Tom Slade with the Colors Part 25

and so forth, and so forth:

ONE OF OUR OWN BOYS FROM CAMP DIX, PRIVATE ROSCOE BENT, WILL TELL OF SOLDIER LIFE.

COME AND GIVE HIM A WELCOME

There was more, but that was all Roscoe saw. It sickened him to read it.

He went on, heavy hearted, trying to comfort himself with the reflection that he really did not know where Tom was or what he was doing. But it did not afford him much comfort.

As he walked along, his head down, certain phrases ran continually through his mind. They came out of the past, like things dead, out of another life which Roscoe Bent knew no more: _Do you think I'd let them get you? Do you think because you made fun of me ... I wouldn't be a friend to you? I got the strength to strangle you! I know the trail--I'm a scout--and I got here first. They'd have to kill me to make me tell...._

Roscoe Bent looked behind him, as if he expected to see some one there.

But there was nothing but the straight, long street, in narrowing perspective.

Under a lamp post on the next corner he took out of his alligator-skin wallet a folded paper, very much worn on the creases, and holding it so that the light caught it he skimmed hurriedly the few half-legible sentences:

"... glad you didn't tell. If you had told it would have spoiled it all--so I'm going to help the government in a way I can do without lying to anybody.... can see I'm not the kind that tells lies. The thing ... most glad about ... that you got registered.

... like you and I always did, even when you made fun of me."

"_I_ made fun----" he mumbled, crumpling the letter and sticking it into the capacious pocket of Uncle Sam's big coat. "_I_--Christopher! If I only had your nerve now--Tommy. It doesn't--it doesn't count for so much to be able to strangle a fellow--though I ought to be strangled.--It's just like Margaret said--the other kind of strength. If I could only make up my mind to do a thing, like he could, and _then do it_!"

He leaned against the lamp post, this fine young soldier who was going to help "can the Kaiser," and he did not stand erect at all, and all his fine air was gone from him.

You had better not slink and slouch like that on the platform to-morrow night, Private Roscoe Bent.

"I can see myself giving my father that message! Proud of me--of _me!

Brave soldier!_ That's what this poor kid said. And me trying to flim-flam myself into thinking that I've got to keep still because I promised Tom. How is it any of his business? It's between me and my---- And I made fun of him--_him_! I wonder what this bully scout kid would say to that! I'm--I'm a low-down, contemptible sneak--that's what----"

On a sudden impulse, the same fine impulse which would some day carry him ahead of his comrades, straight across the German trenches, he ran to the corner where he had parted with Roy and looked eagerly up one street and down another. He ran to the next corner and looked anxiously down the street which crossed there. He ran a block up this street and looked as far as he could see along Terrace Place which was the way up to the fine old Blakeley homestead on the hill.

But no sign of Roy was there to be seen, for the good and sufficient reason that when Roy Blakeley, "Silver Fox," took it into his head to go scout pace, he was presently invisible to pursuers.

So Roscoe's impulse pa.s.sed, as Roscoe's impulses were very apt to do, and he wandered homeward, telling himself that fate had been against him and balked his n.o.ble resolution.

As he went down through Rockwood Place he saw the lights in the library, which told him that his mother and father were still up. But he did not deliver Mr. Ellsworth's message; he was strong enough for that, anyway.

Instead, he went straight up to his own room, which he had not occupied lately, and when he got up there he found that he was not alone. For a certain face haunted him all night and would not go away--a face with a heavy shock of hair, with a big, rugged mouth, and a b.l.o.o.d.y cut on its forehead.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FACE

All the next day that face haunted Roscoe. "If I could only know where he is," he said to himself; "if I could bring him back, I'd tell the whole business."

It occurred to him that perhaps Tom was dead and that that was why he was continually seeing that stolid face with the b.l.o.o.d.y scar. "Maybe the cut got worse and he got blood poisoning and died," he thought.

This train of thought possessed him so that he grew to believe that Tom Slade must really be dead. And that being the case, there would be no use in telling anybody anything....

At breakfast he seemed so preoccupied that after he left the room his mother said to his father,

"You don't think he's nervous or timid, do you?"

"I think he's a little nervous about making a speech in public," said Mr. Bent. "He isn't afraid of anything else," he added proudly.

During the morning Mrs. Bent wanted to take his picture. "You look so splendid and handsome in your uniform, dear!" she told him. So he stood in the big bay window where the sunlight streamed in and let her snap the camera at him. He did look splendid and handsome, there was no denying that.

Then she would have him develop the film with his own hands so that she could make some prints right away. "You may not have another leave," she said. "It's dreadful that you have to go back to camp late to-night."

"Don't you care," he laughed, in that companionable way in which he always talked with his mother.

"You can take one of the prints over to East Bridgeboro to-night," she added, as an inducement to his developing the film at once.

"Think she'd like to have one?"

"The idea! Of course she would."

So, to please his mother, Roscoe took off Uncle Sam's service coat, put on a kitchen ap.r.o.n, and went into his little familiar dark closet to wrestle with chemicals.

And there again, in the dim light of the red lantern, and the deathlike quiet, he saw that face--with the cut and the thick, disordered hair, and the big, tight-set mouth. "You can see yourself it wouldn't do for anybody to know," he fancied the lips saying. "If you told, it would spoil it all----"

"I won't spoil it," Roscoe mumbled, as if he were doing the shadowy presence a great favor.

Private Bent, who was going to "can the Kaiser," was glad to get out of that dark, stuffy place.

In the afternoon he went down into the cellar to grease and cover up his motorcycle in antic.i.p.ation of his long absence "over there." This would be his last chance to do it, unless he got up very early in the morning.

But then he would be an hour over his leave in getting back to camp late to-night on a milk train. A soldier's honor must not be sullied by a stolen hour....

And there again Roscoe Bent saw that face. It was a little more than a face this time. He could almost have sworn that he saw the figure of Tom Slade standing over in the dark corner near the coal bins; and as Roscoe, kneeling by his motorcycle, fixed his eyes upon this thing another sentence ran through his thoughts: "Those secret service fellows--do yer think I'd let them get yer? Do you think because you made fun of me...."

He tried to stare the apparition down, but it would not disappear--not until he went over to it and saw that it was just a burlap bag full of kindling wood, with James, the furnace man's, old felt hat thrown upon it.

"I--I know what it means, all right," he muttered; "it means he's dead."

After supper he parted his wavy blond hair, and his mother brushed his uniform while he stood straight as an arrow, his handsome head thrown back. Then his father proudly helped him into his big military coat and he started for East Bridgeboro, which was across the river. The new Y. M. C. A. hall was not over there, but he was going there first, just the same.

"Have you got the print?" his mother called after him.

"Sure."

"The one holding the gun? You look so soldierly and brave in that!"

He laughed as he went down the steps.

But presently he became moody and preoccupied again. "If Mr. Ellsworth hadn't dragged me into this thing," he said to himself, "it wouldn't be so bad. It gets my goat to stand up there and shoot off about honor and all that sort of thing. But I can't do anything else now. I'm not going to spoil it all. It can't make any difference to Tom now--he's out of the game. He's through with the scouts, and he's through with Bridgeboro--dead, I'm afraid. And if I just keep my mouth shut, it'll be doing just what he wanted me to do; it was _his_ idea."

So that was settled; and in place of those troubling thoughts, Roy Blakeley bobbed up in his mind--Roy Blakeley, who believed in "standing by a fellow through thick and thin"; who was staunch and loyal to his friend.

"He's a bully kid," mused Roscoe, as he crossed the bridge whence the town derived its name, and the more he thought about Roy the more mean and contemptible he felt himself to be.