“We’ll try,” said Frank, “but I’m afraid they’d think it was a wild goose chase. But at any rate, Dick is freer than we are and I’m sure he’ll do the best he can for us. Won’t you, Dick?”
“You bet I will,” replied Dick warmly. “Poor Bart was a prince, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him or for you. The more I think of it, the more I’m inclined to think that Frank may be right. There isn’t a free minute when I won’t be looking for the poor fellow.”
“Even if it shouldn’t be Bart, he ought to be taken care of,” said Frank. “Just wait a minute, Dick, until I see the captain and try to get permission to go back with a squad and hunt him up.”
He was off like a shot, but returned in a few minutes disappointed and chagrined. The captain had listened with sympathy, but the chance seemed to him too remote to depart from the strict orders he had received to keep all the regiment together on this momentous march. He promised, however, to notify the rear guard to keep their eyes open, and if they caught sight of the straggler, if he were such, to gather him in. And with this promise Frank had to be content.
Dick left them with a repeated promise to do all he could, and the march was resumed with the Army Boys in a high state of excitement. In their hearts they knew that it was only a chance and that they might be doomed to bitter disappointment. But as Frank had said, it was at least a reasonable guess, and their hearts swelled with delight at the mere possibility of having dear old Bart back with them again. Even if his mind were wandering, they felt sure that with the care he would receive he would soon be himself again.
The absence of their comrade had been the one bitter drop in their cup of happiness over the beating of the Hun. Half the delight in the victory would be gone unless their loved comrade could share the triumph with them.
They could talk of little else all the rest of that day, and many a glance was directed at the fleet of aeroplanes flying overhead. One of these, they knew, was Dick’s, and they were sure that that trusty friend was “on the job.”
All that day they kept passing huge piles of war material that had been left behind by the Germans under the terms of armistice. There were guns by the hundred, heavy and light. Most of them were camouflaged with all the colors of the rainbow. This had been unnecessary while the Germans were fighting in entrenched positions, but when the rapid advance of the Allies had forced the Germans to put up their guns hastily in the best positions they could find they had painted them in order to dazzle and bewilder the eyes of their enemies.
“All that good paint wasted,” chuckled Billy, as he looked at the grim monsters, silent now, that a little while before had been belching out their messengers of death.
There were airplanes too, scores of them, some of them the famous “flying tanks,” so called because they had a metal armor about them to ward off enemy bullets. The Army Boys looked at them with great curiosity and would have liked to stop to examine them at leisure, but had to keep on in the steadily marching ranks.