Chapter 7

NICK RABIG'S QUEER ACTIONS

"Well," remarked Corporal Wilson, who was relieved beyond measure to find that his own little force was practically intact, "eight is a pretty good bag for one night's work, not to speak of five more who won't do any more strafing for the Kaiser."

"Nine," corrected Bart. "Don't forget our speechless friend in the shell hole."

"No doubt he'd be perfectly willing to be forgotten," grinned Billy. "But we'd better take him along just for luck. That'll be nearly two prisoners apiece for each of the bunch. Pretty fair work if you ask me."

There was no further time for talking, for it would soon be dawn and they were eager to get back to their own lines. They had been under a terrible strain through all the long hours of the night and were beginning to feel the reaction. And they were not at all averse to showing their comrades in the regiment how well they had fared and how stoutly they had held up the colors of the old Thirty-seventh.

"Who goes there?" came the sharp challenge of the sentry, as they drew near the American trench, and they knew that a score of rifles was trained upon them to back up the sentry's demand if the answer were halting or suspicious.

"Friends," replied the corporal.

"Advance and give the countersign," was the next requirement.

Corporal Wilson complied, and he and his squad were joyfully welcomed.

"I said 'friends'" added the corporal with a grin, as the party made their way through the opening in the wire defences, "but perhaps that doesn't go for all this crowd. Some of them didn't want to come, but we told them they'd better, and here they are."

"A bunch of huskies," remarked the sentry, as he surveyed the prisoners critically. "You don't mean to say that just you five rounded up that gang?"

The four privates merely grinned.

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" answered the corporal with keen relish of the sentry's surprise. "Counting those we brought down, there are just fourteen that will turn up missing when the Boches call the roll this morning."

"That's going some," said the sentry admiringly. "I only wish I'd been along with you. Some fellows have all the luck."

The prisoners were turned over to the officer in charge, and the corporal made his way to headquarters to make his report of the night's work.

Bart and Tom went under the hands of the surgeons to have their wounds and bruises treated, and were assured that with a little rest they would be as well as ever in a day or two. Then the boys, "dog-tired," as Bart expressed it, but happy and exultant that they had done their work well and were back safe once more, tumbled into their bunks to enjoy the rest they had so richly earned.

"Never was so tired in my life," murmured Frank, drowsily, as he fell rather than climbed into his bunk.

"Same here," chimed in Billy.

"Rip Van Winkle won't have anything on me," drawled Tom. "What's twenty years of sleep? I'm going to take forty."

As for Bart, he started to say something but dropped off to sleep while saying it.

None of the quartette woke until late in the afternoon. Then they found that their exploit had made a stir in the regiment. Their fight against twice their number was the most interesting feature to their comrades of the rank and file. But still more important in the view of their officers was the discovery of the dummy trench, which might have been turned into a shambles for the American troops if they had rushed into the trap so cunningly and so fiendishly set for them.

"It was fine work, Corporal," the captain said warmly, when Wilson finished his report. "You deserve credit for having brought your squad back without the loss of a man."

"They mostly brought themselves back, sir," replied Wilson with a smile. "It's a pleasure to command such a nervy crowd as that. You don't need to use the spur. I'm mostly busy putting on the brakes. It would have done your heart good if you could have seen the way they waded into the Huns. That fellow Sheldon particularly is a crackerjack when it comes to a scrap. He's as strong as an ox and as quick as a cat."

"I've had my eye on him," replied the officer. "He'll go far before the war is over. You can go now, Corporal. I'll have your work mentioned in the order of the day."

He was as good as his word, for when the regiment was drawn up for inspection the order of the day commended each man of the squad by name for their gallant exploit that, as the order ran, "reflected credit on the regiment."

"How's your head feeling now, old man?" Frank asked of Tom, as they rejoined each other at mess.

"Pretty groggy," responded Tom. "But I'm not kicking. I'm lucky to be alive at all. That fellow made an awful swipe at me, and if it had hit me fair it would have been all over."

"A miss is as good as a mile," put in Bart. "I had a pretty close shave myself. Seemed as though twenty star shells were going off at once."

"Yesterday was your lucky day," remarked Billy. "You had two narrow escapes."

"Let's hope it won't be three times and out," responded Bart lightly." By the way, I wonder what they did with that corporal who tried to do me up?"

"Most likely he's shot by this time," observed Tom. "If he isn't, he ought to be."

"He isn't shot yet at any rate," remarked Fred Andon, who sat near by. "I guess the fighting was so hot all day yesterday that they didn't have time to attend to him. Likely enough he's down in the prisoners' pen waiting for the court-martial."

"Let's go down and see after we've finished our chow," suggested Billy. "That is if you fellows ever get through eating. Look at Tom stowing it away. He'd eat his way through the whole quartermaster's department if he was let."

"And he's the fellow that they wouldn't let enlist because of his teeth," gibed Bart. "They didn't know Tom."

"I'm not the only one that got a raw deal," replied Tom, with whom it was always a sore point that he had been refused when he wanted to enlist, but had been accepted in the draft. "There's a drafted man here who was telling me the other day that he walked ninety miles to enlist. And do you know what the enlistment board did to him?"

"What?" was the query.

"Turned him down because he had flat feet," responded Tom. "Told him he wouldn't be able to stand a five-mile hike."

There was a roar of laughter.

"I heard another good one," chimed in Billy. "A fellow wanted to enlist, and the examining board wanted to reject him because he had a cast in his eye. 'Oh, that's all right,' he drawled, 'I allus shets that eye anyway when I shoot.' That made them laugh and he got by."

In high spirits they finished their meal, and as they were off duty for the next hour or two, made their way down to that quarter of the field where the prisoners' camp was placed.

Behind the barrier at the point nearest them they saw one bulky captive, who was munching contentedly the food that had been given him, and who had none of the woe-begone expression that a man in his position is commonly expected to show.

"See him shovel it in," laughed Billy.

"He doesn't seem to have a care in the world," remarked Bart.

"Probably glad to be behind our machine guns instead of in front of them," conjectured Tom.

"Hello, Heinie!" said Frank good-naturedly.

"Hello yourself," came the answer.

"Do you speak English?" asked Frank in surprise.

"A little," replied the German, and proceeded to prove it by answering, although in rather a halting manner, the questions they put to him.

No, he at any rate had not wanted the war. He was a skilled mechanic in one of the munition factories. There had been a strike on account of bad conditions and he had been one of the leaders. The Government had seized him and bundled him off to the front. He was glad to be captured. After the war the Kaiser would see that men were born to be something else than cannon fodder.

"Well," remarked Frank as they moved along, "there's one fellow at least that doesn't cry: '_Hoch the Kaiser_.'"

"Seems good to see it so full," remarked Bart with great satisfaction, as he saw the large number of Germans who had been captured in the fierce fighting of the day before.

"If only the Kaiser and the Crown Prince were in that bunch," sighed Tom.

"That's a pleasure still to come," replied Frank. "But where's the fellow that tried to stab Bart? I don't see him anywhere. Seems as though the party isn't complete without him."

They made inquiry of one of the guards.

"Oh, that one," replied the guard. "They've roped him out from the rest of these mavericks and given him a hut all by himself. I guess he's thinking of making his will. I hear they're going to have him out before a drumhead in the morning."

"Which hut is it?" asked Frank, as his eye took in a little group of shacks at the further end of the field.

"That end one down by the big tree." The guard pointed it out with the point of his bayonet.

They went down in that direction, and as they neared the hut saw that it was guarded by a single sentry.

"Who's that fellow on guard?" asked Tom. "My head's so dizzy yet that I'm seeing things double."

"Looks rather familiar for a fact," said Bart. "Wait till he turns his head this way."

The next instant the sentry turned, and there was a whistle of surprise from Billy. "By the great horn spoon!" he ejaculated. "It's Nick Rabig!"

"Set a Hun to watch a Hun," remarked Tom bitingly.

"Oh, come, Tom," remonstrated Frank, "that's going a little too far. I've no reason to like the fellow, and we know he had to be dragged into the army, but that doesn't say he's a Hun."

"All except the uniform," persisted Tom. "He'd rather be fighting for the Kaiser this minute than for Uncle Sam."

"Shouldn't wonder if Tom's more than half right," assented Billy. "You know the way he" used to talk in Camport."

"You notice that we've never seen him volunteering for any of the raiding parties," said Billy.

"But that may only mean that Rabig has a yellow streak in him. It doesn't say that he's a traitor," returned Frank.

"Well, maybe he isn't," conceded Tom. "But all the same it seems rather queer that he should have been picked out to guard this Heinie. They could talk together in German through that closed door and nobody be wise to what they were saying."

"I don't suppose the officers know Rabig as well as the rest of us do," said Billy. "But say, fellows, look at that bit of white under the door of the hut. What do you suppose it is?"

"Oh, just a scrap of paper," laughed Bart. "Just like the Belgian treaty."

"Something the wind's blown up against the door, I guess," conjectured Tom.

"Wind nothing!" exclaimed Frank, whose vision was keener than that of any of the others. "It's under the door and it's getting bigger and bigger all the time. I tell you what it is, fellows," he went on excitedly, "it's a note that's being pushed out by the fellow inside."

"Let's get behind these trees and see what's going on," suggested Bart, indicating a clump of trees near which they happened to be standing.

In a moment they were screened from observation. Then they watched with the keenest interest what would follow.

That Rabig had caught sight of the paper was evident, for he stopped his pacing and turned his eyes on the door. Then he looked stealthily about him. The nearest sentry was some distance away, and the boys were well hidden by the trees.

Then Rabig made a complete circuit of the little hut, as though to make sure that no one was lurking about. Having apparently satisfied himself on that point, he returned and resumed his pacing until he was directly in front of the door.

Here he paused and drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. But as he went to put it back, it dropped from his hand so that it lay close by and almost upon the protruding piece of paper.

He was stooping to pick it up, when he caught sight of a sergeant coming in his direction. Instantly he straightened up, and as he did so the butt of his rifle knocked against the door.

The paper disappeared as though it had been drawn swiftly back from the inside, just as the sergeant came up.

"Gee!" gasped Tom.

"Prisoner all right, Rabig?" inquired the sergeant.

"Yes, sir," replied Rabig. "He seems to be keeping pretty quiet. I looked in a little while ago and he was lying asleep on the bench."

"Keep a close watch on him," counseled the sergeant. "What he tried to do to Raymond yesterday shows that he's a desperate character. But I guess that by this time to-morrow he won't need any one to watch him."

The sergeant passed on and the boys looked at each other with speculation in their eyes.

"What do you think of it?" asked Frank thoughtfully.

"Think?" snorted Tom. "I think that Rabig is a bad egg. What else is there for any one to think?"

"It certainly looks suspicious," said Bart with a little wrinkle of anxiety creasing his brow.

"One thing is sure," declared Billy. "It was a note that was being pushed outside that door. The fellow inside was trying to get into communication with Rabig."

"True," assented Frank. "But that in itself doesn't prove anything. You or I might be on sentry duty and a prisoner might try to do the same thing to us."

"Yes," agreed Billy. "But we wouldn't act the way Rabig did. We'd have picked up the note and given it to the sergeant of the guard."

"And we wouldn't have sneaked around the hut to see if any one was near by," said Tom. "Why did he drop his handkerchief, except to have an excuse for picking it up and copping the note at the same time?"

"And his rifle butt didn't hit the door by accident," put in Billy. "That was a tip to the prisoner that some one was coming. Did you see how quickly the note disappeared?"

"I hate to think that there's a single man in the regiment who's a disgrace to his uniform," remarked Frank, "but it certainly looks bad. That fellow Rabig will bear watching."

"I told you he was a Hun," declared Tom. "His body's in France, but his heart's in Germany."