THE EPISODE IN FRANCE
Uncle Jeb smoked his pipe leisurely, listening to this letter. "Kind of a comic, hey?" he said. "I reckon ye'd like to hev 'em come. Hain't never seed each other, hey?"
Tom was silent. The letter meant more to him than Uncle Jeb imagined. It touched one of the springs of his simple, stolid nature, and his eyes glistened as he glanced over it again, drinking in its genial, friendly, familiar tone. So he had at least one friend after all. Cut of all that turmoil of war, with its dangers and sufferings, had come at least one friend. The bursting of that shell which had seemed to shake the earth, and which had shattered his nerves and lost him Roy and all those treasured friends and comrades of his boyhood, had at least brought him one true friend. He had never felt the need of a friend more than at that very moment. The cheery letter seemed for the moment, to wipe out the memory of Roy's last words to him, that he was a liar. And it aroused his memories of France.
"Maybe you might like to hear about it," he said to Uncle Jeb, in his simple way. "Kind of, now it makes me think about France. I wouldn't blame the scouts for not having any use for me—I wouldn't blame Roy—but anyway, it was that shell that did it. If you say so I'll start a camp-fire. That's what always makes me think about the scouts—camp-fire. Maybe you'll say I was to blame. Anyway, they won't lose anything. And when they come I'll go back home, if they want me to. That's only fair. Anyway, I like Temple Camp best of all."
"Kinder like home, Tommy," Uncle Jeb said.
The sun was going down beyond the hills across the lake and flickering up the water and casting a crimson glow upon the wooded summits. The empty cabins, and the boarded-up cooking shack, shone clear and sharp in the gathering twilight. High above, a great bird soared through the dusk, hastening to its home in the mountains, where Silver Fox trail wound its way up through the fastness, and where Tom and Roy had often gone. And the memory of all these fond associations gripped Tom now, and he had to tighten his big ugly mouth to keep it from showing any tremor of weakness.
"Maybe it won't be as easy as Uncle Jeb thinks," he said to himself, "but anyway, I'll be here and I won't be interfering with them, and I'll get the cabins finished and I'll go away before they come. They'll have to like Billy Barnard, that's sure; and maybe he'll tell them about my not knowing who he was until after I gave them the cabins. They'll all be on the hill together and they'll have to be friends...."
Yes, they would all be on the hill together, save one, and they would be friends and there would be some great times. They would all hike up the mountain trail, all save one, and see Devil's Pool up there. Tom hoped that Roy would surely show Barnard and his troop that interesting discovery which he and Roy had made. The hard part was already attended to—making Margaret and Mr. Burton keep still. And, as usual, Lucky Luke's part was the easiest part of all—just building three cabins and going away. It was a cinch.
"Shall I build a camp-fire?" he asked of Uncle Jeb.
And so, in the waning twilight, Tom Slade, liar and forgetter of his friends, built a camp-fire, on this first night of his lonely sojourn at Temple Camp. And he and Uncle Jeb sat by it as the night drew on apace, and it aroused fond memories in Tom, as only a camp-fire has the magic to do, and stilled his jangling nerves and made him happy.
"In about a month there'll be a hundred fellows sitting around one like this," he said.
"En that Peewee kid'll be trying to defend hisself agin Roay's nonsense," Uncle Jeb remarked.
"I ain't going to stay to be assistant camp manager this season," Tom said; "I'm going back to work. I'm having my vacation now. I kind of like being alone with you."
"What is them shell-holes?" Uncle Jeb asked. "Yer got catched into one, huh?"
And then, for the first time since Tom had returned from France, he was moved to tell the episode which he had never told the scouts, and which he had always recalled with agitation and horror. Perhaps the camp-fire and Uncle Jeb's quiet friendliness lulled him to repose and made him reminiscent. Perhaps it was the letter from Barnard.
"That's how I got shell-shocked," he repeated. "When you get shell-shocked it doesn't show like a wound. There's a place named Veronnes in France. A German airman fell near there. It was pretty near dark and it was raining, but anyhow I could just see him fall. I could see him falling down through the dark, like. I was on my way back to the billets for relief. I had to go through a marsh to get to that place where he fell. I thought I'd sink, but I didn't.
"When I got there I saw his machine was all crumbled up, and he was all mixed up with the wires and he was dead. I was going to give him first aid if he wasn't. But anyway, he was dead. So then I searched him and he had a lot of papers. Some of them were maps. I knew it wouldn't be any use to take them to billets, because the wires were all down on account of the rain. So I started through the marshes to get into the road to Rheims. Those marshes are worse than the ones we have here. Sometimes I had to swim. It took me two hours, I guess. Anyway, if you have to do a thing you can do it.
"When I got to the road it was easy. I knew that road went to Rheims because when I was in the Motorcycle Service I knew all the roads. Pretty soon I got to a place where a road crossed it and there were some soldiers coming along that road. I kept still and let them pass by and they didn't see me. I knew there were more coming and I could hear the sound of tanks coming, too. Maybe they were coming back from an attack.
"All of a sudden everything seemed bright and I saw a fellow right close to me and then there was a noise that made my ears ring and dirt flew in my face and I heard that fellow yell. As soon as I took a couple more steps I stumbled and fell into a place that was hot—the earth was hot, just like an oven. That was a new shell-hole I was in.
"I just lay there and my arm hurt and my ears buzzed and there was a funny kind of a pain in the back of my neck. That's how shell-shock begins. I heard that fellow say, 'Are you all right?' I couldn't speak because my throat was all trembling, like. But I could feel my sleeve was all wet and my arm throbbed. I heard him say, 'We must have had our fingers crossed.' Because you know how kids cross their fingers when they're playing tag, so no one can tag them? The way he says things in this letter sounds just like the way he said. He's happy-go-lucky, that fellow, I guess.
"There was a piece of the shell in there and it was red hot and by that he saw my arm was hurt, and he bandaged it with his shirt. He saw my scout badge that I wore and he asked me my name. That's all he knows about me. Pretty soon something that made a lot of noise moved right over the hole and I guess it got stuck there. He said it must be a tank that got kind of caught there. Pretty soon I could hardly breathe, but I could hear him hollering and banging with a stone or something up against that thing. I heard him say we could dig our way out with his helmet. Pretty soon I didn't know anything.
"The next thing I knew there was fresh air and people were carrying me on a stretcher. When I tried to call for that fellow it made me sob—that's the way it is when you're shell-shocked. You wring your hands, too. Even—even—now—if I hear a noise——"
Tom Slade broke down, and began wringing his hands, and his face which shone in the firelight was one of abject terror. And in another moment he was crying like a baby.