Ruth Fielding at the War Front | Page 8

if not volatile, Frenchwoman of certain age.
"I dread having you go, Mademoiselle Ruth," she said, with her arm
about the girl. "I feel as though you were particularly in my care. If
anything should happen to you----"
"You surely would not be blamed," said Ruth, smiling. "Somebody
must go and why not I? Please send two orderlies to carry out these
boxes. This list calls for a lot of supplies. Surely the ambulance will be
filled."
Which was, indeed, the case. When she finally went downstairs,
turning the key of her store-room over to the matron, the ambulance
body was crowded with cases. The stretchers had been taken out before
Charlie Bragg drove in. Ruth must occupy the seat beside him in front.
She did not keep him waiting, but ran down with her bag and crept in

under the torn hood beside him. Several of the nurses stood in the door
to call good-bye after her. The sentinel in the courtyard stood at
attention as the car rolled out of the gate.
"Well," remarked Charlie Bragg, "I hope to thunder nothing busts,
that's all. You've never been to the front, have you?"
"No nearer than this," she confessed.
"Humph! You don't know anything about it."
"But is the hospital you are taking me to exactly at the front?"
"About five miles behind the first dressing station in this sector. It's
under the protection of a hill and is well camouflaged. But almost any
time the Boches may get its range, and then--good-night!"
With which remark he became silent, giving his strict attention to the
car and the road.
CHAPTER IV
UNDER FIRE
The day was fading into evening as the car went over the first ridge and
dropped out of sight of Clair and the sprawling hospital in which Ruth
Fielding had worked so many weeks.
She felt that she had grown old--and grown old rapidly--since coming
to her present work in France. She was the only American in that
hospital, for the United States Expeditionary Forces had only of late
taken over this sector of the battle line and no changes had been made
in the unity of the workers at Clair.
They all loved Ruth there, from the matron and the surgeon-in-chief
down to the last orderly and porter. Although her work was supposed to
be entirely in the supply department, she gave much of her time to the
patients themselves.

Those who could not write, or could not read, were aided by the
American girl. If there was extra work in the wards (and that happened
whenever the opposing forces on the front became active) Ruth was
called on to help the nurses.
Thus far no American wounded had been brought into the Clair
Hospital--a fact easily understood, as the entire force save Ruth was
French. It would not be long, however, before the American Red Cross
would take over that hospital and the French wounded would be sent to
the base hospital at Lyse, where Ruth had first worked on coming to
France.
Up to this very moment--and not an unexciting moment it was--Ruth
Fielding had never been so far away from Clair in this direction. In the
distance, as they mounted another ridge, she saw the flaring lights
which she had long since learned marked the battle front. The guns still
muttered.
Now and again they passed cavities where the great shells had burst.
But most of these were ancient marmite holes and the grass was again
growing in them, or water stood slimy and knee-deep, and, on the
edges of these pools, frogs croaked their evensong.
There were not many farmhouses in this direction. Indeed, this part of
France was "old-fashioned" in that the agricultural people lived in little
villages for the most part and went daily to their fields to work,
gathering at night for self-protection as they had done since feudal
times.
Now and again the ambulance passed within sight of a ruined chateau.
The Germans had left none intact when they had advanced first into
this part of the country. They rolled through two tiny villages which
remained merely battered heaps of ruins.
Orchards were razed; even the shade trees beside the pleasant roads had
been scored with the ax and now stood gaunt and dead. Some were
splintered freshly by German shells. As the light faded and the road
grew dim, Ruth Fielding saw many ugly objects which marked the

"frightfulness" of the usurpers. It all had a depressing effect on the girl's
spirits.
"Are you hungry, Miss Ruth?" Charlie Bragg asked her at last.
"I expect I shall be, Charlie," she replied. "Our tea at the chateau was
almost a fantom tea."
"Gosh! isn't it so?" he said slangily. "What these French folks live on
would starve me to death.