"Oh! get that crazy notion out of your poor head, Tubby. Germans don't make war that way. They face the music, and stand up before the guns. What makes you look at me like that, Rob?" and Merritt as he asked this question stopped short, for he had been in the act of putting his threat into deeds, and getting down beside the stream to take a drink.
"I smell it too, Rob!" exclaimed Tubby just then. "And, oh! let me tell you it's a rank odor. Isn't it in this country they make all that Limburger cheese; or over the border in Holland? Well, if you asked me I'd say it was something like that."
"Smells more like burnt powder to me!" snapped Rob, showing visible signs of increasing excitement.
With that he commenced looking hurriedly around. Perhaps a sudden tremendous suspicion may have flashed into his mind, and he was seeking to justify it by making some sort of discovery.
The gully was of considerable width, as has been said before, though just at that time in the late summer the stream that flowed through it did not appear to be of any great depth, and could be easily forded.
There were bushes and grass and weeds growing all about, besides stray stones that may have fallen there when the solid masonry of the really fine bridge had been constructed years before.
Although he turned his eyes in this quarter and that, Rob failed to see anything that looked at all suspicious. Still that peculiar odor continued to strike his sense of smell, stronger than before, if anything.
"Must be something burning, fellows!" announced Tubby, as he held a hand up so that he could close his nose with thumb and finger against the offensive odor.
The guide had meanwhile thrown himself down at the brink of the stream and proceeded to drink his fill. Evidently he had no fear concerning the quality of the water. Typhoid germs were unknown to his lexicon; and so long as water looked fairly clear it suited him.
He was getting on his feet again as Tubby made that last remark. His horse had been pulling more violently than ever at the rein, and the Belgian started to say something uncomplimentary to the animal in Flemish.