“We might set up a call for him,” said another of the army engineers, a rather stout individual.
“No, don’t do that, Buster!” cried Dave hastily. “Some of those Boches may be closer than we imagine. I heard a report from somebody yesterday that they thought the Germans had some machine-gun nests in the upper end of this wood.”
“Say, talking about machine-guns puts me in mind of a story I heard last night,” broke in a tall, lanky-appearing engineer. “Two men of a gun company had a—”
“For the love of beans, Shadow! don’t start to tell a story now,” broke in Phil Lawrence. “Keep those for to-night, when we get back to our shelter.”
“It wasn’t a very long story,” grumbled the would-be story-teller. “However, it will keep,” he added resignedly. “But say! it sure is funny about Roger. The last I saw of him he was crossing that gully about a hundred feet away from where I was.”
“You saw him go down, I suppose, Shadow,” remarked Dave. “But did you see him come up?”
“I did not. I was busy looking out for myself. I was afraid the minute I showed myself some sharpshooter or machine-gun crowd would fire on me.”
“It’s too bad we couldn’t go forward and finish that road we started,” said another of the young engineers, Ben Basswood. “I don’t understand it at all.”
“Well, orders are orders, Ben; and they must be obeyed,” answered Dave, with a smile. He was now a sergeant and in command of the detail which was making its way through that section of the wood on the American front.
“Oh, I know that!” responded Dave’s former school chum quickly. “I suppose there must be a good reason for stopping the work. By the way, it looks to me as if a storm was coming up.”