CHAPTER XIII
A PERILOUS JOURNEY
Almost at once there set in a reaction, as was natural under the circumstances. The Khaki Boys had been keyed up to such a high pitch through the battle, the attack on the hill, the subsequent shelling of it, and their own dangerous position after the collapse of the building, that now their rescue hardly seemed real.
"Say, I'm about all in!" exclaimed Bob, as he sank down on the grass.
"Same here," agreed Jimmy, staggering to a seat.
"Take it easy, boys, take it easy," counseled their rescuer. "And better come a bit farther away from the fire. The whole place is going, and the wind's blowing strongly this way. We're too much in line with it."
He spoke the truth. The boys were enveloped, part of the time, in a haze of smoke and a swirl of burning brands. Tired, and physically and mentally exhausted as they were, they scrambled to their feet—for they had all stretched out on the grass—and made their way to a spot where they could breathe with freedom. The mill ruins were now burning fiercely.
"Any more left in there!" asked the officer, pointing with his axe towards the fiery structure.
"None alive," answered Jimmy, as he thought of their brave comrades in arms who had perished in wiping out the German machine-gun nest. It was, perhaps, a fitting funeral pyre for them.
"Stay here and I'll get you some water," offered the blue-shirted officer. "That will fetch you around quicker than anything else. I can get you a little food, too, I think—emergency rations, if you need them."
"We aren't exactly hungry, sir," said Jimmy, tacking on the "sir" in an almost certain opinion that the man was an officer. "We had some of our own rations, and we were eating when the Huns sent a big shell over that spilled the beans."
"I see. Well, then, rest here until I can get you some water. Fortunately the Boches can't blow up a stream. The water is sure to remain somewhere. It won't take long to get it, I'll be back in a moment."
He hurried off between two little hillocks, away from the burning mill and in the direction of the stream.
"Who in the world is he?" asked Bob.
"It's a puzzle," said Jimmy. "We'll ask when we thank him for saving our lives."
"Here you are, boys," said the officer, as he came up the slope with a canteen which gurgled most musically with water. "Drink this and then we'll discuss what's best to be done."
"Are we safe here?" asked Jimmy. "Safe from the Germans, I mean?
They're all about here, you know."
"Yes, I know," said the officer, and there seemed to be more in his remark than the mere words indicated. "But you're safe for the time being. They have destroyed the mill, so it is no longer a menace, they fancy. Their guns are directed elsewhere now."
The sound of distant firing could be plainly heard, but the boys could no longer observe the gray ranks of the Huns on the distant hill. One reason for this was because of the smoke from the burning mill, which swirled about in all directions, and the other reason was that there was a lot of smoke caused by the guns of the Germans, and this, or perhaps a smoke screen which they started, concealed them.
"Feel better?" asked the officer, when the lads had emptied the canteen.
"Much," answered Jimmy. "And now, sir, may we have the pleasure of knowing to whom we owe our escape? We're from the 509th Infantry," he went on. "We were in the battle, and got cut off. Our lieutenant had ordered us to take the mill where some Germans had two machine-guns. We five are all that are left of the sixteen that started. And we wouldn't be alive but for you. So if we could know whom to thank—"
The officer stopped him with an imperious gesture. He looked rather stern, and then, as though conscious that this was not the attitude to take, he smiled.
"I'm glad I was able to serve you," he said. "I happened to be in the neighborhood. I heard your cries after the mill collapsed and began to burn, and I hastened up. I had no time to summon help—in fact, your friends are rather distant from here now. The Germans are all about."
"We know it—to our sorrow," replied Bob. "How we are going to get back to our company is what's worrying me."
"It is going to be a problem," assented the officer.
"Are you coming with us?" asked Jimmy. It was a perfectly natural question. Here was one—by most appearances an American officer—marooned with some American doughboys in the midst of the Germans. Why should he not cast his lot with them, and lead them to the best of his ability to the safest place? He was an officer—there was no question of that—and it was his right to lead. But he seemed disturbed at Jimmy's question. He looked searchingly at the boys, and then toward the distant hills where the Germans were massed, though not then in sight.
"No, I—I can't come with you," the unknown said. "I'm sorry, but you will have to shift for yourselves. I'll give you the best directions I can to enable you to reach your own lines, but you'll have to go alone."
"We'll try," said Bob. "But we wish to thank you, and we don't know—"
"Oh, it was all in the day's work," interrupted the officer, "Any one who came along would have done just as I did to help you."
"Not anyone, sir," asserted Franz, in a low voice. "A German wouldn't have chopped us out."
"Well—er—perhaps not," said the officer. "But it was in my line of duty and I did it. I don't want to be thanked for doing my duty."
"But we insist on thanking you, sir!" exclaimed Jimmy with a smile. "If it hadn't been for you we'd be dead in there now—it was impossible for us to free ourselves!"
"Well, you may call me Captain Frank Dickerson," said the officer slowly. And he appeared to hesitate over the words.
"Then allow me, in the names of my companions, to thank you from the bottoms of our hearts!" exclaimed Jimmy, rising and saluting. The captain returned the salute. He stood for a minute looking Jimmy straight in the eyes, and the lad said afterward that the officer seemed to be searching out the sergeant's very soul. Then Captain Dickerson said:
"I must leave you now. You will find a little package of food at the end of the mill flume. I'll leave you this canteen so you may carry water with you on your journey toward your own lines. Your way lies there," and he pointed to the south. "Good-bye—and good luck! I hope you may get through, but—"
Then, turning abruptly he strode off between two high grassy hummocks, and was soon lost to sight in the smoke and haze.
For a moment the khaki boys stood, motionless, and then Jimmy, looking around on the circle of his companions, exclaimed:
"Well, if that isn't mysterious!"
"I should say so!" agreed Bob. "Talk about the man in the iron mask—this beats it!"
"Why doesn't he come with us, toward the American lines?" asked Roger. "Why does he want to go over where the Huns are? This gets me. It looks as if he was——"
He did not finish the sentence. But his chums knew what he had started to say. Only it seemed a terrible suspicion to which to give voice, against the man who had saved their lives. Still, with all that, the khaki boys could not help thinking in their hearts that there was something wrong.
"Maybe he's going over there to scout around and see if that's a better way for us to get back to our quarters," suggested Bob.
Jimmy shook his head. Then he remarked slowly:
"Come on! Let's see about food and water and then well hike. All our stuff—guns, rations and everything—has gone up in the fire."
"I haf yet two off dem handle chranades," spoke up Iggy, meaning, thereby the serrated Mills bombs which were used in the trench raids.
"Hold on to them!" advised Jimmy. "We'll need them if the Huns see us, and they're very likely to."
They crawled to the end of the mill flume. The fire was now some distance from this wooden water carrier. There, in a canvas bag which the boys recognized as one of the variety carried by the Americans, they found a goodly stock of provisions.
"They'll last us a day, anyhow," said Jimmy, making an inspection.
"And by that time we may be back in our lines."
"Or in the Germans'," voiced Bob.
"There's a big battle going on all around us, but we seem to be in the center of a calm area," said Roger. "The question is how to find our way out."
"Well, let's go!" suddenly exclaimed Jimmy. "Well only get lame and stiff staying here, I feel as if I'd been rolled down hill in a spiked barrel."
Not one of the five Brothers but what had several wounds. But, fortunately, they were superficial ones. They were sore and bruised from being knocked down by the concussion, and by being precipitated into the cellar by the collapse of the mill. But they were still able to travel; though, as Jimmy said, if they remained inactive their muscles and joints would stiffen.
"Hike!" cried Bob, and they set off in the direction indicated by Captain Dickerson—that strange man who had seemed so cold and reserved, and who had made so light of what he had done in saving the lives of the Khaki Boys.
"I wonder if we'll ever see him again," mused Franz, as they marched away from the burning mill.
"Somehow I have a feeling that we will," said Jimmy. And afterward he was to recall those words under strange circumstances.
And so they began what was destined to be a most perilous journey to get back to their own lines.