Army Boys in the French Trenches | Page 8

seen anything of it?"
"Not guilty," returned Bart. "Though the way my feet feel it wouldn't do them a bit of harm to have some of that powder on them right now."
A sudden light dawned upon Frank.
"Say, Tony!" he exclaimed, "let's see the bag you got that flour from."
Tony complied and brought forth from one of his receptacles a large paper bag which was two thirds full.
Frank seized it and turned it around to see what was stamped on the other side. Then he almost dropped the bag in a wild fit of hilarity.
"No wonder Tony couldn't make his dough!" he exclaimed, when he could speak. "Some chump in the supply department has handed him out a bag of foot powder when he asked for flour."
He showed the others the marking on the bag, and their merriment equaled his own, while Tony alternately glowered and grinned. He had begun to think that somebody had cast on him the "evil eye," so dreaded by his countrymen, and he was relieved to find that his plight was due to natural causes. Yet the thought of all that wasted effort stirred him to resentment.
"That's one on you, Tony, old boy!" chuckled Billy, with a poke in the ribs.
"It's lucky the dough wouldn't stick," laughed Frank. "There wouldn't have been much nourishment in that kind of bread."
"Dat guy a bonehead," asserted Tony, as he scraped his board with vigor. "A vera beeg bonehead."
The boys assented and passed on laughing.
"And now for grub!" exclaimed Billy. "Oh, boy, maybe it won't taste good!"
"I guess we've earned our breakfast, all right," said Bart.
"I can stand a whole lot of filling up," observed Tom. "Talk about exercise before breakfast to get you an appetite. We've sure had enough of it this morning."
"I never ran so fast in my life," declared Billy. "A Marathon runner would have had nothing on me."
"We must have covered the space between those trenches in about twenty seconds," agreed Bart.
"Well, as long as we weren't running in the wrong direction it was all right," grinned Tom.
"The Boches haven't seen our backs yet, and here's hoping it will be some time before they'll have that treat," said Frank with a laugh.
They ate like famished wolves and then threw themselves on their bunks to get a long sleep in preparation for the strenuous night that lay before them. And so used had they already become to roaring of cannon and whining of bullets and shrieking of shells, that, although the din was almost incessant all through that day, it bothered them not at all.
It was nearly dusk when the corporal passed along, giving them a shake that roused them from their slumbers and brought them out of their bunks in a hurry.
"Time to get up, boys," said the corporal. "Not that we're going to start out right away. But we've got quite a job before us and I want you to have plenty of time to think over your instructions and have them sink in."
They dressed quickly and after a hearty supper reported to Wilson at their company headquarters.
They found the corporal grave and preoccupied.
"As I suppose you fellows have already guessed," he began, "we're going to-night on a scouting party. We're to find out the condition of the wire in front of that third trench that the Huns still hold, and we want to get more exact information about the location of the enemy's machine guns. Anything else we find out will be welcome, but those are the main things.
"It's going to be pretty risky work," he continued. "Not but what there's always plenty of risk about a job of this kind, but to-night there's more than usual. The fierce fighting to-day has got the enemy all stirred up and he'll be on the alert. Likely enough he'll have scouting parties of his own out, and we may run across them in the dark. Then it will be a question of who is the quicker with knife or bayonet. Now you boys scatter and get your crawling suits and hoods and masks, and we'll be ready for business.
"I can see that there'll be no monotony in our young lives to-night," observed Frank to Bart, as they obeyed instructions.
"Not that you can notice," agreed Bart. "The corp has quite a little program marked out for us."
"So it seems."
"And No Man's Land is going to be a little rougher land to-night than it ever was before," predicted Tom. "That mine explosion hasn't done a thing to it."
"All the better," chimed in Billy. "There'll be better places to hide in when Fritz throws up his star shells. But let's get a hustle on or the corp will be after us."
They got into their "crawling suits," so named because they were used only on scouting duty, when it was necessary