Quite calmly, but without relaxing for an instant his keen watchfulness on all his surroundings, Gill began cleaning his rifle, examining his cartridge clips and pistol ammunition, looking to his general well-being, even to the extent of re-tying his shoe lacings. He had little to wish for, except that Jennings were with him and that he had something to eat and a cup of good water. This going hungry and thirsty for so long was not calculated to put a fellow on his best edge. But still his eyes and nerves were good and his stanch muscles all there. If his buddy had not been killed and were to share his fortunes now, he might get into really far greater misery than the grave: long imprisonment. It wouldn’t be exactly desirable to be seriously wounded, either, and to lie for hours in these bushes. But Gill promised himself that if he were hit and not knocked out completely, the Huns would have no little trouble finding him.
He remembered rather vaguely that Don had told him to come back in twenty minutes. Gill’s watch had been smashed, he had thrown it away and how long was twenty minutes? There would be more Huns at the field piece before half that time and there was no telling how long it might take to further impress upon them that its mere vicinity was fatal ground.
Gill was right in this conjecture. He had hardly finished his task and shoved a new cartridge clip into his gun before he saw a half dozen men come running up the hill. He recognized one of them as belonging to the gun squad and this fellow was evidently protesting to the young officer at the head of the new bunch.
They came boldly into the little space, the member of the old squad trying almost to hold the officer back. Suddenly that smirk-faced leader turned and struck the well meaning man a blow across the face.
The sheer brutality, the nasty ingratitude of this act impressed the watcher in the bushes much as when he had once seen a drunken coon hunter kick his dog when the beast was doing his best to make known the whereabouts of a hunted animal.
It was well now to get busy and the rule was to get an officer, if possible, so as to upset the morale of a fighting force, big or little.
The Hun leader was still glaring at the man who would dare to try to tell him his business or interfere with his duty; he had also a thing or two to say about it, judging from the way he flung out his chest and pounded it with his fist. Suddenly he bent forward, placed both hands upon his stomach and sank to the ground. Gill hoped that his bullet had not done enough damage to keep the fellow from repenting his meanness.
The other Huns had all rushed for cover; one was a little slow and the mountaineer’s next shot did not permit him to gain shelter. One fellow, from behind a tree, began shooting at where he must have noted the flash of Gill’s gun and the bullets were cutting low over the mountaineer’s head as the latter drew a fine bead to the left of that tree. The Hun marksman stopped shooting, but Gill knew the man had only been nicked a little; hurt only enough to render him unable to keep on worrying the Yank.
But others were shooting now and the spot that Gill occupied was getting to be uncomfortable. A bullet struck and split a stout scrub oak sapling right in front of his face, the missile going off at a tangent, else the mountaineer would have been done for. Therefore, he moved, and quickly, backing out on hands and knees, and when screened completely he slipped into the friendly shelter of some other bushes where, back of a sprout-grown tree stump he was still better hidden. The bullets continued to cut and to tear through the thicket he had just left, all of them wasted, of course, and Gill smiled grimly.
“No good, Heinie,” he thought, “though if I’d ’a’ stayed there you’d ’a’ got me, I reckon.”