"All right!" said the other.
Together they lifted and pulled the limp body to the level of the ground, and then as carefully as they could they lifted it and, stumbling and swaying and falling, they made their way back. They could not wait for caution; the flares went up unheeded. A sharpshooter near the enemy's line discovered the strange, shambling group and commenced peppering at it as each flare brought them into view. The bullets whined over and around them. One cut its way through the sleeve of one boy, but did not touch the skin beneath. They felt no fear. The man whom they were carrying was thin and rather small, but his limp body weighed cruelly on their young muscles. With set teeth and streaming faces they kept on in their flight. At last when their breath cut them like knives and their knees almost refused to support them, they reached the safety of their own line and, laying their burden down on the edge of the trench, they slipped down and in a moment were surrounded by helpers. The wounded man was hustled into the nearest shelter and given first aid, while a quick little corporal scrambled off and was back almost at once with stretcher bearers and a canvas litter. The two boys accompanied the wounded man back to the First Aid Station, an underground, roughly boarded chamber where desperate looking men worked silently at their task of keeping life in the tattered forms brought in to them.
While they labored over the still form just brought in, the boys dropped wearily down on the wet ground outside the first aid room, and looked at each other.
A pale glow from the first aid room below them shone upward on their white faces. They were caked with mud and grime but even through that mask a marvelous resemblance could be seen. Feature for feature, line for line, they were alike. Even their gestures were alike. As they sat staring at each other, they looked like some queer, repeated design; a double boy smirched and hollow-eyed.
They stared steadily at each other, then the boy on the ledge cleared his throat and spoke, still in the guardedly low tone that gets to be a habit with the men in the trenches.
"Well, Porky, old sport," he said, affectionately patting the other's soggy knee, "you gave me a nice little old jolt this time for fair! How in the name of time did you get out there in that shell crater? Gosh, if it wasn't for my hunches I dunno where you would be when you pull off these stunts!"
"What's the matter with my hunches?" demanded the boy called Porky. "I don't see but what I have about as many as you have. I was waitin' for you. Knew you would hunt me up if I gave you time."
"Gave me time!" exclaimed the boy addressed. "Gave me time! I hustled out there as soon as I commenced to feel you wanted me. Honest, I don't see how people who are not twins ever get along. But I tell you they are laying for you at headquarters. The General is mad; just plain honest-to-goodness mad at you. I don't see why you had to pull off this and get us in all wrong." He leaned forward and whispered. "There is something doing up there—something big; and I think we are in on it. I don't know just how, but I heard enough to let me know that much. Perhaps you have queered it by cutting up this caper. Honest, Porky, what possessed you?"
"Possessed me?" exploded Porky. "Possessed me! Why, all I did was what I was told to do!"
"According to the General, you were sent on an errand that should have taken you half an hour. Instead you stay all day and I have to come dig you out of a shell crater about fifty feet from the German line. That's a peach of a way to do!"