“Why yes—in the car—army pistol. But I guess I’m not much at using it. I’m better with a knife. It’s either the gun or me, but I can’t hit a barn door up against it. I can shoot with a real gun, though. I’ve hunted and shot deer.”
“Well, then, bo, all you’ve got to do,” suggested the wounded man, “is to chase back to that shell hole and get my rifle. She’s there; I forgot to fetch her. And she’s a dandy old pill-slinger, too, believe me.”
Ten minutes later the two young fellows went up to the end of the lane and turned sharply to the right, as Clem had seen the suspected Red Cross car do. It was now growing dusk, though the boys could easily make their way across the field. Clem had noticed a bunch of trees taller than those around on the edge of the woods below the summit of the hill, and that the top of one of these trees was partly cut off and hanging: the work of a shell. It was beyond this spot that the spies’ car had stopped.
“We’re getting there,” whispered the driver. “The Heinies are liable to send some whiz-bangs over here any time.”
“I hardly think so while that fellow is here,” Clem said. “We’ll see if I’m not right pretty soon. We’ll have to risk it, anyway.”
“Go ahead; I’ve risked more than that more than once.”
“What is your name?”
“Duncan. I’m from Maine. What’s yours?”
“Stapley. Marines. I’m from Pennsylvania. Go easy now; we’re getting up near the place and they’ll likely be watching out for somebody. Let’s wait until it’s a little darker, then sneak up. I have a hunch those chaps are on this side signaling information to their friends over east.”
The darkness grew thicker and gave way to night. The watchers had found shelter, both against possible German shells or discovery, behind a boulder where they crouched for several minutes. No shells came that way, though the booming of cannon not very far away to the east and northeast showed that the Huns were awake and replying to the constant cannonading of the French and Americans. All around the boys it was as quiet as any night in early summer. Once, overhead, they heard the call of a night bird and once the twitter of some small feathered citizen disturbed in its slumbers in a thicket. There was the squeak of a mouse or shrew beneath the turf almost at their feet. In a whisper that could not have been heard twenty feet away Clem told his companion what he suspected, from his recollection of the doubtful ambulance driver’s face and from Don Richards’ brief account of the signaling near Montdidier. After what Clem had seen here and the injury to the army ambulance, there was enough to satisfy Duncan that they had Hun spies to deal with.