This road must NOT be used by troops during daylight.
She nodded her head sagely.
“That’s why there is no one around,” she remarked. “What were you saying just now, Helen?”
Miss Ryker had discovered a fresh grievance.
“It seems to me that some of the firing has gotten behind us!” she said.
The girls stood still, and listened. A third American shell swung over their heads and burst in the woods opposite. Simultaneously came a sharp outburst of machine-gun fire from the right—the right rear, in fact.
“Maybe we have walked into a sort of bend in the line,” suggested Frances. “They call it a salient,” she added professionally. “Why, if there aren’t some of our boys at last! There … crossing that bridge!”
She was right. As she spoke, two khaki-clad figures emerged from the woods upon the opposite side of the stream below them and trotted briskly across the pontoon bridge, in single file a few yards apart. Once across, they joined forces, and began to climb the hill in a more leisurely fashion. But it was noticeable that instead of coming up the road they kept a course roughly parallel to its direction—perhaps a hundred yards away.
“Why should they go hiking through that mushy long grass, wetting themselves, when there is a good road right here? Aren’t men just children?” observed Miss Ryker.
“Perhaps they don’t know about the road,” said Miss Lane charitably, “We’ll call them. Oh—Boys!”