Tom Slade with the Boys Over There Part 9

CHAPTER X

THE SOLDIER'S PAPERS

All that day they stayed in their leafy refuge. They could look down across the marshy meadows they had crossed to the trellised vineyard of the Leteurs, looking orderly and symmetrical in the distance like a two-storied field, and beyond that the ma.s.sive gables of the gray, forsaken house.

They could see the whole neighboring country in panorama. Other houses were discernible at infrequent intervals along the road which wound southward through the lowland between the hills where the boys were and the Vosges Mountains (the "Blue Alsatian Mountains") to the west.

Through the long, daylight hours Tom studied the country carefully. Now, as never before (for he knew how much depended on it), he watched for every sc.r.a.p of knowledge which might afford any inference or deduction to help them in their flight.

"You can see how it is," he told Archer, as they watched the little compa.s.s needle, waiting for it to settle. "This is a ridge and it runs north and south. I kind of think it's the west side of the valley of a river, like Daggett's Hills are to Perch River up your way."

"I'd like to be therre now," said Archer.

"I'd rather be in France," Tom answered.

"Of course it'll fizzle out in places and we'll come to villages, but there's enough woods ahead of us for us to go twenty miles tonight.

That's the way it seems to me, anyway."

Once Tom ventured out on hands and knees into the woods in quest of water, and returned with the good news that he had had a refreshing drink from a brook to which he directed Archer.

"Do you know what this is?" he said, emptying an armful of weeds on the ground. "It's chicory. If I dared to build a fire I could make you a good imitation of coffee with that. But we can eat the roots, anyway.

Now I remember it used to be in the geography in school about so much chicory growing in the Alps----"

"Oh, Ebeneezerr!" shouted Archer, much to Tom's alarm. "I'm glad you said that 'cause it reminds me about the mussels."

"The _what_?"

"'The mountain streams abound with the pearrl-bearing mussels which are a staple article of diet with the Alpine natives,'" quoted Archer in declamatory style. "I had to write that two hundred and fifty times f'rr whittlin' a hole in the desk----"

"I s'pose you were after a souvenir," said Tom dryly.

"Firrst I wrote it once 'n' then I put two hundred and forty-nine ditto marrks. _Ebenezerr!_ Wasn't the teacherr mad! I had to write it two hundred and fifty times f'rr vandalism and two hundred and fifty morre f'rr insolence."

"Served you right," said Tom.

"Oh, I guess you weren't such an angel in school either!" said Archer.

"I'll never forget about those pearrl-bearing mussels as long as I live--you can bet!"

Tom separated the chicory roots from the stalks and Archer went to wash them in the stream. In a little while he returned with a triumphant smile all over his round, freckled face and half a dozen mussels in his cupped hands.

"_Now_ what have you got to say, huh? It's good I whittled that desk and was insolent--you can bet!"

Tom's practical mind did not quite appreciate this line of reasoning, but he was glad enough to see the mussels, the very look of which was cool and refreshing.

"I always said I had no use for geographies except to put mustaches and things on the North Pole explorers and high hats on Columbus and Henry Hudson, but, believe _me_, I'm glad I remembered about those pearrl-bearing mussels--hey, Slady? I hope the Alpine natives don't take it into their heads to come up herre afterr any of 'em just now. I just rooted around in the mud and got 'em. Look at my hand, will you?"

They made a sumptuous repast of wet, crisp chicory roots and "pearrl-bearing mussels" as Archer insisted upon calling them, although they found no pearls. The meal was refreshing and not half bad. There was a pleasant air of stealth and cosiness about the whole thing, lying there in their leafy refuge in the edge of the woods with the Alsatian country stretched below them. Perhaps it was the mussels out of the geography (to quote Archer's own phrase) as well as the sense of security which came as the uneventful hours pa.s.sed, but as the twilight gathered they enjoyed a feeling of safety, and their hope ran high. They had found, as the scout usually finds, that Nature was their friend, never withholding her bounty from him who seeks and uses his resourcefulness and brains.

All through the long afternoon they could distinguish heavy army wagons with dark spots on their canvas sides (the flaring, arrogant German crest which allied soldiers had grown to despise) moving northward along the distant road. They looked almost like toy wagons. Sometimes, when the breeze favored, they could hear the rattle of wheels and occasionally a human voice was faintly audible. And all the while from those towering heights beyond came the spent, m.u.f.fled booming.

"I'd like to know just what's going on over there," Tom said as he gazed at the blue heights. "Maybe those wagons down there on the road have something to do with it. If there's a big battle going on they may be bringing back wounded and prisoners.--Some of our own fellers might be in 'em."

They tried to determine about where, along that far-flung line, the sounds arose, but they could only guess at it.

"All I know is what I hearrd 'em say in the prison camp," said Archer; "that our fellers are just the otherr side of the mountains."

"That would be Nancy," said Tom thoughtfully.

"That Loquet feller that got capturred in a raid," Archer said, "told me the Americans were all around therre, just the otherr side of the mountains--in a lot of differrent villages: When they get through training they send 'em ahead to the trenches. Some of 'em have been in raids already, he said."

"You have to run like everything in a raid," said Tom. "I'd like to be in one, wouldn't you?"

"Depends on which way I was running.--Let's have a look at these paperrs before it gets too darrk, hey?" he added, hauling from his pocket the papers which he had taken from the dead Boche. "I neverr thought about 'em till just now?"

"I thought about it," said Tom, who indeed seldom forgot anything, "but I didn't say anything about it 'cause it kind of makes me think about what happened--I mean how they took her away," he added, in his dull way.

For a minute they sat silently gazing down at the vineyard which was now touched with the first crimson rays of sunset.

"You can just see the chimney," Tom said; "see, just left of that big tree.--I hope I don't see Frenchy any more now 'cause I wouldn't like to have to tell him----"

"We don't know what happened," said Archer. "Maybe therre werren't any otherr soldierrs; she may have escaped--and her motherr, too."

"It's more likely there _were_ others, though," said Tom. "I keep thinking all the time how scared she was and it kind of----"

"Let's look at the papers," said Archer.

The German soldier must have been a typical Boche, for he carried with him the customary baggage of written and statistical matter with which these warriors sally forth to battle.

"He must o' been a walking correspondence school," said Archer, unfolding the contents of the parchment envelope. "Herre's a list--all in German. Herre's some poetry--or I s'pose it's poetry, 'cause it's printed all in and out."

"Maybe it's a hymn of hate," said Tom.

"Herre's a map, and herre's a letter. All in Gerrman--even the map.

Anyway, I can't understand it."

"Looks like a scout astronomy chart," said Tom. "It's all dots like the big dipper."

"Do you s'pose it means they're going to conquer the sky and all the starrs and everything?" Archer asked. "Here's a letter, it's dated about two weeks ago--I can make out the numbers all right."

The letter was in German, of course, and Archer, who during his long incarceration in the prison camp had picked up a few sc.r.a.ps of the language, fell to trying to decipher it. The only reward he had for his pains was a familiar word which he was able to distinguish here and there and which greatly increased their desire to know the full purport of the letter.

"Herre's President Wilson's name.--See!" said Archer excitedly. "And herre's _America_----"

"Yes, and there it is again," said Tom. "That must be _Yankees_, see?

Something or other Yankees. It's about a mile long."

"Jim-min-nitty!" said Archer, staring at the word (presumably a disparaging adjective) which preceded the word _Yankees_. "It's got one--two--three--wait a minute--it's got thirty-seven letters to it.

_Go-o-od night_!"