Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer | Page 3

Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck out like a huge snout now, as if it were sniffing in longing anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons passed by in the quiet night, moving southward. He knew now what it meant to go into the West. One after another they passed in deathlike stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the moonlight. As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns in the north. Many stretchers, borne by men afoot, followed the wagons and he could hear the groans of those who tossed restlessly upon them.
"Look out for shell holes," he heard someone say. So there were Americans in the fighting, he thought.
He ran along the edge of the hills now on the fifteen-mile stretch to Meaux, where he intended to follow the road northward through Senlis and across the old trenches near Clermont. He could hear the booming all the while, but it seemed weary and spent, like a runner who has slackened his pace and begun to pant.
At Meaux he crossed the path of another silent cavalcade of stretchers and ambulances and wounded soldiers who were being supported as they limped along. They spoke in French and one voice came out of an ambulance, seeming hollow and far off, as though from a grave. Then came a lot of German prisoners tramping along, some sullen and some with a fine air of bravado sneering at their guards.
The rider knew where he was going and how to get there and he did not venture any inquiries either as to his way or what had been going on.
Happenings in Flanders and Picardy are known in America before they are known to the boys in Alsace. He knew there was fighting in the West and that Fritz had poked a big bulge into the French line, for his superiors had given him a road map with the bulge pencilled upon it so that he might go around it and not bump his nose into it, as he had said. But he had not expected to see such obvious signs of fighting and it made him realize that at last he was getting into the war with a vengeance.
Instead of following the road leading northwest out of Meaux, he took the one leading northeast up through Villers-Cotterets, intending to run along the edge of the forest to Campiegne and then verge westward to the billet villages northwest of Montdidier, where he was to report.
This route brought him within ten miles of the west arm of the salient, but the way was quiet and there was no sign of the fighting as he rode along in the woody solitude. It reminded him of his home far back in America and of the woods where he and his scout companions had camped and hiked and followed the peaceful pursuits of stalking and trailing.
He was thinking of home as he rode leisurely along the winding forest road, when suddenly he was startled by a rustling sound among the trees.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in pursuance of his general instructions for such an emergency, at the same time drawing his pistol. "Halt!"
He was the scout again now, keen, observant. But there was no answer to his challenge and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits, peering into the tree-studded solitude, waiting.
Then suddenly, close by him he heard that unmistakable sound, the clanking of a chain, and accompanying it a voice saying, "Kamerad."
CHAPTER TWO
AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
Tom Slade, dispatch-rider, knew well enough what kamerad meant. He had learned at least that much of German warfare and German honor, even in the quiet Toul sector. He knew that the German olive branch was poisoned; that German treachery was a fine art--a part of the German efficiency. Had not Private Coleburn, whom Tom knew well, listened to that kindly uttered word and been stabbed with a Prussian bayonet in the darkness of No Man's Land?
"Stand up," said Tom. "Nobody can talk to me crouching down like that."
"Ach!" said the voice in the unmistakable tone of pain. "Vot goot--see!"
Tom turned on his searchlight and saw crawling toward him a German soldier, hatless and coatless, whose white face seemed all the more pale and ghastly for the smear of blood upon it. He was quite without arms, in proof of which he raised his open hands and slapped his sides and hips. As he did so a long piece of heavy chain, which was manacled to his wrist clanged and rattled.
"Ach!" he said, shaking his head