Tom Slade with the Boys Over There Part 15

Several things remained indelibly impressed on his mind. Old Melotte had told him that upon the western bank of the Rhine about fifteen miles above the Swiss border was an old gray castle with three turrets, and that directly opposite this and not far from the Alsatian bank was the little village of Norne.

"The way I make it out," said Archer, "is that this Blondel, whoeverr he is, has got some Gerrman officerr wished on him and that geezerr has charrge of the women worrking on the new road. I'd like to know how you expect to get within a mile of those people in the daytime."

"We got plenty of time to think it out," Tom answered doggedly, "'cause we'll be in the woods a couple of days and nights and that's where thoughts come to you."

"We'd be big fools, afterr gettin' all the way down to the frontierr to cross the riverr and go huntin' forr a road in broad daylight," said Archer; "we'd only get caught."

"Well, we'll get caught then," retorted Tom.

"Anyway, I think the old fellow's half crazy," Archer persisted. "He's got roads on the brain. He jumps all around from Norrne to Pa.s.saic and----"

"He gave us something to eat," said Tom curtly.

"Well, I didn't say he didn't, did I?" Archer snapped. "If we'd had any sense, we'd have stayed therre all night like he wanted us to. Therre wouldn't have been any dangerr in that old shack, a hundred miles from nowherre."

"We're safest in the hills," said Tom.

"It's going to rain, too," Archer grumbled.

Tom made no answer and they scrambled in silence up the uninviting hillside, till old Melotte's shack could be seen far below with the dim light in its windows.

"You'rre so particularr about not bein' caught," Archer began again, "it's a wonder you wouldn't think morre about that when we get down close to the borrderr. If I've got to be caught at all I'd ratherr be caught now."

They had regained the height above the little hamlet and to the south they could see the cl.u.s.tering lights of Stra.s.sbourg and here and there a moving light upon the river.

"We've got to cross that, too, I s'pose," Archer said sulkily.

Tom did not answer. The plain fact was that they were both thoroughly tired out, with that dog-tiredness which comes suddenly as a reaction after days of nerve-racking apprehension and hard physical effort. For the first two days their nervous excitement had kept them up. But now they were f.a.gged and the tempting invitation to remain at the hovel had been too strong for Archer. Moreover, this new scheme of Tom's to divert their course in a hazardous quest for Florette Leteur was not at all to his liking. But mostly he was tired and everything looks worse when one is tired.

"We're not going to keep on hiking it tonight, are we?" he demanded.

"You said yourself that the old man was kind of--a little off, like,"

Tom answered patiently. "He's got the bug that he's very shrewd and that he can always get the best of the Germans. Do you think I'd take a chance staying there? We took a chance as it was."

"Yes, and you'rre going to take a biggerr one if you go chasing all over Gerrmany after that girrl. You won't find herr. That was a lot of rattlebrain talk anyway--we're _so clevaire_!"

"There's no use making fun of him," said Tom; "he helped us."

"We'll get caught, that'll be the end of it," said Archer sullenly. Tom did not answer.

"You seem to be the boss of everything, anyway."

They scrambled diagonally down the eastern slope of the high ground, heading always toward the river and after an hour's travelling came out upon its sh.o.r.e.

"Here's where we'll have to cross if we're going to cross at all," said Tom. "What do you say?"

"_I_ haven't got anything to say," said Archer; "_you're_ doin' all the saying."

"If we go any farther south," Tom went on patiently, "we'll be too near Stra.s.sbourg and we're likely to meet boats. Listen."

From across the river came the spent whistle of a locomotive accompanied by the rattling of a hurrying train, the steady sound, thin and clear in the still night, mingling with its own echoes. A few lights, widely separated, were visible across the water and one, high up, rea.s.sured Tom that the mountains, the foothills of which they had followed, continued at no great distance from the opposite sh.o.r.e.

There were welcoming fastnesses over there, he knew, and a dim, wide belt of forest extending southward. There, safe from the haunts of men, or at least with timely warning of any hamlets nestling in those sombre depths, he and his comrade might press southward toward that promised land, the Swiss border.

Yet, strangely enough (for one side of a river is pretty much like the other) Tom felt a certain regret at the thought of leaving Alsace.

Perhaps his memory of the Leteurs had something to do with this. Perhaps he had just the boyish feeling that it would change their luck. And he knew that over there he would be truly in the enemy's country, with the magic of his little talisman vanished in air.

Yet right here he must decide between open roads and stealthy hospitality and that silent, embracing hospitality which the lonesome heights would offer. And he decided in favor of the lonesome heights.

Perhaps after all it was not the enemy's country, though the names of Baden and Schwarzwald certainly had a hostile sound.

But the rugged mountains and dim woods are never enemies of the scout, and perhaps Tom Slade of Temple Camp felt that even the Schwarzwald, which is the Black Forest, would forget its allegiance to whisper its secrets in his ear.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE RHINE

"What do you say?" said Tom. "It's up to both of us."

"Oh, don't mind me," Archer answered sarcastically. "_I_ don't count. I know one thing--_I'm_ going to head straight for the Swiss borderr. If crossing the river herre's the quickest way to do it, then that's what I'm going to do, you can bet!"

For a moment Tom did not speak, then looking straight at Archer, he said,--

"You don't forget how she helped us, do you?"

"I'm not saying anything about that," said Archer. "My duty's to Uncle Sam. You've got the _crazy_ notion now that you want to rescue a girrl, just like fellerrs do in story books. If you'rre going to be thinking about herr all the time I might as well go by myself. I could get along all right, if it comes to that."

"Well, I couldn't," said Tom, with a note of earnestness in his voice.

"Anyway, there's no use of our sc.r.a.pping about it 'cause I don't suppose we'll find her. As long as we're going south through the mountains we might as well see if we can pick out Norne with the gla.s.s.

Maybe we could even see that feller Blondel's house. The old man said the west slopes of the mountains were steep and that they run close to the river down there, so we ought to be able to pick out Norne with the gla.s.s. There isn't any harm in that, is there?" he added conciliatingly, "as long as we've got the gla.s.s?"

Archer maintained a sullen silence.

"I know we've got to think about Uncle Sam, and I know you're patriotic," said Tom generously, "and we can't afford to be taking big chances. But if you had known her brother, you'd feel the way I do--that's one sure thing."

"I wouldn't run the risk of getting pinched and sent back to prison just on account of a girrl," said Archer scornfully. "_That's one sure thing_," he added, sulkily mimicking Tom's phrase.

"That ain't the way it is," said Tom, flushing a little. "I ain't--if that's what you mean. Anyway, I admit we got to be careful, and I promise you if we can't spy out the house and the road with the gla.s.s I won't cross the river again till we get to the border."

"First thing you know somebody'll come along if we keep on standing here," said Archer.

"Here, you take one of these rubber gloves," said Tom. "Shut the gla.s.s and see if it'll go inside. I'll put the flashlight and the compa.s.s in the other one. It's going to rain, too. Here, let me do it," he added rather tactlessly, as he closed the little telescope and forced its smaller end down into the longest of the big glove fingers. "Twist the top of it and turn the edges over, see?" he added, doing it himself, "and it's watertight. I can make a watertight stopple for a bottle with a long strip of paper, but you got to know how to wind it," he added, with clumsy disregard of his companion's mood. Tom was a hopeless bungler in some ways.

"Oh, surre, _you_ can do anything," said Archer.