CHAPTER XXIV LOOSE AMONG THE BOCHES

“It is plain to me,” said Gordon, “that you are not a hunter, and have never stalked deer as I have often done. If it had been a Boche instead of me, you would have been captured or shot, when you were so near me.”

“But how,” I asked, “did you get away from them?”

“When you were knocked overboard,” he answered, “there was a good deal of confusion. The sergeant commanding the guard made motions urging me to go to your rescue. None of them wanted to try it, and when I had made him understand that I could not swim, enough time had passed for any reasonable man to drown; and no real effort was made to rescue you or to retrieve your body. Then the guard who knocked you overboard was scolded by the sergeant, not particularly for striking you, but for making it hard for him to account for a missing prisoner. There was a rejoinder that there was one less American pig to feed, which caused a laugh. And just then, when attention was drawn from me, I softly slipped into the water and, swimming under for some distance, at last crawled upon the shore.

“Apparently they did not discover my absence for some time. Then they came tramping back across the bridge, looking in the ends of the boats and then beneath the planking. When they got to this end of the bridge, I heard one of our officers suggest to the sergeant that you were not drowned but faking it.”

“Did that fellow who was giving me away have a voice like the purr of a cat--too sweet to be honest?” I asked suddenly.

“I reckon that’s him to a T. How did you happen to know him?”

“I spotted him,” I answered, “the first hour I was in that Boche wire coop, and I wouldn’t trust him for a cent’s worth.”

“I reckoned you felt it rather than reasoned it; didn’t you?”

“That’s about it,” I replied. “I always did have ‘hunches’--and I wouldn’t have shaken hands with him with a pair of tongs.”

“I reckon we are twins. I have that same feeling about some folks myself.”

Gordon and I were glad of each other’s company, though neither of us said much about it; for between some folks there is no need to say things. That night we walked rapidly; for my comrade’s trained senses enabled him to see and travel in the dark without missing the right direction. Sometimes we kept the road in view for guidance, but he seemed never to have doubts of the right road.

When daylight came, we found a hiding place in what, at first, we thought was a quarry, but soon saw excavations that told us it had been used by both the French and German soldiers for bomb proofs and other military service. We halted and made a breakfast from our tins and wheat bread, and lay there for most of the day, taking turns in standing guard, while the other slept.

I think that I was, possibly, doing more than my share of sleeping, when Gordon awakened me, and with a motion to keep silent, said in a whisper: “There are some folks near here--quite a lot of them--sounds like women--and I think they are French. But as we used to say in the Medical School, ‘Don’t be sure of your subject until you are certain it is a dead one.’ So you stay here until I find out what it means.”

It was a full half-hour before he returned, saying, “There is a nest of people in an underground dugout. I reckon that the question before the house is, shall we make their acquaintance, or skip them.”

“Can you speak French?” I inquired.

“Not ten cents’ worth,” he replied. “Can you?”

“Well,” I said, following his simile, “about twenty cents’ worth.”

“A few words,” he observed, “are sometimes better than a sermon.”

“All right,” I said, “we will chance it.”

“We’d better doll up a little first,” suggested Gordon. “You’d look better to get them weeds and burs out of your hair, chum.”

“And you,” I retorted, “would look less like a bear from the wilderness if you shaved and washed.”

“No soap or razor,” said Gordon, “but I will do it, if you will produce them.”

“I am more provident,” I said; “when I travel, I travel first class”--showing a comb and other articles.

“That’s fine!” he agreed. “But I don’t see what you carry a razor for with nothing to shave--that I can see.”

When he had shaved, as he said, “with tears,” for he declared that the razor was as “full of gaps as a hand saw,” we were ready for the interview.

After some search we found the entrance to the excavation, and introduced ourselves to the people. But instead of the welcome we had expected, they drew together like so many frightened sheep, and made outcries of fear and held up their hands in supplication.

“We are Americans,” I said, expecting that this would calm their fears; but to my surprise they became still more frantic.

Then an old crippled man cried out in broken English, “We know you--devils! The German soldiers have warned us that Americans are savages and kill everybody on sight.”

It was some time before we convinced them that the Americans had come to France to help them, and were fighting on their side.

This German lie to these people showed the deep cunning of the enemy to prejudice the French peasants against American soldiers.

One old Frenchman told us that he had once lived in Montreal, and had a little shop there, but had come home two years before the war. The Germans, he said, had taken everything away from them and destroyed their homes.

We tried to tell them of the victories the French and Americans had achieved, but they could not believe it; for the Germans had told them that they were besieging Paris and that London had been destroyed. It was hard to convince these poor people of the truth, and they still shrank at our approach.

We remained with them two hours or more and then, fearing that some of the Huns might return, we resumed our journey, which, with the information the Frenchman gave us, and a little compass that Gordon carried offered fair directions for reaching our lines.

When morning came we recognized by the sound of guns and in other ways known to soldiers, that we were near the German lines. We found a hiding place in a field where there were some stacks of straw, and soon saw the troops of the enemy moving over the near-by roads.

“I judge,” I said, “that there is going to be a fight near here, and the enemy are concentrating for it; but I believe it is a rear-guard action, to make their way clear for still further retreat.”

It was not long before an outburst of artillery and machine-gun fire confirmed this belief. The sound of combat grew nearer and nearer showing that the Boches were falling back.

“Let’s get out of this,” said Gordon, “for the enemy will be falling back here before long, and we will be caught. When it comes night, they will be after this straw for bedding.”

It was fortunate that we got away when we did, for before long we saw soldiers going into the field and streaming back with sheaves of straw.

In another hour by crawling through a bit of woodland we came to an abandoned village which, apparently, the Huns had occupied, and which now was a wrecked heap of masonry and jagged walls. Here we thought no human being would resort, or Huns approach, for there was nothing to steal or destroy, but to our surprise we came upon an aged couple still clinging to their ruined home. They had a few tattered bed clothes and garments, some wheat that they had apparently gathered from the near-by fields, a few potatoes, but not a scrap of bread or meat. Their condition was so pitiable that we attempted in our poor French to condole with them. They must have partially understood, for the old man shook his head and with trembling voice said, “_C’est la guerre_.”

Thus we traveled for several nights, lying very close during the day, without incident worthy of record except getting wet and tired. The country hereabouts was rough and hilly and sparsely inhabited by French speaking people, mostly of the peasant class, with whom we came in contact but twice, and that in an accidental way.

It had been raining almost constantly. After traveling all night, drenched to the skin and weak with long hunger and exposure, I felt that I could not go further without rest and warmth. So, just before daylight, we crept into a thatched little barn where, in one secluded corner, there was some straw.

“Say, chum!” said Gordon, “this is right comfortable.”

“Yes,” I replied petulantly, “but ain’t it ‘right’ dangerous?”

“We can’t have everything, Yank,” he replied. “We’ve got to chance it once in a while.”

“Yes,” I assented, “but I’m afraid I’m all in. I’m all of a shiver.”

After looking at my wound, my chum said, “That arm is right bad; and I don’t like them shivers you are having. If we don’t get into God’s country pretty soon, I reckon we shall have to do something desperate to get that arm fixed.”

He covered me over with his coat, and heaped straw on top of that, and then after a while, asked anxiously, “Getting over them shivers?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I am getting comfortable and warmer than I have been for a good while. Better take your coat.”

“That’s good!” he said with a relieved expression. “Never mind about the coat. I was afraid that them shivers meant something more than cold.”

I had dropped into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion when I was awakened by a sharp punch, and the rustling of the straw. Looking up, I saw an old man with a pitchfork in one hand, staring down upon me with eyes big with surprise and inquiry.

My chum sprang up with a greeting in German, and was answered in French by the inquiry: “Who are you?”

“Un Americain,” I answered quickly.

He dropped his hay fork, and held out his arms to embrace me, then called to his wife; and as she spoke German quite well, we soon had an understanding with them.

They said that though some of the French people of that country had become Germanized, they still loved “la belle France” and prayed for deliverance from the hated, overbearing Germans. They had conscripted his son and had taken his horse, his crop of potatoes and other food, for their soldiers.

From them we learned that there was a heavy force of Germans a few miles away, but that they were constantly falling back before the French and Americans. They said, further, that many of the Boches they had met were discouraged and feared that they could not continue to fight much longer.

The old man gave us food to continue our journey, saying: “We are good friends,” and then added ruefully, “_C’est la guerre_.”