Tom, coming upon the rigid resistance as it was being shown at the fringe of the wood, jumped into the thick of the fight just as “Buck” Granger went down with a bullet wound in his right leg. “I’m all right, don’t bother about me,” the brave fellow shouted, as Tom wavered and was about to stop. “Just a little hit in the calf. I’ll hobble along all right.”
“Better stay where you are,” Tom advised him, “and if I come through myself I’ll be back for you later in the day. The Red Cross stretcher men will be along shortly anyway, and they’ll give you a lift.”
The injured man nodded, the while he nursed his injured leg, the knee drawn up under his chin, and Tom started off.
“Say!” Granger shouted, before he was out of hearing, “just give Fritz a couple for me, will you?”
“Do my best,” Tom called back, and disappeared.
He was no more than out of “Buck’s” sight when a German, lying prone upon the ground, and whom Tom thought dead, fired point blank at him. The bullet tore through his right sleeve and left a stinging sensation on his arm. With fixed bayonet he charged before the man could shoot again.
It was the second man he had killed at close range that day. The sight sickened him. He hurried on. There was the great difference in the armies. The Germans seemingly killed for the lust of killing. The Americans, only because it was the only way in which to save humanity, rescue or aid martyr nations, and redeem civilization to the world.
As he reached the edge of the wood, a hundred feet from the nearest of his own men, he thought he heard a voice weakly calling him—calling him by his own name.
“Tom Walton!” Silence, as he looked around; and then again, “Tom Walton! Here I am, over here.”
It was scarcely more than a weak and quavering whisper, and the very ghastliness of it sent the chills running up and down Tom’s spine as fire and bullets couldn’t make them do.