Further question, reply and comment were interrupted by Gill:
“Get me free, quick! And I want your gun, buddy!” This to one of the squad. “Make him lend it to me, Corp.—Lieutenant. I got to go after them polecats that beat me up and just quit here. I got to get ’em! They got our guns, too.”
The man’s eagerness was catching; his words thrilled both Herbert and Don, for they had witnessed some of his treatment at the hands of the captors and they felt now instinctively that he would make good. Telling Corporal Peters that he would be entirely responsible, Herbert insisted that Gill be given the weapon. In spite of his bruises and aching bones, the mountaineer, gun in hand, dived into the thicket like a panther, and those in the clearing, uttering hardly a word, stood waiting and listening.
A shot sounded not a hundred yards away. Two more followed in quick succession; then was heard only the more distant shooting in the valley and beyond the ridge, the firing in the continuous battle.
“It’ll be either Gill or some of them. I think it won’t be Gill,” Don said in a whisper. Again they all waited.
“That fellow’s a terror. He’ll come back with a big score, or he won’t come back at all,” Herbert remarked in a very low voice.
“Listen. He’s coming back!” asserted one of the men.
“Someone is coming, sure.” And then, eager to satisfy their wonder, Gill, just beyond, let out a joyous whoop. A moment later he came limping, laboring, grinning, into the open again.
“Got three. Three shots. The big one. Would ’a’ chased him to Berlin. Here’s your gun, Lieutenant, and yours, fellow. I got mine, too.” Then to Don: “The feller that got away took yours, I reckon, buddy.”