THE EPISODE IN FRANCE
Uncle Jeb smoked his pipe leisurely, listening to this letter. "Kind of
a comic, hey?" he said. "I reckon ye'd like to hev 'em come. Hain't
never seed each other, hey?"
Tom was silent. The letter meant more to him than Uncle Jeb imagined. It
touched one of the springs of his simple, stolid nature, and his eyes
glistened as he glanced over it again, drinking in its genial, friendly,
familiar tone. So he had at least one friend after all. Cut of all that
turmoil of war, with its dangers and sufferings, had come at least one
friend. The bursting of that shell which had seemed to shake the earth,
and which had shattered his nerves and lost him Roy and all those
treasured friends and comrades of his boyhood, had at least brought him
one true friend. He had never felt the need of a friend more than at
that very moment. The cheery letter seemed for the moment, to wipe out
the memory of Roy's last words to him, that he was a liar. And it
aroused his memories of France.
"Maybe you might like to hear about it," he said to Uncle Jeb, in his
simple way. "Kind of, now it makes me think about France. I wouldn't
blame the scouts for not having any use for me--I wouldn't blame
Roy--but anyway, it was that shell that did it. If you say so I'll start
a camp-fire. That's what always makes me think about the
scouts--camp-fire. Maybe you'll say I was to blame. Anyway, they won't
lose anything. And when they come I'll go back home, if they want me to.
That's only fair. Anyway, I like Temple Camp best of all."
"Kinder like home, Tommy," Uncle Jeb said.
The sun was going down beyond the hills across the lake and flickering
up the water and casting a crimson glow upon the wooded summits. The
empty cabins, and the boarded-up cooking shack, shone clear and sharp
in the gathering twilight. High above, a great bird soared through the
dusk, hastening to its home in the mountains, where Silver Fox trail
wound its way up through the fastness, and where Tom and Roy had often
gone. And the memory of all these fond associations gripped Tom now, and
he had to tighten his big ugly mouth to keep it from showing any tremor
of weakness.
"Maybe it won't be as easy as Uncle Jeb thinks," he said to himself,
"but anyway, I'll be here and I won't be interfering with them, and I'll
get the cabins finished and I'll go away before they come. They'll have
to like Billy Barnard, that's sure; and maybe he'll tell them about my
not knowing who he was until after I gave them the cabins. They'll all
be on the hill together and they'll have to be friends...."
Yes, they would all be on the hill together, save one, and they would be
friends and there would be some great times. They would all hike up the
mountain trail, all save one, and see Devil's Pool up there. Tom hoped
that Roy would surely show Barnard and his troop that interesting
discovery which he and Roy had made. The hard part was already attended
to--making Margaret and Mr. Burton keep still. And, as usual, Lucky
Luke's part was the easiest part of all--just building three cabins and
going away. It was a cinch.
"Shall I build a camp-fire?" he asked of Uncle Jeb.
And so, in the waning twilight, Tom Slade, liar and forgetter of his
friends, built a camp-fire, on this first night of his lonely sojourn at
Temple Camp. And he and Uncle Jeb sat by it as the night drew on apace,
and it aroused fond memories in Tom, as only a camp-fire has the magic
to do, and stilled his jangling nerves and made him happy.
"In about a month there'll be a hundred fellows sitting around one like
this," he said.
"En that Peewee kid'll be trying to defend hisself agin Roay's
nonsense," Uncle Jeb remarked.
"I ain't going to stay to be assistant camp manager this season," Tom
said; "I'm going back to work. I'm having my vacation now. I kind of
like being alone with you."
"What is them shell-holes?" Uncle Jeb asked. "Yer got catched into one,
huh?"
And then, for the first time since Tom had returned from France, he was
moved to tell the episode which he had never told the scouts, and which
he had always recalled with agitation and horror. Perhaps the camp-fire
and Uncle Jeb's quiet friendliness lulled him to repose and made him
reminiscent. Perhaps it was the letter from Barnard.
"That's how I got shell-shocked," he repeated. "When you get
shell-shocked it doesn't show like a wound. There's a place named
Veronnes in France. A German airman fell near there. It was pretty near
dark and it was raining, but anyhow I could just see him fall. I could
see him falling down through the dark, like. I was on my way back to the
billets for relief. I had to go through a marsh to get to that place
where he fell. I thought I'd sink, but I didn't.
"When I got there I saw his machine was all crumbled up, and he was all
mixed up with the wires and he was dead. I was going to give him first
aid if he wasn't. But anyway, he was dead. So then I searched him and he
had a lot of papers. Some of them were maps. I knew it wouldn't be any
use to take them to billets, because the wires were all down on account
of the rain. So I started through the marshes to get into the road to
Rheims. Those marshes are worse than the ones we have here. Sometimes I
had to swim. It took me two hours, I guess. Anyway, if you _have_ to do
a thing you can do it.
"When I got to the road it was easy. I knew that road went to Rheims
because when I was in the Motorcycle Service I knew all the roads.
Pretty soon I got to a place where a road crossed it and there were some
soldiers coming along that road. I kept still and let them pass by and
they didn't see me. I knew there were more coming and I could hear the
sound of tanks coming, too. Maybe they were coming back from an attack.
"All of a sudden everything seemed bright and I saw a fellow right close
to me and then there was a noise that made my ears ring and dirt flew in
my face and I heard that fellow yell. As soon as I took a couple more
steps I stumbled and fell into a place that was hot--the earth was hot,
just like an oven. That was a new shell-hole I was in.
"I just lay there and my arm hurt and my ears buzzed and there was a
funny kind of a pain in the back of my neck. That's how shell-shock
begins. I heard that fellow say, 'Are you all right?' I couldn't speak
because my throat was all trembling, like. But I could feel my sleeve
was all wet and my arm throbbed. I heard him say, 'We must have had our
fingers crossed.' Because you know how kids cross their fingers when
they're playing tag, so no one can tag them? The way he says things in
this letter sounds just like the way he said. He's happy-go-lucky, that
fellow, I guess.
"There was a piece of the shell in there and it was red hot and by that
he saw my arm was hurt, and he bandaged it with his shirt. He saw my
scout badge that I wore and he asked me my name. That's all he knows
about me. Pretty soon something that made a lot of noise moved right
over the hole and I guess it got stuck there. He said it must be a tank
that got kind of caught there. Pretty soon I could hardly breathe, but I
could hear him hollering and banging with a stone or something up
against that thing. I heard him say we could dig our way out with his
helmet. Pretty soon I didn't know anything.
"The next thing I knew there was fresh air and people were carrying
me on a stretcher. When I tried to call for that fellow it made me
sob--that's the way it is when you're shell-shocked. You wring your
hands, too. Even--even--now--if I hear a noise----"
Tom Slade broke down, and began wringing his hands, and his face which
shone in the firelight was one of abject terror. And in another moment
he was crying like a baby.