Buttons | Page 4

this--cursed sneaking, he'd call it, and it rattled a fellow, you know.
After an age of stealthy crawling the raiders lay at the foot of the little knoll at the top of which was the fortified bit of trench that was their objective. They were literally under the enemy's guns, and in the stillness they could hear the night watch moving about. Occasionally the Fritzies' voices could be heard, and once one of them laughed out, and the clearness of his laughter pierced the silence as would the scream of a shell.
One might have heard the breathing of the bombers below as they relaxed from the rigid tenseness which the sudden sound had struck into them. Wet through and through, and covered with mud, they lay there waiting the sergeant's word.
The slightest sound and the machine guns above would have swept the little slope with a sheet of fire through which no living thing could have passed.
The sergeant was too old at this business to keep his men long under such a strain. "Now, men!" he said in a low voice, and at the word the twenty-nine raiders dashed forward. They mounted the rise and flung themselves into the black pit with a suddenness that must have stupefied the handful of defenders.
Not gunshot was fired. The muffled cursing and scuffle of the brief hand-to-hand combat, and the terrible thuds of heavy blows dealt in the dark, and then, almost at the same instant--silence again. But there were two heavy-handed bombers waiting at the end of the trench section to welcome any unlucky Fritz who might happen along, and that unscrupulous lieutenant had climbed off the Hun who had been the recipient of his personal attentions and was looking for the entrance of a certain dugout in which there were such things as Gottliebs and buttons.
He was not long in finding it. Just a few paces down the trench from where the brief melee had occurred and behind a high point where the parapet was conveniently high, Cottingham's flashlight discovered a heavy little sheet-iron door in the trench wall.
That Fritz back there must have been very hungry, indeed, to have told the truth in this unusual fashion. But he had not told the whole truth. He had said nothing about Gottlieb's being a nightowl. Yet here was light streaming out of a tiny chink at the bottom of the door, and much did that tiny point of light disconcert the unscrupulous lieutenant who had expected to find his host tucked in for the night.
It required a thorough recollection of every detail of that Emilie's loveliness and fitness to become Mrs. Cottingham to convince the lieutenant that it was necessary to open that door.
First he gave it a bit of a push, but it wasn't that kind of a door. It had to be dragged, and the first drag opened it only about an inch and a half, but through that inch and a half the lieutenant took one penetrating peek.
Around the little table in the center of the room sat three officer Fritzies playing cards. Over their heads hung an electric light, and over in front of the mirror a fourth Fritz brushed his bristles with a real hairbrush. There were two entrancing bunks, one legitimate chair, several framed photographs on the walls, and numerous magazines strewn about. The only thing that dugout lacked was period furniture.
Cottingham turned his attention again to the card players. He presumed they were playing skat, but he began to doubt this when one of them showed his hand and said, "Drei Koenigen. Was habst du?" The man opposite said, "Alle blau." According to Cottingham's feeble German, one player had announced three kings and the other had said that his cards were all blue. This sounded very much like the game they had taught him in the States, wherein his Yank instructor had said, "all blue," and on the strength of it had demanded eight pounds. Silly game it was, but the lieutenant did not have time to reflect about it, because the disgruntled loser, who from Emilie's description must have been Gottlieb, pushed across the table a little heap of--buttons.
The sight of them was enough to banish caution. Cottingham jerked open the door and put his automatic in the faces of the astounded officer Fritzies. They were too surprised to even curse, and they stood against the wall with their hands as high as the dugout roof would permit and watched him as he scooped each man's pile of buttons into the big pocket of his bomber's coat.
"You see, my hand is high," he laughed, but be did not laugh long. Eight hands is a good many for one man to watch while he gathers buttons, and before he knew it that Gottlieb had shot him