“All right, Billy you stay. I can make the trip alone. They’ll help me with the _blessés_ at the station and at the hospital too. If anything does happen to me--should I get hit--you couldn’t help much until you got the hang of running over such roads. And say, Billy, you can do something else: when you hear a car going back take a peep and if it’s those fellows that just went by, observe them, will you? If you see them coming, go out and stop them and ask who they are, you can let on you’re making a report. I’m just curious. Tell you why later. G’bye! I’ll stop for you on the next trip down.”
Don dashed on, reached the dressing station without mishap, took on two wounded _poilus_ and one Yank; they sped back.
Billy quickly found a garden spade an went to work with all his might so as to complete his gruesome task. The ground was soft beneath a wide-spreading apple tree just showing signs of blossoming; a sweet-voiced bird sang the while in the branches above, and this was the only requiem the old couple and the little child should know, as, wrapped carefully in sheets rescued from the destroyed house, they filled the one grave.
The tender-hearted youth’s eyes were wet while he labored for the poor souls who deserved a better burial than this. When the grave was filled he made a rude cross of boards and wrote on it a simple inscription, a tribute from his own gentle heart.
This was the best the boy could do. The little bird still sang its cheery ditty overhead. He turned away with a sigh and said, half aloud:
“I wonder what Father would think of me now. He wouldn’t believe it possible of his youngest boy he used to call ‘a silly, girl-like thing.’ I couldn’t blame him then, but now--well, he’ll change his mind about me if I go back--that is, _if_ I get back.”
Then Billy heard a car approaching and slipped out front to take a look, as Don had requested. It was the army ambulance returning. But where was the other Red Cross ambulance?
Well, Don would not be here again for perhaps half an hour yet. There would be time to slip along the road and get a glimpse of the other car. Then he might give his pal even more information than he expected.
The clump of bushes was not more than three hundred yards from the farm road and if there was a dressing station there Billy would find it out--the information might be of value. To keep out of sight of Hun airmen, should they fly overhead, the youth followed close to the line of low evergreen trees that skirted the road and when he reached the end of these but stood still within their welcome shadow, he gazed across at the clump. In all this section of land north of the distant woods and between where the American regiment in reserve on the cross-road was stationed, there were no troops. Evidently it was not a spot where the Huns could break through because of the strongly entrenched positions of the Allies facing them. There had been some Hun raids and some Allied counter-attacks, platoons of Americans fighting beside the French--hence the wounded. But the Germans had not succeeded in pushing their line any farther than the western outskirts of the small village of Cantigney, another half mile east of this ground. Here had come to an end the German drive around Montdidier, a part of the Amiens offensive during the early spring, which is called the first great drive of 1918. The effort to take Amiens, a few miles to the north, was to meet defeat about two weeks later. And meanwhile the great armies intrenched themselves, crouching like lions at bay. They almost ceaselessly growled with their numerous artillery and every little while kept up the clawing and biting through local raids and counter-attacks, adding constantly to the wounded and the dead.