"Looks as if he had to make bricks without straw," said Frank to Bart the next morning, when the state of things had been explained by the orderly who had taken them in charge.
"It's a case of must," said Bart, "and from the squint I had at the general last night he's the one who can do the job if it can be done at all."
"Will you stay and help?" asked the orderly. "Every man will help. The general's picked up three hundred American engineers working on a road nearby. Every one of them has thrown down his pick and shouldered a rifle."
"Bully for the engineers!" cried Frank.
"Will you stay?" asked the orderly. "Of course you can return to your own command if you want to."
"Will we stay?" exclaimed Frank. "Give me a gun. I know my captain would be willing."
"You can't drive us away," Bart almost shouted.
It was a scratch army that the general finally got together. Some of his men had never handled a gun before. Some were drivers, some were telegraph linemen, some were cooks. But he made the most of what he had. He himself was here, there and everywhere, having trees felled to obstruct the roads, planting machine guns in strategic places, digging shallow trenches, resting neither by day or night.
Frank and Bart worked like beavers. They were placed in charge of machine-gun crews, and their deadly weapons kept spitting fire until they were almost too hot to handle. Again and again they beat back German detachments. They fought like fiends. They never expected to come out of that fight alive. The odds seemed too tremendous.
"It's like Custer's last charge," panted Frank. "There wasn't one of his troopers left alive. But I'll bet that not one of them was sorry he was there."