Read Ebook: Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer by Fitzhugh Percy Keese Owen Robert Emmett Illustrator

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Ebook has 634 lines and 29777 words, and 13 pages

"Stop up that hole. Give me a bullet, will you?"

"You're taking a big chance, Tom."

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 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.

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."

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 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.

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?"

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?"

"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 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.

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