Camps and training schools, learning how and drilling. This was the lot of Young America in the latter days of the year 1917 and in the earlier months of the succeeding year, a year long to be remembered and to cut a mighty figure in the history of the United States.
Bloody are the annals of this year of 1918, severe the sacrifices that led the nation into its tragic paths of glory, but so noble and just has been the purpose behind our act of war and so humane our conduct that the whole sane world has applauded. All honor to the fighters first and all praise to the men and the women, young and old, who aided and encouraged the fighters with abundant humanity at home and on the field of strife.
We think of war and see its tragedies mostly through the eyes of the military, but to some of the unarmed participants have come the bitterest experiences and the opportunities for the bravest deeds.
Donald Richards, late student at old Brighton and now Red Cross ambulance driver, too young to enlist as a soldier, but nevertheless keen for action and to do his bit and his best, at once so interested his superiors that after he had fully qualified they quickly placed him where his craving for thrills and work worth while should beamply satisfied. In February, after a month of training he sailed across the big pond in a transport laden with troops and met no mishaps on the way.
Three weeks after landing in France the boy found himself in the midst of military activities and the most urgent hospital work. He was clad to his own satisfaction, mostly at his own expense, in khaki. He had become a capable mechanic on automobiles, was well practised in roughing it, in picking his way in strange country, and above all in the fine art of running, with wounded passengers, swiftly and smoothly over rough roads.
First as an assistant driver, then with a car of his own and a helper, he had been assigned to duty along the great highway leading from Paris to Amiens. Like many others in the area of military activity, this road had been well built, rock-ballastedand hammered hard with normal travel, in the days before the world war, but now, from the wheels of great munition trucks and motor lorries, the wear and tear of marching feet and from little care after long rains, it had been soaked into a sticky mass, with a continuation of holes and ruts, puddles and upheavals. A cross-road led from the Amiens highway straight east toward the battle front and into the wide territory of France held by the enemy. The German front line was not more than seven miles from the evacuation hospitals on this cross-road. These centers of mercy were where the badly wounded were sent for quick, emergency operations, which saved many lives. Between these evacuation hospitals and the Red Cross base hospital in an old château a few miles outside of Paris and also near the Amiens road the comparatively few Red Cross cars and the score or more of Army ambulances plied almost continuously when there was anything doing at the front. And for the most part there was something doing.
From the twenty-first of March, when the terrific drive of the Huns carried them nearly to Amiens, and during which time theyoccupied Montdidier, until the middle of June, there was pretty constant shelling and scrapping throughout this area. The great German offensive began in March, only a few days before Donald Richards started to run his own ambulance, so that almost his first duties were most urgent and strenuous.
“Whatever the Doctor, Major Little, in command up there, tells you to do, do it,” was the order the boy received from the chief at the base hospital, “but your regular duty is to bring the wounded from the evacuation hospitals, or from the dressing stations to us, when so ordered. Of course, we don’t want to subject our men to the danger of going up to the lines any more than is absolutely necessary, and we surely do not want you to get hurt, my boy, but this war and the call of duty must be heeded first. Either the surgeons at the dressing stations or Major Little and his assistants at the cross-roads hospitals will tell you where to take the wounded. Critical cases are first operated on at the evacuation hospitals so as to save time, but shell shock, slight wounds, men not very seriously gassed, and merely sick men are brought here directfrom the field. Hence it will be best for you, if there are no wounded to be brought away from the evacuation hospitals, to go to the dressing stations or into a battle area, to get the wounded in your car anyway you can. For the most part they will be brought to you by stretcher bearers; of course, some will come themselves. I see you have on your steel helmet. Wear it regularly.
“You must prepare yourself for some horrible sights, my boy. Above all things, no matter how much you may be scared, and you will be, don’t lose your nerve. No one, especially at your age, can be blamed for being somewhat flabbergasted under fire, while seeing men killed, maimed, blown to bits by shells, and all that sort of thing, but you must try to overcome this. And be sure to have your gas-mask always handy.
“Now then, have everything in tiptop shape according to our methods; you had better take a hot bath, wear clean under-clothing and brush your teeth. Get a good meal and be sure to take a lot of chocolate with you give out where needed. You should also have extra blankets in case you get hurt, or your car crippled and you have to sleep out. The weather is moderating now and I think it will continue so, but there will be cold rains. Now then, be off in an hour and good luck to you!”
From such a general order, Don saw clearly enough that he would be his own boss a great deal of the time, and that much of his most important work must be carried on according to his own judgment. The boy of sixteen, who had never really engaged in anything more strenuous than mere sport, except the arresting of the German spy back home, was now brought face to face with the duties and responsibilities that were fully man-size.
Don prepared himself quickly for any undertaking that might be before him. He made everything ready as the chief had suggested. He insisted also that the same be done by his helper, Billy Mearns, a city-bred young man who was just now getting familiar with handling and repairing a motor car.
Presently they started. The little truck, new, smooth-running and responsive, delighted the boy. His first duties as helper had been in a rattletrap machine, which ran only when it felt like it and in which they carried convalescents from the base hospitals to a place withterraced gardens and verandas two hundred miles farther south.
Don’s new duties exhilarated him and as he turned his car northward he could have said, with Macduff, when that warrior sought to meet Macbeth, the master war-maker: “That way the noise is. Tyrant show thy face!” for, boy-like, yet with a thorough understanding of the situation, secretly desirous of taking some part—he did not know what—in fighting, he had smuggled a sporting rifle into his car, and he carried a long-barreled revolver in a holster on his hip.
“You see,” he confided to Billy Mearns—they called each other by their first names almost from the moment of meeting—“we don’t know what we are up against, and I hope I may be hanged, drawn and quartered, as the old pirates used to say, if I let any blamed Hun sneak around me without trying to see if he is bullet-proof.”
“Right-o!” agreed Mearns. “But, for goodness’ sake, don’t get too anxious and take some of our Yanks for Heinies! If you do and I’m along, me for wading the Atlantic right back home! They’d do worse than draw and quarter us; mebbe they’d even pull out our hair or tweak our noses.”
“Pshaw! Anybody who couldn’t tell a Hun, day or night, ought to have—”
“His nose examined, eh? Oh, you sauerkraut and onions!”
Ploof! Ploof! Bang! P-ssst, wam! Zing, zing, zing! T-r-r-r-r-r—rip! Ploooof! Something of this nature, if it can at all be conveyed by words, came in waves, roars and spasms of sound to the ears of Don and Billy, as their ambulance truck traversed part of the five or six miles of cross-road between the evacuation hospitals near the Amiens road, not twenty miles south of that shell-torn town, and the front line of the Allied army where American troops, newly arrived from training camps, were brigaded with the French soldiers; that is, a number of regiments of one nation were included with those of the other in the same sector, sometimes companies, even platoons, of Americans and French fighting side by side against the savage attacks of an enemy far superior in numbers.
“We’ve just sent a dozen or more to your people down there—nearly all light cases—but there’s been some sort of a scrap overtoward the southeast. You can’t find a road, for the enemy holds that, but you can turn in across the fields to your right, or follow an old farm road; one of our men did so yesterday. It is just beyond, where some reserves are digging in by the edge of a ruined farm; both the house and barn have been struck by shells or sky bombs. If you can go any farther from there you’ll have to ask your way, but probably the P. C. beyond won’t let you go on. There are two dressing stations to the west of some woods on a low hill; that will be still farther to your right as you follow the new trail. Go to it!”
This was the all-too-brief order Don received from Major Little, the hospital-chief when the lads reached the broad tents on the cross-road early one morning. Without further words Don leaped into his car and glided on along the narrow road for about two miles; then he began dodging shell holes, one here that involved half of the wheel tracks, another, farther on, which took in all of the road and had been partly filled and partly bridged with timbers from an old building near. Beyond this, small shell-holes had torn up the once smoothsurface here and there. After the ambulance had traversed another mile, at the best speed possible over such a highway, it overtook a string of ammunition trucks going into position, ready for progress or retreat. Dodging around these and avoiding other shell-holes was difficult for the half mile on to where the artillery had debouched. Once, not two hundred feet ahead, a big shell came over with a swish and snarl and landed in the field near the road, sending up a cloud of sod, dirt and stones and sprinkling the ambulance and its drivers with bits of gravel. One sizable stone landed on the hood with a whang and bounced against the windshield just hard enough to crack it, exactly in line with Billy Mearns’ face.
“Pal, we seem to be under fire,” remarked Don, and Billy, with a grunt of relief, replied:
“Yes, and if that glass hadn’t been there I’d have bitten that stone in half to show I didn’t care whether it came this way or not. But say, if we’d been just where that shell landed we would have had to sing Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ They’re rude things, aren’t they, the way they mess up the landscape?”
Don glanced at his smiling companion.A fellow who could take such matters so calmly, and jest over them, was a lad after his own heart.
The sound of fighting came to the boys now with increasing fury. They were not experienced enough to tell whether it was a regular battle, or merely a skirmish. Anyway, it was lively enough for an introduction to green hands far from home.
They came to where the reserve regiment was digging in. Some of them camped in the open, with a few little canopy tents spread. A few fires were burning. A few officers stood or squatted around talking and laughing. Sentries were pacing up and down. A sentinel stood in the road and faced about toward them, but when he saw the Red Cross on the front and side of the car and had scanned the faces of the drivers he asked no questions but let them pass. Don slowed up enough to hear him say:
“All right. Go find ’em, bo! There’s some down there.”
“Going to give your friends, the Limburgers, a warm reception after while?” Billy called back and the soldier nodded briskly, smiling and waving his hand.
Turning sharply and dashing along theold farm road between greening fields, the little car gained a slight crest and, uncertain for the moment which way to turn, Don stopped her. Billy leaned out and looked around.
“Over there are the woods the Major spoke about,” he said.
“Sure is. We can cross this meadow, I guess.”
“Ooh! Hold on a bit, and look up, Don!”
Two airplanes were circling overhead. The boys could see a black Maltese cross on the under side and near the end of each wing of one plane; the other bore a broad tri-colored circle in similar positions. The two soaring, roaring, vulture-like things were approaching each other, suddenly little jets of white smoke burst from each and long streaks of pale light, like miniature lightning, shot from each flying-machine to the other.
“A Hun plane and a Britisher! It’s a fight!” Don remarked excitedly. “See, they’re the illuminated bullets to tell just where they’re shooting, like squirting a hose. Watch ’em, Billy; watch ’em! Oh, by cracky!”
“Watch them? Do you think I’m taking a nap? Oooh! Look at that gasoline swallow dive! And bring up, too!” The Germanplane had done this to try to get around under the tail of its opponent before the other could turn, but its calculation went amiss. The Englishman instantly made a quick swerve around and then dived straight at his enemy, sending a stream of bullets ahead, and as the boche had by this time turned around and was coming back toward him, it looked terribly like there would be a collision.
But not so. The superior maneuvering of the Britisher was too much for his antagonist—the Hun plane swerved to the left, went on straight for a moment, then began to tilt a little sidewise and to spin slowly. As it sank it pitched from side to side, following a spiral course, thus imitating perfectly the fall of a dead leaf; so perfectly, indeed, that as it neared the earth and wasnot checked norrighted it became evident that the engine had stopped and that the airman could not control the plane. Then, when not more than fifty feet above the ground it suddenly tilted over forward and crashed to the ground in the field, about an eighth of a mile beyond the boys.
Looking aloft, then, Don and Billy saw the victorious English plane going straightaway at high speed toward the enemy’s lines and rising higher in air at every second.
“Work cut out for us right ahead there,” Don remarked, as he settled back in his seat and began to speed up his motor. “We didn’t think that our first ‘blessé’ would be a Hun, did we?”
“No. What’s a ‘blessé’?”
“Why, I think that’s what the French call a wounded man. I hear them using it that way.”
“I know a little French, but very little; I hadn’t heard that expression before. Many of these war-time French words bother me muchly. Look out; another shell-hole! Say, this must be a regular farm.”
They saw the house standing in a clump of trees. The roadway led straight past it; with increased speed the ambulance flew by and in a little while came to the fallen airplane.
The winged intruder, ‘winged’ also as a flying game bird is by the accurate fire of a sportsman, lay twisted, beyond repair, its wings, uprights and stays crushed and broken. Almost beneath the flattened wheels on the other side, crumpled up on the ground, lay the unconscious airman. He had either leapedat the last moment, landing almost where the airplane had, or he had been jarred from his seat by the impact.
The boys were out of the car and beside him at once. Observing that he still breathed, they gently turned him over, trying to find where he was injured; then they saw a mass of clotted blood on his shoulder and discovered the bullet hole.
First Aid was in order. Don ran to the ambulance and returned with a kit. Billy followed to unfasten a stretcher and a blanket. With utmost care, yet moving swiftly, though both lads were admittedly nervous over their first case, they got him on the stretcher, removed his upper garments, bathed the wound, plugged it with antiseptic gauze and then, covering him with the blanket, slid the stretcher into the car.
What next to do? There was room for two or three more; why return with but one? And just beyond here lay the dressing stations, which they could reach in less than two minutes. Don made up his mind quickly and drove the car farther down the narrow farm road and over another field—a pasture. Half way across and toward them, four men were walking in single file. The boyshad just made out that these were stretcher-bearers when suddenly the men stopped, ducked down and the foremost one raised his arm signaling for the car to stop. The next instant they were hidden from view by a fountain of earth between them and the ambulance and not over seventy-five feet from the car. The earth shook with the tremendous concussion of the explosion. It was one of the largest shells. The ambulance was stopped as though it had butted into a stone wall; Don felt a mass of glass fly against him and the car lifted partly up and swung aside. When he regained his senses and could see about him through the settling cloud of dust, he discovered that the car had been flung crosswise, that the windshield was smashed, and that the top was bent back, and very much askew. Billy, not having a grip on a steering wheel, as Don had, and having partly risen, was now on his back on the bottom of the car, behind the seat, his long legs sticking out over the back. He regained his normal position only by turning a back somersault and climbing forward. That the lads were not hurt was almost a miracle.
The Ambulance was Stopped as though it had Butted into a Stone Wall.
But strangest of all was the fact that thetail doors had been blown open, the stretcher lifted out on the ground as neatly as though human hands had done it and looking back Don saw the German airman, shocked into consciousness, sitting up and gazing at him.
Billy, you aren’t kilt entirely, eh? Well, then, hop out and crank her; maybe that volcano didn’t stall her. We’ll turn round, if she runs, and hunt for those stretcher chaps; guess we can find ’em. Say, I’ll bet they’re sorry they saw us coming.”
“No, for here they come again! It could not have reached them. Oooh, but wasn’t it a daisy? For about one second I longed to be back in the good, old United States. Hah! Wait till I spin her. There she goes as fine as ahand organ!”
Don backed and turned the car; then the lads went to the German.
“Well, Fritz, feel better?” Don asked, speaking English.
No answer; a blank stare. Billy comprehended and at once got some fun out of the incident. It was a funereal affair that didn’t have a humorous side for him. He held his spread hand, palm down, over hishead, moved it about like the flying of an airplane, pointed to it and to the Hun with his other finger; then making the hand take a big drop through the air and double up on the ground again pointed to the airman. The latter understood at once and scowled at his combined rescuers and captors; then flopped back on the stretcher. The boys restored him to his place in the car and turned to meet the men from the dressing-station. They all looked fagged out, tired beyond endurance. As a matter of fact, they were to keep on many more hours longer. Their conversation was brief, but to the point.
“Red Cross? Get these men back as quickly as you can and return at once. We are in anabrithere by the woods. Tell Major Little that the lieutenant wants more ambulances right away. We have eleven wounded; two ‘going West.’”
“All right, I’ll put the juice to her, Sergeant?” Don saw the three bent stripes on the man’s sleeve. The four shifted the wounded, one of whom was unconscious, to the unfolded white stretchers of the car, strapped them down, folded their own brown army stretchers and turned back.
“What does he mean by ‘going West’?”Billy whispered, as they got under way.
“Dying,” replied Don. “Guess it’s an Indian phrase—‘toward the setting sun.’ Poor chaps!”
“O my! I’m afraid one of these,” Billy pointed his thumb over his shoulder, “won’t stay ‘East’ long. I hope he does, but you see, I really ought to study medicine. I get hunches about that sort of thing, you know.”
They flew over the even ground, and moved slowly over the rough. Again in the farm road they were swiftly passing the house when a cry from one of their passengers arrested their attention. It was a cry for water.
Don pressed down his brake and turned to Billy. “That canteen—” he began.
“I think that a real cold drink,” suggested the young man, “would do more good. Oughtn’t they to have a well here? Suppose I see.”
“We’ll both go and get a pull, too; then bring some back. Come on!” Don said.
The quaint little half-stone domicile, in the very midst of this shell-torn area, faced directly east; the rear was, therefore, away and thus somewhat sheltered from the enemy’slines. There had been a French or American dressing station in the front room, but a German 77-m. shell had come along and demolished the wall and a portion of the interior. The boys quickly passed under the newly leafing fruit trees, where bird arrivals were singing, and reached the rear of the house. Here, in the mellowing spring-time warmth, an old woman and an old man were sitting; the one on the door step, the other, upon an ancient stone seat, leaning his head on his cane. By the side of the old woman’s knee a little child of about four years gazed up at the visitors with wide-open, blue eyes.
Don, knowing no French and forgetting that Billy knew a little, resorted to pantomime. He made a cup of his hand and lifted it to his lips; the old man pronounced the word water very distinctly and pointed to a well-sweep among the shrubbery. While Don drew forth a moss-covered bucket of water that looked sparkling, Billy was recalling his school-day language and getting information. Yes, the old couple were trusting in the mercy of a Higher Power; if it were His will to take them, well and good, but they hoped it would be quick and withoutsuffering. Rather than leave their lifetime abode, where they had always known comfort and happiness, they would risk the present dangers, which they hardly seemed to realize. They would dare almost anything rather than wander to strange regions.
And here was little Marie, happy with her grandparents, though her father had died in the war and her mother from grief and illness soon after. Well, the good General Foch, now that he had been made commander of all the armies, would soon chase the wicked boches away. The French would fight on forever, and so would the good English. And then the Americans were coming, they said. Were the young men English?
American! “Vive l’ Amerique!” Ah, it was good to see them. And how soon, oh, how soon would the great army arrive and rid France, dear, suffering, half-destroyed France, from the wicked, hateful boches? “A bas les boches!”
Don had taken water to the wounded men, two of whom received it eagerly; the other lay in a stupor. The passengers, the boy now saw, were two Frenchman, besides the German airman.
“Come on, Billy!” Don called, and shakinghands with the old people and lifting the child for a kiss, hastened away. As he leaped into the machine and Billy ran to the front end, grasping the crank, they heard again, now not high overhead, the roar of a flying motor and there came an airplane, marked with the black Maltese cross, sailing across their road and very nearly over them.
“I guess he can see our Red Cross sign,” Billy said, but Don, having heard many stories, was taking no chances; he started and flew swiftly down the road. Blam! Something exploded far behind them and to one side of the road. Again, within a few seconds, another detonation, much nearer, came to their ears. Billy was craning his neck out of the side of the car.
“He’s after us! Would you think it? I suspect he’ll get us, too, unless we beat him out to the soldiers. They’ve got anti-aircraft guns, haven’t they, Don?”
“Sure, and he’s got to go some. Just watch us!”
It was a race for a few seconds, though the airman must have been wary, flying low as he did. He could not gain on the car, and soon, with a long sweep, he was turning back, flying now even lower. Where werethe Allied airmen? Not one in sight! As Don neared the main road again and reached the little hillock he slowed up, on hearing the crack of light artillery in the fields. The anti-aircraft guns had got busy and the Hun had reason to keep his distance. But if he was foiled in his attempt to wreck an Allied Red Cross ambulance he surely meant to find some prey for his perverted desire to destroy. He had seen the place from where the ambulance had started as he approached; certainly there must be a dressing station in the little farm house.
Billy, looking back then, saw it. Themurderous Hunflew lower still over the spot of peacefulness and beauty; if he had any sense of pastoral loveliness, hate and the German desire for mastery had drowned it all. Something falling straight down from the airplane passed exactly over the little stone and frame dwelling and then a great column of flame, of black and gray smoke, of stones and bits of splintered wood leaped upward and sunk to earth again. A cloud of smoke and dust drifted away in the wind.
“Oh, Don! The house, the old people, the little girl!” said Billy with a sob, and Don, clamping down his brakes, gazed athis companion. It was the first time he had seen him with anything different from a smile on his gentle face, even when danger was literally heaped up in front of them. But now the young man’s soft eyes had a horror in them and a gray pallor had taken the place of the pink, almost girlish complexion.
Don looked back and saw the holocaust wrought by the Hun.
“That—that murderous devil!” he exclaimed.
The wounded airman in the car turn his face toward Don and made a remark in German, probably not expecting it to be understood. Don replied in German:
“One of your airmen has blown up the little farmhouse where we got the drink! No doubt the good people are killed!”
“But it is war and a good hit is to be praised. Besides, these degenerate French—”
Don turned on the fellow with the glare of an angry wildcat; in his excitement his German mostly gave way to English.
“What’s that?You teufel! Yousay that! And when we are treating you decently? Well, we shall just fix you, you—!”
“Oooh, Don! Look, look!”
The airman had once more turned about, evidently to fly back over his work of destruction to feast his eyes on its completeness. Then he met his Waterloo. The long swerves took him beyond and near the woods, where a French 75, aimed by a cool-headed American gunner barked upward just once. With a burst of flame the airplane pitched to the earth. The brutal driver, who refused to respect an ambulance, a supposed dressing station, or the modest home of non-combatants, was probably strapped on his seat and unable to extricate himself went down to the most horrible of deaths.
“Ah, he got his, all righty!” Don shouted; then turning: “And here’s another who’s going to get his! Billy, this Hun, this skunk here, is praising the act of that devil! We’ll just dump him out and let him lie here and suffer and bleed to death. Come on; give a hand!”
“No, no, Don! You can’t mean that. It would not be humane.”
“Humane? I’d be humane to a dog, a cat, a worm even, I hope, but not to a thing like this. Come—!”
“‘As they should do unto you’, Don. I know this is war and he’s a Hun, but it’sall the more of an excuse that he is only partly human; he doesn’t know any better and he has feelings, some. Let’s go on, Don, please, now.” Don leaped to his seat with Billy and they continued on their way.
Major Little ordered the German airman turned over to an army ambulance where he would be disposed of as a wounded man and prisoner. To Don the surgeon said, after hearing the boy’s message:
“Yes, we have had the same over the wire, but could hardly get it. Hurry back, then. I’ll send two others after you. Phoned for them an hour ago. Look out for gas shells; they may be sending them over soon. Listen for the warning gongs from our trenches and the gurgling sound of the shells themselves—you’ll know it. Or you may see the fumes drifting your way in certain lights; after the explosion, sometimes, you can see them very plainly. You can generally smell the fumes in the open before they come near enough to injure you—then on with your masks! By the way,” the Major lowered his voice, “is that helper of yours on the job?”
“Yes, sir; you may be sure he is! As cool and not afraid as they make ’em.” Don was glad of this chance to praise Billy. His regard for the youth was hardly less than a strong love for his pal. The doctor seemed surprised.
“I would hardly have thought that,” he admitted,—“a gentle kind of a boy. But that kind often fools you. Even girls themselves—some of our demurest nurses are the bravest under fire. Well, I’m glad you like him. Now, you must make a quick get-away!”
Bon and Billy boarded their little car again, and just as they were turning around, two other ambulances dashed up. The first one was a light army truck, manned by members of the regular corps of the army service. The other bore the Red Cross and it looked like a higher grade of car than that commonly in use by that organization. Don was swinging into the road and just caught sight of the driver and helper in this last car. But as he glanced at the side face of the former a rush of partial recognition mixed with an undefined feeling of hostility swept over him. Where had he seen that face before? There were not many personshe remembered unpleasantly. He had been in one or two student rows with ruffians, who had fared badly as a rule and the boys at Old Brighton had it in for a disagreeable fellow who was even opposed to their speaking above a whisper when they passed his place in the town. The face he had just seen was not one of these. Well, there was more big work cut out ahead and he would think over this question later. Yet the matter kept returning to his mind in spite of the battle sounds and sights, among which they soon came at close quarters.
“I can’t understand one thing:” Billy remarked, as they sped on. “Why is the shooting so at random? Just look at the shells that have landed all around us, in the fields, in the roads, almost everywhere, doing no real damage, except to stir up the ground, hitting hardly anyone. It looks like fool business to me.”
“And when you think how much one of these shells costs and how much must be paid for a hundred rounds of cartridges fired by a machine-gun, no wonder they say that it costs a good many thousands of dollars for every man that gets hit,” Don offered.
“Well, if it costs so much I wish they’dsave those that come my way. I’d just as lief treat even the Huns more economically!” declared Billy.
Don had to laugh, though at the moment they were approaching again the old farm house, now torn to pieces, where the Hun airman had dropped his bomb but an hour before. Billy also noticed it and asked Don to stop.
“Couldn’t we go in and see, Don? It will be solemn enough, but we can be sure they’re all—they’re not suffering.”
The boys alighted and rounded the house once more, stepping over broken bits of stone and mortar and twisted framing. Billy was ahead and he took but one glance and turned about.
“Beyond doubt. They had at least their wish not to suffer.” He uttered the words like a funeral benediction, and followed Don back. As they were about to emerge from the trellised gateway the other Red Cross ambulance shot by, the occupants, no doubt, supposing those in the boys’ car had stopped here for a drink. Again Don caught sight of the driver of that car. Instantly it came to the boy who the fellow must be. The recognition was quite complete—and startling.
Don stood in the road, looking after the speeding car. Billy’s thoughts were upon other matters. The ambulance ran on until almost out of sight. Then suddenly, instead of turning across toward the dressing station at the western edge of the woods, it veered to the east across fields and ran down a slope to a clump of bushes and low trees where it stopped. The boy wondered if there could a dressing station at that spot.
“Don, if you can go on just this once without me, I’d like to stay and bury that poor old couple and the little girl. It seems horrible to let them lie there, exposed, uncared for, as though they had no friends. What do you say?”
“All right, Billy you stay. I can make the trip alone. They’ll help me with theblessésat the station and at the hospital too. If anything does happen to me—should I get hit—you couldn’t help much until you got the hang of running over such roads. And say, Billy, you can do something else: when you hear a car going back take a peep and if it’s those fellows that just went by, observe them, will you? If you see them coming, go out and stop them and ask who they are, you can let on you’re making a report.I’m just curious. Tell you why later. G’bye! I’ll stop for you on the next trip down.”
Don dashed on, reached the dressing station without mishap, took on two woundedpoilusand one Yank; they sped back.
Billy quickly found a garden spade an went to work with all his might so as to complete his gruesome task. The ground was soft beneath a wide-spreading apple tree just showing signs of blossoming; a sweet-voiced bird sang the while in the branches above, and this was the only requiem the old couple and the little child should know, as, wrapped carefully in sheets rescued from the destroyed house, they filled the one grave.
The tender-hearted youth’s eyes were wet while he labored for the poor souls who deserved a better burial than this. When the grave was filled he made a rude cross of boards and wrote on it a simple inscription, a tribute from his own gentle heart.
This was the best the boy could do. The little bird still sang its cheery ditty overhead. He turned away with a sigh and said, half aloud:
“I wonder what Father would think of me now. He wouldn’t believe it possibleof his youngest boy he used to call ‘a silly, girl-like thing.’ I couldn’t blame him then, but now—well, he’ll change his mind about me if I go back—that is,ifI get back.”
Then Billy heard a car approaching and slipped out front to take a look, as Don had requested. It was the army ambulance returning. But where was the other Red Cross ambulance?
Well, Don would not be here again for perhaps half an hour yet. There would be time to slip along the road and get a glimpse of the other car. Then he might give his pal even more information than he expected.
The clump of bushes was not more than three hundred yards from the farm road and if there was a dressing station there Billy would find it out—the information might be of value. To keep out of sight of Hun airmen, should they fly overhead, the youth followed close to the line of low evergreen trees that skirted the road and when he reached the end of these but stood still within their welcome shadow, he gazed across at the clump. In all this section of land north of the distant woods and between where the American regiment in reserve on the cross-road was stationed, there were no troops.Evidently it was not a spot where the Huns could break through because of the strongly entrenched positions of the Allies facing them. There had been some Hun raids and some Allied counter-attacks, platoons of Americans fighting beside the French—hence the wounded. But the Germans had not succeeded in pushing their line any farther than the western outskirts of the small village of Cantigney, another half mile east of this ground. Here had come to an end the German drive around Montdidier, a part of the Amiens offensive during the early spring, which is called the first great drive of 1918. The effort to take Amiens, a few miles to the north, was to meet defeat about two weeks later. And meanwhile the great armies intrenched themselves, crouching like lions at bay. They almost ceaselessly growled with their numerous artillery and every little while kept up the clawing and biting through local raids and counter-attacks, adding constantly to the wounded and the dead.
It was strange, Billy thought, if there should be a dressing station here. He had been told that the stream, the south fork of the Avre, bent here to the west and that the German positions followed the river at thispoint. Therefore, while the Allied reinforcement was stronger against attack, the Huns had made themselves stronger also, to match their opponents and the local fights were all the fiercer, therefore making the wide expanse of low land sloping toward the stream subject to continual bombardment from higher and overplaced shot and shell. It was across this area that the ambulances were forced to travel from the dressing stations in the shelter of the hillside woods beyond. That was dangerous enough without the further exposure of a dressing station, even in a well coveredabri, or dugout, to this zone of flying shells.
But what could the men with this ambulance be about for such a length of time, when they were probably sent to the other dressing station to bring away the wounded? Surely they had met with some urgent call here. Billy pondered. Might he not go over and aid them?
He started on a swift trot and had covered more than half the distance in less than half a minute when a thing occurred that made him drop to a walk, watching, wondering. Out of a thicket a tiny puff of white smoke rose in jets, as though measured by time;two close together, then four, then two, then six, then one, then six again and 2-6-6-3-2-6-4-4-2-6-3 and so on for another half minute. By that time Billy had stopped. Was it mere instinct that made him dodge back of a wide bush and peer through its budding branches?
Again the funny little jets of white smoke. Why were they doing this—these Red Cross men? There was the ambulance itself, in plain sight, by the edge of the thicket and, moreover, a Red Cross sign had been raised on a pole above the low trees.
Billy’s eyes rapidly scanned the surroundings. A line of trees on the slope toward the south shut off the thicket from the view of the woods and the low ground here could not well be seen by the reserves back on the cross-road. It seemed a place that might be well chosen for isolation, if desired. And high in air, far over the enemy’s trenches, a Hun observation balloon could be plainly seen against the white,cumulus clouds.
Billy gazed at this object long and keenly. He could distinctly discern the basket beneath it; he could detect a certain movement of something white going up and down, up and down several times and then a pause;then several times again. While this was going on the puffs of white smoke from the thicket were not forthcoming. Then, whenthe white thingat the balloon ceased to move, the puffs began again.
What did all this mean? Could there be any connection between the thicket and the balloon—the little puffs of white smoke and the movements of that white thing by the basket in the sky?
Well, he was going to find out, anyway. There seemed to be nothing else he could do that would straighten out the mystery in his own mind. And so he again trotted forward direct toward the thicket, still watching the balloon. Suddenly he grasped the truth. There were two upward sweeps of white in the sky and instantly the little puffs ceased again. The two men, wheeling about, their heads above the bushes, saw Billy and began to beckon him. Fearless, probably without any misgivings regarding himself, he went on to join them. One pointed to the balloon and said something about it and Billy gazed at it again, entirely off his guard. Suddenly he ceased to see anything; he only tossed his arms feebly in air and sunk to the ground in a crumpled heap. In frontof him the long, thin-faced, narrow-eyed driver of the car seized again a queer looking instrument and began quickly to shoot up more of the little smoke puffs. Back of the fallen youth stood the helper, holding a heavy iron rod in his hand. He made a quick, excited remark to the driver in German.
Once again along the farm road came Don’s ambulance. It reached the old farm house and stopped. He called loudly for Billy Mearns. There was no answer and Don rose in his seat to go and look for his pal, and to witness the good work he had done here. Always alert, he glanced about. He had not met the other Red Cross ambulance again. Was it still in the low ground by the thicket?
It was, and the men there were moving about. Don stood watching them for a moment. He saw a slender figure, one that he surely recognized as that of Billy Mearns, crossing the field toward the thicket. He saw two men within the clump and when Billy reached the bushes and passed among them Don saw one of the men lift his arm as if he were pointing.
Then, for an instant, Don’s heart seemed to stand still, for he saw the other man who had been in the clump of bushes raise hisarm, holding some sort of weapon and strike the slender figure down.
The army ambulance at this moment was also coming along the farm house lane. The driver and helper had been watching the German observation balloon and its strange movements. When they reached the high knoll they, too, stopped to see if this might mean signaling to the enemy. The American driver’s helper was apoiluwho had been wounded at the first battle of the Marne in 1914 and long experience in the ways of the Huns had taught him to be suspicious of everything unusual. He knew that the means of communication between a captive balloon and the divisional commander was by telephone and such signaling as this must be to those that a wire could not reach. In broken English he shouted excitedly:
“Behold! Zat ess eet, in ze booshes zere, over ze field! Puff, puff, puff; behold! We have heem,m’sieu’! An we capture heem now purty queek; right off, eh?”
The Yank was about to send the car forward again when his companion stopped him with another exclamation which made it worth while pausing a moment longer for a better view.
“Ha, look! Zee balloon, eet seegnal ze enemy,m’sieu’! Ha, he come! He come queek; he go fast! Ha! Somesing doing now!” The Frenchman had caught this last expression from his American friend. “An eet ees zeCroix Rougecar, ze other wan. He but young boy. An’ he fire; ha, he too has—what you say? catched on to ze seegnalers. But,m’sieu’, will not they reseest heem?”
The two were on their feet now, gazing with all eyes, excited. So they remained for some time—the Yank with clenched fists, thepoilurubbing his hands together. Then, as if at a signal, they both dropped into their seats and the ambulance rushed again along the by-way. Halt an hour later, with but one wounded man and a Red Cross driver, unhurt, sitting beside him, the army ambulance drew up to the evacuation hospital tent. In answer to the curt query of the Major, the driver excused himself for bringing in only one man.
“You see, sir, we thought it was no more than fair, after what they had both done—discovered those Heinies inside our lines signaling to the boche balloon and it signaling back to them. This fellow inside that gothis must have landed on ’em first, afoot, and they did him up. Then the young chap, he went ’em one better and I never seen a prettier fight. We seen it from the little hill.”
“Did the German spies get away?” asked the surgeon.
“Only one did, and I think he’ll get stopped. They must have seen it from the woods. He made a run fer his car and jumped into it; it’s the speediest thing ever, I reckon. He was out of sight quicker’n a scared cootie, going for the woods. But the kid he got the other one; the one, he says, that hit the pink-cheeked lad.”
“How did he get him?”
“Shot him. Let him have it like Pete the Plugger would ’a’ done. Yes, sir! The kid’s car run right along to about fifty yards of the bushes where they was hid and the kid jumped out; right off they began shootin’ at him and he pulls a gun out of his Red Cross car as calm and as deliberate as if he was after prairie chicken and knowed he was goin’ to get ’em, and commenced shootin’. They skinned for their car and one of ’em gets in and gets her goin’, but the other one he turns round to take another shotat the kid who was kneelin’ down and lettin’ ’em have it proper and the feller keels over and the one in the car he skids off. I reckon the kid he jest about filled that there car full of lead, but the feller he got away, though if he wasn’t hurt it’s a wonder!”
“The lad is sure one scrapper, eh?” The surgeon was much tickled and slapped his leg at the realistic narrative of the ambulancier.
“He is, Major; all of that!” continued the soldier. “For a kid, orfor a veteran, for that matter, he is some boy with a gun! And he showed pluck, too, when we got there. You see, we seen and heard them Hun gas shells comin’ over—that there Hun balloon give the range, I reckon—and we heard the gongs, too, but we reckoned the kid, bein’ so excited over the fight, didn’t get on to it, so the only thing to do was to get there right quick and you bet we did! Here was this one dead Hun with the Red Cross on his sleeve—the feller that the kid shot—and in the bushes was the kid bendin’ over the feller what them Huns had knocked in the head, and the gas from two busted shells a sneakin’ up on ’em lively. We had on our masks and we started to grab him and gethim away. He hadn’t saw us ner heard us come and he turned round on me with a drawed pistol, so’s I thought it was all off sure. But the kid knowed us and didn’t shoot. We yelled ‘gas’ at him and what did he do? Run to his car off there and get his mask? Never a bit of it! He jest sez to us: ‘help me with this feller to my car,’ he sez. ‘I’ve got two masks there, his’n and mine’ he sez. So I sez: ‘this way’s quicker; make tracks fer our car, young feller!’ and I picked up the insensible feller and run with him to our car and the kid follered, and we got away from the gas. The kid he begged us to get here quick, or his pal might die and so that’s why we come back with only one.”
“Well, all right; excused, of course,” said the Major.
“Now we’re off, back up there, Major, and we’ll try to make up fer—”
“It isn’t lost time, or it wouldn’t be if we could save that lad’s life. Well, anyway—but you’d better wait a moment and I’ll get the kid, as you call him—Richards—to go back with you and get his car.”
The chief entered the tent and wended his way quickly down the long aisle, betweenthe rows of brown cots, many of which held wounded men, he stopped here and there for a word of encouragement, of advice, or to answer a question. Reaching the farther end he stood for a moment, looking down at a white-faced figure lying very inert beneath the blanket and at another sitting, with his face in his hands, beside the cot. A woman nurse, rather young, with wonderfully gentle eyes, passed softly and whispered to the Major.
“He feels it terribly; we don’t often see such grief, though he is not of the loud weeping kind.”
The Major nodded and, stooping forward, laid his hand on the shoulder of the figure in the chair.
“Come, Richards. No use sitting here; there is much to do; much. Getting away on duty will make you feel better.”
Don looked up with a face that was drawn with sorrow.
“But, Doctor, suppose he comes to and asks for me? You are sure that he can’t get well?”
The doctor assented by a nod. “He cannot recover,” was his brief remark, uttered more feelingly than usual with this man of long,hard experience. Then he added with his usual attention to duty on his mind:
“He may become conscious later on. I’ll let you know. After you get your car and bring in the next bunch you must run down to your base and report. They must assign you another helper. I have sent your description of the German signal man to headquarters and to the P. C. at the front of the woods section—I think they’ll get him. And I’ll send a note by you, telling what good work you did.”
With the idea uppermost that it was his first duty to play the part of a good soldier in the work he had enlisted to do, Don got up to join the army ambulance. Two hours later, in his own car and at its best speed, he was returning from the Red Cross base. The man beside him began to think himself most unlucky to have been assigned to duty with this dare-devil of a driver, who spoke hardly a word and seemed not to care if they were presently piled in a heap and both killed. Around, past and in between lorries, trucks, ambulances, big guns being hauled to the front and marching men they dashed. When the evacuation hospital was again reached the young driver left the car withbut a word to the new man, requesting him to wait, and was gone a long half hour.
“He has asked for you,” said the nurse to Don. “His mind seems to be clear and he is not suffering, but the shock was too great. It has caused some immediate heart trouble and with the loss of blood—the Major can explain. Go right over and speak to the poor boy.”
Don did so, almost in despair, but he was determined not to show it. Billy must get well; if there was anything in his thinking so, then he must be given every chance. And so Don met his pal with a smile.
“Hello, Billy! Feeling better? Soon be all right, I—”
“No, no! Don, the—nurse told me all about it, what you did and what you did for me, too. Don—we—we have only known each other—how long, Don?”
“Why, three whole days, Billy. But we’ll know each other al—-”
“Listen, Don. I know. Don’t try to fool me. No use. West—I’m going—West. Pretty soon, too. A message, to my father and mother and brother, Don. Will you write it? I got the nurse to write this to introduce you to them, and to bid themgood-bye. Then I only want you to write him a letter about me—a little. Can you tell them, Don, that I was not a coward—that I was not very much afraid that—I tried to do my duty? Don’t tell them a lie—but—but if you could truthfully say something like that it will please them. Do you understand?”
Don could not trust his voice, but he nodded his head with very evident determination and, unlike anything he had ever done before, placed his hand over that of Billy’s and held it. It was not a boylike act, but it seemed as though they were no longer boys, but creatures of profound and heart-stirring sentiment. The soft, droning voice of the dying youth ceased a little; then began again with halting, sometimes difficult speech.
“Father will be pleased, Don, and know he will do as I request. But you are not to open and read the note the nurse wrote for me. You told me, Don—it was the first day—that you would like to go to college when you get through Prep, but that your father could never afford it with so many other boys to raise and educate. But if someone who cared a lot for you, compelledyou to accept the money, then you would, Don, wouldn’t you? Please, please, say yes, Don—if we have been friends. That’s good—good. Tell me, Don—what school do you go to—now—when—you go—at home?”
“Brighton.” Don just managed to pronounce the word.
“Don! Brighton! Oh—you didn’t tell me that before. Brighton—was my school, too, Don. Class of—1915.And you—Don—too! Well the good old school will have reason to be proud—of you!”
“Of you—of you, Billy!”
“Perhaps so, if—if I could have—lived—gone on doing things—tried to be—Don, ask the nurse to come here—or the—Major. I guess—I guess—”
The boy’s face had suddenly grown whiter, if that were possible, and a deathly pallor came over it. Don went quickly to do as Billy asked. The nurse came to the bedside of the young man. She bent over him for what seemed a long while—a minute or more. Then she turned to Don.
“Going,” she said. “He called your name again. Perhaps he can hear you.” The nurse made way.
“Billy, dear Billy, I—I’m here,” Don said, his lips close to his pal’s ear. A faint smile came over the patient’s face and then it became rigid. With a light heart Billy Mearns “went West.”
Don Richards’ new helper on the Red Cross ambulance was an under-sized, red-headed Irishman by the name of Tim Casey. He was a month or two short of nineteen winters and, as he expressed it, an undetermined number of summers, but judging by the bleached-out color of his hair, which he assured Don was originally as black as a nigger’s pocket, there must have been a long siege of sunny months. County Kerry was his birthplace and his native village was noted for its big men, his own father being almost a walking church steeple and his numerous brothers all six-footers. Tim was the only short one—“the runt in the litter,” he called himself.
“But if yez are proper anxious to know an’ ye look loike ye couldn’t survive the day out wid not knowin’ all o’ me fam’ly histhry, Oi’ll tell yez this: Phw’at was left out o’ me body was put in me head, do yez moind? for by the holy Saint Macherel, Oi’m thesmartest o’ the bunch. Me faither’s poorer than whin he was born, an’ me brithers couldn’t foind pennies if they growed on the grass. But me? Faith, if wan o’ these here boche zizzers don’t have me name wrote on it, thin whin the war’s over Oi’m goin’ to America an’ make a million pounds, loike me friend Mike McCarty did!”
“Good for you! That’s nearly five million dollars. Hope you get it,” said Don.
“Thanks. Could yez lend me phw’at they call two francs, now, to git us both some sweet, brown, mushy things, loike candy, but diff’runt? It’s me own treat, now.”
“Chocolate? Sure. Here you are. You can get them at the Y. M. C. A. hut in anabriback of the woods and near our dressing station,” Don informed him, and a little later the two lads were enjoying mouthfuls of very satisfying sweetness, as they waited for more wounded to be brought out to them. And as they waited Don turned to a sentry to ask some questions. The sentry was glad to impart:
“The P. C. came over a little while ago and I heard him tell the medical sergeant, here in the doorway, that they had a message from the evacuation hospital about a Hun ina Red Cross ambulance getting away around the woods here. The man I relieved said he saw the fellow go past, and he went a whizzing, but he didn’t question him; nobody does anything with the Red Cross on it. The P. C. said that they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man, nor the ambulance, since and they think he must have been heading for another sector. He can rip off his red crosses there and let on he’s something else important. They do those stunts. But if he’s caught, it’s good-night for him!”
Don was keenly disappointed. He had sent some very well directed bullets straight after the escaping car, but they must have hit the sides at an angle and glanced off. However cold-blooded and murderous it appeared thus to shoot down a man, even a declared and vicious enemy, the boy had done this deed against one who had murdered his dear pal, Billy Mearns. Moreover, Don had wanted to write to his father and to Mr. Stapley, at home, that the escaped man who had helped to blow up the mills had been discovered and accounted for. Don felt sure that this fake Red Cross driver and spy was the same man—the narrow-eyed, tall individual that he and Clem Stapley had spotted and listened to on the train coming from Brighton, more than three months ago.
Now that the German spy had escaped again, he would surely turn up somewhere else and do more harm. Like his bearded confederate at Lofton, he could probably speak English and American English perfectly, and no doubt he knew French also, for these spies were of that sort—sharp-witted, brainy, learned scoundrels!
“He will try, yes, no doubt, but it will amount to very little. What can he do?” replied the sentinel to whom Don made his pessimistic remark.
“Are yez on to this?” said Tim Casey. “The Limburgers are a very smart bunch, yis; in many ways, yiz; but, me b’y, they’re awful stupid, do yez see? These here Huns are loike parrots. They’re windy imitators, ye see, but bad ’cess to thim, they got no real sense. They don’t know just phw’at they want. A parrot, me b’y, is always hollerin’ fer a cracker, but did yez iver see it eat wan? Ye did not.”
“By which you mean to say—” began Don.
“Thot the dumb Dutch will do somethin’ crazy sooner er later an’ hang hisself. They jist natchally go round with a rope ready.An look phw’at they’re doin’ in this war. Preparin’ the thickest koind of a rope an’ makin’ it good an’ tight around their fool necks be desthroyin’ iv’rything they come acrost so that whin they have t’ pay they can’t do it!”
It might seem to one not familiar with the risks of battle that the work of an army or Red Cross ambulance driver must have been intolerably monotonous. But such an idea is very far from the truth. No two journeys afield were alike and so varied wasthe work and sosoul-stirring the sights and sounds of two great armies facing each other, with bared fangs, that the part of any kind of an actor in the war become a terribly real experience.
There was no monotony in this thing for Don Richards, nor doubtless, for any other ambulance driver in France during the great war, and our hero could affirm this, especially when a shell, making a direct hit, carried away all the latter part of his ambulance and burst on the ground beyond, not forty feet away. Tim and Don were dragged one way by the impact, a hundredth of a second later tossed, in a heap in the other direction clear of motor and front wheels, upon afriendly bit of mud and left to wonder whether the world had come to an end completely, or was only just beginning to. And yet the boys came through without a scratch worth mentioning.
Tim Casey worried Don not a little in always being slow with his gas mask. The boy told his helper that it would serve him right some time if he got a sore throat from the gas. But the Irishman laughed; he was really not afraid of anything normal, and abnormal things he treated with a sort of lenient bluff, cursing them soundly in his soft Irish brogue and dodging them because it was the habit to do so.
“The sthinkin’ stuff is as vile as the dirthy Huns thot sind it over, an’ if Oi had the villain thot invinted it Oi’d maul the face off him, I wud!”
“But suppose he were a big fellow, like some of these Huns are?” Don asked in jest, to tease his companion.
“Big er little, it don’t matter,” replied Tim. “It ain’t the soize of a mon thot counts; it’s the spirit of him,” which Don was glad to admit. And he sized up the little Irishman as one having a large spirit when it came to a scrap.
And there was the movement of men, of guns big and little, of airplanes; there were aerial battles, bombings, raids and counter-attacks, which were seen but little by the ambulance drivers, but the immediate results were realistic enough. Tim Casey found a remark or two that fitted every occasion and he declared one fight even bloodier than an Irish holiday.
“Ah, me b’y, if the bloody gobs in this here scrap had only had clubs—shillalahs—phw’at wud they done to each ither? If Oi was the ginral of this outfit, b’gorry, Oi’d sthart out a raidin’ party of all Irish from County Kerry, give ’em shillalahs an’ the war’d be over the next day! The kaiser wud call it inhuman, of coorse, an’ right he’d be, but we’d win jist the same.”
“Now, what could clubs do against guns?” Don laughed. “They’d have you all shot dead before you got near enough to soak them.”
“An wud they? Thin, me b’y, how come they to use bayonets? Tell me thot.”
“Its a thing I can’t understand and I guess I never will; unless it’s after the ammunition on both sides gives out that they use them. Maybe if they’d do away withammunition in wars shillalahs would be handier than guns and worse than bayonets.”
“Oi’ll write the C. and C. about thot same,” said Tim.
But whatever frightful atrocities and science had done to make this war a horror beyond the conception of those who could not witness it, the most terrible of all was the Hun bombing of hospitals. There was, as with many other things indulged in by the Germans, nothing gained by these acts—nothing but deeper exasperation and determination on the part of those who were forced to fight the Hun. He saw others through his own shade of yellow and imagined that he could frighten his foes and lessen their morale that way—but it produced exactly the opposite effect.
The cross-roads evacuation hospital tents back of the Montdidier front suffered from German airmen, not many days after the great German push for Amiens had been stopped. Plainly an act of hatred, this bombing gained nothing for the Huns. They had lost thousands of men in killed, wounded and prisoners and wanted the Allies to suffer still more.
Don and Tim had received but one woundedman from the dressing station back of the woods on the hill. Looking for additional wounded, who might be struggling in, they had run around the northern edge of the woods and a half-mile farther on, near the front line trenches, when a military policeman rode out from an old orchard and stopped them.
“Too much noise from that motor of yours and the Heinies are very wide awake,” he said. “They’ll spot you and be pretty likely to get you.”
“We hadn’t seen any Hun fliers and we thought they might be generally keeping quiet,” Don said.
“They are quiet just now, but I reckon it’s just before a storm,” said the M. P. “That’s the way it usually is. If they suddenly start to put down a barrage before a drive or a raid you’ll be in for it. You know a good many of the bullets fly high and pretty nearly half of them ricochet. You fellows can’t get back of a tree as I and my horse can. Better go back.”
Tim, who was driving the car, having now become rather proficient at it, had a word to say, as usual.
“R-right you are, me b’y! We was jistcalculatin’ if they sint some whizzers over to ketch ’em in these here dish pans; do ye see?” And Tim tapped his helmet. “We’re lookin’ fer sowineers, we are.”