When Cassius Wyble came down from his mountains to the 2OOO-population
metropolis of Clayburg on his half-yearly trip for supplies he thought
the old custom of Muster Day had been revived.
No fewer than eleven men in khaki were lounging round the station
platform or sitting on the steps of the North America general store.
Enlistment posters, too, flared from windows and walls.
These posters--except for their pretty pictures--meant nothing at all to
Cash Wyble. For, as with his parents and grandparents, his knowledge of
the written or printed word was purely a matter of hearsay.
Yet the sight of the eleven men in newfangled uniform--so like in color
to his own butternut homespuns--interested Cash.
"What's all the boys doin'--togged up thataway?" he demanded of the
North America's proprietor. "Waitin' for the band?"
"Waiting to be shipped to Camp Lee," answered the local merchant prince;
adding, as Cash's burnt-leather face grew blanker: "Camp Lee, down in
V'ginia, you know. Training camp for the war."
"War?" queried Cash, preparing to grin, at prospect of a joke. "What
war?"
"What war?" echoed the dumfounded storekeeper.
"Why, _the_ war, of course! Where in blazes have you been keeping
yourself?"
"I been up home, where I b'long," said Cash sulkily. "What with the
hawgs, an' crops an' skins an' sich, a busy man's got no time traipsin'
off to the city every minute. Twice a year does me pretty nice. An' now
s'pose you tell me what war you're blattin' about."
The storekeeper told him. He told him in the simplest possible language.
Yet half--and more than half--of the explanation went miles above the
listening mountaineer's head. Cash gathered, however, that the United
States was fighting Germany.
Germany he knew by repute for a country or a town on the far side of the
world. Some of its citizens had even invaded his West Virginia
mountains, where their odd diction and porcelain pipes roused much
derision among the cultured hillfolk.
"Germany?" mused Cash when the narrative was ended. "We're to war with
Germany, hey? Sakes, but I wisht I'd knowed that yesterday! A couple of
Germans went right past my shack. I could 'a' shot 'em as easy as toad
pie."
The North America's proprietor valued Cash Wyble's sparse trade, as he
valued that of other mountaineers who made Clayburg their semiannual
port of call. If on Cash's report these rustics should begin a guerilla
warfare upon their German neighbors, more of them would presently be
lodged in jail than the North America could well afford to spare from
its meager customer list.
Wherefore the proprietor did some more explaining. Knowing the
mountaineer brain, he made no effort to point out the difference between
armed Germans and noncombatants. He merely said that the Government had
threatened to lock up any West Virginian who should kill a German--this
side of Europe. It was a new law, he continued, and one that the revenue
officers were bent on enforcing.
Cash sighed and reluctantly bade farewell to an alluring dream that had
begun to shape itself in his simple brain--a dream of "laying out" in
cliff-top brush, waiting with true elephant patience until a German
neighbor should stroll, unsuspecting, along the trail below and should
move slowly within range of the antique Wyble rifle.
It was a sweet fantasy, and hard to banish. For Cash certainly could
shoot. There was scarce a man in the Cumberlands or the Appalachians who
could outshoot him. Shooting and a native knack at moon-shining were
Cash's only real accomplishments. Whether stalking a shy old stag or
potting a revenue officer on the sky line, the man's aim was uncannily
true. In a region of born marksmen his skill stood forth supreme.
He felt not the remotest hatred for any of these local Germans. In an
impersonal way he rather liked one or two of them. Yet, if the law had
really been off----
The zest of the man hunt tingled pleasantly in the marksman's blood. And
he resented this unfair new revenue ruling, which permitted and even
encouraged larger than Clayburg--which he knew to be the biggest
metropolis in America--Cash set out to nail the lie by a personal
inspection of Petersburg. He neglected to apply for leave, so was held
up by the first sentinel he met.
Cash explained very politely his reason for quitting camp. But the
pig-headed sentinel still refused to let him pass. Two minutes later a
fast-summoned corporal and two men were using all their strength to pry
Wyble loose from the luckless sentry. And again the guardhouse had Cash
as a transient and blasphemous guest.
He was learning much more of kitchen-police work than of guard mount. At
the latter task he was a failure. The first night he was assigned to
beat pacing, the relief found him restfully snoring, on his back, his
rifle stuck up in front of him by means of its bayonet thrust into the
ground. Cash had seen no good reason why he should walk to and fro for
hours when there was nothing exciting to watch for and when he had been
awake since early morning. Therefore he had gone to sleep. And his
subsequent guardhouse stay filled him with uncomprehending fury.
The salute, too, struck him as the height of absurdity--as a bit of
tomfoolery in which he would have no part. Not that he was exclusive,
but what was the use of touching one's forelock to some officer one had
never before met? He was willing to nod pleasantly and even to say
"Howdy, Cap?" when his company captain passed by him for the first time
in the morning. But he saw no use in repeating that or any other form of
salutation when the same captain chanced to meet him a bare fifteen
minutes later.
Cash Wyble's case was not in any way unique among Camp Lee's thirty
thousand new soldiers. Hundreds of mountaineers were in still worse
mental plight. And the tact as well as the skill of their officers was
strained well-nigh to the breaking point in shaping the amorphous
backwoods rabble into trim soldiers.
Not all members of the mountain draft were so fiercely resentful as was
Cash. But many others of them were like unbroken colts. The strange
frequency of washing and of shaving, and the wearing of underclothes
were their chief puzzles.
The company captain labored with Cash again and again, pointing out the
need of neat cleanliness, of promptitude, of vigilance; trying to make
him understand that a salute is not a sign of servility; seeking to
imbue him with the spirit of patriotism and of discipline. But to Cash
the whole thing was infinitely worse and more bewildering than had been
the six months he had once spent in Clayburg jail for mayhem.
Three things alone mitigated his misery at Camp Lee: The first was the
shooting; the second was his monthly pay--which represented more real
money than he ever had had in his pocket at any one time; the third was
the food--amazing in its abundance and luxurious variety, to the
always-hungry mountaineer.
But presently the target shooting palled. As soon as he had mastered
carefully the intricacies of the queer new rifle they gave him, the
hours at the range were no more inspiring to him than would be, to
Paderewski, the eternal playing of the scale of C with one finger.
To Cash the target shooting was child's play. Once he grasped the rules
as to sights and elevations and became used to the feel of the army
rifle, the rest was drearily simple.
He could outshoot practically every man at Camp Lee. This gave him no
pride. He made himself popular with men who complimented him on it by
assuring them modestly that he outshot them not because he was such a
dead shot but because they shot so badly.
The headiest colt in time will learn the lesson of the breaking pen. And
Cash Wyble gradually became a soldier. At least he learned the drill and
the regulations and how to keep out of the guardhouse--except just after
pay day; and his lank figure took on a certain military spruceness. But
under the surface he was still Cash Wyble. He behaved, because there was
no incentive at the camp that made disobedience worth while.
Then after an endless winter came the journey to the seaboard and the
embarkation for France; and the awesome sight of a tossing gray ocean a
hundred times wider and rougher than Clayburg River in freshet time.
Followed a week of agonized terror, mingled with an acute longing to
die. Then ensued a week of calm water, during which one might refill the
oft-emptied inner man.
A few days later Cash was bumping along a newly repaired French railway
in a car whose announced capacity was forty men or eight horses. And
thence to billet in a half-wrecked village, where his regiment was
drilled and redrilled in the things they had toiled so hard at Camp Lee
to master, and in much that was novel to the men.
Cash next came to a halt in a network of trenches overlooking a stretch
of country that had been tortured into hideousness--a region that looked
like a Dore nightmare. It was a waste of hillocks and gullies and shell
holes and blasted big trees and frayed copses and split bowlders and
seared vegetation. When Cash heard it was called No Man's Land he was
not surprised. He well understood why no man--not even an ignorant
foreigner--cared to buy such a tract.
He was far more interested in hearing that a tangle of trenches,
somewhat like his regiment's own, lay three miles northeastward, at the
limit of No Man's Land, and that those trenches were infested with
Germans.
Germans were the people Cash Wyble had come all the way to France to
kill. And once more the thrill of the man hunt swept pleasantly through
his blood. He had no desire to risk prison. So he had made very certain
by repeated inquiry that this particular section of France was in
Europe; and that no part of it was within the boundaries or the
jurisdiction of the sovereign state of West Virginia. Here, therefore,
the law was off on Germans, and he could not get into the slightest
trouble with the hated revenue officers by shooting as many of the foe
as he could go out and find.
Cash enjoyed the picture he conjured up--a picture of a whole bevy of
Germans seated at ease in a trench, smoking porcelain pipes and
conversing with one another in comically broken English; of himself
stealing toward them, and from the shelter of one of those hillock
bowlders opening a mortal fire on the unsuspecting foreigners.
It was a quaint thought, and one that Cash loved to play with.
Also it had an advantage that most of Cash's vivid mind pictures had
not. For, in part, it came true.
The Germans, on the thither side of No Man's Land, seemed bent on
jarring the repose and wrenching the nerve of their lately arrived
Yankee neighbors. Not only were those veteran official entertainers,
Minnie and Bertha, and their equally vocal artillery sisters called into
service for the purpose, but a dense swarm of snipers were also
impressed into the task.
Now this especial reach of No Man's Land was a veritable snipers'
paradise. There was cover--plenty of it--everywhere. A hundred
sharpshooters of any scouting prowess at all could deploy at will amid
the tumble of bowlders and knolls and twisted tree trunks and battered
foliage and craters.
The long spell of wet weather had precluded the burning away of
undergrowth. There were tree tops and hill summits whence a splendid
shot could be taken at unwary Americans in the lower front-line trenches
and along the rising ground at the rear of the Yankee lines. Yes, it was
a stretch of ground laid out for the joy of snipers. And the German
sharpshooters took due advantage of this bit of luck. The whine of a
high-power bullet was certain to follow the momentary exposure of any
portion of khaki anatomy above or behind the parapets. And in
disgustingly many instances the bullet did not whine in vain. All of
which kept the newcomers from getting any excess joy out of trench life.
To mitigate the annoyance there was a call for volunteer sharpshooters
to scout cautiously through No Man's Land and seek to render the boche
sniping a less safe and exhilarating sport than thus far it had been.
The job was full of peril, of course. For there was a more than even
chance of the Yankee snipers' being sniped by the rival sharpshooters,
who were better acquainted with the ground.
Yet at the first call there was a clamorous throng of volunteers. Many
of these volunteers admitted under pressure that they knew nothing of
scout work and that they had not so much as qualified in marksmanship.
But they craved a chance at the boche. And grouchily did they resent the
swift weeding-out process that left their services uncalled for.
Cash Wyble was the first man accepted for the dangerous detail. And for
the first time since the draft had caught him his burnt-leather face
expanded into a grin that could not have been wider unless his flaring
ears had been set back.
With two days' rations and a goodly store of cartridges he fared forth
that night into No Man's Land. Dawn was not yet fully gray when the
first crack of his rifle was wafted back to the trenches.
Then the artillery firing, which was part of the day's work, set in. And
its racket drowned the noise of any shooting that Cash might be at.
Forty-eight hours passed. At dawn of the third day Cash came back to
camp. He was tired and horribly thirsty; but his lantern-jawed visage
was one unmarred mask of bliss.
"Twelve," he reported tersely to his captain. "At least," he continued
in greater detail, "twelve that I'm dead sure of. Nice big ones, too,
some of 'em."
"Nice big ones!" repeated the captain in admiring disgust. "You talk as
if you'd been after wild turkeys!"
"A heap better'n wild-turkey shootin'!" grinned Cash. "An' I got twelve
that I'm sure of. There was one, though, I couldn't get. A he-one, at
that. He's sure some German, that feller! He's as crafty as they make
'em. I couldn't ever come up to him or get a line on him. I'll bet I
throwed away thutty ca'tridges on jes' that one Dutchy. An' by an' by he
found out what I was arter. Then there was fun, Cap! Him and I did have
one fine shootin' match! But I was as good at hidin' as he was. And
there couldn't neither one of us seem to git 'tother. Most of the rest
of 'em was as easy to git as a settin' hen. But not him. I'd 'a' laid
out there longer for a crack at him but I couldn't find no water. If
there'd been a spring or a water seep anywheres there I'd 'a' stayed
till doomsday but what I'd 'a' got him. Soon's I fill up with some water
I'm goin' back arter him. He's well wuth it. I'll bet that cuss don't
weigh an ounce under two hundred pound."
Cash's smug joy in his exploit and his keen anticipation of a return
trip were dashed by the captain's reminder that war is not a hunting
jaunt; and that Wyble must return to his loathed trench duties until
such time as it should seem wise to those above him to send him forth
again.
Cash could not make head or tail out of such a command. After months of
grinding routine he had at last found a form of recreation that not only
dulled his sharply constant homesickness but that made up for all he had
gone through. And now he was told he could go forth on such delightful
excursions only when he might chance to be sent!
Red wrath boiled hot in the soul of Cash Wyble. Experience had taught
him the costly folly of venting such rage on a commissioned officer. So
he hunted up Top Sergeant Mahan of his own company and laid his griefs
before that patient veteran.
Top Sergeant Mahan--formerly of the Regular Army--listened with true
sympathy to the complaint; and listened with open enthusiasm to the tale
of the two days of forest skulking. But he could offer no help in the
matter of returning to the _battue_.
"The cap'n was right," declared Mahan. "They wanted to throw a little
lesson into those boche snipers and make them ease up on their heckling.
And you gave them a man's-size dose of their own physic. There's not one
sniper out there to-day, to ten who were on deck three days ago. You've
done your job. And you've done it good and plenty. But it's done--for a
while anyhow. You weren't brought over here to spend your time in
prowling around No Man's Land on a still hunt for stray Germans. That
isn't Uncle Sam's way. Don't go grouching over it, man! You'll be
remembered, all right. And if they get pesky again you'll be the first
one sent out to abate them. You can count on it. Till then, go ahead
with your regular work and forget the sniper job."
"But, Sarge!" pleaded Cash, "you don't git the idee. You don't git it at
all. Those Germans will be shyer'n scat, now that I've flushed 'em. An'
the longer the news has a chance to git round among 'em, the shyer
they're due to git. Why, even if I was to go out thar straight off it
ain't likely I'd be able to pot one where I potted three before. It's
the same difference as it is between the first flushin' of a wild-turkey
bunch an' the second. An' if I've got to wait long there'll be no
downin' _any_ of 'em. Tell that to the Cap. Make him see if he wants
them cusses he better let me git 'em while they're still gittable."
In vain did Top Sergeant Mahan go over and over the same ground, trying
to make Cash see that the company captain and those above him were not
out for a record in the matter of ambushed Germans.
Wyble had struck one idea he could understand, and he would not give it
up.
"But, Sarge," he urged desperately, "I'm no durn good here foolin'
around with drill an' relief an' diggin' an' all that. Any mudback can
do them things if you folks is sot on havin' 'em done. But there ain't
another man in all this outfit who can shoot like I can; or has the
knack of 'layin' out'; or of stalkin'. Pop got the trick of it from
gran'ther. An' gran'ther got if off th' Injuns in th' old days. If you
folks is out to git Germans I'm the feller to git 'em fer you. Nice big
ones. If you're here jes' to play sojer, any poor fool c'n play it fer
you as good as me."
"I've just told you," began the sergeant, "that we----"
"'Nuther thing!" suggested Cash brightly. "These Germans must have
villages somew'eres. All folks do. Even Injuns. Some place where they
live when they ain't on the warpath. Get leave an' rations an'
ca'tridges for me--for a week, or maybe two--an' I'll gar'ntee to scout
till I find one of them villages. The Dutchies won't be expectin' me.
An' I c'n likely pot a whole mess of 'em before they c'n git to cover.
"Say!" he went on eagerly, a bit of general information flashing into
his memory. "Did you know Germans was a kind of Confed'? The fightin'
Germans, I mean. Well, they are. The hull twelve I got was dressed in
gray Confed' uniform, same as pop used to wear. I got his old uniform to
home. Lord, but pop would sure lay into me if he knowed I was pepperin'
his old side partners like that! I'd figered that all Germans was
dressed like the ones back home. But they've got reg'lar uniforms.
Confed' uniforms, at that. I wonder does our gin'ral know about it?"
Again the long-suffering Mahan tried to set him right; this time as to
the wide divergence between the gray-backed troops of Ludendorff and the
Confederacy's gallant soldiers. But Cash merely nodded cryptically, as
always he did when he thought his foreigner fellow soldiers were trying
to take advantage of his supposed ignorance. And he swung back to the
theme nearest his heart.
"Now about that snipin' business," he pursued, "even if the Cap don't
want too many of 'em shot up, he sure won't be so cantankerous as to
keep me from tryin' to git that thirteenth feller! I mean the one that
kep' blazin' at me whiles I kep' blazin' at him; an' the both of us too
cute to show an inch of target to t'other or stay in the same patch of
cover after we'd fired. That Dutchy sure c'n scout grand! He's a born
woodsman. An' you-all don't want it to be said the Germans has got a
better sniper than what we've got, do you? Well, that's jes' what will
be said by everyone in this yer county unless you let me down him. Come
on, Sarge! Let me go back arter him! I been thinkin' up a trick
gran'ther got off'n th' Injuns. It oughter land him sure. Let me go try!
I b'lieve that feller can't weigh an ounce less'n two-twenty. Leave me
have one more go arter him; and I'll bring him in to prove it!"
Top Sergeant Mahan's patience stopped fraying, and ripped from end to
end.
"You seem to think this war is a cross between a mountain feud and a
deer hunt!" he growled. "Isn't there any way of hammering through your
ivory mine that we aren't here to pick off unsuspecting Germans and make
a tally of the kill? And we aren't here to brag about the size of the
men we shoot either. We're here, you and I, to obey orders and do our
work. You'll get plenty of shooting before you go home again, don't
worry. Only you'll do it the way you're told to. After all the time
you've spent in the hoosgow since you joined, I should think you'd know
that."
But Cash Wyble did not know it. He said so--loudly, offensively,
blasphemously. He said many things--things that in any other army than
his own would have landed him against a blank wall facing a firing
squad. Then he slouched off by himself to grumble.
As far as Cash Wyble was concerned the war was a failure--a total
failure. The one bright spot in its workaday monotony was blurred for
him by the orders of his stupid superiors. In his vivid imagination that
elusive German sniper gradually attained a weight not far from three
hundred pounds.
In sour silence Cash sulked through the rest of the day's routine. In
his heart boiled black rebellion. He had learned his soldier trade, back
at Camp Lee, because it had been very strongly impressed upon him that
he would go to jail if he did not. For the same reason he had not tried
to desert. He had all the true mountaineer horror for prison. He had
toned down his native temper and stubbornness because failure to do so
always landed him in the guardhouse--a place that, to his mind, was
almost as terrible as jail.
But out here in the wilderness there were no jails. At least Cash had
seen none. And he had it on the authority of Top Sergeant Mahan himself
that this part of France was not within the legal jurisdiction of West
Virginia--the only region, as far as Cash actually knew, where men are
put in prison for their misdeeds. Hence the rules governing Camp Lee
could not be supposed to obtain out here. All of which comforted Cash
not a little.
To him "patriotism" was a word as meaningless as was "discipline." The
law of force he recognized--the law that had hog-tied him and flung him
into the Army. But the higher law which makes men risk their all, right
blithely, that their country and civilization may triumph--this was as
much a mystery to Cash Wyble as to any army mule.
Just now he detested the country that had dragged him away from his lean
shack and forbade him to disport himself as he chose in No Man's Land.
He hated his country; he hated his Army; he hated his regiment. Most of
all he loathed his captain and Top Sergeant Mahan.
At Camp Lee he had learned to comport himself more or less like a
civilized recruit because there was no breach of discipline worth the
penalty of the guardhouse. Out here it was different.
That night Private Cassius Wyble got hold of two other men's emergency
rations, a bountiful supply of water and a stuffing pocketful of
cartridges. With these and his adored rifle he eluded the sentries--a
ridiculously easy feat for so skilled a woodsman--and went over the top
and on into No Man's Land.
By daylight he had trailed and potted a German sniper.
By sunrise he had located the man against whom he had sworn his strategy
feud--the German who had put him on his mettle two days before.
Cash did not see his foe. And when from the edge of a rock he fired at a
puff of smoke in a clump of trees no resultant body came tumbling
earthward. And thirty seconds later a bullet from quite another part of
the clump spatted hotly against the rock edge five inches from his head.
Cash smiled beatifically. He recognized the tactics of his former
opponent. And once more the merry game was on.
To make perfectly certain of his rival's identity Cash wiggled low in
the undergrowth until he came to a jut of rock about seven feet long and
two feet high. Lying at full length behind this low barrier, and
parallel to it, Cash put his hat on the toe of his boot and cautiously
lifted his foot until the hat's sugar-loaf crown protruded a few inches
above the top of the rock.
On the instant, from the tree clump, snapped the report of a rifle. The
bullet, ignoring the hat, nicked the rock comb precisely above Cash's
upturned face. He nodded approval, for it told him that his enemy was
not only a good forest fighter but that he recognized the same skill in
Wyble.
Thus began two days of delightful pastime for the exiled mountaineer.
Thus, too, began a series of offensive and defensive maneuvers worthy of
Natty Bumppo and Old Sleuth combined.
It was not until Cash abandoned the hunt long enough to find and shoot
another German sniper and appropriate the latter's uniform that he was
able, under cover of dusk, to get near enough to the tree clump for a
fair sight of his antagonist. At which juncture a snap shot from the hip
ended the duel.
Cash's initial thrill of triumph, even then, was dampened. For the
sniper--to whom by this time he had credited the size of Goliath at the
very least--proved to be a wizened little fellow, not much more than
five feet tall.
Still Cash had won. He had outgeneraled a mighty clever sharpshooter. He
had gotten what he came out for, and two other snipers, besides. It was
not a bad bag. As there was nothing else to stay there for, and as his
water was gone, as well as nearly all his cartridges, Cash shouldered
his rifle and plodded wearily back to camp for a night's rest.
There to his amazed indignation he was not received as a hero, even when
he sought to recount his successful adventures. Instead, he was arrested
at once on a charge of technical desertion, and was lodged in the local
substitute for a regular guardhouse.
Bewildered wrath smothered him. What had he done, to be arrested again?
True, he had left camp without leave. But had he not atoned for this
peccadillo fifty-fold by the results of his absence? Had he not killed
three men whose business it was to shoot Americans? Had he not killed
the very best sniper the Germans could hope to possess?
Yet, they had not promoted him. They had not so much as thanked him.
Instead, they had stuck him here in the hoosgow. And Mahan had said
something about a court-martial.
It was black ingratitude! That was what it was. That and more. Such
people did not deserve to have the services of a real fighter like
himself.
Which started another train of thought.
Apparently--except on special occasions--the Americans did not send men
out into the wilderness to take pot shots at the lurking foe. And
apparently that was just what the Germans always did. He had full proof,
indeed, of the German custom. For had he not found a number of the
graybacks thus happily engaged? Not for one occasion only, but as a
regular thing?
Yes, the Germans had sense enough to appreciate a good fighter when they
had one. And they knew how to make use of him in a way to afford
innocent pleasure to himself and much harm to the enemy. That was the
ideal life for a soldier--"laying out" and sniping the foe. Not
kitchen-police work and endless drill and digging holes and taking
baths. Sniping was the job for a he-man, if one had to be away from home
at all. And in the German ranks alone was such happy employment to be
found.
When Cash calmly and definitely made up his mind to desert to the
Germans he was troubled by no scruples at all. Even the dread of the
mysterious court-martial added little weight to his decision. The deed
seemed to him not a whit worse than was the leaving of one farmer's
employ, back home, to take service with another who offered more
congenial work.
Wherefore he deserted.
It was not at all difficult for him to escape from the elementary cell
in which he was confined. It was a mere matter of strategy and luck. So
was his escape to No Man's Land.
Unteroffizier Otto Schrabstaetter an hour later conducted to his company
commander a lanky and leather-faced man in khaki uniform who had
accosted a sentry with the pacific plea that he be sworn in as a member
of the German Army.
The sentry did not know English; nor did Unteroffizier Otto
Schrabstaetter. And though Cash addressed them both in a very fair
imitation of the guttural English he had heard used by the West Virginia
Germans--and which he fondly believed to be pure German--they did not
understand a word of his plea. So he was taken to the captain, a man who
had lived for five years in New York.
With the Unteroffizier at his side and with two armed soldiers just
behind him Cash confronted the captain, and under the latter's volley of
barked questions told his story. Ten minutes afterward he was repeating
the same tale to a flint-faced man with a fox-brush mustache--Colonel
von Scheurer, commander of the regiment that held that section of the
first-line trench.
A little to Cash's aggrieved surprise, neither the captain nor the
colonel seemed interested in his prowess as a sharpshooter or in his
ill-treatment at the hands of his own Army. Instead, they asked an
interminable series of questions that seemed to have no bearing at all
on his case.
They wanted, for instance, to know the name of his regiment; its quota
of men; how long they had been in France; what sea route they had taken
in crossing the ocean; from what port they had sailed; and the
approximate size of the convoy. They wanted to know what regiments lay
to either side of Cash's in the American trenches; how many men per
month America was sending overseas and where they usually landed. They
wanted to know a thousand things more, of the same general nature.
Cash saw no reason why he should not satisfy their silly curiosity. And
he proceeded to do so to the best of his ability. But as he did not know
so much as the name of the port whence he had shipped to France, and as
the rest of his tactical knowledge was on the same plane, the
fast-barked queries presently took on a tone of exasperation.
This did not bother Cash. He was doing his best. If these people did not
like his answers that was no affair of his. He was here to fight, not to
talk. His attention wandered.
Presently he interrupted the colonel's most searching questions to ask:
"You-all don't happen to be the Kaiser, do you? I s'pose not though.
I'll bet that old Kaiser must weigh----"
A thundered oath brought him back to the subject in hand, and the
cross-questioning went on. But all the queries elicited nothing more
than a mass of misinformation, delivered with such palpable genuineness
of purpose that even Colonel von Scheurer could not doubt the man's good
faith.
And at last the two officers began to have a very fair estimate of the
mountaineer's character and of the reasons that had brought him thither.
Still it was the colonel's mission in life to suspect--to take nothing
for granted. And after all, this yokel and his queer story were no more
bizarre than was many a spy trick played by Germany upon her foes. Spies
were bound to be good actors. And this lantern-jawed fellow might
possibly be a character actor of high ability. Colonel von Scheurer sat
for a moment in silence, peering up at Cash from beneath a thatch of
stiff-haired brows. Then he ordered the captain and the others to leave
the dugout.
Alone with Wyble the colonel still maintained his pose of majestic
surveillance.