Читать книгу Tom Slade with the Boys Over There - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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“You needn’t be afraid,” said Tom; “we didn’t leave any tracks; we came across the fields—all the way from the crossroads down there. We crawled along the fence. There ain’t any tracks. I looked out for that.”

Pausing in suspense, yet encouraged by their expectant silence, he spoke to some one behind him in the bushes and there emerged a young fellow quite as ragged as himself.

“It’s all right,” said Tom confidently, and apparently in great relief. “It’s them.”

“You must come inside ze house,” whispered Florette fearfully. “It is not safe to talk here.”

“There isn’t any one following us,” said Tom’s companion reassuringly. “If we can just get some old clothes and some grub we’ll be all right.”

“Zere is much danger,” said the girl, unconvinced. “We are always watched. But you are friends to Armand. We must help you.”

She led the way into the house and into a simply furnished room lighted by a single lamp and as she cautiously shut the heavy wooden blinds and lowered the light, the two fugitives looked eagerly at the first signs of home life which they had seen in many a long day.

It was in vain that the two Americans declined the wine which old Pierre insisted upon their drinking.

“You will drink zhust a leetle—yess?” said the girl prettily. “It is make in our own veenyard.”

So the boys sipped a little of the wine and found it grateful to their weary bodies and overwrought nerves.

“Now you can tell us—of Armand,” she said eagerly.

Often during Tom’s simple story she stole to the window and, opening the blind slightly, looked fearfully along the dark, quiet road. The very atmosphere of the room seemed charged with nervous apprehension and every sound of the breeze without startled the tense nerves of the little party.

Old Pierre and his wife, though quite unable to understand, listened keenly to every word uttered by the strangers, interrupting their daughter continually to make her translate this or that sentence.

“There ain’t so much need to worry,” said Tom, with a kind of dogged self-confidence that relieved Florette not a little. “I wouldn’t of headed for here if I hadn’t known I could do it without leaving any trace, ’cause I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.”

Florette looked intently at the square, dull face before her with its big mouth and its suggestion of a frown. His shock of hair, always rebellious, was now in utter disorder. He was barefoot and his clothes were in that condition which only the neglect and squalor of a German prison camp can produce. But in his gaunt face there shone a look of determination and a something which seemed to encourage the girl to believe in him.

“Are zey all like you—ze Americans?” she asked.

“Some of ’em are taller than me,” he answered literally, “but I got a good chest expansion. This feller’s name is Archer. He belongs on a farm in New York.”

She glanced at Archer and saw a round, red, merry face, still wearing that happy-go-lucky look which there is no mistaking. His skin was camouflaged by a generous coat of tan and those two strategic hills, his cheeks, had not been reduced by the assaults of hunger. There was, moreover, a look of mischief in his eyes, bespeaking a jaunty acceptance of whatever peril and adventure might befall and when he spoke he rolled his R’s and screwed up his mouth accordingly.

“Maybe you’ve heard of the Catskills,” said Tom. “That’s where he lives.”

“My dad’s got a big apple orrcharrd therre,” added Archer.

Florette Leteur had not heard of the Catskills, but she had heard a good deal about the Americans lately and she looked from one to the other of this hapless pair, who seemed almost to have dropped from the clouds.

“You have been not wise to escape,” she said sympathetically. “Ze Prussians, zey are sure to catch you.—Tell me more of my bruzzer.”

“The Prussians ain’t so smarrt,” said Archer. “They’re good at some things, but when it comes to tracking and trailing and all that, they’re no good. You neverr hearrd of any famous Gerrman scouts. They’re clumsy. They couldn’t stalk a mud turrtle.”

“You are not afraid of zem?”

“Surre, we ain’t. Didn’t we just put one overr on ’em?”

“We looped our trail,” explained Tom to the puzzled girl. “If they’re after us at all they probably went north on a blind trail. We monkeyed the trees all the way through this woods near here.”

“He means we didn’t touch the ground,” explained Archer.

“We made seven footprints getting across the road to the fence and then we washed ’em away by chucking sticks. And, anyway, we crossed the road backwards so they’d think we were going the other way. There ain’t much danger—not tonight, anyway.”

Again the girl looked from one to the other and then explained to her father as best she could.

“You are wonderful,” she said simply. “We shall win ze war now.”

“I was working as a mess boy on a transport,” said Tom; “we brought over about five thousand soldiers. That’s how I got acquainted with Frenchy—I mean Armand——”

“Yes!” she cried, and at the mention of Armand old Pierre could scarcely keep his seat.

“He came with some soldiers from Illinois. That’s out west. He was good-natured and all the soldiers jollied him. But he always said he didn’t mind that because they were all going to fight together to get Alsace back. Jollying means making fun of somebody—kind of,” Tom added.

“Oh, zat iss what he say?” Florette cried. “Zat iss my brother—Armand—yess!”

She explained to her parents and then advanced upon Tom, who retreated to his second line of defence behind a chair to save himself from the awful peril of a grateful caress.

“He told me all about how your father fought in the Franco-Prussian War,” Tom went on, “and he gave me this button and he said it was made from a cannon they used and——”

“Ah, yess, I know!” Florette exclaimed delightedly.

“He said if I should ever happen to be in Alsace all I’d have to do would be to show it to any French people and they’d help me. He said it was a kind of—a kind of a vow all the French people had—that the Germans didn’t know anything about. And ’specially families that had men in the Franco-Prussian War. He told me how he escaped, too, and got to America, and about how he hit the German soldier that came to arrest you for singing the Marseillaise.”

The girl’s face colored with anger, and yet with pride.

“Mostly what we came here for,” Tom added in his expressionless way, “was to get some food and get rested before we start again. We’re going through Switzerland to join the Americans—and if you’ll wait a little while you can sing the Marseillaise all you want.”

Something in his look and manner as he sat there, uncouth and forlorn, sent a thrill through her.

“Zey are all like you?” she repeated. “Ze Americans?”

“Your brother and I got to be pretty good friends,” said Tom simply; “he talked just like you. When we got to a French port—I ain’t allowed to tell you the name of it—but when we got there he went away on the train with all the other soldiers, and he waved his hand to me and said he was going to win Alsace back. I liked him and I liked the way he talked. He got excited, like——”

“Ah, yess—my bruzzer!”

“So now he’s with General Pershing. It seemed funny not to see him after that. I thought about him a lot. When he talked it made me feel more patriotic and proud, like.”

“Yess, yess,” she urged, the tears standing in her eyes.

“Sometimes you sort of get to like a feller and you don’t know why. He would always get so excited, sort of, when he talked about France or Uncle Sam that he’d throw his cigarette away. He wasted a lot of ’em. He said everybody’s got two countries, his own and France.”

“Ah, yess,” she exclaimed.

“Even if I didn’t care anything about the war,” Tom went on in his dull way, “I’d want to see France get Alsace back just on account of him.”

Florette sat gazing at him, her eyes brimming.

“And you come to Zhermany, how?”

“After we started back the ship I worked on got torpedoed and I was picked up by a submarine. I never saw the inside of one before. So that’s how I got to Germany. They took me there and put me in the prison camp at Slopsgotten—that ain’t the way to say it, but——”

“You’ve got to sneeze it,” interrupted Archer.

“Yes, I know,” she urged eagerly, “and zen——”

“And then when I found out that it was just across the border from Alsace I happened to think about having that button, and I thought if I could escape maybe the French people would help me if I showed it to ’em like Frenchy said.”

“Oh, yess, zey will! But we must be careful,” said Florette.

“It was funny how I met Archer there,” said Tom. “We used to know each other in New York. He had even more adventures than I did getting there.”

“And you escaped?”

“Yop.”

“We put one over on ’em,” said Archer. “It was his idea (indicating Tom). They let us have some chemical stuff to fix the pump engine with and we melted the barbed wire with it and made a place to crawl out through. I got a piece of the barbed wirre for a sooveneerr. Maybe you’d like to have it,” Archer added, fumbling in his pockets.

Florette, smiling and crying all at once, still sat looking wonderingly from one to the other of this adventurous, ragged pair.

“Those Germans ain’t so smart,” said Archer.

The girl only shook her head and explained to her parents. Then she turned to Tom.

“My father wants to know if zey are all like you in America. Yess?”

“He used to be a Boy Scout,” said Archer. “Did you everr hearr of them?”

But Florette only shook her head again and stared. Ever since the war began she had lived under the shadow of the big prison camp. Many of her friends and townspeople, Alsatians loyal still to France, were held there among the growing horde of foreigners. Never had she heard of any one escaping. If two American boys could melt the wires and walk out, what would happen next?

And one of them had blithely announced that these mighty invincible Prussians “couldn’t even trail a mud turtle.” She wondered what they meant by “looping our trail.”