Much as he would have liked to wait for his two friends, Ollie decided that if the enemy was to be kept in sight and finally captured, he must continue to go forward alone. And with the thought he proceeded.
He had gone scarcely more than another thirty feet when something happened that for the instant seemed to make his heart stand still and the blood to freeze in his veins. Momentarily he had lost sight of his quarry. In that instant while he groped about him, undecided as to his exact position and the direction he should pursue, the cold steel of a revolver barrel was thrust against his right temple, and Ollie for the first time was aware of the presence of another man, not more than two feet away from him.
It may have been that only a fraction of seconds elapsed, but to Ollie, rigid and helpless in the darkness, unable to see his opponent or make a single move, it seemed like an eternity of time, in which sudden death was inevitable, before a low voice close to his ear commanded, “Put up your hands!”
Ollie could have shouted with joy and relief. He could have embraced the speaker in a great hug. Instead, he very wisely followed a policy of “safety first.” He put his hands straight into the air, as directed, and as high as he could reach, so that there might be no mistake as to his intentions. Then he whispered sharply, “Tom, it’s Ollie; for the love of Mike take that gun away from my head. I don’t like the feel of it at all. You might get a sudden twitching of that trigger finger.”
“Well I’ll be hanged,” ejaculated Tom Walton, in a hushed and rather abashed tone. “It’s good I didn’t shoot first and speak afterward. I thought you were that Hun. Where is he?”
“Not so loudly,” warned Ollie. “I don’t know where he is now, but I only lost sight of him a few seconds before you poked that gun to my head. He had started for home. He ought to be out there straight ahead somewhere. Wonder where George is?”
There was no time to loiter, however, if they were going to capture the man they were after, and after waiting for several seconds without hearing or seeing any sign of their friend approaching, they began cautiously and silently to push forward again.
Stretched out almost flat upon the ground, pulling themselves forward by handgrips upon the turf, only occasionally raising their heads to take a hurried but unsuccessful survey of the vicinity to locate the enemy, they finally came upon the first of the bodies over which he had been working.
They had made no mistake. The most cursory glance showed that the dead man was a captain in the United States army, and that every pocket of his uniform had been rifled. Not only that, but the shirt beneath had been torn loose and the chest was bared, showing that the most thorough search had been made for anything of value that might have been concealed there.
The lads paused for a moment in an effort to identify the officer, but it was out of the question even to attempt to read his identification tag, and a shell fragment had so mutilated his head and face that in the darkness it was impossible for them even to guess who he was. With a suppressed sigh and a muttered threat against the man who thus had defiled the dead, they pressed onward, but without any definite idea as to the exact direction they should pursue, or how far they ought to go.