upsetting these murderous hogsheads, and putting an end to the
danger. Evidently the woods were not yet wholly cleared of the enemy who
might still seek to make use of these agents of destruction.
"There may be stragglers in the woods even to-morrow," Roscoe said.
"S'pose we dig a little trench running away from the brook and then turn
on the cock and let the stuff flow off?" suggested Tom.
The idea seemed a good one and they fell to, hewing out a ditch with a
couple of sticks. It was a very crude piece of engineering, as Roscoe
observed, and they were embarrassed in their work by the gathering
darkness, but at length they succeeded, by dint of jabbing and plowing
and lifting the earth out in handfuls, in excavating a little gully
through the rising bank so that the liquid would flow off and down the
rocky decline beyond at a safe distance from the stream.
For upwards of an hour they remained close by, until the hogsheads had
run dry, and then they set out through the woods for the captured
village.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GUN PIT
"I think the best way to get into the village," said Roscoe, "is to
follow the edge of the wood around. That'll bring us to the by-path that
runs into the main road. They've got the woods pretty well cleared out
over that way. There's a road a little north of here and I think the
Germans have withdrawn across that. What do you say?"
"You know more about it than I do," said Tom. "I followed the brook up.
It's pretty bad in some places."
"There's only two of us," said Roscoe, "and you've no rifle. Safety
first."
"I suppose there's a lot of places they could hide along the brook; the
brush is pretty thick all the way up," Tom added.
Roscoe whistled softly in indecision. "I like the open better," said he.
"I guess so," Tom agreed, "when there's only two of us."
"There's three of us, though," said Roscoe, "and _Tommy_ here likes the
open better. I'd toss up a coin only with these blamed French coins you
can't tell which is heads and which is tails."
Roscoe was right about the Germans having withdrawn beyond the road
north of the woods. Whether he was right about its being safer to go
around the edge of the forest remained to be determined.
This wood, in which they had passed the day, extended north of the
village (see map) and thinned out upon the eastern side so that one
following the eastern edge would emerge from the wood a little east of
the main settlement. Here was the by-path which Roscoe had mentioned,
and which led down into the main road.
Running east and west across the northern extremity of the woods was a
road, and the Germans, driven first from their trenches, then out of the
village, and then out of the woods, were establishing their lines north
of this road.
If the boys had followed the brook down they would have reached the
village by a much shorter course, but Roscoe preferred the open country
where they could keep a better lookout. Whether his decision was a wise
one, we shall see.
[Illustration: SHOWING PATH TAKEN BY TOM AND ROSCOE THROUGH THE WOODS]
Leaving the scene of their "complete annihilation of the crack poison
division," as Roscoe said, they followed the ragged edge of the woods
where it thinned out to the north, verging around with it until they
were headed in a southerly direction.
"There's a house on that path," said Roscoe, "and we ought to be able to
see a light there pretty soon."
"There's a little piece of woods ahead of us," said Tom; "when we get
past that we'll see it, I guess. We'll cut through there, hey?"
"Wait a minute," said Roscoe, pausing and peering about in the half
darkness. "I'm all twisted. There's the house now."
He pointed to a dim light in the opposite direction to that which they
had taken.
"That's north," said Tom in his usual dull manner.
"You're mistaken, my boy. What makes you think it's north?"
"I didn't say I thought so," said Tom. "I said it _is_."
Roscoe laughed. "Same old Tom," he said. "But how do you know it's
north?"
"You remember that mountain up in the Catskills?" Tom said. "The first
time I ever went to the top of that mountain was in the middle of the
night. I never make that kind of mistakes. I know because I just know."
Roscoe laughed again and looked rather dubiously at the light in the
distance. Then he shook his head, unconvinced.
"We've been winding in and out along the edge of this woods," said Tom,
"so that you're kind of mixed up, that's all. It's always those little
turns that throw people out, just like it's a choppy sea that upsets a
boat; it ain't the big waves. I used to get rattled like that myself,
but I don't any more."
Roscoe drew his lips tight and shook his head skeptically. "I can't
understand about that light," he said.
"I always told you you made a mistake not to be a scout when you were
younger," said Tom in that impassive tone which seemed utterly free of
the spirit of criticism and which always amused Roscoe, "'cause then you
wouldn't bother about the light but you'd look at the stars. Those are
sure."
Roscoe looked up at the sky and back at Tom, and perhaps he found a kind
of reassurance in that stolid face. "All right, Tommy," said he, "what
you say, goes. Come ahead."
"That light is probably on the road the Germans retreated across," said
Tom, as they picked their way along. His unerring instinct left him
entirely free from the doubts which Roscoe could not altogether dismiss.
"I don't say there ain't a light on the path you're talking about, but
if we followed this one we'd probably get captured. I was seven months
in a German prison. I don't know how you'd like it, but I didn't."
Roscoe laughed silently at Tom's dry way of putting it. "All right,
Tommy, boy," he said. "Have it your own way."
"You ought to be satisfied the way you can shoot," said Tom, by way of
reconciling Roscoe to his leadership.
"All right, Tommy. Maybe you've got the bump of locality. When we get
past that little arm of the woods just ahead we ought to see the right
light then, huh?"
"_Spur_ is the right name for it, not _arm_," said Tom. "You might as
well say it right."
"The pleasure is mine," laughed Roscoe; "Tommy, you're as good as a
circus."
They made their way in a southeasterly direction, following the edge of
the woods, with the open country to the north and east of them.
Presently they reached the "spur," as Tom called it, which seemed to
consist of a little "cape" of woods, as one might say, sticking out
eastward. They could shorten their path a trifle by cutting through
here, and this they did, Roscoe (notwithstanding Tom's stolid
self-confidence) watching anxiously for the light which this spur had
probably concealed, and which would assure them that they were heading
southward toward the path which led into Cantigny village.
Once, twice, in their passage through this little clump of woods Tom
paused, examining the trees and ground, picking up small branches and
looking at their ends, and throwing them away again.
"Funny how those branches got broken off," he said.
Roscoe answered with a touch of annoyance, the first he had shown since
their meeting in the woods.
"I'm not worrying about those twigs," he said; "I don't see that light
and I think we're headed wrong."
"They're not twigs," said Tom literally; "they're branches, and they're
broken off."
"Any fool could tell the reason for that," said Roscoe, rather
scornfully. "It's the artillery fire."
Tom said nothing, but he did not accept Roscoe's theory. He believed
that some one had been through here before them and that the branches
had been broken off by human hands; and but for the fact that Roscoe had
let him have his own way in the matter of direction he would have
suggested that they make a detour around this woody spur. However, he
contented himself by saying in his impassive way, "I know when branches
are broken off."
"Well, what are we going to do now?" Roscoe demanded, stopping short and
speaking with undisguised impatience. "You can see far beyond those
trees now and you can see there's no light. They'll have us nailed upon
a couple of crosses to-morrow. I don't intend to be tortured on account
of the Boy Scouts of America."
He used the name as being synonymous with bungling and silly notions and
star-gazing, and it hit Tom in a dangerous spot. He answered with a kind
of proud independence which he seldom showed.
"I didn't say there'd be a light. Just because there's a house it
doesn't mean there's got to be a light. I said the light we saw was in
the north, and it's got nothing to do with the Boy Scouts. You wouldn't
let me point your rifle for you, would you? They sent me to this sector
'cause I don't get lost and I don't get rattled. You said that about the
Scouts just because you're mad. I'm not hunting for any light. I'm going
back to Cantigny and I know where I'm at. You can come if you want to or
you can go and get caught by the Germans if you want to. I went a
hundred miles through Germany and they didn't catch _me_--'cause I
always know where I'm at."
He went on for a few steps, Roscoe, after the first shock of surprise,
following silently behind him. He saw Tom stumble, struggle to regain
his balance, heard a crunching sound, and then, to his consternation,
saw him sink down and disappear before his very eyes.
In the same instant he was aware of a figure which was not Tom's
scrambling up out of the dark, leaf-covered hollow and of the muzzle of
a rifle pointed straight at him.
Evidently Tom Slade had not known "where he was at" at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PRISONERS
Apparently some of the enemy had not yet withdrawn to the north, for in
less than five seconds Roscoe was surrounded by a group of German
soldiers, among whom towered a huge officer with an eye so fierce and
piercing that it was apparent even in the half darkness. He sported a
moustache more aggressively terrible than that of Kaiser Bill himself
and his demeanor was such as to make that of a roaring lion seem like a
docile lamb by comparison. An Iron Cross depended from a heavy chain
about his bull neck and his portly breast was so covered with the junk
of rank and commemoration that it seemed like one of those boards from
which street hawkers sell badges at a public celebration.
Poor Tom, who had been hauled out of the hole, stood dogged and sullen
in the clutch of a Boche soldier, and Roscoe, even in his surprise at
this singular turn of affairs, bestowed a look of withering scorn upon
him.
"I knew those branches were _broken_ off," Tom muttered, as if in
answer. "They're using them for camouflage. It's got nothing to do with
the other thing about which way we were going."
But Roscoe only looked at him with a sneer.
Wherever the wrong and right lay as to their direction, they had run
plunk into a machine-gun nest and Roscoe Bent, with all his diabolical
skill of aim, could not afford his fine indulgence of sneering, for as
an active combatant, which Tom was not, he should have known that these
nests were more likely to be found at the wood's edge than anywhere
else, where they could command the open country. The little spur of
woods afforded, indeed, an ideal spot for secreting a machine gun,
whence a clear range might be had both north and south.
If Tom had not been a little afraid of Roscoe he would have acted on the
good scout warning of the broken branches and made a detour in time to
escape this dreadful plight. And the vain regret that he had not done so
rankled in his breast now. The pit was completely surrounded and almost
covered with branches, so that no part of the guns and their tripods
which rose out of it was discoverable, at least to Roscoe.
"Vell, you go home, huh?" the officer demanded, with a grim touch of
humor.
Roscoe was about to answer, but Tom took the words out of his mouth.
"We got lost and we got rattled," he said, with a frank confession which
surprised Roscoe; "we thought we were headed south."
The sniper bestowed another angrily contemptuous look upon him, but Tom
appeared not to notice it.
"Vell, we rattle you some more--vat?" the officer said, without very
much meaning. His voice was enough to rattle any captive, but Tom was
not easily disconcerted, and instead of cowering under this martial
ferocity and the scorning looks of his friend, he glanced about him in
his frowning, lowering way as if the surroundings interested him more
than his captors. But he said nothing.
"You English--no?" the officer demanded.
"We're Americans," said Roscoe, regaining his self-possession.
"Ach! Diss iss good for you. If you are English, ve kill you! You have
kamerads--vere?"
"There's only the two of us," said Roscoe. Tom seemed willing enough to
let his companion do the talking, and indeed Roscoe, now that he had
recovered his poise, seemed altogether the fitter of the two to be the
spokesman. "We got rattled, as this kid says." "If we'd followed that
light we wouldn't have happened in on you. We hope we don't intrude," he
added sarcastically.
The officer glanced at the tiny light in the distance, then at one of
the soldiers, then at another, then poured forth a gutteral torrent at
them all. Then he peered suspiciously into the darkness.
"For treachery, ve kill," he said.
"I told you there are only two of us," said Roscoe simply.
"Ach, two! Two millions, you mean! Vat? Ach!" he added, with a
deprecating wave of his hands. "Vy not _billions_, huh?"
Roscoe gathered that he was sneering skeptically about the number of
Americans reported to be in France.
"Ve know just how many," the officer added; "vell, vat you got, huh?"
At this two of the Boches proceeded to search the captives, neither of
whom had anything of value or importance about them, and handed the
booty to the officer.
"Vat is diss, huh?" he said, looking at a small object in his hand.
Tom's answer nearly knocked Roscoe off his feet.
"It's a compass," said he.
So Tom had had a compass with him all the time they had been discussing
which was the right direction to take! Why he had not brought it out to
prove the accuracy of his own contention Roscoe could not comprehend.
"A compass, huh. Vy you not use it?"
"Because I was sure I was right," said Tom.
"Always sure you are right, you Yankees! Vat?"
"Nothing," said Tom.
The officer examined the trifling haul as well as he could in the
darkness, then began talking in German to one of his men. And meanwhile
Tom watched him in evident suspense, and Roscoe, unmollified, cast at
Tom a look of sneering disgust for his bungling error--a look which
seemed to include the whole brotherhood of scouts.
Finally the officer turned upon Roscoe with his characteristic martial
ferocity.
"How long you in France?" he demanded.
"Oh, about a year or so."
"Vat ship you come on?"
"I don't know the name of it."
"You come to Havre, vat?"
"I didn't notice the port."
"Huh! You are not so--vide-avake, huh?"
"Absent-minded, yes," said Roscoe.
The officer paused, glaring at Roscoe, and Tom could not help envying
his friend's easy and self-possessed air.
"You know the _Texas Pioneer_?" the officer shot out in that short,
imperious tone of demand which is the only way in which a German knows
how to ask a question.
"Never met him," said Roscoe.
"A ship!" thundered the officer.
"Oh, a ship. No, I've never been introduced."
"She come to Havre--vat?"
"That'll be nice," said Roscoe.
"You never hear of dis ship, huh?"
"No, there are so many, you know."
"To bring billions, yes!" the officer said ironically.
"That's the idea."
Pause.
"You hear about more doctors coming--no? Soon?"
"Sorry I can't oblige you," said Roscoe.
The officer paused a moment, glaring at him and Tom felt very
unimportant and insignificant.
"Vell, anyway, you haf good muscle, huh?" the officer finally observed;
then, turning to his subordinates, he held forth in German until it
appeared to Tom that he and Roscoe were to carry the machine gun to the
enemy line.
To Tom, under whose sullen, lowering manner, was a keenness of
observation sometimes almost uncanny, it seemed that these men were not
the regular crew which had been stationed here, but had themselves
somehow chanced upon the deserted nest in the course of their withdrawal
from the village.
For one thing, it seemed to him that this imperious officer was a
personage of high rank, who would not ordinarily have been stationed in
one of these machine gun pits. And for another thing, there was
something (he could not tell exactly what) about the general demeanor of
their captors, their way of removing the gun and their apparent
unfamiliarity with the spot, which made him think that they had stumbled
into it in the course of their wanderings just as he and Roscoe had
done. They talked in German and he could not understand them, but he
noticed particularly; that the two who went into the pit to gather the
more valuable portion of the paraphernalia appeared not to be familiar
with the place, and he thought that the officer inquired of them whether
there were two or more guns.
When he lifted his share of the burden, Roscoe noticed how he watched
the officer with a kind of apprehension, almost terror, in his furtive
glance, and kept his eyes upon him as they started away in the darkness.
Roscoe was in a mood to think ill of Tom, whom he considered the
bungling, stubborn author of their predicament. It pleased him now to
believe that Tom was afraid and losing his nerve. He remembered that he
had said they would be crucified as a result of Tom's pin-headed error.
And he was rather glad to believe that Tom was thinking of that now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHADES OF ARCHIBALD ARCHER
After a minute the officer paused and consulted with one of his men;
then another was summoned to the confab, the three of them reminding Tom
of a newspaper picture he had seen of the Kaiser standing in a field
with two officers and gazing fiercely at a map.
One of the soldiers waved a hand toward the distance, while Tom watched
sharply. And Roscoe, who accepted their predicament with a kind of
reckless bravado, sneered slightly at Tom's evident apprehension.
Then the officer produced something, holding it in his hand while the
others peered over his shoulder. And Tom watched them with lowering
brows, breathing hurriedly. No one knew it, but in that little pause Tom
Slade lived a whole life of nervous suspense. It was not, however, the
nervousness and suspense which his friend thought.
Then, as if unable to control his impulse, he moved slightly as though
to start in the direction which he and Roscoe had been following. It was
only a slight movement, made in obedience to an overwhelming desire, and
as if he would incline his captors' thoughts in that direction. Roscoe,
who held his burden jointly with Tom, felt this impatient impulse
communicated to him and he took it as a confession from Tom that he had
made the fatal error of mistaking their way before. And he moved a
trifle, too, in the direction where he knew the German lines had been
established, muttering scornfully at Tom, "You know where you're headed
for now, all right. It's what I said right along."
"I admit I know," said Tom dully.
No doubt it was the compass which was the main agent in deciding the
officer as to their route, but he and his men moved, even as Tom did, as
if to make an end of needless parleying.
As they tramped along, following the edge of the wood, a tiny light
appeared ahead of them, far in the distance, like a volunteer beacon,
and Roscoe, turning, a trifle puzzled, tried to discover the other
light, which had now diminished to a mere speck. Now and again the
officer paused and glanced at that trifling prize of war, Tom's little
glassless, tin-encased compass. But Tom Slade of Temple Camp, Scout of
the Circle and the Five Points, winner of the Acorn and the Indianhead,
looked up from time to time at the quiet, trustful stars.
So they made their way along, following a fairly straight course, and
verging away from the wood's edge, heading toward the distant light. Two
of the Germans went ahead with fixed bayonets, scouring the underbrush,
and the others escorted Tom and Roscoe, who carried all of the burden.
The officer strode midway between the advance guard and the escorting
party, pausing now and again as if to make sure of his ground and
occasionally consulting the compass. Once he looked up at the sky and
then Tom fairly trembled. He might have saved himself this worry,
however, for Herr Officer recognized no friends nor allies in that
peaceful, gold-studded heaven.
"It was an unlucky day for me I ran into you over here," Roscoe
muttered, yielding to his very worst mood.
Tom said nothing.
"We won't even have the satisfaction of dying in action now."
No answer.
"After almost a year of watching my step I come to this just because I
took _your_ word. Believe _me_, I deserve to hang. I don't even get on
the casualty list, on account of you. You see what we're both up against
now, through that bump of locality you're so proud of. Edwards' Grove[1]
is where _you_ belong. I'm not blaming you, though--I'm blaming myself
for listening to a dispatch kid!"
The Germans, not understanding, paid no attention, and Roscoe went on,
reminding Tom of the old, flippant, cheaply cynical Roscoe, who had
stolen his employer's time to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp
office, trying to arouse the stenographer's mirth by ridiculing the Boy
Scouts.
"I'm not thinking about what you're saying," he said bluntly, after a few
minutes. "I'm remembering how you saved my life and named your gun after
me."
"Hey, Fritzie, have they got any Boy Scouts in Germany?" Roscoe asked,
ignoring Tom, but speaking apparently at him. The nearest Boche gave a
glowering look at the word _Fritzie_, but otherwise paid no attention.
"We were on our way to German headquarters, anyway," Roscoe added,
addressing himself indifferently to the soldiers, "but we're glad of
your company. The more, the merrier. Young Daniel Boone here was leading
the way."
The Germans, of course, did not understand, but Tom felt ashamed of his
companion's cynical bravado. The insults to himself he did not mind. His
thoughts were fixed on something else.
On they went, into a marshy area where Tom looked more apprehensively at
the officer than before, as if he feared the character of the ground
might arouse the suspicion of his captors. But they passed through here
without pause or question and soon were near enough to the flickering
light to see that it burned in a house.
Again Roscoe looked perplexedly behind him, but the light there was not
visible at all now. Again the officer stopped and, as Tom watched him
fearfully, he glanced about and then looked again at the compass.
For one brief moment the huge figure stood there, outlined in the
darkness as if doubting. And Tom, looking impassive and dogged, held his
breath in an agony of suspense.
It was nothing and they moved on again, Roscoe, in complete repudiation
of his better self, indulging his sullen anger and making Tom and the
Scouts (as if they had anything to do with it) the victims of his
cutting shafts.
And still again the big, medal-bespangled officer paused to look at the
compass, glanced, suspiciously, Tom thought, at the faint shadow of a
road ahead of them, and moved on, his medals clanging and chinking in
unison with his martial stride.
And Tom Slade of Temple Camp, Scout of the Circle and the Five Points,
winner of the Acorn and the Indianhead, glanced up from time to time at
the quiet, trustful stars.
If he thought of any human being then, it was not of Roscoe Bent (not
_this_ Roscoe Bent, in any event), but of a certain young friend far
away, he did not know where. And he thanked Archibald Archer, vandal
though he was, for, one idle, foolish thing that he had done.
[1] The woods near Bridgeboro, in America, where Tom and the Scouts had
hiked and camped.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE BIG COUP
No one knew, no one ever would know, of the anxiety and suspense which
Tom Slade experienced in that fateful march through the country above
Cantigny. Every uncertain pause of that huge officer, and every half
inquiring turn of his head sent a shock of chill misgiving through poor
Tom and he trudged along under the weight of his burden, hearing the
flippant and bitter jibes of Roscoe as if in a trance.
At last, having crossed a large field, they fell into a well-worn path,
and here Tom experienced his moment of keenest anxiety, for the officer
paused as if in momentary recognition of the spot. For a second he
seemed a bit perplexed, then strode on. Still again he paused within a
few yards of the little house where the light had appeared.
But it was too late. About this house a dozen or more figures moved in
the darkness. Their style of dress was not distinguishable, but Tom
Slade called aloud to them, "Here's some prisoners we brought you
back."
In an instant they were surrounded by Americans and Tom thought that his
native tongue had never sounded so good before.
"Hello, Snipy," some one said.
But Roscoe Bent was too astonished to answer. In a kind of trance he saw
the big Prussian officer start back, heard him utter some terrific
German expletive, beheld the others of the party herded together, and
was aware of the young American captain giving orders. In a daze he
looked at Tom's stolid face, then at the Prussian officer, who seemed
too stunned to say anything after his first startled outburst. He saw
two boys in khaki approaching with lanterns and in the dim light of
these he could distinguish a dozen or so khaki-clad figures perched
along a fence.
"Where are we at, anyway?" he finally managed to ask.
"Just inside the village," one of the Americans answered.
"What village?"
"Coney Island on the subway," one of the boys on the fence called.
"Cantigny," some one nearer to him said. "You made a good haul."
"Well--I'll--be----" Roscoe began.
Tom Slade said nothing. Like a trusty pilot leaving his ship he strolled
over and vaulted up on the fence beside the boys who, having taken the
village, were now making themselves comfortable in it. His first
question showed his thoughtfulness.
"Is the brook water all right?"
"Sure. Thirsty?"
"No, I only wanted to make sure it was all right. There were some big
hogsheads of poison up in the woods where the brook starts and the other
feller killed three Germans who tried to empty them in the stream. By
mistake he shot a hole in one of the hogsheads and I thought maybe some
of the stuff got into the water. But I guess it didn't."
It was characteristic of Tom that he did not mention his own part in the
business.
"I drank about a quart of it around noontime," said a young sergeant,
"and I'm here yet."
"It's good and cool," observed another.
"What's the matter with Snipy, anyway?" a private asked, laughing.
"Somebody been spinning him around?"
"He just got mixed up, kind of, that's all," Tom said.
_That was all._
There was much excitement in and about the little cottage on the edge of
the village. Up the narrow path, from headquarters below, came other
Americans, officers as Tom could see, who disappeared inside the house.
Presently, the German prisoners, all except the big officer, came out,
sullen in captivity, poor losers as Germans always are, and marched away
toward the centre of the village, under escort.
"They thought they were taking us to the German lines," said Tom simply.
Roscoe, having recovered somewhat from his surprise and feeling deeply
chagrined, walked over and stood in front of Tom.
"Why didn't you show me that compass, Tom?" he asked.
"Because it was wrong, just like you were," Tom answered frankly, but
without any trace of resentment. "If I'd showed it to you you'd have
thought it proved you were right. It was marked, crazy like, by that
feller I told you about. I knew all the time we were coming to
Cantigny."
There was a moment of silence, then Roscoe, his voice full of feeling,
said simply,
"Tom Slade, you're a wonder."
"Hear that, Paul Revere?" one of the soldiers said jokingly. "Praise
from the Jersey Snipe means something."
"No, it don't either," Roscoe muttered in self-distrust. "You've saved
me from a Hun prison camp and while you were doing it you had to listen
to me--Gee! I feel like kicking myself," he broke off.
"I ain't blaming you," said Tom, in his expressionless way. "If I'd had
my way we'd have made a detour when I saw those broken branches, 'cause
I knew it meant people were there, and then we wouldn't have got those
fellers as prisoners, at all. So they got to thank you more than me."
This was queer reasoning, indeed, but it was Tom Slade all over.
"Me!" said Roscoe, "that's the limit. Tom, you're the same old hickory
nut. Forgive me, old man, if you can."
"I don't have to," said Tom.
Roscoe stood there staring at him, thrilled with honest admiration and
stung by humiliation.
And as the little group, augmented by other soldiers who strolled over
to hear of this extraordinary affair first hand, grew into something of
a crowd, Tom, alias Thatchy, alias Paul Revere, alias Towhead, sat upon
the fence, answering questions and telling of his great coup with a dull
unconcern which left them all gaping.
"As soon as I made up my mind they didn't belong there," he said, "I
decided they weren't sure of their own way, kind of. If the big man
hadn't taken the compass away from me, I'd have given it to him anyway.
It had the N changed into an S and the S into an N. I think he kind of
thought the other way was right, but when he saw the compass, that
settled him. All the time I was looking at the Big Dipper, 'cause I knew
nobody ever tampered with that. I noticed he never even looked up, but
once, and then I was scared. When we got to the marsh, I was scared,
too, 'cause I thought maybe he'd know about the low land being south of
the woods. I was scared all the time, as you might say, but mostly when
he turned his head and seemed kind of uncertain-like. It ain't so much
any credit to me as it is to Archer--the feller that changed the
letters. Anyway, I ain't mad, that's sure," he added, evidently
intending this for Roscoe. "Everybody gets mistaken sometimes."
"You're one bully old trump, Tom," said Roscoe shamefacedly.
"So now you see how it was," Tom concluded. "I couldn't get rattled as
long as I could see the Big Dipper up there in the sky."
For a few moments there was silence, save for the low whistling of one
of the soldiers.
"You're all right, kiddo," he broke off to say.
Then one of the others turned suddenly, giving Tom a cordial rap on the
shoulder which almost made him lose his balance. "Well, as long as we've
got the Big Dipper," said he, "and as long as the water's pure, what
d'you say we all go and have a drink--in honor of Paul Revere?"
So it was that presently Tom and Roscoe found themselves sitting alone
upon the fence in the darkness. Neither spoke. In the distance they
could hear the muffled boom of some isolated field-piece, belching forth
its challenge in the night. High overhead there was a whirring, buzzing
sound as a shadow glided through the sky where the stars shone
peacefully. A company of boys in khaki, carrying intrenching implements,
passed by, greeting them cheerily as they trudged back from doing their
turn in digging the new trench line which would embrace Cantigny.
Cantigny!
"I'm glad we took the town, that's one sure thing," Tom said.
"It's the first good whack we've given them," agreed Roscoe.
Again there was silence. In the little house across the road a light
burned. Little did Tom Slade know what was going on there, and what it
would mean to him. And still the American boys guarding this approach
down into the town, moved to and fro, to and fro, in the darkness.
"Tom," said Roscoe, "I was a fool again, just like I was before, back
home in America. Will you try to forget it, old man?" he added.
"There ain't anything to forget," said Tom, "I got to be thankful I
found you; that's the only thing I'm thinking about and--and--that we
didn't let the Germans get us. If you like a feller you don't mind about
what he says. Do you think I forget you named that rifle after me? Just
because--because you didn't know about trusting to the stars,--I
wouldn't be mad at you----"
Roscoe did not answer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TOM IS QUESTIONED
When it became known in the captured village (as it did immediately)
that the tall prisoner whom Tom Slade had brought in, was none other
than the famous Major Johann Slauberstrauffn von Piffinhoeffer,
excitement ran high in the neighborhood, and the towheaded young
dispatch-rider from the Toul sector was hardly less of a celebrity than
the terrible Prussian himself. "Paul Revere" and his compass became the
subjects of much mirth, touched, as usual, with a kind of bantering
evidence of genuine liking.
In face of all this, Tom bestowed all the credit on Roscoe (it would be
hard to say why), and on Archibald Archer and the Big Dipper.
"Now that we've got the Big Dipper with us we ought to be able to push
right through to Berlin," observed one young corporal. "They say
Edison's got some new kind of a wrinkle up his sleeve, but believe me,
if he's got anything to beat Paul Revere's compass, he's a winner!"
"Old Piff nearly threw a fit, I heard, when he found out that he was
captured by a kid in the messenger service," another added.
"They may pull a big stroke with Mars, the god of war," still another
said, "but we've got the Big Dipper on our side."
Indeed, some of them nicknamed Tom the Big Dipper, but he did not mind
for, as he said soberly, he had "always liked the Big Dipper, anyway."
As the next day passed the importance of Tom's coup became known among
the troops stationed in the village and was the prime topic with those
who were digging the new trench line northeast of the town. Indeed,
aside from the particular reasons which were presently to appear, the
capture of Major von Piffinhoeffer was a "stunt" of the first order
which proved particularly humiliating to German dignity. That he should
have been captured at all was remarkable. That he should have been
hoodwinked and brought in by a young dispatch-rider was a matter of
crushing mortification to him, and must have been no less so to the
German high command.
Who but Major von Piffinhoeffer had first suggested the use of the
poisoned bandage in the treatment of English prisoners' wounds? Who but
Major von Piffinhoeffer had devised the very scheme of contaminating
streams, which Tom and Roscoe had discovered? Who but Major von
Piffinhoeffer had invented the famous "circle code" which had so long
puzzled and baffled Uncle Sam's Secret Service agents? Who but Major von
Piffinhoeffer had first suggested putting cholera germs in rifle
bullets, and tuberculosis germs in American cigarettes?
A soldier of the highest distinction was Major von Piffinhoeffer, of
Heidelberg University, whose decorative junk had come direct from the
grateful junkers, and whose famous eight-volume work on "Principles of
Modern Torture" was a text-book in the realm. A warrior of mettle was
Major von Piffinhoeffer, who deserved a more glorious fate than to be
captured by an American dispatch-rider!
But Tom Slade was not vain and it is doubtful if his stolid face,
crowned by his shock of rebellious hair, would have shown the slightest
symptom of excitement if he had captured Hindenburg, or the Kaiser
himself.
In the morning he rode down to Chepoix with some dispatches and in the
afternoon to St. Justen-Chaussee. He was kept busy all day. When he
returned to Cantigny, a little before dark, he was told to remain at
headquarters, and for a while he feared that he was going to be
court-martialled for overstaying his leave.
When he was at last admitted into the presence of the commanding
officer, he shifted from one foot to the other, feeling ill at ease as
he always did in the presence of officialdom. The officer sat at a heavy
table which had evidently been the kitchen table of the French peasant
people who had originally occupied the poor cottage. Signs of petty
German devastation were all about the humble, low-ceiled place, and they
seemed to evidence a more loathsome brutality even than did the blighted
country which Tom had ridden through.
Apparently everything which could show an arrogant contempt of the
simple family life which had reigned there had been done. There was a
kind of childish spitefulness in the sword thrusts through the few
pictures which hung on the walls. The German genius for destruction and
wanton vandalism was evident in broken knick-knacks and mottoes of hate
and bloody vengeance scrawled upon floor and wall.
It did Tom's heart good to see the resolute, capable American officers
sitting there attending to their business in quiet disregard of all
these silly, vulgar signs of impotent hate and baffled power.
"When you first met these Germans," the officer asked, "did the big
fellow have anything to say?"
"He asked us some questions," said Tom.
"Yes? Now what did he ask you?" the officer encouraged, as he reached
out and took a couple of papers pinned together, which lay among others
on the table.
"He seemed to be interested in transports, kind of, and the number of
Americans there are here."
"Hmm. Did he mention any particular ship--do you remember?" the officer
asked, glancing at the paper.
"Yes, he did. _Texas Pioneer_. I don't remember whether it was Texan or
Texas."
"Oh, yes," said the officer.
"We didn't tell him anything," said Tom.
"No, of course not."
The officer sat whistling for a few seconds, and scrutinizing the
papers.
"Do you remember the color of the officer's eyes?" he suddenly asked.
"It was only in the dark we saw him."
"Yes, surely. So you didn't get a very good look at him."
"I saw he had a nose shaped like a carrot, kind of," said Tom
ingenuously.
Both of the officers smiled.
"I mean the big end of it," said Tom soberly.
The two men glanced at each other and laughed outright. Tom did not
quite appreciate what they were laughing at but it encouraged him to
greater boldness, and shifting from one foot to the other, he said,
"The thing I noticed specially was how his mouth went sideways when he
talked, so one side of it seemed to slant the same as his moustache,
like, and the other didn't."
The officers smiled at each other again, but the one quizzing Tom looked
at him shrewdly and seemed interested.
"I mean the two ends of his moustache that stuck up like the
Kaiser's----"
"Oh, yes."
"I mean they didn't slant the same when he talked. One was crooked."
Again the officers smiled and the one who had been speaking said
thoughtfully,
"I see."
Tom shifted back to his other foot while the officer seemed to ruminate.
"He had a breed mark, too," Tom volunteered.
"A what?"
"Breed mark--it's different from a species mark," he added naively.
The officer looked at him rather curiously. "And what do you call a
breed mark?" he asked.
Tom looked at the other man who seemed also to be watching him closely.
He shifted from one foot to the other and said,
"It's a scout sign. A man named Jeb Rushmore told me about it. All
trappers know about it. It was his ear, how it stuck out, like."
He shifted to the other foot.
"Yes, go on."
"Nothing, only that's what a breed sign is. If Jeb Rushmore saw a bear
and afterwards way off he saw another bear he could tell if the first
bear was its grandmother--most always he could.
"Hmm. I see," said the officer, plainly interested and watching Tom
curiously. "And that's what a breed sign is, eh?"
"Yes, sir. Eyes ain't breed signs, but ears are. Feet are, too, and
different ways of walking are, but ears are the best of all--that's one
sure thing."
"And you mean that relationships can be determined by these breed
signs?"
"I don't mean people just looking like each other," Tom explained,
"'cause any way animals don't look like each other in the face. But you
got to go by breed signs. Knuckles are good signs, too."
"Well, well," said the officer, "that's very fine, and news to me."
"Maybe you were never a scout," said Tom naively.
"So that if you saw your Prussian major's brother or son somewhere,
where you had reason to think he would be, you'd know him--you'd
recognize him?"
Tom hesitated and shifted again. It was getting pretty deep for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE MAJOR'S PAPERS
It was perfectly evident that the officer's purpose in sending for Tom,
whatever that was, was considerably affected by the boy's own remarks,
and he now, after pondering a few moments, handed Tom the two papers
which he had been holding.
"Just glance that over and then I'll talk to you," he said.
Tom felt very important, indeed, and somewhat perturbed as well, for
though he had carried many dispatches it had never been his lot to know
their purport.
"If you know the importance and seriousness of what I am thinking of
letting you do," the officer said, "perhaps it will help you to be very
careful and thorough."
"Yes, sir," said Tom, awkwardly.
"All right, just glance that over."
The two papers were clipped together, and as Tom looked at the one on
top he saw that it was soiled and creased and written in German. The
other was evidently a translation of it. It seemed to be a letter the
first part of which was missing, and this is what Tom read:
"but, as you say, everything for the Fatherland. If you receive this
let them know that I'll have my arms crossed and to be careful
before they shoot. If you don't get this I'll just have to take my
chance. The other way isn't worth trying. As for the code key, that
will be safe enough--they'll never find it. If it wasn't for the ----
English service ---- (worn and undecipherable) ---- as far as that's
concerned. As far as I can ascertain we'll go on the T.P. There was
some inquiry about my close relationship to you, but nothing
serious. All you have to do is cheer when they play the S.S.B. over
here. It isn't known if Schmitter had the key to this when they
caught him because he died on Ellis Island. But it's being abandoned
to be on the safe side. I have notice from H. not to use it after
sending this letter. If we can get the new one in your hands
before ---- (text undecipherable) ---- in time so it can be used
through Mexico.
"I'll have much information to communicate verbally in T. and A.
matters, but will bring nothing in ---- ---- form but key and
credentials. The idea is L.'s--you remember him at Heidelberg, I
dare say. I brought him back once for holiday. Met him through
Handel, the fellow who was troubled with cataract. V. has furnished
funds. So don't fail to have them watch out.
"To the day,
"A. P."
"So you see some one is probably coming over on the _Texas Pioneer_,"
said the officer, as he took the papers from bewildered Tom, "and we'd
like to get hold of that fellow. The only trouble is we don't know who
he is."
It was quite half a minute before Tom could get a grip on himself, so
dark and mysterious had seemed this extraordinary communication. And it
was not until afterward, when he was alone and not handicapped by his
present embarrassment, that certain puzzling things about it became
clear to him. At present he depended wholly upon what his superior told
him and thought of nothing else.
"That was taken from your tall friend," said the officer, "and it means,
if it means anything, that somebody or other closely related to him is
coming over to France on the _Texas Pioneer_. From his mention of the
name to you I take it that is what T. P. means.
"Now, my boy, we want to get hold of this fellow--he's a spy.
Apparently, he won't have anything incriminating about him. My
impression is that he's in the army and hopes to get himself captured by
his friends. Yet he may desert and take a chance of getting into Germany
through Holland. About the only clew there is, is the intimation that
he's related to the prisoner. He may look like him. We've been trying to
get in communication with Dieppe, where this transport is expected to
dock to-morrow, but the wires seem to be shot into a tangle again.
"Do you think you could make Dieppe before morning--eighty to ninety
miles?"
"Yes, sir. The first twenty or so will be bad on account of shell holes,
I heard they threw as far as Forges."
"Hmm," said the officer, drumming with his fingers. "We'll leave all
that to you. The thing is to get there before morning."
"I know they never let anybody ashore before daylight," said Tom,
"because I worked on a transport."
"Very well. Now we'll see if the general and others hereabouts have been
overrating you. You've two things to do. One is to get to Dieppe before
to-morrow morning. That's imperative. The other is to assist the
authorities there to identify the writer of this letter if you can. Of
course, you'll not concern yourself with anything else in the letter. I
let you read it partly because of your very commendable bringing in of
this important captive and partly because I want you to know how serious
and important are the matters involved. I was rather impressed with what
you said about--er--breed marks."
"Yes, sir."
"And I believe you're thoughtful and careful. You've ridden by night a
good deal, I understand."
"Yes, sir."
"So. Now you are to ride at once to Breteuil, a little east of here,
where they're holding this prisoner. You'll deliver a note I shall give
you to Colonel Wallace, and he'll see to it that you have a look at the
man, in a sufficiently good light. Don't be afraid to observe him
closely. And whatever acuteness you may have in this way, let your
country have the benefit of it."
"Yes, sir."
"It may be that some striking likeness will enable you to recognize this
stranger. Possibly your special knowledge will be helpful. In any case,
when you reach Dieppe, present these papers, with the letter which I
shall give you, to the quartermaster there, and he will turn you over to
the Secret Service men. Do whatever they tell you and help them in every
way you can. I shall mention that you've seen the prisoner and observed
him closely. They may have means of discovery and identification which I
know nothing of, but don't be afraid to offer your help. Too much won't
be expected of you in that way, but it's imperative that you reach
Dieppe before morning. The roads are pretty bad, I know that. Think you
can do it?"
"What you got to do, you can do," said Tom simply.
It was a favorite saying of the same Jeb Rushmore, scout and woodsman,
who had told Tom about breed marks, and how they differed from mere
points of resemblance. And it made him think about Jeb Rushmore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF PAUL REVERE
Swiftly and silently along the dark road sped the dispatch-rider who had
come out of the East, from the far-off Toul sector, _for service as
required_. All the way across bleeding, devastated France he had
travelled, and having paused, as it were, to help in the little job at
Cantigny, he was now speeding through the darkness toward the coast with
as important a message as he had ever carried.
A little while before, as time is reckoned, he had been a Boy Scout in
America and had thought it was something to hike from New York to the
Catskills. Since then, he had been on a torpedoed transport, had been
carried in a submarine to Germany, had escaped through that war-mad land
and made his way to France, whose scarred and disordered territory he
had crossed almost from one end to the other, and was now headed for
almost the very point where he had first landed. Yet he was only
eighteen, and no one whom he met seemed to think that his experiences
had been remarkable. For in a world where all are having extraordinary
experiences, those of one particular person are hardly matter for
comment.
At Breteuil Tom had another look at "Major Piff," who bent his terrible,
scornful gaze upon him, making poor Tom feel like an insignificant worm.
But the imperious Prussian's stare netted him not half so much in the
matter of valuable data as Tom derived from his rather timid scrutiny.
Yet he would almost have preferred to face the muzzle of a field-piece
rather than wither beneath that arrogant, contemptuous glare.
It was close on to midnight when he reached Hardivillers, passing beyond
the point of the Huns' farthest advance, and sped along the straight
road for Marseille-en-Froissy, where he was to leave a relay packet for
Paris. From there he intended to run down to Gournay and then northwest
along the highway to the coast. He thought he had plenty of time.
At Gournay they told him that some American engineers were repairing the
bridge at Saumont, which had been damaged by floods, but that he might
gain the north road to the coast by going back as far as Songeons and
following the path along the upper Therain River, which would take him
to Aumale, and bring him into the Neufchatel road.
He lost perhaps two hours in doing this, partly by reason of the extra
distance and partly by reason of the muddy, and in some places
submerged, path along the Therain. The stream, ordinarily hardly more
than a creek, was so swollen that he had to run his machine through a
veritable swamp in places, and anything approaching speed was out of the
question. So difficult was his progress, what with running off the
flooded road and into the stream bed, and also from his wheels sticking
in the mud, that he began to fear that he was losing too much time in
this discouraging business.
But there was nothing to do but go forward, and he struggled on,
sometimes wheeling his machine, sometimes riding it, until at last it
sank almost wheel deep in muddy water and he had to lose another half
hour in cleaning out his carbureter. He feared that it might give
trouble even then, but the machine labored along when the mud was not
too deep, and at last, after almost superhuman effort, he and _Uncle
Sam_ emerged, dirty and dripping, out of a region where he could almost
have made as good progress with a boat, into Aumale, where he stopped
long enough to clean the grit out of his engine parts.
It was now nearly four o'clock in the morning, and his instructions were
to reach Dieppe not later than five. He knew, from his own experience,
that transports always discharge their thronging human cargoes early in
the morning, and that every minute after five o'clock would increase the
likelihood of his finding the soldiers already gone ashore and separated
for the journeys to their various destinations. To reach Dieppe after
the departure of the soldiers was simply unthinkable to Tom. Whatever
excuse there might have been to the authorities for his failure, that
also he could not allow to enter his thoughts. He had been trusted to do
something and he was going to do it.
Perhaps it was this dogged resolve which deterred him from doing
something which he had thought of doing; that is, acquainting the
authorities at Aumale with his plight and letting them wire on to
Dieppe. Surely the wires between Aumale and the coast must be working,
but suppose----
Suppose the Germans should demolish those wires with a random shot from
some great gun such as the monster which had bombarded Paris at a
distance of seventy miles. Such a random shot might demolish Tom Slade,
too, but he did not think of that. What he thought of chiefly was the
inglorious rôle he would play if, after shifting his responsibility, he
should go riding into Dieppe only to find that the faithful dots and
dashes had done his work for him. Then again, suppose the wires should
be tapped--there were spies everywhere, he knew that.
Whatever might have been the part of wisdom and caution, he was well
past Aumale before he allowed himself to realize that he was taking
rather a big chance. If there were floods in one place there might be
floods in another, but----
He banished the thought from his mind. Tom Slade, motorcycle
dispatch-bearer, had always regarded the villages he rushed through with
a kind of patronizing condescension. His business had always been
between some headquarters or other and some point of destination, and
between these points he had no interest. He and _Uncle Sam_ had a
little pride in these matters. French children with clattering wooden
shoes had clustered about him when he paused, old wives had called,
"_Vive l'Amerique!_" from windows and, like the post-boy of old, he had
enjoyed the prestige which was his. Should he, Tom Slade, surrender or
ask for help in one of these mere incidental places along his line of
travel?
_What you got to do, you do_, he had said, and you cannot do it by going
half way and then letting some one else do the rest. He had read the
_Message to Garcia_ (as what scout has not), and did that bully
messenger--whatever his name was--turn back because the Cuban jungle was
too much for him? _He delivered the message to Garcia_, that was the
point. There were swamps, and dank, tangled, poisonous vines, and
venomous snakes, and the sickening breath of fever. _But he delivered
the message to Garcia._
It was sixty miles, Tom knew, from Aumale to Dieppe by the road. And he
must reach Dieppe not later than five o'clock. The road was a good road,
if it held nothing unexpected. The map showed it to be a good road, and
as far west as this there was small danger from shell holes.
Fifty miles, and one hour!
Swiftly along the dark road sped the dispatch-rider who had come from
the far-off blue hills of Alsace across the war-scorched area of
northern France into the din and fire and stenching suffocation and
red-running streams of Picardy _for service as required_. Past St. Prey
he rushed; past Thiueloy, and into Mortemer, and on to the hilly region
where the Eualine flows between its hilly banks. He was in and out of La
Tois in half a minute.
When he passed through Neufchatel several poilus, lounging at the
station, hailed him cheerily in French, but he paid no heed, and they
stood gaping, seeing his bent form and head thrust forward with its
shock of tow hair flying all about.
Twenty miles, and half an hour!
Through St. Authon he sped, raising a cloud of dust, his keen eyes
rivetted upon the road ahead, and down into the valley where a tributary
of the Bethune winds its troubled way--past Le Farge, past tiny,
picturesque Loix, into an area of 'lowland where an isolated cottage
seemed like a lonely spectre of the night as he passed, on through
Mernoy to the crossing at Chabris, and then----
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"UNCLE SAM"
Tom Slade stood looking with consternation at the scene before him. His
trusty motorcycle which had borne him so far stood beside him, and as he
steadied it, it seemed as if this mute companion and co-patriot which he
had come to love, were sharing his utter dismay. Almost at his very feet
rushed a boisterous torrent, melting the packed earth of the road like
wax in a tropic sunshine, and carrying its devastating work of erosion
to the very spot where he stood.
In a kind of cold despair, he stooped, reached for a board which lay
near, and retreating a little, stood upon it, watching the surging water
in its heedless career. This one board was all that was left of the
bridge over which Tom Slade and _Uncle Sam_ were to have rushed in their
race with the dawn. Already the first glimmering of gray was discernible
in the sky behind him, and Tom looked at _Uncle Sam_ as if for council
in his dilemma. The dawn would not require any bridge to get across.
"We're checked in our grand drive, kind of," he said, with a pathetic
disappointment which his odd way of putting it did not disguise. "We're
checked, that's all, just like the Germans were--kind of."
He knelt and let down the rest of his machine so that it might stand
unaided, as if he would be considerate of those mud-covered, weary
wheels.
And meanwhile the minutes passed.
"Anyway, you did _your_ part," he muttered. And then, "If you only could
swim."
It was evident that the recent rains had swollen the stream which
ordinarily flowed in the narrow bed between slanting shores so that the
rushing water filled the whole space between the declivities and was
even flooding the two ends of road which had been connected by a bridge.
An old ramshackle house, which Tom thought might once have been a
boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning. Close by it
was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the
rushing water. One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had
caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being
carried downstream in the rush of water.
Holding his flashlight to his watch Tom saw that it was nearly fifteen
minutes past four and he believed that about forty miles of road lay
ahead of him. Slowly, silently, the first pale tint of gray in the sky
behind him took on a more substantial hue, revealing the gaunt, black
outlines of trees and painting the sun-dried, ragged shingles on the
little house a dull silvery color.
"Anyway, you stood by me and it ain't your fault," Tom muttered
disconsolately. He turned the handle bar this way and that, so that
_Uncle Sam's_ one big eye peered uncannily across the flooded stream and
flickered up the road upon the other side, which wound up the hillside
and away into the country beyond. The big, peering eye seemed to look
longingly upon that road.
Then Tom was seized with a kind of frantic rebellion against fate--the
same futile passion which causes a convict to wrench madly at the bars
of his cell. The glimpse of that illuminated stretch of road across the
flooded stream drove him to distraction. Baffled, powerless, his wonted
stolidness left him, and he cast his eyes here and there with a sort of
challenge born of despair and desperation.
Slowly, gently, the hazy dawn stole over the sky and the roof of dried
and ragged shingles seemed as if it were covered with gray dust.
Presently the light would flicker upon those black, mad waters and laugh
at Tom from the other side.
And meanwhile the minutes passed.
He believed that he could swim the torrent and make a landing even
though the rush of water carried him somewhat downstream. But what about
_Uncle Sam_? He turned off the searchlight and still _Uncle Sam_ was
clearly visible now, standing, waiting. He could count the spokes in the
wheels.
The spokes in the wheels--_the spokes_. With a sudden inspiration born
of despair, Tom looked at that low, shingled roof. He could see it
fairly well now. The gray dawn had almost caught up with him.
And meanwhile the minutes passed!
In a frantic burst of energy he took a running jump, caught the edge of
the roof and swung himself upon it. In the thin haze his form was
outlined there, his shock of light hair jerking this way and that, as
he tore off one shingle after another, and threw them to the ground. He
was racing now, as he had not raced before, and there was upon his
square, homely face that look of uncompromising resolution which the
soldier wears as he goes over the top with his bayonet fixed.
Leaping to the ground again he gathered up some half a dozen shingles,
selecting them with as much care as his desperate haste would permit.
Then he hurriedly opened the leather tool case on his machine and
tumbled the contents about until he found the roll of insulated wire
which he always carried.
His next work was to split one of the shingles over his knee so that he
had a strip of wood about two inches wide. It took him but so many
seconds to jab four or five holes through this, and adjusting it between
two slopes of the power wheel so that it stood crossways and was
re-enforced by the spokes themselves, he proceeded to bind it in place
with the wire. Then he moved the wheel gently around, and found that the
projecting edge of wooden strip knocked against the mud-guard.
Hesitating not a second he pulled and bent and twisted the mud-guard,
wrenching it off. The wheel revolved freely now. The spokes were
beginning to shine in the brightening light.
And meanwhile the seconds passed!
It was the work of hardly a minute to bind three other narrow strips of
shingle among the spokes so that they stood more or less crossways.
There was no time to place and fasten more, but these, at equal
intervals, forming a sort of cross within the wheel, were quite
sufficient, Tom thought, for his purpose. It was necessary to shave the
edges of the shingles somewhat, after they were in place, so that they
would not chafe against the axle-bars. But this was also the hurried
work of a few seconds, and then Tom moved his machine to the old mooring
float and lifted it upon the bobbing platform.
He must work with the feverish speed of desperation for the float was
held by no better anchor than one of its supporting barrels embedded in
the mud. If he placed his weight or that of _Uncle Sam_ upon the side of
the float already in the water the weight would probably release the
mud-held barrel and the float, with himself and _Uncle Sam_ upon it,
would be carried willy-nilly upon the impetuous waters.
And meanwhile---- How plainly he could distinguish the trees now, and
the pale stars stealing away into the obscurity of the brightening
heavens.
With all the strength that he could muster he wrenched a board from the
centre of the platform, and moving his arm about in the opening felt the
rushing water beneath.
The buoyancy of the air-tight barrels, one of which was lodged under
each corner of the float, was such that with Tom and his machine upon
the planks the whole platform would float six or eight inches free of
the water. To pole or row this unwieldy raft in such a flood would have
been quite out of the question, and even in carrying out the plan which
Tom now thought furnished his only hope, he knew that the sole chance of
success lay in starting right. If the float, through premature or
unskilful starting, should get headed downstream, there would be no hope
of counteracting its impetus.
Lifting his machine, he lowered it carefully into the opening left by
the torn-off plank, until the pedals rested upon the planks on either
side and the power wheel was partially submerged. So far, so good.
In less than a minute now he would either succeed or fail. It was
necessary first to alter the position of the float slightly so that the
opening left by the plank pointed across and slightly upstream. He had
often noticed how the pilot of a ferryboat directs his craft above or
below the point of landing to counteract the rising or ebbing tide, and
this was his intention now; but to neutralize the force of the water
with another force not subject to direction or adjustment involved a
rather nice calculation.
Very cautiously he waded out upon the precipitous, submerged bank and
brought the float into position. This done, he acted with lightning
rapidity. Leaping upon the freed float before it had time to swing
around, he raised his machine, started it, and lowering the power wheel
into the opening, steadied the machine as best he could. It was not
possible to let it hang upon its pedals for he must hold it at a steep
angle, and it required all his strength to manage its clumsy, furiously
vibrating bulk.
But the effects of his makeshift paddle-wheel were pronounced and
instantaneous. His own weight and that of the machine sufficiently
submerged the racing power wheel so that the rough paddles plowed the
water, sending the float diagonally across the flooded stream with
tremendous force. He was even able, by inclining the upper end of the
machine to right or left, to guide his clumsy craft, which responded to
this live rudder with surprising promptness.
In the rapid crossing this rough ferryboat lost rather more than Tom had
thought it would lose from the rush of water and it brought him close to
the opposite shore at a point some fifty feet beyond the road, but he
had been able to maintain its direction at least to the extent of
heading shoreward and preventing the buoyant float from fatal swirling,
which would have meant loss of control altogether.
Perhaps it was better that his point of landing was some distance below
the road, where he was able to grasp at an overhanging tree with one
hand while shutting his power off and holding fast to his machine with
the other. A landing would have been difficult anywhere else.
Even now he was in the precarious position of sitting upon a limb in a
rather complicated network of small branches and foliage, hanging onto
his motorcycle for dear life, while the buoyant float went swirling and
bobbing down the flood.
It had taken him perhaps five minutes to prepare for his crossing and
about thirty seconds to cross. But his strategic position was far from
satisfactory. And already the more substantial light of the morning
revealed the gray road winding ribbon-like away into the distance, the
first glints of sunlight falling upon its bordering rocks and trees as
if to taunt and mock him.
And meanwhile the minutes passed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
UP A TREE
In military parlance, Tom had advanced only to be caught in a pocket.
There he sat, astride a large limb, hanging onto the heavy machine,
which depended below him just free of the water. He had, with
difficulty, moved his painful grip upon a part of the machine's
mechanism and succeeded in clutching the edge of the forward wheel. This
did not cut his hands so much, but the weight was unbearable in his
embarrassed attitude.
Indeed, it was not so much his strength, which was remarkable, that
enabled him to keep his hold upon this depending dead weight, as it was
sheer desperation. It seemed to be pulling his arms out of their
sockets, and his shoulders ached incessantly. At the risk of losing his
balance altogether he sought relief by the continual shifting of his
position but he knew that the strain was too great for him and that he
must let go presently.
It seemed like a mockery that he should have gained the shore only to be
caught in this predicament, and to see his trusty machine go tumbling
into the water beyond all hope of present recovery, simply because he
could not hang on to it.
Well, then, he _would_ hang on to it. He would hang on to it though
every muscle of his body throbbed, though his arms were dragged out, and
though he collapsed and fell from that limb himself in the last anguish
of the aching strain. He and _Uncle Sam_, having failed, would go down
together.
And meanwhile the minutes passed and _Uncle Sam_ and Tom were reflected,
inverted, in the water where the spreading light was now flickering. How
strange and grotesque they looked, upside down and clinging to each
other for dear life and wriggling in the ripples of rushing water.
_Uncle Sam_ seemed to be holding _him_ up. It was all the same--they
were partners.
He noticed in the water something which he had not noticed before--the
reflection of a short, thick, broken branch projecting from the heavy
limb he was straddling. He glanced about and found that it was behind
him. His stooping attitude, necessitated by the tremendous drag on his
arms, prevented him even from looking freely behind him, and in trying
to do so he nearly fell. The strain he was suffering was so great that
the least move caused him pain.
But by looking into the water he was able to see that this little stub
of a limb might serve as a hook on which the machine might be hung if he
could clear away the leafy twigs which grew from it, and if he could
succeed in raising the cycle and slipping the wheel over it. That would
not end his predicament but it would save the machine, relieve him for a
few moments, and give him time to think.
_For a few moments!_ They were fleeting by--the moments.
There is a strength born of desperation--a strength of will which is
conjured into physical power in the last extremity. It is when the
frantic, baffled spirit calls aloud to rally every failing muscle and
weakening nerve. It is then that the lips tighten and the eyes become as
steel, as the last reserves waiting in the entrenchments of the soul are
summoned up to re-enforce the losing cause.
And there in that tree, on the brink of the heedless, rushing waters
which crossed the highroad to Dieppe was going to be fought out one of
the most desperate battles of the whole war. There, in the mocking light
of the paling dawn, Tom Slade, his big mouth set like a vice, and with
every last reserve he could command, was going to make his last cast of
the dice--let go, give up--or, _hold on_.
_Let go!_ Of all the inglorious forms of defeat or surrender! _To let
go!_ To be struck down, to be taken prisoner, to be----
But to _let go_! The bulldog, the snapping turtle, seemed like very
heroes now.
"He always said I had a good muscle--he liked to feel it," he muttered.
"And besides, _she_ said she guessed I was strong."
He was thinking of Margaret Ellison, away back in America, and of Roscoe
Bent, as he had known him there. When he muttered again there was a
beseeching pathos in his voice which would have pierced the heart of
anyone who could have seen him struggling still against fate, in this
all but hopeless predicament.
But no one saw him except the sun who was raising his head above the
horizon as a soldier steals a cautious look over the trench parapet.
There would be no report of this affair.
He lowered his chest to the limb, wound his legs around it and for a
second lay there while he tightened and set his legs, as one will
tighten a belt against some impending strain. Not another fraction of an
inch could he have tightened those encircling legs.
And now the fateful second was come. It had to come quickly for his
strength was ebbing. There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can
just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about _budge_
it with one hand. Tom had tried this at Temple Camp with a visiting
scout's baggage chest. With both hands he had been barely able to lift
it by its strap. With one hand he had been able to _budge_ it for the
fraction of a second. But there had been no overmastering incentive--and
no reserves called up out of the depths of his soul.
He could feel his breast palpitating against the limb, drawn tight
against it by the dead weight. Yet he could not put his desperate
purpose to the test.
And so a second--two, three, seconds--were wasted.
"I won't let go," he muttered through his teeth. "I wish I could wipe
the sweat off my hand." Then, as if his dogged resolution were not
enough, he added, almost appealingly, "Don't _you_ drop and--and go back
on me."
_Uncle Sam_ only swung a little in the breeze and wriggled like an eel
in the watery mirror.
Slowly Tom loosened his perspiring left hand, not daring to withdraw it.
The act seemed to communicate an extra strain to every part of his body.
Of all the fateful moments of his life, this seemed to be the most
tense. Then, in an impulse of desperation, he drew his left hand away.
"I won't--let--go," he muttered.
The muscles on his taut right arm stood out like cords. His forearm
throbbed with an indescribable, pulling pain. There was a feeling of
dull soreness in his shoulder blade. His perspiring hand closed tighter
around the wheel's rim and he could feel his pulse pounding. His fingers
tingled as if they had been asleep. Then his hand slipped a little.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH"
Whether merely from the change of an eighth of an inch or so in its hold
upon the rim, or because his palm fitted better around the slight
alteration of curve, Tom was conscious of the slightest measure of
relief.
As quickly as he dared (for he knew that any sudden move would be
fatal), he reached behind him with his left arm and, groping for the
stub of limb, tore away from it the twigs which he knew would form an
obstacle to placing the wheel rim with its network of spokes over this
short projection.
The dead soreness of his straining shoulder blade ran down his arm,
which throbbed painfully. His twitching, struggling fingers, straining
against the weight which was forcing them open, clutched the rim. They
were burning and yet seemed numb. Oh, if he could only wipe his palm and
that rim with a dry handkerchief! He tightened his slipping fingers
again and again. The muscles of his arm smarted as from a blow. He
tightened his lips--and that seemed to help.
Carefully, though his aching breast pounded against the limb, he brought
back his left hand, cautiously rubbed it against his khaki shirt, then
encircled it about the rim. For a moment the weight seemed manageably
light in the quick relief he felt.
Availing himself of the slight measure of refreshment he raised the
machine a trifle, a trifle more, squirmed about to get in better
position, bent, strained, got the bulky thing past his clutching legs,
exerted every muscle of chest and abdomen, which now could assume some
share of the strain, and by a superhuman effort of litheness and
dexterity and all the overwhelming power of physical strength and
frenzied resolution, he succeeded in slipping the wheel rim over the
stubby projection behind him.
If he had been running for ten miles he could not have been more
exhausted. His breast heaved with every spasmodic breath he drew. His
shoulder blades throbbed like an aching tooth. His dripping palm was
utterly numb. For a few brief, precious seconds he sat upon the limb
with a sense of unutterable relief, and mopped his beaded forehead. And
the sun's full, round face smiled approvingly upon him.
Meanwhile the minutes flew.
Hurrying now, he scrambled down the tree trunk where he had a better and
less discouraging view of the situation. He saw that _Uncle Sam_ hung
about five feet from the brink and just clear of the water. If the bank
on this side was less precipitous than on the other there would be some
prospect of rescuing his machine without serious damage. He could afford
to let it get wet provided the carburetor and magneto were not submerged
and the gas tank----
_The gas tank._ That thought stabbed him. Could the gasoline have flowed
out of the tank while the machine was hanging up and down? That would
bring the supply hole, with its perforated screw-cover, underneath.
He waded cautiously into the water and found to his infinite relief that
the submerged bank formed a gentle slope. He could not go far enough to
lift his machine, but he could reach to wiggle it off its hook and then
guide it, in some measure, enough to ease its fall and keep its
damageable parts clear of the water. At least he believed he could. In
any event, he had no alternative choice and time was flying. After what
he had already done he felt he could do anything. Success, however
wearying and exhausting, gives one a certain working capital of
strength, and having succeeded so far he would not now fail. His success
in crossing had given him that working capital of resolution and
incentive whence came his superhuman strength and overmastering resolve
in that lonely tree. And he would not fail now.
Yet he could not bring himself to look at his watch. He was willing to
venture a guess, from the sun, as to what time it was, but he could not
clinch the knowledge by a look at the cruel, uncompromising little
glass-faced autocrat in his pocket. He preferred to work in the less
disheartening element of uncertainty. He did not want to know the hard,
cold truth--not till he was moving.
Here now was the need of nice calculating, and Tom eyed the shore and
the tree and the machine with the appraising glance of a wrestler eyeing
his opponent. He broke several branches from the tree, laying them so as
to form a kind of springy, leafy mound close to the brink. Then
standing knee-deep he wiggled the wheel's rim very cautiously out to the
end of its hanger, so that it just balanced there.
One more grand drive, one more effort of unyielding strength and
accurate dexterity and--_he would be upon the road_.
The thought acted as a stimulant. Lodging one hand under the seat of the
machine and the other upon a stout bar of the mechanism which he thought
would afford him just the play and swing he needed, he joggled the wheel
off its hanger, and with a wide sweep, in which he skillfully minimized
the heavy weight, he swung the machine onto the springy bed which he had
made to receive it.
Then, as the comrade of a wounded soldier may bend over him, he knelt
down beside his companion upon the makeshift, leafy couch.
"Are you all right?" he asked in the agitation of his triumphant effort.
_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.
He stood the machine upright and lowered the rest so that it could stand
unaided; and he tore away the remnant of mud-guard which _Uncle Sam_ had
sacrificed in his role of combination engine and paddle-wheel.
"You've got the wires all tangled up in your spokes," Tom said; "you
look like a--a wreck. What do you want with those old sticks of
shingles? How are you off for gas--you--you old tramp?"
_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.
"Anyway, you're all right," Tom panted; "only my arm is worse than your
old mud-guard. We're a pair of---- Can't you speak?" he added breathing
the deadly fatigue he felt and putting his foot upon the pedal.
"What--do--you--say? Huh?"
And then _Uncle Sam_ answered.
"Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r---- Never mind your arm. Come
ahead--hurry," he seemed to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO--"
Swiftly along the sun-flecked road sped the dispatch-rider. In the
mellow freshness of the new day he rode, and the whir of his machine in
its lightning flight mingled with the cheery songs of the birds, whose
early morning chorus heartened and encouraged him. There was a balm in
the fragrant atmosphere of the cool, gray morning which entered the soul
of Tom Slade and whispered to him, _There is no such word as fail._
Out of the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking
perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching
his splendid strength and towering will against obstacles, against fate,
against everything.
As he held the handle-bar of _Uncle Sam_ in that continuous handshake
which they knew so well, his right arm felt numb and sore, and his
whole body ached. _Uncle Sam's_ big, leering glass eye was smashed, his
mud-guard wrenched off, and dried mud was upon his wheels. His rider's
uniform was torn and water-soaked, his face black with grime. They made
a good pair.
Never a glance to right or left did the rider give, nor so much as a
perfunctory nod to the few early risers who paused to stare at him as he
sped by. In the little hamlet of Persan an old Frenchman sitting on a
rustic seat before the village inn, removed his pipe from his mouth long
enough to call,
"_La côte?_"
But never a word did the rider answer. Children, who, following the good
example of the early bird, were already abroad, scurried out of his way,
making a great clatter in their wooden shoes, and gaping until he passed
beyond their sight.
Over the bridge at Soignois he rushed, making its ramshackle planks
rattle and throw up a cloud of dust from between the vibrating seams.
Out of this cloud he emerged like a gray spectre, body bent, head low,
gaze fixed and intense, leaving a pandemonium of dust and subsiding
echoes behind him.
At Virneu an old housewife threw open her blinds and seeing the dusty
khaki of the rider, summoned her brood, who waved the tricolor from the
casement, laughing and calling, "_Vive l'Amerique!_"
Their cheery voices and fraternal patriotism did cause Tom to turn his
head and call,
"_Merci. Vive la France!_"
And they answered again with a torrent of French.
The morning was well established as he passed through Chuisson, and a
clock upon a romantic, medieval-looking little tower told him that it
lacked but ten minutes of five o'clock.
A feeling of doubt, almost of despair, seized upon him and he called in
that impatient surliness which springs from tense anxiety, asking an old
man how far it was to Dieppe.
The man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in polite confession
that he did not understand English.
In his anxiety it irritated Tom. "What _do_ you know?" he muttered.
Out of Chuisson he labored up a long hill, and though _Uncle Sam_ made
no more concession to it than to slacken his unprecedented rate of
speed the merest trifle, the difference communicated itself to Tom at
once and it seemed, by contrast, as if they were creeping. On and up
_Uncle Sam_ went, plying his way sturdily, making a great noise and a
terrific odor--dogged, determined and irresistible.
But the rider stirred impatiently. Would they ever, _ever_, reach the
top? And when they should, there would be another hamlet in a valley,
another bridge, more stupid people who could not speak English, more
villages, more bends in the road, still other villages, and
then--another hill.
It seemed to Tom that he had been travelling for ten years and that
there was to be no end of it. Ride, ride, ride--it brought him nowhere.
His right arm which had borne that tremendous strain, was throbbing so
that he let go the handle-bar from time to time in the hope of relief. It
was the pain of acute tiredness, for which there could be no relief but
rest. Just to throw himself down and rest! Oh, if he could only lay that
weary, aching arm across some soft pillow and leave it there--just leave
it there. Let it hang, bend it, hold it above him, lay it on _Uncle
Sam's_ staunch, unfeeling arm of steel, he could not, _could_ not, get
it rested.
The palm of his hand tingled with a kind of irritating feeling like
chilblains, and he must be continually removing one or other hand from
the bar so that he could reach one with the other. It did not help him
keep his poise. If he could only scratch his right hand once and be done
with it! But it annoyed him like a fly.
Up, up, up, they went, and passed a quaint, old, thatch-roofed house.
Crazy place to build a house! And the people in it--probably all they
could do was to shrug their shoulders in that stupid way when asked a
question in English.
He was losing his morale--was this dispatch-rider.
But near the top of the hill he regained it somewhat. Perhaps he could
make up for this lost time in some straight, level reach of road beyond.
Up, up, up, plowed _Uncle Sam_, one lonely splinter of shingle still
bound within his spokes, and his poor, dented headlight bereft of its
dignity.
"I've an idea the road turns north about a mile down," Tom said to
himself, "and runs around through----"
The words stopped upon his lips as _Uncle Sam_, still laboring upward,
reached level ground, and as if to answer Tom out of his own
uncomplaining and stouter courage, showed him a sight which sent his
faltering hope skyward and started his heart bounding.
For there below them lay the vast and endless background of the sea,
throwing every intervening detail of the landscape into insignificance.
There it was, steel blue in the brightening sunlight and glimmering here
and there in changing white, where perhaps some treacherous rock or bar
lay just submerged. And upon it, looking infinitesimal in the limitless
expanse, was something solid with a column of black smoke rising and
winding away from it and dissolving in the clear, morning air.
"There you are!" said Tom, patting _Uncle Sam_ patronizingly in a swift
change of mood. "See there? That's the Atlantic Ocean--that is. _Now_
will you hurry? That's a ship coming in--see? I bet it's a whopper, too.
Do you know what--what's off beyond there?" he fairly panted in his
excitement; "do you? You old French hobo, you? _America!_ That's where
_I_ came from. _Now_ will you hurry? That's Dieppe, where the white[2]
is and those steeples, see? And way across there on the other side is
America!"
For _Uncle Sam_, notwithstanding his name, was a French motorcycle and
had never seen America.
[2] Dieppe's famous beach.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A SURPRISE
Down the hill coasted _Uncle Sam_, bearing his rider furiously onward. A
fence along the wayside seemed like a very entanglement of stakes and
pickets. Then it was gone. A house loomed up in view, grew larger, and
was gone. A cow that was grazing in a field languidly raised her head,
blinked her eyes, and stood as if uncertain whether she had really seen
something pass or not.
They were in the valley now and the sea was no longer discernible. On
they rushed with a fine disdain for poor little Charos, whose village
steeple appeared and disappeared like a flash of lightning. The road was
broad and level and _Uncle Sam_ sped along amid a cloud of dust, the
bordering trees and houses flying away behind like dried leaves in a
hurricane. The rider's hair was fluttering like a victorious emblem, his
eyes fixed with a wild intensity.
"We'd get arrested for this in America," he muttered; "we--we should
worry."
It was little _Uncle Sam_ cared for the traffic laws of America.
Around the outskirts of Teurley they swept and into the broad highway
like a pair of demons, and a muleteer, seeing discretion to be the
better part of valor, drove his team well to the side--far enough, even,
to escape any devilish contamination which this unearthly apparition
might diffuse.
They had reached a broad highway, one of those noble roads which
Napoleon had made. They could not go wrong now. They passed a luxurious
chateau, then a great hotel where people haled them in French. Then they
passed an army auto truck loaded with mattresses, with the bully old
initials U. S. A. on its side. Two boys in khaki were on the seat.
"Is the _Texas Pioneer_ in?" Tom yelled.
"What?" one of them called back.
"He's deaf or something," muttered Tom; "we--should worry."
On they sped till the road merged into a street lined with shops, where
children in wooden shoes and men in blouses shuffled about. Tom thought
he had never seen people so slow in his life.
[Illustration: DOWN THE HILL COASTED UNCLE SAM BEARING TOM FURIOUSLY
ONWARD.]
Now, indeed, he must make some concession to the throngs moving back and
forth, and he slackened his speed, but only slightly.
"Dieppe?" he called.
"Dieppe," came the laughing answer from a passer-by, who was evidently
amused at Tom's pronunciation.
"Where's the wharves?"
Again that polite shrug of the shoulders.
He took a chance with another passer-by, who nodded and pointed down a
narrow street with dull brown houses tumbling all over each other, as it
seemed to Tom. It was the familiar, old-world architecture of the French
coast towns, which he had seen in Brest and St. Nazaire, as if all the
houses had become suddenly frightened and huddled together like panicky
sheep.
More leisurely now, but quickly still, rode the dispatch-rider through
this narrow, surging way which had all the earmarks of the
shore--damp-smelling barrels, brass lanterns, dilapidated ships'
figureheads, cosy but uncleanly drinking places, and sailors.
And of all the sights save one which Tom Slade ever beheld, the one
which most gladdened his heart was a neat new sign outside a stone
building,
Office of United States Quartermaster.
Several American army wagons were backed up against the building and
half a dozen khaki-clad boys lounged about. There was much coming and
going, but it is a part of the dispatch-rider's prestige to have
immediate admittance anywhere, and Tom stopped before this building and
was immediately surrounded by a flattering representation of military
and civilian life, both French and American.
To these he paid not the slightest heed, but carefully lowered _Uncle
Sam's_ rest so that his weary companion might stand alone.
"You old tramp," he said in an undertone; "stay here and take it easy.
Keep away," he added curtly to a curious private who was venturing a too
close inspection of _Uncle Sam's_ honorable wounds.
"What's the matter--run into something?" he asked.
"No, I didn't," said Tom, starting toward the building.
Suddenly he stopped short, staring.
A man in civilian clothes sat tilted back in one of several chairs
beside the door. He wore a little black moustache and because his head
was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his hat was pushed
forward giving him a rakish look which was rather heightened by an
unlighted cigar sticking up out of the corner of his mouth like a piece
of field artillery.
He might have been a travelling salesman waiting for his samples on the
veranda of a country hotel and he had about him a kind of sophisticated
look as if he took a sort of blasé pleasure in watching the world go
round. His feet rested upon the rung of his tilted chair, forming his
knees into a sort of desk upon which lay a French newspaper. The tilting
of his knees, the tilting of his chair, the tilting of his hat and the
rakish tilt of his cigar, gave him the appearance of great
self-sufficiency, as if, away down in his soul, he knew what he was
there for, and cared not a whit whether anyone else did or not.
Tom Slade paused on the lower step and stared. Then with a slowly
dawning smile supplanting his look of astonishment, he ejaculated,
"M-i-s-t-e-r _C-o-n-n-e_!"
The man made not the slightest change in his attitude except to smile
the while he worked his cigar over to the other corner of his mouth.
Then he cocked his head slightly sideways.
"H'lo, Tommy," said he.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SMOKE AND FIRE
Mr. Carleton Conne, of the United States Secret Service, had come over
from Liverpool _via_ Dover on a blind quest after an elusive spy. There
had been a sort of undercurrent of rumor, with many extravagant
trappings, that a mysterious agent of the Kaiser was on his way to
Europe with secrets of a most important character. Some stories had it
that he was intimately related to Bloody Bill himself; others that he
gloried in a kinship with Ludendorf, while still other versions
represented him as holding Mexico in the palm of his hand. Dark stories
floated about and no one knew just where they originated.
One sprightly form this story took, which had been whispered in New York
and then in Liverpool, was that a certain young lady (identity unknown)
had talked with a soldier (identity unknown) in the Grand Central
Station in New York, and that the soldier had told her that at his
cantonment (cantonment not identified) there was a man in a special
branch of the service (branch not mentioned) who was a cousin or a
brother or a nephew or a son or something or other to a German general
or statesman or something or other, and that he had got into the
American army by a pretty narrow squeak. There seemed to be a unanimity
of opinion in the lower strata of Uncle Sam's official family in
Liverpool that the soldier who had talked with the young lady was coming
over on the transport _Manchester_ and it was assumed (no one seemed to
know exactly why) that the mysterious and sinister personage would be
upon the same ship.
But no soldier had been found upon the _Manchester_ who showed by his
appearance that he had chatted with a young lady. Perhaps several of
them had done that. It is a way soldiers have.
As for the arch spy or propagandist, he did not come forward and
introduce himself as such, and though a few selected suspects of German
antecedents were searched and catechised by Mr. Conne and others, no one
was held.
And there you are.
Rumors of this kind are always in circulation and the Secret Service
people run them down as a matter of precaution. But though you can run a
rumor down and stab it through and through you cannot kill it. It now
appeared that this German agent had sailed from Mexico and would land at
Brest--with a message to some French statesman. Also it appeared that he
had stolen a secret from Edison and would land at Dieppe. It had also
been reported that someone had attempted to blow up the loaded transport
_Texas Pioneer_ on her way over.
And so Mr. Carleton Conne, of the American Secret Service, quiet,
observant, uncommunicative, never too sanguine and never too skeptical,
had strolled on to the _Channel Queen_, lighted his cigar, and was now
tilted back in his chair outside the Quartermaster's office in Dieppe,
not at all excited and waiting for the _Texas Pioneer_ to dock.
He had done this because he believed that where there is a great deal of
smoke there is apt to be a little fire. He was never ruffled, never
disappointed.
Tom's acquaintance with Mr. Conne had begun on the transport on which he
had worked as a steward's boy, and where his observant qualities and
stolid soberness had attracted and amused the detective.
"I never thought I'd see you here," said Tom, his face lighting up to an
unusual degree. "I'm a dispatch-rider now. I just rode from Cantigny. I
got a letter for the Quartermaster, but anyway he's got to turn me over
to the Secret Service (Mr. Conne regarded him with whimsical attention
as he stumbled on), because there's a plot and somebody--a spy--kind
of----"
"A spy, kind of, eh?"
"And I hope the _Texas Pioneer_ didn't land yet, that's one sure thing."
"It's one sure thing that she'll dock in about fifteen minutes, Tommy,"
said Mr. Conne rising. "Come inside and deliver your message. What's the
matter with your machine? Been trying to wipe out the Germans alone and
unaided, like the hero in a story book?"
Tom followed him in, clumsily telling the story of his exciting journey;
"talking in chunks," as he usually did and leaving many gaps to be
filled in by the listener.
"I'm glad I found you here, anyway," he finished, as if that were the
only part that really counted; "'cause now I feel as if I can tell
about an idea I've got. I'd of been scared to tell it to anybody else. I
ain't exactly got it yet," he added, "but maybe I can help even better
than they thought, 'cause as I was ridin' along I had a kind of an
idea----"
"Yes?"
"Kind of. Did you ever notice how you get fool ideas when there's a
steady noise going on?"
"So?" said Mr. Conne, as he led the way along a hall.
"It was the noise of my machine."
"How about the smell, Tommy?" Mr. Conne asked, glancing around with that
pleasant, funny look which Tom had known so well.
"You don't get ideas from smells," he answered soberly.
In the Quartermaster's office he waited on a bench while Mr. Conne and
several other men, two in uniform and two that he thought might be
Secret Service men, talked in undertones. If he had been a hero in a
book, to use Mr. Conne's phrase, these officials would doubtless have
been assembled about him listening to his tale, but as it was he was
left quite out of the conference until, near its end, he was summoned to
tell of his capture of Major von Piffinhoeffer and asked if he thought
he could identify a close relation of that high and mighty personage
simply by seeing him pass as a total stranger.
Tom thought he might "by a special way," and explained his knowledge of
breed marks and specie marks. He added, in his stolid way, that he had
another idea, too. But they did not ask him what that was. One of the
party, a naval officer, expressed surprise that he had ridden all the
way from Cantigny and asked him if it were not true that part of the
road was made impassible by floods. Tom answered that there were floods
but that they were not impassible "if you knew how." The officer said he
supposed Tom knew how, and Tom regarded this as a compliment.
Soon, to his relief, Mr. Conne took all the papers in the case and left
the room, beckoning Tom to follow him. Another man in civilian clothes
hurried away and Tom thought he might be going to the dock. It seemed to
him that his rather doubtful ability to find a needle in a haystack had
not made much of an impression upon these officials, and he wondered
ruefully what Mr. Conne thought. He saw that his arrival with the
papers had produced an enlivening effect among the officials, but it
seemed that he himself was not taken very seriously. Well, in any event,
he had made the trip, he had beaten the ship, delivered the message to
Garcia.
"I got to go down and turn my grease cup before I forget it," he said,
as they came out on the little stone portico again.
Several soldiers who were soon to see more harrowing sights than a
bunged-up motorcycle, were gathered about _Uncle Sam_, gaping at him and
commenting upon his disfigurements. Big U. S. A. auto trucks were
passing by. A squad of German prisoners, of lowering and sullen aspect,
marched by with wheelbarrows full of gray blankets. They were keeping
perfect step, through sheer force of habit. Another dispatch-rider (a
"local") passed by, casting a curious eye at _Uncle Sam_. A French child
who sat upon the step had one of his wooden shoes full of smoky, used
bullets, which he seemed greatly to prize. Several "flivver" ambulances
stood across the way, new and roughly made, destined for the front.
American naval and military officers were all about.
"We haven't got much time to spare, Tommy," said Mr. Conne, resuming
his former seat and glancing at his watch.
"It's only a second. I just got to turn the grease cup."
He hurried down past the child, who called him "M'sieu Yankee," and
elbowed his way through the group of soldiers who were standing about
_Uncle Sam_.
"Your timer bar's bent," one of them volunteered.
Tom did not answer, but knelt and turned the grease cup, then wiped the
nickel surfaces, bent and dented though they were, with a piece of
cotton waste. Then he felt of his tires. Then he adjusted the position
of the handle-bar more to his liking and as he did so the poor, dented,
glassless searchlight bobbed over sideways as if to look at the middle
of the street. Tom said something which was not audible to the curious
onlookers. Perhaps _Uncle Sam_ heard.
The local rider came jogging around the corner on his way back. His
machine was American-made and a medley of nickel and polished brass. As
he made the turn his polished searchlight, with a tiny flag perched
jauntily upon it, seemed to be looking straight at _Uncle Sam_. And
_Uncle Sam's_ green-besprinkled,[3] glassless eye seemed to be leering
with a kind of sophisticated look at the passing machine. It was the
kind of look which the Chicago Limited might give to the five-thirty
suburban starting with its load of New York commuters for East Orange,
New Jersey.
[3] The effect of water on brass is to produce a greenish, superficial
erosion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"MADE IN GERMANY"
"Now, Tommy, let's hear your idea," said Mr. Conne, indulgently, as he
worked his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. "I find
there's generally a little fire where there's a good deal of smoke.
There's somebody or other, as you say, but the trouble is we don't know
who he is. We think maybe he looks like someone you've seen. We think he
may have a patent ear." He looked at Tom sideways and Tom could not help
laughing. Then he looked at the mysterious letter with a funny,
ruminating look.
"What can we--you--do?" Tom ventured to ask, feeling somewhat squelched.
Mr. Conne screwed up his mouth with a dubious look. "Search everybody on
board, two or three thousand, quiz a few, that's about all. It'll take a
long time and probably reveal nothing. Family resemblances are all right
when you know both members, Tommy, but out in the big world--Well,
let's look this over again," he added, taking up the letter.
Tom knew that he was not being consulted. He had a feeling that his
suggestion about breed marks and personal resemblances was not being
taken seriously. He was glad that he had not put his foot too far in by
telling of his other precious idea. But he was proud of Mr. Conne's
companionable attitude toward him. He was proud to be the friend of such
a man. He was delighted at the thought of participation in this matter.
He knew Mr. Conne liked him and had at least a good enough opinion of
him to adopt the appearance of conferring with him. Mr. Conne's rather
whimsical attitude toward this conference did not lessen his pride.
"Let's see now," said the detective. "This thing evidently went through
Holland in code. It's a rendering."
It was easy for Tom to believe that Mr. Conne was re-reading the letter
just to himself--or to himself and Tom.
"Let's see now--_but, as you say, everything for the Fatherland. If you
receive this, let them know that I'll have my arms crossed and to be
careful before they shoot_. I wish he'd cross his arms when he comes
ashore. He's evidently planning to get himself captured. _If you don't
get this I'll just have to take my chance. The other way isn't worth
trying._ Hmm! Probably thought of deserting at the wharf and getting
into Holland or Belgium. No, that wouldn't be worth trying. _As for the
code key, that'll be safe enough--they'll never find it._ Hmm! _If it
wasn't for the_--what's all this--_the English swine_. Humph! They fight
pretty good for swine, don't they, Tommy? _As far as I can ascertain,
we'll go on the T. P._ We know that much, anyway, thanks to you, Tommy."
(Tom felt highly elated.) "_There was some inquiry about my close
relationship to you, but nothing serious. All you have to do is to cheer
when they play the S. S. B. over here_. Humph! That's worth knowing. _It
isn't known if Schmitter had the key to this when they caught him_----
"He didn't," said Mr. Conne dryly; "I was the one who caught
him.--_because he died on Ellis Island. But it's being abandoned to be
on the safe side_. Safety first, hey? _I have notice from H. not to use
it after sending this letter. If we can get the new one in your hands
before_--Seems to be blotted out--_in time so it can be used through
Mexico. I'll have much information to communicate verbally in T. and A.
matters, but will bring nothing in ---- ---- form but key and
credentials_. He means actual, concealed or disguised form, I s'pose.
_The idea is L.'s._ I suppose he means the manner of concealing the key
and credentials."
"Yes," said Tom rather excitedly.
Mr. Conne glanced at him, joggled his cigar, and went on,
"_You remember him at Heidelberg, I dare say. I brought him back once
for holiday. Met him through Handel, who was troubled with cataract. V.
has furnished funds. So don't fall to have them watch out._"
"Hmm!" concluded Mr. Conne ruminatively. "You see what they're up to. We
caught Schmitter in Philadelphia. They think maybe Schmitter had the key
of a code with him. So they're changing the code and sending the key to
it across with this somebody or other. That's about the size of it. He's
got a lot of information, too, in his head, where we can't get at it."
"But his credentials will have to be something that can be seen, won't
they?" Tom ventured to ask.
"Prob'ly. You see, he means to desert or get captured. It's a long way
round, but about the best one--for him. Think of that snake wearing
Uncle Sam's uniform!"
"It makes me mad, too--kind of," said Tom.
"So he's probably got some secret means of identification about him, and
probably the new code key in actual form--somewhere else than just in
his head. Then there'd be a chance of getting it across even if he fell.
We'll give him an acid bath and look in his shoes if we can find him.
The whole thing hangs on a pretty thin thread. They used to have
invisible writing on their backs till we started the acid bath."
He whistled reflectively for a few moments, while Tom struggled to
muster the courage to say something that he wished to say.
"Could I tell you about that other idea of mine?" he blurted finally.
"You sure can, Tommy. That's about all we're likely to get--ideas." And
he glanced at Tom again with that funny, sideways look. "Shoot, my boy."
"It's only this," said Tom, still not without some trepidation, "and
maybe you'll say it's no good. You told me once not to be thinking of
things that's none of my business."
"Uncle Sam's business is our business now, Tommy boy."
"Well, then, it's just this, and I was thinking about it while I was
riding just after I started away from Cantigny. Mostly I was thinking
about it after I took that last special look at old Piff----"
Mr. Conne chuckled. "I see," he said encouragingly.
"Whoever that feller is," said Tom, "there's one thing sure. If he's
comin' as a soldier he won't get to the front very soon, 'cause they're
mostly the drafted fellers that are comin' now and they have to go in
training over here. I know, 'cause I've seen lots of 'em in billets."
"Hmm," said Mr. Conne.
"So if the feller expects to go to the front and get captured pretty
soon, prob'ly he's in a special unit. Maybe I might be all wrong about
it--some fellers used to call me Bullhead," he added by way of shaving
his boldness down a little.
But Mr. Conne, with hat tilted far down over his forehead and cigar at
an outrageously rakish angle, was looking straight ahead of him, at a
French flag across the way.
"Go on," he said crisply.
"Anyway, I'm sure the feller wouldn't be an engineer, 'cause mostly
they're behind the lines. So I thought maybe he'd be a surgeon----"
Mr. Conne was whistling, almost inaudibly, his eyes fixed upon the
flagpole opposite. "He was educated at Heidelberg," said he.
"I didn't think of that," said Tom.
"It's where he met L."
Tom said nothing. His line of reasoning seemed to be lifted quietly away
from him. Mr. Conne was turning the kaleidoscope and showing him new
designs. "He took L. home for the holidays," he quietly observed. "Old
Piff and the boys."
"I--I didn't think of that," said Tom, rather crestfallen.
"You didn't ride fast enough and make enough noise," Mr. Conne said. His
eyes were still fixed on the fluttering tricolor and he whistled very
low. Then he rubbed his lip with his tongue and aimed his cigar in
another direction.
"They were studying medicine there, I guess," he mused.
"That's just what my idea's about," said Tom. "It ain't an idea exactly,
either," he added, "but it's kind of come to me sudden-like. You know
what a _hunch_ is, don't you? There's something there about somebody
having a cataract, and that's something the matter with your eyes; Mr.
Temple had one. So maybe that feller L. that he met again is an eye
doctor. Long before the war started they told Mr. Temple maybe he ought
to go to Berlin to see the eye specialists there--'cause they're so
fine. So maybe the spy is a surgeon and L. is an eye doctor. It says how
he met him again on account of somebody having a cataract. And he said
the way of bringing the code key was L.'s idea. I read about a dentist
that had a piece of paper with writing on it rolled up in his tooth. He
was a spy. So that made me think maybe L.'s idea had something to do
with eyes or glasses, as you might say."
"Hmm! Go on. Anything else?"
"But, anyway, that ain't the idea I had. In Temple Camp there was a
scout that had a little pocket looking-glass and you couldn't see
anything on it but your own reflection. But all you had to do was to
breathe on it and there was a picture--all mountains and a castle, like.
Then it would fade away again right away. Roy Blakeley wanted to swap
his scout knife for it, but the feller wouldn't do it. On the back of it
it said _Made in Germany_. It just came to me sudden-like that maybe
that was L.'s idea and they'd have it on a pair of spectacles. Maybe
it's a kind of crazy idea, but----"
He looked doubtfully at Mr. Conne, who still sat tilted back, hat almost
hiding his face, cigar sticking out from under it like a camouflaged
field-piece. He was whistling very quietly, "_Oh, boy, where do we go
from here?_" He had whistled that same tune more than a year before when
he was waiting for a glimpse of "Dr. Curry," spy and bomb plotter,
aboard the vessel on which Tom was working at that time. He had whistled
it as he escorted the "doctor" down the companionway. How well Tom
remembered!
"Come on, Tommy," he said, jumping suddenly to his feet.
Tom followed. But Mr. Conne did not speak; he was still busy with the
tune. Only now he was singing the words. There was something portentous
in the careless way he sang them. It took Tom back to the days when it
was the battle hymn of the transport:
"And when we meet a pretty girl, we whisper in her ear,
Oh, Boy! Oh, Joy! Where do we go from here?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
"NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T"
The big transport _Texas Pioneer_ came slowly about in obedience to her
straining ropes and rubbed her mammoth side against the long wharf. Up
and down, this way and that, slanting-wise and curved, drab and gray and
white and red, the grotesque design upon her towering freeboard shone
like a distorted rainbow in the sunlight. Out of the night she had come,
stealing silently through the haunts where murder lurks, and the same
dancing rays which had run ahead of the dispatch-rider and turned to
mock him, had gilded her mighty prow as if to say, "Behold, I have
reached you first."
At her rail crowded hundreds of boys in khaki, demanding in English and
atrocious French to know where they were.
"Are we in France?" one called.
"Where's the Boiderberlong, anyway?" another shouted, the famous
Parisian boulevard evidently being his only means of identifying
France.
"Is that Napoleon's tomb?" another demanded, pointing to a little round
building.
"Look at the pile of hams," shouted another gazing over the rail at a
stack of that delectable. "Maybe we're in _Hamburg_!"
"This is Dippy," his neighbor corrected him.
"You mean Deppy," another said.
And so on and so on. There seemed to be hundreds of them, thousands of
them, and all on a gigantic picnic.
"Which is the quickest way to Berlin?" one called, addressing the throng
impartially.
"Second turn to your left."
Some of these boys would settle down in France and make it their long,
final home, under little wooden crosses. But they did not seem to think
of that.
At the foot of the gangplank stood the dispatch-rider and the man with
the cigar. Several other men, evidently of their party, stood near by.
Mr. Conne's head was cocked sideways and he scanned the gangway with a
leisurely, self-assured look. Tom was shaking all over--the victim of
suppressed excitement. He had been less excited on that memorable
morning when he had "done his bit" at Cantigny.
It seemed to be in the air that something unusual was likely to happen.
Workers, passing with their wheelbarrows and hand trucks, slackened
their pace and dallied as long as they dared, near the gangplank. They
were quickly moved along. Tom shifted from one foot to the other,
waiting. Mr. Conne worked his cigar over to the opposite corner of his
mouth and observed to an American officer that the day was going to be
warm. Then he glanced up and smiled pleasantly at the boys crowding at
the rail. He might have been waiting on a street corner for a car.
"Not nervous, are you?" he smiled at Tom.
"Not exactly," said Tom, with his usual candor; "but it seems as if
nothing can happen at all, now that we're here. It seems different,
thinking up things when you're riding along the road--kind of."
"Uh huh."
Presently the soldiers began coming down the gangplank.
"You watch for resemblances and I'll do the rest," said Mr. Conne in a
low tone. "Give yourself the benefit of every doubt. Know what I mean?"
"Yes--I do."
"I can't help you there."
Tom felt a certain compunction at scrutinizing these fine, American
fellows as they came down with their kits--hearty, boisterous,
open-hearted. He felt that it was unworthy of him to suspect any of this
laughing, bantering army, of crime--and such a crime! Treason! In the
hope of catching one he must scrutinize them all, and in his generous
heart it seemed to put a stigma on them all. He hoped he wouldn't see
anyone who looked like Major von Piffinhoeffer. Then he hoped he would.
Then he wondered if he would dare to look at him after---- And suppose
he should be mistaken. He did not like this sort of work at all now that
he was face to face with it. He would rather be off with _Uncle Sam_,
riding along the French roads, with the French children calling to him.
For the first time in his life he was nervous and afraid--not of being
caught but of catching someone; of the danger of suspecting and being
mistaken.
Mr. Conne, who never missed anything, noticed his perturbation and
patted him on the shoulder saying,
"All kinds of work have to be done, Tommy."
Tom tried to smile back at him.
Down the long gangplank they came, one after another, pushing each
other, tripping each other--joking, laughing. Among them came a young
private, wearing glasses, who was singing,
"Good-bye, Broadway. Hello, France!"
He was startled out of his careless merriment by a tap on the shoulder
from Mr. Conne, and almost before Tom realized what had happened, he was
standing blinking at one of the other Secret Service men who was handing
him back his glasses.
"All right, my boy," said Mr. Conne pleasantly, which seemed to wipe out
any indignity the young man might have felt.
Tom looked up the gangplank as they surged down, holding the rail to
steady them on the steep incline. Nobody seemed to have noticed what had
happened.
"Keep your mind on _your_ part, Tommy," said Mr. Conne warningly.
Tom saw that of all those in sight only one wore glasses--a black-haired
youth who kept his hands on the shoulders of the man before him. Tom
made up his mind that he, in any event, would not detain this fellow on
the ground of anything in his appearance, nor any of the others now in
sight. He was drawn aside by Mr. Conne, however, and became the object
of attention of the other Secret Service men.
Tom kept his eyes riveted upon the gangplank. One, two, more, wearing
glasses, came in view, were stopped, examined, and passed on. After that
perhaps a hundred passed down and away, none of them with glasses, and
all of them he scrutinized carefully. Now another, with neatly adjusted
rimless glasses, came down. He had a clean-cut, professional look. Tom
did not take his eyes off the descending column for a second, but he
heard Mr. Conne say pleasantly,
"Just a minute."
He was glad when he was conscious of this fine-looking young American
passing on.
So it went.
There were some whom poor Tom might have been inclined to stop by way of
precaution for no better reason than that they had a rough-and-ready
look--hard fellows. He was glad--_half_ glad--when Mr. Conne, for
reasons of his own, detained one, then another, of these, though they
wore no glasses. And he felt like apologizing to them for his momentary
suspicion, as he saw them pause surprised, answer frankly and honestly
and pass on.
Then came a young officer, immaculately attired, his leather leggings
shining, his uniform fitting him as if he had been moulded into it. He
wore little rimless eye-glasses. He might lead a raiding party for all
that; but he was a bit pompous and very self-conscious. Tom was rather
gratified to see him hailed aside.
Nothing.
Down they came, holding both rails and lifting their feet to swing, like
school boys--hundreds of them, thousands of them, it seemed. Tom watched
them all keenly as they passed out like an endless ribbon from a
magician's hat. There seemed to be no end of them.
There came now a fellow whom he watched closely. He had blond hair and
blue eyes, but no glasses. He looked something like--something like--oh,
who? Fritzie Schmitt, whom he used to know in Bridgeboro. No, he
didn't--not so much.
But his blond hair and blue eyes did not escape Mr. Conne.
Nothing.
"Watching, Tommy?"
"Yes, sir."
A hundred more, two hundred, and then a young sergeant with glasses.
While this young man was undergoing his ordeal (whatever it was, for Tom
kept his eyes riveted on the gangway), there appeared the tall figure of
a lieutenant. Tom thought he was of the medical corps, but he was not
certain. He seemed to be looking down at Mr. Conne's little group, with
a fierce, piercing stare. He wore horned spectacles of goodly
circumference and as Tom's eyes followed the thick, left wing of these,
he saw that it embraced an ear which stood out prominently. Both the ear
and the piercing eagle gaze set him all agog.
Should he speak? The lieutenant was gazing steadfastly down at Mr. Conne
and coming nearer with every step. Of course, Mr. Conne would stop him
anyway, but---- To mention that piercing stare and that ear after the
man had been stopped for the more tangible reason--there would be no
triumph in that.
Tom's hand trembled like a leaf and his voice was unsteady as he turned
to Mr. Conne, and said.
"This one coming down--the one that's looking at you--he looks like--and
I notice----"
"Put your hands down, my man," called Mr. Conne peremptorily, at the
same time leaping with the agility of a panther up past the descending
throng. "I'll take those."
But Tom Slade had spoken first. He did not know whether Mr. Conne's
sudden dash had been prompted by his words or not. He saw him lift the
heavy spectacles off the man's ears and with beating heart watched him
as he came down alongside the lieutenant.
"Going to throw them away, eh?" he heard Mr. Conne say.
Evidently the man, seeing another's glasses examined, had tried to
remove his own before he reached the place of inspection. Mr. Conne, who
saw everything, had seen this. But Tom had spoken before Mr. Conne moved
and he was satisfied.
"All right, Tommy," said Mr. Conne in his easy way. "You beat me to it."
Tom hardly knew what took place in the next few moments. He saw Mr.
Conne breathe upon the glasses, was conscious of soldiers slackening
their pace to see and hear what was going on, and of their being
ordered forward. He saw the two men who were with Mr. Conne standing
beside the tall lieutenant, who seemed bewildered. He noticed (it is
funny how one notices these little things amid such great things) the
little ring of red upon the lieutenant's nose where the glasses had sat.
"There you are, see?" he heard Mr. Conne say quietly, breathing heavily
upon the glasses and holding them up to the light, for the benefit of
his colleagues. "B L--two dots--X--see--Plain as day. See there, Tommy!"
He breathed upon them again and held them quickly up so that Tom could
see.
"Yes, sir," Tom stammered, somewhat perturbed at such official
attention.
"Look in the other one, too, Tommy--now--quick!"
"Oh, yes," said Tom as the strange figures die away. He felt very proud,
and not a little uncomfortable at being drawn into the centre of things.
And he did not feel slighted as he saw Mr. Conne and the captive
lieutenant, and the other officials whom he did not know, start away
thoughtless of anything else in the stress of the extraordinary affair.
He followed because he did not know what else to do, and he supposed
they wished him to follow. Outside the wharf he got _Uncle Sam_ and
wheeled him along at a respectful distance behind these high officials.
So he had one companion. Several times Mr. Conne looked back at him and
smiled. And once he said in that funny way of his,
"All right, Tommy?"
"Yes, sir," Tom answered, trudging along. He had been greatly agitated,
but his wonted stolidness was returning now. Probably he felt more
comfortable and at home coming along behind with _Uncle Sam_ than he
would have felt in the midst of this group where the vilest treason
walked baffled, but unashamed, in the uniform of Uncle Sam.
Once Mr. Conne turned to see if Tom were following. His cigar was stuck
up in the corner; of his mouth as usual and he gave Tom a whimsical
look.
"You hit the Piff family at both ends, didn't you, Tommy."
"Y-yes, sir," said Tom.
CHAPTER THIRTY
HE DISAPPEARS
Swiftly and silently along the quiet, winding road sped the
dispatch-rider. Away from the ocean he was hurrying, where the great
ships were coming in, each a fulfilment and a challenge; away from
scenes of debarkation where Uncle Sam was pouring his endless wealth of
courage and determination into bleeding, suffering, gallant France.
Past the big hotel he went, past the pleasant villa, through village and
hamlet, and farther and farther into the East, bound for the little
corner of the big salient whence he had come.
He bore with him a packet and some letters. One was to be left at
Neufchatel; others at Breteuil. There was one in particular for
Cantigny. His name was mentioned in it, but he did not know that. He
never concerned himself with the contents of his papers.
So he sped along, thinking how he would get a new headlight for _Uncle
Sam_ and a new mud-guard. He thought the people back at Cantigny would
wonder what had happened to his machine. He had no thought of telling
them. There was nothing to tell.
Swiftly and silently along the road he sped, the dispatch-rider who had
come from the blue hills of Alsace, all the way across poor, devastated
France. The rays of the dying sun fell upon the handle-bar of _Uncle
Sam_, which the rider held in the steady, fraternal handshake that they
knew so well. Back from the coast they sped, those two, along the
winding road which lay on hill and in valley, bathed in the mellow glow
of the first twilight. Swiftly and silently they sped. Hills rose and
fell, the fair panorama of the lowlands with its quaint old houses here
and there opened before them. And so they journeyed on into the din and
fire and stenching suffocation and red-running streams of Picardy and
Flanders--for service as required.
(END)
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