But seeing that this would be a foolish attempt, Don now took command.
“No. You stay here, Gill, and pick off any others that come up and try to use that gun, which they will and soon. I’ll go back to the rocks. In about ten or twenty minutes you come back, too. If you get some more of them they’ll likely let the gun alone for a bit and then try to grenade us. If they get to working the gun again, then——Listen, Gill; listen! The shooting all along the line is getting awfully near. It can’t be half a mile away. They’re coming fast. I’ll get back now.”
There was little trouble in retracing his steps and creeping under the spruces. Don found the squad just as he had left it, except that another man was missing. Gerhardt had gone a little out of his head; had become quarrelsome and abusive, mumbling that he was hungry, that there were apples and pears down in the woods and that, Germans or no Germans, he was going after them. Before the others of the squad could lay hold to stop him he had leaped over the stone barrier and actually untouched by a veritable hail of bullets had gone off on a wabbling run. And that was the last any of them had ever seen of Gerhardt; his fate was never known. Probably he got into the German lines, was killed because dangerously insane and his unmarked grave would tell no tales.
Herbert, still on watch and looking terribly pale and haggard, had not known of the expedition of Don and Gill. When young Judson crawled out and insisted on taking the lieutenant’s place on watch and Herbert had almost reluctantly crept back to the shelter, he remarked that the Hun shells had ceased being fired. Then Don informed him of what Gill had done.
“That has saved our lives, Don! They were getting our exact range to a T. We never could have survived that shell fire. And Gill is still out there?”
“If he gets back, Herb, that fellow will deserve all the honors that may be put upon him. He’s coming back in twenty minutes.”
“Listen! Was that a bugle, men?”
“It might have been; off a long way.”
“If it was, it was Yank.”
“The shooting is nearer all the time.”