Land."
"Were you the kid on that wheel?" Roscoe asked, surprised.
"Yes, and I always knew you'd make a good soldier. I told everybody so."
"_Kind of?_ Tommy, old boy, don't forget it was _you_ made me a
soldier," Roscoe said soberly. "Come on back to my perch with me," he
added, "and tell me all about your adventures. This is better than
taking Berlin. There's only one person in this little old world I'd
rather meet in a lonely place, and that's the Kaiser. Come on--quiet
now."
"You don't think you can show _me_ how to stalk, do you?" said Tom.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON GUARD
"You see it was this way," said Roscoe after hie had scrambled with
amazing agility up to his "perch" in a tree several hundred feet distant
but in full view of the stream. Tom had climbed up after him and was
looking with curious pleasure at the little kit of rations and other
personal paraphernalia which hung from neighboring branches. "How do you
like my private camp? Got Temple Camp beat, hey?" he broke off in that
erratic way of his. "All the comforts of home. Come on, get into your
camouflage."
"You don't seem the same as when you used to come up to our office from
the bank downstairs--that's one sure thing," said Tom, pulling the
leaves about him.
"You thought all I was good for was to jolly Margaret Ellison, huh?"
"I see now that you didn't only save my life but lots of other fellers',
too," said Tom. "Go on, you started to tell me about it."
It was very pleasant and cosy up there in the sniper's perch where
Roscoe had gathered the thinner branches about him, forming a little
leafy lair, in which his agile figure and his quick glances about
reminded Tom for all the world of a squirrel. He could hardly believe
that this watchful, dexterous creature, peering cautiously out of his
romantic retreat, was the same Roscoe Bent who used to make fun of the
scouts and sneak upstairs to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office;
who thought as much of his spotless high collar then as he seemed to
think of his rifle now.
"I got to thank you because you named it after me," said Tom.
"And I _got to thank you_ that you gave me the chance to get it to name
after you, Tommy. Well, you see it was this way," Roscoe went on in a
half whisper; "there were half a dozen of us over here in the woods and
we'd just cleaned out a machine gun nest when we saw this miniature
forest moving along. I thought it was a decorated moving van."
"That's the trouble with them," agreed Tom; "they're no good in the
woods; they're clumsy. They're punk scouts."
"Scouts!" Roscoe chuckled. "If we had to fight this gang of cut-throats
and murderers in the woods where old What's-his-name--Custer--had to
fight the Indians, take it from me, we'd have them wiped up in a month.
That fellow's idea of camouflaging was to bury himself under a couple of
tons of green stuff and then move the whole business along like a clumsy
old Zeppelin. I can camouflage myself with a branch with ten leaves on
it by studying the light."
"Anybody can see you've learned something about scouting--that's one
sure thing," said Tom proudly.
"_One sure thing!_" Roscoe laughed inaudibly. "It's the same old Tommy
Slade. Well, I was just going to bean this geezer when my officer told
me I'd better follow him."
"I was following him, too," said Tom; "stalking is the word you ought to
use."
"Captain thought he might be up to something special. So I
followed--_stalked_--how's that?"
"All right."
"So I stalked him and when I saw he was following the stream I made a
detour and waited for him right here. You see what he was up to? Way
down in Cantigny they could turn a switch and start this blamed poison,
half a dozen hogsheads of it, flowing into the stream. They waited till
they lost the town before they turned the switch, and they probably
thought they could poison us Americans by wholesale. Maybe they had some
reason to think the blamed thing hadn't worked, and sent this fellow up.
I beaned him just as he was going to turn the stop-cock."
"Maybe you saved a whole lot of lives, hey?" said Tom proudly.
Roscoe shrugged his shoulder in that careless way he had. "I'll be glad
to meet any more that come along," he said.
It was well that Tom Slade's first sight of deliberate killing was in
connection with so despicable a proceeding as the wholesale poisoning of
a stream. He could feel no pity for the man who, fleeing from those who
fought cleanly and like men instead of beasts, had sought to pour this
potent liquid of anguish and death into the running crystal water. Such
acts, it seemed to him, were quite removed from the sphere of honorable,
manly fighting.
As a scout he had learned that it was wrong even to bathe in a stream
whence drinking water was obtained, and at camp he had always
scrupulously observed this good rule. He felt that it was cowardly to
defile the waters of a brook. It was not a "mailed fist" at all which
could do such things, but a fist dripping with poison.
And Tom Slade felt no qualm, as otherwise he might have felt, at hiding
there waiting for new victims. He was proud and thrilled to see his
friend, secreted in his perch, keen-eyed and alert, guarding alone the
crystal purity of this laughing, life-giving brook, as it hurried along
its pebbly bed and tumbled in little gushing falls and wound cheerily
around the rocks, bearing its grateful refreshment to the weary, thirsty
boys who were holding the neighboring village.
"I used to think I wouldn't like to be a sniper," he said, "but now it
seems different. I saw two fellers in the village and one had a bandage
on his arm and the other one who was talking to him--I heard him say a
long drink of water would go good--and--I--kind of--now----"
The Jersey Snipe winked at Tom and patted his rifle as a man might pat a
favorite dog.
"It's good fresh water," said he.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
In Tom's visions of the great war there had been no picture of the
sniper, that single remnant of romantic and adventurous warfare, in all
the roar and clangor of the horrible modern fighting apparatus.
He had seen American boys herded onto great ships by thousands; and,
marching and eating and drilling in thousands, they had seemed like a
great machine. He knew the murderous submarine, the aeroplane with its
ear-splitting whir, the big clumsy Zeppelin; and he had handled gas
masks and grenades and poison gas bombs.
But in his thoughts of the war and all these diabolical agents of
wholesale death there had been no visions of the quiet, stealthy figure,
inconspicuous in the counterfeiting hues of tree and rock, stealing
silently away with his trusty rifle and his week's rations for a lonely
vigil in some sequestered spot.
There was the same attraction about this freelance warfare which there
might have been about a privateer in contrast with a flotilla of modern
dreadnaughts and frantic chasers, and it reminded him of Daniel Boone,
and Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett, and other redoubtable scouts of old
who did not depend on stenching suffocation and the poisoning of
streams. It was odd that he had never known much about the sniper, that
one instrumentality of the war who seems to have been able to preserve a
romantic identity in all the bloody _mélée_ of the mighty conflict.
For Tom had been a scout and the arts of stealth and concealment and
nature's resourceful disguises had been his. He had thought of the
sniper as of one whose shooting is done peculiarly in cold blood, and he
was surprised and pleased to find his friend in this romantic and noble
rôle of holding back, single-handed, as it were, these vile agents of
agonizing death.
Arsenic! Tom knew from his memorized list of poison antidotes that if
one drinks arsenic he will be seized with agony unspeakable and die in
slow and utter torture. The more he thought about it, the more the cold,
steady eye of the unseen sniper and his felling shot seemed noble and
heroic.
Almost unconsciously he reached out and patted the rifle also as if it
were some trusted living thing--an ally.
"Did you really mean you named it after me--honest?" he asked.
Roscoe laughed again silently. "See?" he whispered, holding it across,
and Tom could distinguish the crudely engraved letters, TOMMY.
"--Because I never had anything named after me," he said in his simple,
dull way. "There's a place on the lake up at Temple Camp that the
fellers named after Roy Blakeley--Blakeley Isle. And there's a new
pavilion up there that's named after Mr. Ellsworth, our scoutmaster. And
Mr. Temple's got lots of things--orphan asylums and gymnasiums and
buildings and things--named after _him_. I always thought it must be
fine. I ain't that kind--sort of--that fellers name things after," he
added, with a blunt simplicity that went to Roscoe's heart; and he held
the rifle, as the sniper started to take it back, his eyes still fixed
upon the rough scratches which formed his own name. "In Bridgeboro
there was a place in Barrell Alley," he went on, apparently without
feeling, "where my father fell down one night when he was--when he'd had
too much to drink, and after that everybody down there called it Slade's
Hole. When I got in with the scouts, I didn't like it--kind of----"
Roscoe looked straight at Tom with a look as sure and steady as his
rifle. "Slade's Hole isn't known outside of Barrell Alley, Tom," he said
impressively, although in the same cautious undertone, "but _Tom Slade_
is known from one end of this sector to the other."
"Thatchy's what they called me in Toul sector, 'cause my hair's always
mussed up, I s'pose, and----"
"The first time I ever saw you to really know you, Tom, your hair was
all mussed up--and I hope it'll always stay that way. That was when you
came up there in the woods and made me promise to go back and register."
"I knew you'd go back 'cause----"
"I went back with bells on, and here I am. And here's _Tom Slade_ that's
stuck by me through this war. It's named _Tom Slade_ because it makes
good--see? Look here, I'll show you something else--you old hickory
nut, you. See that," he added, pulling a small object from somewhere in
his clothing.
Tom stared. "It's the Distinguished Service Cross," he said, his longing
eyes fixed upon it.
"That's what it is. The old gent handed me that--if anybody should ask
you."
Tom smiled, remembering Roscoe's familiar way of speaking of the
dignified Mr. Temple, and of "Old Man" Burton, and "Pop" this and that.
"General Pershing?"
"The same. You've heard of him, haven't you? Very muchly, huh?"
"Why don't you wear it?" Tom asked.
"Why? Well, I'll tell you why. When your friend, Thatchy, followed me on
that crazy trip of mine he borrowed some money for railroad fare, didn't
he? And he had a Gold Cross that he used to get the money, huh? So I
made up my mind that this little old souvenir from Uncle Samuel wouldn't
hang on my distinguished breast till I got back and paid Tom Slade what
I owed him and made sure that he'd got his own Cross safely back and was
wearing it again. Do you get me?"
"I got my Cross back," said Tom, "and it's home. So you can put that on.
You got to tell me how you got it, too. I always knew you'd make a
success."
"It was _Tommy Slade_ helped me to it, as usual. I beaned nine Germans
out in No Man's Land, and got away slightly wounded--I stubbed my toe.
Old Pop Clemenceau gave me a kiss and the old gent slipped me this for
good luck," Roscoe said, pinning on the Cross to please Tom. "When
Clemmy saw the name on the rifle, he asked what it meant and I told him
it was named after a pal of mine back home in the U.S.A.--Tom Slade.
Little I knew you were waltzing around the war zone on that thing of
yours. I almost laughed in his face when he said, 'M'soo Tommee should
be proud.'"
So the Premier of France had spoken the name of Tom Slade, whose father
had had a mud hole in Barrell Alley named after him.
"I _am_ proud," he stammered; "that's one sure thing. I'm proud on
account of you--I am."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FOUNTAINS OF DESTRUCTION
As Tom had the balance of the day to himself he cherished but one
thought--that of remaining with Roscoe as long as his leave would
permit. If he had been in the woods up at Temple Camp, away back home in
his beloved Catskills, he could hardly have felt more at home than he
felt perched in this tree near the headwaters of the running stream; and
to have Roscoe Bent crouching there beside him was more than his fondest
dreams of doing his bit had pictured.
At short intervals they could hear firing, sometimes voices in the
distance, and occasionally the boom of artillery, but except for these
reminders of the fighting the scene was of that sort which Tom loved. It
was there, while the sniper, all unseen, guarded the source of the
stream, his keen eye alert for any stealthy approach, that Tom told him
in hushed tones the story of his own experiences; how he had been a
ship's boy on a transport, and had been taken aboard the German U-boat
that had torpedoed her and held in a German prison camp, from which he
and Archer had escaped and made their way through the Black Forest and
across the Swiss border.
"Some kid!" commented Roscoe, admiringly; "the world ain't big enough
for you, Tommy. If you were just back from Mars I don't believe you'd be
excited about it."
"Why should I be?" said literal Tom. "It was only because the feller I
was with was born lucky; he always said so."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Roscoe sarcastically. "_I_ say he was mighty
lucky to be with _you_. Feel like eating?"
It was delightful to Tom sitting there in their leafy concealment,
waiting for any other hapless German emissaries who might come, bent on
the murderous defilement of that crystal brook, and eating of the
rations which Roscoe never failed to have with him.
"You're kind of like a pioneer," he said, "going off where there isn't
anybody. They have to trust you to do what you think best a lot, I
guess, don't they? A feller said they often hear you but they never see
you. I saw you riding on one of the tanks, but I didn't know it was you.
Funny, wasn't it?"
"I usually hook a ride. The tanks get on my nerves, though, they're so
slow."
"You're like a squirrel," said Tom admiringly.
"Well, you're like a bulldog," said Roscoe. "Still got the same old
scowl on your face, haven't you? So they kid you a lot, do they?"
"I don't mind it."
So they talked, in half whispers, always scanning the woods about them,
until after some time their vigil was rewarded by the sight of three
gray-coated, helmeted figures coming up the bank of the stream. They
made no pretence of concealment, evidently believing themselves to be
safe here in the forest. Roscoe had hauled the body of the dead German
under the thick brush so that it might not furnish a warning to other
visitors, and now he brought his rifle into position and touching his
finger to his lips by way of caution he fixed his steady eye on the
approaching trio.
One of these was a tremendous man and, from his uniform and arrogant
bearing, evidently an officer. The other two were plain, ordinary
"Fritzies." Tom believed that they had come to this spot by some
circuitous route, bent upon the act which their comrade and the
mechanism had failed to accomplish. He watched them in suspense,
glancing occasionally at Roscoe.
The German officer evidently knew the ground for he went straight to the
bush where the hogshead stood concealed, and beckoned to his two
underlings. Tom, not daring to stir, looked expectantly at Roscoe, whose
rifle was aimed and resting across a convenient branch before him. The
sniper's intent profile was a study. Tom wondered why he did not fire.
He saw one of the Boches approach the officer, who evidently would not
deign to stoop, and kneel at the foot of the bush. Then the crisp,
echoing report of Roscoe's rifle rang out, and on the instant the
officer and the remaining soldier disappeared behind the leaf-covered
hogshead. Tom was aware of the one German lying beside the bush, stark
and motionless, and of Roscoe jerking his head and screwing up his mouth
in a sort of spontaneous vexation. Then he looked suddenly at Tom and
winked unmirthfully with a kind of worried annoyance.
"Think they can hit us from there? Think they know where we are?" Tom
asked in the faintest whisper.
"'Tisn't that," Roscoe whispered back. "Look at that flat stone under
the bush there. Shh! I couldn't get him in the right light before. Shh!"
Narrowing his eyes, Tom scanned the earth at the foot of the bush and
was just able to discern a little band of black upon a gray stone there.
It was evidently a wet spot on the dusty stone and for a second he
thought it was blood; then the staggering truth dawned upon him that in
shooting the Hun in the very act of letting loose the murderous liquid
Roscoe had shot a hole in the hogshead and the potent poison was flowing
out rapidly and down into the stream.
And just in that moment there flashed into Tom's mind the picture of
that weary, perspiring boy in khaki down in captured Cantigny, who had
mopped his forehead, saying, "A drink of water would go good now."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TOM USES HIS FIRST BULLET
It had been a pet saying of Tom's scoutmaster back in America that you
should _wait long enough to make up your mind and not one second
longer_.
Tom knew that the pressure of liquid above that fatal bullet hole near
the bottom of the hogshead was great enough to send the poison fairly
pouring out. He could not see this death-dealing stream, for it was
hidden in the bush, but he knew that it would continue to pour forth
until several of these great receptacles had been emptied and the
running brook with its refreshing coolness had become an instrument of
frightful death.
Safe behind the protecting bulk of the hogshead crouched the two
surviving Germans, while Roscoe, covering the spot, kept his eyes
riveted upon it for the first rash move of either of the pair. And
meanwhile the poison poured out of the very bulwark that shielded them
and into the swift-running stream.
"I don't think they've got us spotted," Tom whispered, moving cautiously
toward the trunk of the tree; "the private had a rifle, didn't he?"
"What are you going to do?" Roscoe breathed.
"Stop up that hole. Give me a bullet, will you?"
"You're taking a big chance, Tom."
"I ain't thinking about that. Give me a bullet. All _you_ got to do is
keep those two covered."
With a silent dexterity which seemed singularly out of keeping with his
rather heavy build, Tom shinnied down the side of the tree farthest from
the brook, and lying almost prone upon the ground began wriggling his
way through the sparse brush, quickening his progress now and again
whenever the diverting roar of distant artillery or the closer report of
rifles and machine guns enabled him to advance with less caution.
In a few minutes he reached the stream, apparently undiscovered, when
suddenly he was startled by another rifle report, close at hand, and he
lay flat, breathing in suspense.
It was simply that one of that pair had made the mistake so often made
in the trenches of raising his head, and had paid the penalty.
Tom was just cautiously crossing the brook when he became aware of a
frantic scramble in the bush and saw the German private rushing
pell-mell through the thick undergrowth beyond, hiding himself in it as
best he might and apparently trying to keep the bush-enshrouded hogshead
between himself and the tree where the sniper was. Evidently he had
discovered Roscoe's perch and, there being now no restraining authority,
had decided on flight. It had been the officer's battle, not his, and he
abandoned it as soon as the officer was shot. It was typical of the
German system and of the total lack of individual spirit and resource of
the poor wretches who fight for Kaiser Bill's glory.
Reaching the bush, Tom pulled away the leafy covering and saw that the
poisonous liquid was pouring out of a clean bullet hole as he had
suspected. He hurriedly wrapped a bit of the gauze bandage which he
always carried around the bullet Roscoe had given him and forced it into
the hole, wedging it tight with a rock. Then he waved his hand in the
direction of the tree to let Roscoe know that all was well.
Tom Slade had used his first bullet and it had saved hundreds of lives.
"They're both dead," he said, as Roscoe came quickly through the
underbrush in the gathering dusk. "Did the officer put his head up?"
"Mm-mm," said Roscoe, examining the two victims.
"You always kill, don't you?" said Tom.
"I have to, Tommy. You see, I'm all alone, mostly," Roscoe added as he
fumbled in the dead officer's clothing. "There are no surgeons or nurses
in reach. I don't have stretcher-bearers following _me_ around and it
isn't often that even a Hun will surrender, fair and square, to one man.
I've seen too much of this '_kamarad_' business. I can't afford to take
chances, Tommy. But I don't put nicks in my rifle butt like some of them
do. I don't want to know how many I beaned after it's all over. We kill
to save--that's the idea you want to get into your head, Tommy boy."
"I know it," said Tom.
The officer had no papers of any importance and since it was getting
dark and Tom must report at headquarters, they discussed the possibility
of upsetting these murderous hogsheads, and putting an end to the
danger. Evidently the woods were not yet wholly cleared of the enemy who
might still seek to make use of these agents of destruction.
"There may be stragglers in the woods even to-morrow," Roscoe said.
"S'pose we dig a little trench running away from the brook and then turn
on the cock and let the stuff flow off?" suggested Tom.
The idea seemed a good one and they fell to, hewing out a ditch with a
couple of sticks. It was a very crude piece of engineering, as Roscoe
observed, and they were embarrassed in their work by the gathering
darkness, but at length they succeeded, by dint of jabbing and plowing
and lifting the earth out in handfuls, in excavating a little gully
through the rising bank so that the liquid would flow off and down the
rocky decline beyond at a safe distance from the stream.
For upwards of an hour they remained close by, until the hogsheads had
run dry, and then they set out through the woods for the captured
village.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GUN PIT
"I think the best way to get into the village," said Roscoe, "is to
follow the edge of the wood around. That'll bring us to the by-path that
runs into the main road. They've got the woods pretty well cleared out
over that way. There's a road a little north of here and I think the
Germans have withdrawn across that. What do you say?"
"You know more about it than I do," said Tom. "I followed the brook up.
It's pretty bad in some places."
"There's only two of us," said Roscoe, "and you've no rifle. Safety
first."
"I suppose there's a lot of places they could hide along the brook; the
brush is pretty thick all the way up," Tom added.
Roscoe whistled softly in indecision. "I like the open better," said he.
"I guess so," Tom agreed, "when there's only two of us."
"There's three of us, though," said Roscoe, "and _Tommy_ here likes the
open better. I'd toss up a coin only with these blamed French coins you
can't tell which is heads and which is tails."
Roscoe was right about the Germans having withdrawn beyond the road
north of the woods. Whether he was right about its being safer to go
around the edge of the forest remained to be determined.
This wood, in which they had passed the day, extended north of the
village (see map) and thinned out upon the eastern side so that one
following the eastern edge would emerge from the wood a little east of
the main settlement. Here was the by-path which Roscoe had mentioned,
and which led down into the main road.
Running east and west across the northern extremity of the woods was a
road, and the Germans, driven first from their trenches, then out of the
village, and then out of the woods, were establishing their lines north
of this road.
If the boys had followed the brook down they would have reached the
village by a much shorter course, but Roscoe preferred the open country
where they could keep a better lookout. Whether his decision was a wise
one, we shall see.
[Illustration: SHOWING PATH TAKEN BY TOM AND ROSCOE THROUGH THE WOODS]