Tam o' the Scoots Part 24

"Hector O'Brien!" gasped Tam, and almost lost his grasp of the situation in the discovery of this amazing likeness. "A' thought ye was dead,"

said Tam. "Oh, Hector, we have missed ye!"

The little man, his shaking hands uplifted, could only chatter incoherently. It needed this to complete the resemblance to the deceased mascot of One-Three-One.

"Ma puir wee man," said Tam, as he scientifically tied the hands of his prisoner, "so the Gairmans got ye after all."

"You shall suffer great punishment," his prisoner was spurred by fear to offer a protest. "Presently the _Herr Leutnant_ will come with his motor-car."

"G.o.d bless ye for those encouraging words," said Tam. "Now will ye tell me how many soldiers are coming along?"

"Four--six--" began the prisoner.

"Make it ten," said Tam, examining the magazine of his pistol. "A' can manage wi' ten, but if there's eleven, A' shall have to fight 'im in a vulgar way wi' ma fists. Ye'll sit here," said he, "and ye will not speak."

He went to the untidy bed, and taking a coa.r.s.e sacking-sheet he wound it about the man's mouth. Then he went to the door and waited.

Presently he heard the hum of the car, and saw two twinkling lights coming from the eastward. Nearer and nearer came the motor-car and pulled up with a jerk before the hut.

There were two men, a chauffeur and an officer, cloaked and overcoated, in the tonneau. The officer opened the door of the car and stepped down.

"Franz!" he barked. Tam stepped out into the moonlight.

"Is it ma frien' ye're calling?" he asked softly. "And will ye pit up yeer hands."

"Who--who--" demanded the officer.

"Dinna make a noise like an owl," said Tam, "or you will frighten the wee birdies. Get out of that, McClusky." This to the chauffeur.

He marched them inside the hut and searched them. The officer had come providentially equipped with a pair of handcuffs, which Tam used to fasten the well-born and the low-born together. Then he made an examination of the car, and to his joy discovered six cans of petrol, for in this deserted region where petrol stores are non-existent a patrol car carries two days' supply.

He brought his three prisoners out, loosened the bonds of the little man, and after a little persuasion succeeded in inducing his three unwilling porters to carry the tins across a rough field to where his plane was standing.

In what persiflage he indulged, what bitter and satirical things he said of Germans and Germany is not recorded. They stood in abject silence while he replenished his store of petrol and then--

"Up wi' ye," said he to Hector O'Brien's counterpart.

"For why?" asked the affrighted man.

"Up wi' ye," said Tam sternly; "climb into that seat and fix the belt around ye, quick--A'm taking ye back to yeer home!"

His pistol-point was very urgent and the little man scrambled up behind the pilot's seat.

"Now, you, McClusky," said Tam, following him and deftly strapping himself, "ye'll turn that propeller--pull it down so, d'ye hear me, ye miserable chauffeur!"

The man obeyed. He pulled over the propeller-blade twice, then jumped back as with a roar the engine started.

As the airplane began to move, first slowly and then gathering speed with every second, Tam saw the two men break into a run toward the road and the waiting motor-car.

Behind him he felt rather than heard slight grunts and groans from his unhappy pa.s.senger, and then at the edge of the field he brought up the elevator and the little scout, roaring like a thousand express trains, shot up through the mist and disappeared from the watchers on the road in the low-hanging clouds, bearing to the bereaved and saddened staff of One-Three-One Hector O'Brien's understudy.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST LOAD

Along a muddy road came an ambulance. It was moving slowly, zigzagging from side to side to avoid the sh.e.l.l holes and the subsidences which the collapse of ancient trenches on each side of the road had caused. It was a secondary or even a tertiary road, represented on the map by a spidery line, and was taken by driver Vera Laramore because there was no better.

From the rear end of the ambulance showed eight muddy soles, three pairs with toes upturned, the fourth at such an angle, one foot with the other, as to suggest a pain beyond any but this mute expression.

On the tail-board of the ambulance an orderly of the R. A. M. C.

balanced himself, gaunt-eyed, unshaven, caked from head to foot in yellow mud, the red cross on his untidy bra.s.sard looming faintly from its grimy background. Beyond the soles with their worn and glaring nails, a disorderly rumple of brown army blankets, and between the stretchers a confusion of entangled haversacks, water-bottles and equipment, there was nothing to be seen of the patients, though a thin blue haze which curled along the tilt showed that one at least was well enough to smoke.

The ambulance made its slow way through the featureless country, past rubble heaps which had once been the habitations of men and women, splintered trunks of poplar avenues, great excavations where sh.e.l.ls of an immense caliber had fallen long ago and the funnel shapes of which were now overgrown with winter weeds.

Presently the ambulance turned on to the main road and five people heaved a sigh of thankfulness, the sixth, he of the eloquent soles, being without interest in anything.

The car with its sad burden pa.s.sed smoothly along the broad level road, such a road as had never been seen in France or in any other country before the war, increasing its speed as it went. Red-capped policemen at the crossroads held up the traffic--guns and mechanical transport, mud-splashed staff cars and tramping infantry edged closer to the side to let it pa.s.s.

Presently the car turned again, swept past a big aerodrome--the girl who drove threw one quick glance, had a glimpse of the parade-ground but did not recognize the man she hoped to see--and a few minutes later she was slowing the ambulance before the reception room of General Hospital One-Three-One.

The R. A. M. C. man dismounted, nodded to other R. A. M. C. men more tidy, more shaven, and a little envious it seemed of their comrade's dishabille and the four cases were lifted smoothly and swiftly and carried into the big hut.

"All right, driver," said the R. A. M. C. sergeant when four stretchers and eight neatly folded blankets had been put into the ambulance to replace those she had surrendered, and Vera, with a little jerk of her head, sent the car forward to the park.

She brought her machine in line with one of the four rows, checked her arrival and walked wearily over to her quarters. She had been out that morning since four, she had seen sights and heard sounds which a delicately nurtured young woman, who three years before had shuddered at the sight of a spider, could never in her wildest nightmare imagine would be brought to her sight or hearing. She was weary, body and soul, sick with the nausea which is incomparable to any other. And now she was at the end of it. Her application for long leave had followed the smashing up of her airman brother and his compulsory retirement in England.

And yet she could not bear the thought of leaving all this; the horror and the wonder of it were alike fascinating. She felt the same pangs of remorse she had experienced on the one occasion she had run away from school. She branded herself as a deserter and looked upon those who had the nerve and will to stay on with something of envy.

Her plain-spoken friend was sitting on her bed in a kimono as the girl came in.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, what?" asked Vera irritably.

"Are you sorry you are leaving us?"

"I haven't left yet," said the girl, sitting down and unstrapping her leather leggings slowly.

"You don't go till to-morrow, that's true," said the other girl calmly, "and how have you rounded off all your little--friendships?" There was just the slightest of pauses between the two last words.

"You mean Lieutenant MacTavish?" asked Vera distraitly.

"I mean Tam," said the girl with a nod.

"Exactly what do you mean by 'rounded off'?"