It was a race for a few seconds, though the airman must have been wary, flying low as he did. He could not gain on the car, and soon, with a long sweep, he was turning back, flying now even lower. Where were the Allied airmen? Not one in sight! As Don neared the main road again and reached the little hillock he slowed up, on hearing the crack of light artillery in the fields. The anti-aircraft guns had got busy and the Hun had reason to keep his distance. But if he was foiled in his attempt to wreck an Allied Red Cross ambulance he surely meant to find some prey for his perverted desire to destroy. He had seen the place from where the ambulance had started as he approached; certainly there must be a dressing station in the little farm house.
Billy, looking back then, saw it. The murderous Hun flew lower still over the spot of peacefulness and beauty; if he had any sense of pastoral loveliness, hate and the German desire for mastery had drowned it all. Something falling straight down from the airplane passed exactly over the little stone and frame dwelling and then a great column of flame, of black and gray smoke, of stones and bits of splintered wood leaped upward and sunk to earth again. A cloud of smoke and dust drifted away in the wind.
“Oh, Don! The house, the old people, the little girl!” said Billy with a sob, and Don, clamping down his brakes, gazed at his companion. It was the first time he had seen him with anything different from a smile on his gentle face, even when danger was literally heaped up in front of them. But now the young man’s soft eyes had a horror in them and a gray pallor had taken the place of the pink, almost girlish complexion.
Don looked back and saw the holocaust wrought by the Hun.
“That—that murderous devil!” he exclaimed.
The wounded airman in the car turn his face toward Don and made a remark in German, probably not expecting it to be understood. Don replied in German:
“One of your airmen has blown up the little farmhouse where we got the drink! No doubt the good people are killed!”
“But it is war and a good hit is to be praised. Besides, these degenerate French—”
Don turned on the fellow with the glare of an angry wildcat; in his excitement his German mostly gave way to English.
“What’s that? You teufel! You say that! And when we are treating you decently? Well, we shall just fix you, you—!”