Clem nodded; Martin confirmed this. The lads helped to lower their comrade into his grave and stood with bowed heads during the brief reading of the burial service. Then they went into the field near by and made two wreaths of poppies and daisies to hang on the wooden crosses over Giddings and the captain.
The shadows were growing long; the two “Leathernecks” had quite a distance to travel in the return to camp. For a little way their road lay along the foot of the hill around which a well beaten track had been made by motor cars and artillery. Now and then they were met by ambulances plying between the dressing station west of the hill and of the last battle-field where the marines and regulars had repulsed the German advance. Some of the cars detoured part way up the hillside by a farm lane, on the slopes to seek further for wounded that might have been overlooked.
The driver of a passing ambulance, returning from the dressing station, offered to give the boys a lift and they accepted gladly. They ran on for less than a fourth of a mile when something got out of order with a spark plug which they stopped to replace, just beyond the lane turning up the hill.
“Be only a moment,” the driver said. “I’ll get you fellows right by your camp in ten minutes.”
“Plenty of time!” both said and, while Martin aided the driver a little, Clem walked to an opening in the thicket and gazed up to where, in the morning, he had seen such bloody work with rifle, pistol and bayonet.
Another ambulance came along the road. It seemed to Clem that he had heard the motor start somewhere back under the hill, though there could be nothing strange in that. There was an unusually large Red Cross in its patch of white on the side of the long, low car, and the machine glided along as though it possessed great motive force but was held down in speed. Two men were in the seat. When the car reached the lane it swung in and, without apparent slowing, ascended the grade, stopping about half way up. A few yards beyond it was an army ambulance, its driver walking away across the slope.
Clem’s very brief glance at the driver of the Red Cross car had caused him to start and wonder. He hardly knew why he gazed after the car with an unpleasant feeling, and then, in order to watch its movements, crossed the road and swung himself up on a branch of a low tree.
There were no other cars on the hill and apparently no other people, but the army ambulance man. Clem was cogitating:
“Now, can’t I think where? What had Don Richards said only yesterday? Spies? But would they dare again to come here boldly and—” his thoughts were cut short.