I was a little puzzled at this because—well, just because I was. I think you will agree, Roy, that soldiers should receive letters from girls. I was under the impression—but no matter.
When Slade and Archer reached the American front in Alsace they joined the Motorcycle Corps, becoming messengers behind the lines. In their long journey through the Black Forest and Switzerland they had resolved on entering this branch of the service, but their paths soon diverged, Archer’s sphere of duty being in the neighborhood of Paris, while Tom rushed back and forth on his machine in the Toul sector until he was sent far west into Picardy and Flanders on some specially dangerous service. As long as Tom was attached to the command in Toul sector he and Archer met occasionally at Troyes and Chaumont where their longer errands sometimes took them. Then there came a time when Archer saw his former comrade no more, and he later heard of Tom’s being sent west where the streams were running red and the paths of the cyclist messenger were being torn with jagged shell holes.
“I thought maybe Slady had run his machine pell-mell into one of those places,” said Archer, “until——”
“Well, don’t try to tell me now,” I said. “Lie down and get some sleep. We’ve all tomorrow before us.”
CHAPTER II—TOM APPEARS ON THE SCENE
Out of the clouds he came, sweeping, veering, dodging, scattering the ghoulish night birds in his flight, the whir of his propeller heard amid the havoc of wind and storm as he raced with the elements, his soaring wings outlined with a kind of ghostly clearness in the fitful gleams of lightning.
Often, as I have lain here in the long monotony of convalescence, I have thought how he first emerged out of the clouds in wind and rain, a hurrying spectre glimpsed in sudden flashes, and of how in the end he disappeared again amid the lashing tempest, up, up, up, into the shadow of the clouds whence he had come—never to be seen alive by mortal man again.
Surely, it is not hard to fancy him a kind of spirit of the sky, visiting this war-scourged land of France, and withdrawing to his kindred elements when his tragic work was done.
It seems fitting that this creature of fate should have come and gone in this way; that there should have been no prosy beginning or end to his career. And I am glad, Roy, for your sake, and for mine and for his and—yes, for the sake of his sturdy champion, Archer—that only a few of his earlier and more conspicuous exploits are known and remembered.
I have it from Archer that the night of this first strange thing which I am about to tell was of intense darkness and incessant, wind-blown rain. Occasionally, he said, quick, sharp flashes of lightning illumined the sky and at such times he could see the clouds, as he said, “churrned up like clabberred milk.”