It was a Maxim and the men dropped to their bellies.
“Hey, you poor fool, can’t you shut up?” Kahl said. “That’s a Maxim.”
Hicks made for behind a tree as fast as he could crawl.
“Hey, Pete,” he called in an undertone “where’s the rest of the outfit?”
“I don’t know,” Pietrzak answered him. “That’s the reason we come over here where you fellers are.”
Hicks turned to Kahl. “By God, Kahl, we’re lost!”
The machine-gun bullets shaved the bark from the trunk of the tree behind which Hicks was lying. He flattened out, his face pressed into the grass.
“Oh, Kahl, we’re lost!”
But Kahl did not hear him. Possibly he remembered what he had said earlier in the day. Possibly he was really a hero. Possibly he again saw himself as a little boy playing Indian in the back yard. Whatever were his thoughts, he rose to one knee, and, after peering intently in the direction from which the bullets had come, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted along the shining barrel.
Rat-t-t-t-tat.