Tom Slade at Black Lake | Page 5

of
banter and absurdity which they called their meetings. At all this he
would just sit and smile and forget to interlace his fingers and jerk his
head. And sometimes he would even laugh outright.
I am afraid that everything was managed wrong from the first. It would
have been better if Mr. Burton or Mr. Ellsworth or somebody or other
had told the troop the full truth about Tom's condition. I suppose they
refrained for fear the boys would stare at him and treat him as one
stricken, and thereby, perhaps make his struggle harder.
At all events, it was hard enough. And little they knew of this new and
frightful war that he was struggling through with all the power of his
brave, dogged nature. Little they knew how he lay awake night after
night, starting at every chime of the city's clock, of how he did the best
he could each day, waiting and longing for Friday night, hoping,
hoping that Peewee and Roy would surely be there. Poor, distracted,
shell-shocked fighter that he was, he was fighting still, and they were
his only hope and they did not know it. No one knew it. He would not
let them know.

For that was Tom Slade.
CHAPTER IV
"LUCKY LUKE"
Next morning Tom had his breakfast in a dingy little restaurant and
then started along Terrace Avenue for the bank building, in which was
the Temple Camp office.
He still wore the shabby khaki uniform which had seen service at the
front. He was of that physique called thick-set and his face was of the
square type, denoting doggedness and endurance, and a stolid
temperament.
There had never been anything suggestive of the natty or agile about
him when he had been a scout, and army life, contrary to its reputation,
had not spruced and straightened him up at all. He was about as
awkward looking as a piece of field artillery, and he was just about as
reliable and effective. He was not built on the lines of a rifle, but rather
on the lines of a cannon, or perhaps of a tank. His mouth was long and
his lips set tight, but it twitched nervously at one end, especially when
he waited at the street crossing just before he reached the bank building,
watching the traffic with a kind of fearful, bewildered look.
Twice, thrice, he made the effort to cross and returned to his place on
the curb, interlacing his fingers distractedly. And yet this young fellow
had pushed through barbed wire entanglements and gone across No
Man's Land, without so much as a shudder in the very face of hostile
fire.
He always dreaded this street corner in the mornings and was thankful
when he was safe up in his beloved Temple Camp office. If he had
been on crutches some grateful citizen would have helped him across,
and patriotic young ladies would have paused to watch the returned
hero and some one might even have removed his hat in the soldier's
presence; for they did those things--for a while.

But such honors were only for those who were fortunate enough to
have had a leg or an arm shot off or to have been paralyzed. For the
hero who had had his nerves all shot to pieces there were no such
spontaneous tributes.
And that was the way it had always been with Tom Slade. He had
always made good, but somehow, the applause and the grateful tributes
had gone to others. Nature had not made him prepossessing and he did
not know how to talk; he was just slow and dogged and stolid, like a
British tank, as I said, and just about as homely. You could hardly
expect a girl to make much fuss over a young fellow who is like a
British tank, when there are young fellows like shining machine guns,
and soaring airplanes--to say nothing of poison gas.
And after two years of service in the thick of danger, with bombs and
bullets flying all about him; after four months' detention in an enemy
prison camp and six weeks of trench fever, to say nothing of frightful
risks, stolidly ignored, in perilous secret missions, this young chunk of
the old rock of Gibraltar had come home with his life, just because it
had pleased God not to accept the proffer of it, and because Fritzie shot
wild where Tom was concerned. He couldn't help coming back with his
life--it wasn't his fault. It was just because he was the same old Lucky
Luke, that's all.
That had been Roy Blakeley's name for him--Lucky Luke; and he had
been known as Lucky Luke to all of his scout comrades.
You see it was this way: if Tom was going to