That night I dropped in on Scotty and casually remarked that our guns would speak shortly and I expected we would bring the German fire upon us, as was the usual result. Scotty's voice quavered I thought, as he asked me when we would begin. "Oh, in an hour, maybe. Have you got a sup of hot tea, Scotty?" "No, I hae na tea, Grant; you'll get your tea at the proper time and not before." "Well, of all the——." I couldn't find words, and then I remembered his old-time habit of thriftiness, and I made up my mind to keep a sharp lookout, and if I caught him profiteering in rations he had saved from the men, I mentally resolved I would show him no mercy.
Exactly at 2 o'clock that morning we started sending our messages to Fritzie, and inside of a minute—Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! And his shells were flying all around us. The cookhouse was only about 20 yards off and I wondered if Scotty would now loosen up a bit, and I stepped over leaving Lawrence in charge of the gun. The cook had crawled under his bunk, which was merely a slight wire mattress raised a couple of feet off the floor. There was a dixie of hot tea standing near and I started to help myself to a drink. He saw what I was doing and with chattering teeth told me he would report me in the morning. He had scarcely spoken when a shell tore through the cookhouse, going clean through the wall over his bed, and as the roar of it passed by, I heard Scotty again offering up supplications in a manner that would arouse the admiration of the most earnest camp-meeting devotee. The shells were commencing to pop all around and I knew instantly that Fritz had located the cookhouse instead of the battery, and I roared to Scotty to come out, but he wouldn't budge. I reached under and grabbed him by the leg, dragging him to the door and leading him by the hand, for he was shaking like a leaf, made my way to the battery. By that time Fritz had got a better line on the guns and it was getting so hot that we got orders to retire to our dugouts. I pushed the cook ahead of me and when we got to the path leading to our quarters, about 200 yards off, no sprinter ever lived that could equal the pace of the bow-legged chef. I doubt if a moving picture machine could have caught the flash of his legs.
The following day we got the welcome order of billets. When there the O.C. made an announcement that he would give a prize of 20 francs to the driver of the best pair of mules on inspection day, which was two weeks hence. This was done for the purpose of encouraging the well-being of the animals,—a most important factor in our own well-being. Scotty's eye to thrift ever open, he entered into an engagement with one of the drivers that he would feed his mules potato peelings if he would split fifty-fifty with him on the prize. The driver agreed and a few days later he and his helper appeared at the door of the cookhouse with one of the mules to get his feed. In order to prevent spilling the peelings at the entrance to the cookhouse, he backed the mule up against the door. In France, as is well known, every farmhouse has a cesspool in which all manner of refuse is distilled by means of a pump and straw, and used to fertilize the soil. These pools are all the way from 8 to 10 feet deep. Immediately in front of the cookhouse and the mule was one of these cesspools, our billets here being on a farm. It happened that when Scotty was peeling his potatoes that day, he had thrown them so close to the fire that they got thoroughly heated. He hastily gathered them up and threw them in a pan which he handed to Tompkins, the man who had charge of the mules and who had entered into the agreement with him; the driver was still on the animal's back. When the mule stuck his nose into the hot peelings he jerked backwards into the door of the cookhouse, the driver's back struck the wall over the entrance and he was shot clean off the mule's back head-foremost into the cesspool 10 feet away. When I say that the bone-grinding department of a stockyard's plant is pleasant compared to the odor of the mixture contained in the cesspool, some idea will be had of the driver's condition when he was pulled out by Tompkins. In the meantime, Scotty was standing in the cookhouse, laughing his sides out at the driver's plight, and he had forgotten to notice that the mule was backing further and further into the room. Just then Mr. Mule got his foot tangled up in one of the dixies that were lying on the floor, and in attempting to kick it off, his foot missed Scotty's head by about six inches. Scotty backed up and so did the mule, still kicking, each kick bringing his hoof nearer Scotty's mug.
"Take your damn mule out," he roared, but they returned the laugh on him and made no move. The next kick brought the hoof and dixie within an inch of the cook's skull and in desperation and fear for his life he slid sidewise under the mule's belly and just escaped a vicious bite as he was getting out of the door.
What the mule did not do in that room to the dinner preparations was not worth doing and Scotty was peremptorily demoted for the loss of the men's dinner and put to tending mules instead. He had no more idea of caring for a mule than he had for performing a delicate operation on the brain and, as a consequence, when inspection day came around, the hip bones of the animals he had cared for could be used as a hat rack and the officer ordered them shot and buried. The cook's thrift again came to the front. "Grant, I'll tell ye what I'll do, if ye'll help me take the carcasses to an abattoir we'll sell them for forty francs, and then we can dig a grave and let on we've buried them, and I'll go half wi' ye. What do you say?" The scheme looked plausible enough to me and I consented, and I was the richer by 20 francs.
Owing to his misfortune with the mules the O.C. ordered him to report for duty on my gun and Scotty came into the lines with us the following week. I was in charge of a trench mortar and our duty was to send over 8 or 10 shells, instantly take the gun to pieces and remove it to another position for the purpose of getting away from the return fire that Fritz was sure to send. When the first 10 messages were sent across, I ordered all hands to take their respective parts and carry them to the point designated, I superintending the dismemberment of the gun. When the last man, who happened to be Scotty, had taken away his respective part of the gun, I picked up the range-finder and started for the spot about a hundred yards off down the trench. I had scarcely gone 10 yards when an ear-splitting roar came hurtling through the air and an explosion followed that made the very earth tremble. I knew it was somewhere in the neighborhood of our selected spot and I anxiously hastened my steps. I got there to find every man of my gun crew with one exception blown to atoms, the exception being Scotty, but he too had paid the supreme price. With the help of another soldier, we carried him to the rear of the cookhouse and covered him with a blanket. When daylight broke I went over there with a party to give him as decent a burial as possible, and the new cook, who was a Scotchman, came out to have a look at the dead pal.
"Well, if it isn't Jock Henderson!" he exclaimed.
"Did you know him?" I asked.
"Know him! Why, mon, we were bakers taegither in Glascae. I could tell him anywhere by his bow-legs, an' he's got a scar on one o' them as big as your face."
"Yes, I know he has, where the shell grazed him at Mons."