Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer Part 12

"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 compa.s.s 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 gla.s.sless, tin-encased compa.s.s. 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 compa.s.s. 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 b.u.mp 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.s.

For one brief moment the huge figure stood there, outlined in the darkness as if doubting. And Tom, looking impa.s.sive 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 compa.s.s, glanced, suspiciously, Tom thought, at the faint shadow of a road ahead of them, and moved on, his medals clanging and c.h.i.n.king 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.