Buttons | Page 5

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 in the head.
Almost with the flash and the crash Cottingham demolished the light
globe with the barrel of his revolver and dropped underneath the table.
In the pitch black and the silence of the room not a man dared move.
The lieutenant's wound was evidently not serious. He huddled there in a
daze, but listening for a sound that would tell him the position of the
Fritzies. He could hear the scurrying outside which the report had
caused. It seemed as though they waited in this breathless stillness for
hours. Perhaps it was two minutes.
Then some one shouted in the door: "Come on out 'ere, Fritzie, or I'm
dingin' yer ter 'ell Three I'm givin' yer--wan--two--"
But Sergeant Sands never got to three. There was a tumult of yelps in
that dugout, and those four officer Fritzies bolted through the little door
into the waiting arms of the Bradford bombers with such haste that the
undersized door couldn't accommodate as many as wanted to get
through at the same time. Cottingham staggered after them.
"Have they got yer, Liftinint?" demanded the sergeant.
"Bit of a head wound," replied Cottingham.

"Are your bombs placed?"
"They are, sir."
"Fire them and let's go."
Another minute and the raiders went back over the parapet with two
machine-guns and eleven Fritz prisoners, including four officer Fritzies.
They were out of danger when the bombs exploded, wrecking the
concrete emplacements.
After that the whole German line for half a mile burst into a sheet of
rifle and machine-gun fire that forced them, prisoners and all, flat on
their stomachs.
The terrifying and agonizingly slow crawl back to the British trenches
to the blackest hour of the night seemed miles long. The sergeant half
dragged the semiconscious Cottingham with him as they moved
forward. Four of the men were seriously wounded before they finally
gained the shelter of the little advance trench from which they had
started. But that was nothing. "Another successful raid by the Bradford
bombers," the dispatches would say.
And madame was wondering and worrying again about that Emilie.
Never had she delayed when her time was up at the hospital before.
Probably she was flirting with one of the doctors--or perhaps, with one
of those Tommee Atkeens who was hurt in that raid last week.
This last was a very shrewd conjecture, because that was exactly what
Emilie was doing.
She was sitting on the edge of that unscrupulous Cottingham's cot
pretending to be ministering to his needs when in reality she was
submitting to his makings of love with great joy. On the white coverlet,
all arranged in order, was a great array of military buttons. They were
very precious, because this beloved Veek had been all the way to
Berleen after them. Each time she counted them and found the correct

number present, she watched her chance and kissed the defenseless
lieutenant on the cheek or nose or the bandaged head.
"You know, Emilie," he said, "I brought back your Gottlieb as well as
your buttons. Thought you might want him, you know."
"But no, mon cher Veek--I am content with only the buttons and--you."
2 RTEXTR*ch

A free ebook from http://www.dertz.in/