THE ESCAPE
By A. Leslie Goodwin
The tent flap lifted and dropped. The prisoner could make out the dim outlines of a man’s form.
“To be shot at sunrise, eh?”
The prisoner stirred quickly. That voice was strangely familiar to him.
The figure moved nearer. A knife flashed and the prisoner’s bonds fell off.
“Follow me, and not a sound.”
They crept out of the tent, past a dozing sentry, and across a dark field.
“Now,” said the guide, as they straightened up in the shadow of a hedge, “a proposition, for cousins will be cousins, even in war.”
He paused, looked warily around, and emitted a low chuckle.
“Six months ago,” he continued, “when I was captured by your side and sentenced to be shot you rescued me, as I have you. You showed me our lines and gave me two minutes to get away. After that two minutes you were to fire, and you——”
He stopped, wheeled like a flash, but too late. A shot rang out, and another.
The two men stiffened, leaned toward each other, gasped, and dropped to the ground.
Around the corner of the hedge stepped the sentry, a smoking automatic in his hand.
“Huh!” he growled, stirring the prostrate figures with his foot. “Relatives have no business on opposite sides, anyway.”