But the lads themselves, expectant as they were, hardly were prepared for the wily Indian warfare of John Big Bear.
They were in a particularly shadowed spot when Tom thought he heard the slightest grunt, or it might have been a suppressed hiccough, from the German not two feet away from him and acting as their guard upon the right. There wasn’t anything at all unusual about the sound. Tom turned a merely casual glance in that direction, and but for a slight nudge from a lithe form which had carried the German speechless and motionless to the ground, he would have come to a sudden halt.
John Big Bear was at work! And already he had disposed of one Boche—or was at that instant disposing of him—and without a single one of the other Germans realizing that anything had happened.
As Tom continued on he managed to cast one sidelong glance at the two forms locked together upon the ground. With his powerful left hand John Big Bear, trusty scout for Uncle Sam, had the German in a throat stranglehold, and before the under man could begin to writhe free, or so much as utter a groan, a knife which the Indian held in his uplifted right hand descended with tremendous force and unerring aim.
With His Powerful Left Hand John Big Bear had the German in a Throat Stranglehold.
Tom knew that the Hun had died instantly and with only a flash of pain as the steel blade penetrated his heart!
Instinctively, rather than by any sound he heard, Tom knew that John Big Bear, as silently as the wild animals he had stalked years before in his native woods in the great northwest of the United States, was approaching again. He gave Ollie the barest nudge, and he in turn relayed the warning to Harper.
Tom felt a slight touch upon his arm. It was startling, even uncanny, to know that a man could move so silently and stealthily that he might be right beside one and his presence remain unknown until he, himself, revealed it. In the darkness the Indian pressed a finger against Tom’s lips, then put the automatic pistol which had been the German’s into his hand.
“Wait!” was the one word he barely breathed into Tom’s ear, and the latter knew he was only to use the firearm when John Big Bear directed. And he was entirely content to trust to John Big Bear’s judgment in such an emergency as this.