Short Stories of the New America Part 7

The job was full of peril, of course. For there was a more than even chance of the Yankee snipers' being sniped by the rival sharpshooters, who were better acquainted with the ground.

Yet at the first call there was a clamorous throng of volunteers. Many of these volunteers admitted under pressure that they knew nothing of scout work and that they had not so much as qualified in marksmans.h.i.+p.

But they craved a chance at the boche. And grouchily did they resent the swift weeding-out process that left their services uncalled for.

Cash Wyble was the first man accepted for the dangerous detail. And for the first time since the draft had caught him his burnt-leather face expanded into a grin that could not have been wider unless his flaring ears had been set back.

With two days' rations and a goodly store of cartridges he fared forth that night into No Man's Land. Dawn was not yet fully gray when the first crack of his rifle was wafted back to the trenches.

Then the artillery firing, which was part of the day's work, set in. And its racket drowned the noise of any shooting that Cash might be at.

Forty-eight hours pa.s.sed. At dawn of the third day Cash came back to camp. He was tired and horribly thirsty; but his lantern-jawed visage was one unmarred mask of bliss.

"Twelve," he reported tersely to his captain. "At least," he continued in greater detail, "twelve that I'm dead sure of. Nice big ones, too, some of 'em."

"Nice big ones!" repeated the captain in admiring disgust. "You talk as if you'd been after wild turkeys!"

"A heap better'n wild-turkey shootin'!" grinned Cash. "An' I got twelve that I'm sure of. There was one, though, I couldn't get. A he-one, at that. He's sure some German, that feller! He's as crafty as they make 'em. I couldn't ever come up to him or get a line on him. I'll bet I throwed away thutty ca'tridges on jes' that one Dutchy. An' by an' by he found out what I was arter. Then there was fun, Cap! Him and I did have one fine shootin' match! But I was as good at hidin' as he was. And there couldn't neither one of us seem to git 'tother. Most of the rest of 'em was as easy to git as a settin' hen. But not him. I'd 'a' laid out there longer for a crack at him but I couldn't find no water. If there'd been a spring or a water seep anywheres there I'd 'a' stayed till doomsday but what I'd 'a' got him. Soon's I fill up with some water I'm goin' back arter him. He's well wuth it. I'll bet that cuss don't weigh an ounce under two hundred pound."

Cash's smug joy in his exploit and his keen antic.i.p.ation of a return trip were dashed by the captain's reminder that war is not a hunting jaunt; and that Wyble must return to his loathed trench duties until such time as it should seem wise to those above him to send him forth again.

Cash could not make head or tail out of such a command. After months of grinding routine he had at last found a form of recreation that not only dulled his sharply constant homesickness but that made up for all he had gone through. And now he was told he could go forth on such delightful excursions only when he might chance to be sent!

Red wrath boiled hot in the soul of Cash Wyble. Experience had taught him the costly folly of venting such rage on a commissioned officer. So he hunted up Top Sergeant Mahan of his own company and laid his griefs before that patient veteran.

Top Sergeant Mahan-formerly of the Regular Army-listened with true sympathy to the complaint; and listened with open enthusiasm to the tale of the two days of forest skulking. But he could offer no help in the matter of returning to the _battue_.

"The cap'n was right," declared Mahan. "They wanted to throw a little lesson into those boche snipers and make them ease up on their heckling.

And you gave them a man's-size dose of their own physic. There's not one sniper out there to-day, to ten who were on deck three days ago. You've done your job. And you've done it good and plenty. But it's done-for a while anyhow. You weren't brought over here to spend your time in prowling around No Man's Land on a still hunt for stray Germans. That isn't Uncle Sam's way. Don't go grouching over it, man! You'll be remembered, all right. And if they get pesky again you'll be the first one sent out to abate them. You can count on it. Till then, go ahead with your regular work and forget the sniper job."

"But, Sarge!" pleaded Cash, "you don't git the idee. You don't git it at all. Those Germans will be shyer'n scat, now that I've flushed 'em. An'

the longer the news has a chance to git round among 'em, the shyer they're due to git. Why, even if I was to go out thar straight off it ain't likely I'd be able to pot one where I potted three before. It's the same difference as it is between the first flus.h.i.+n' of a wild-turkey bunch an' the second. An' if I've got to wait long there'll be no downin' _any_ of 'em. Tell that to the Cap. Make him see if he wants them cusses he better let me git 'em while they're still gittable."

In vain did Top Sergeant Mahan go over and over the same ground, trying to make Cash see that the company captain and those above him were not out for a record in the matter of ambushed Germans.

Wyble had struck one idea he could understand, and he would not give it up.

"But, Sarge," he urged desperately, "I'm no durn good here foolin'

around with drill an' relief an' diggin' an' all that. Any mudback can do them things if you folks is sot on havin' 'em done. But there ain't another man in all this outfit who can shoot like I can; or has the knack of 'layin' out'; or of stalkin'. Pop got the trick of it from gran'ther. An' gran'ther got if off th' Injuns in th' old days. If you folks is out to git Germans I'm the feller to git 'em fer you. Nice big ones. If you're here jes' to play sojer, any poor fool c'n play it fer you as good as me."

"I've just told you," began the sergeant, "that we--"

"'Nuther thing!" suggested Cash brightly. "These Germans must have villages somew'eres. All folks do. Even Injuns. Some place where they live when they ain't on the warpath. Get leave an' rations an'

ca'tridges for me-for a week, or maybe two-an' I'll gar'ntee to scout till I find one of them villages. The Dutchies won't be expectin' me.

An' I c'n likely pot a whole mess of 'em before they c'n git to cover.

"Say!" he went on eagerly, a bit of general information flas.h.i.+ng into his memory. "Did you know Germans was a kind of Confed'? The fightin'

Germans, I mean. Well, they are. The hull twelve I got was dressed in gray Confed' uniform, same as pop used to wear. I got his old uniform to home. Lord, but pop would sure lay into me if he knowed I was pepperin'

his old side partners like that! I'd figered that all Germans was dressed like the ones back home. But they've got reg'lar uniforms.

Confed' uniforms, at that. I wonder does our gin'ral know about it?"

Again the long-suffering Mahan tried to set him right; this time as to the wide divergence between the gray-backed troops of Ludendorff and the Confederacy's gallant soldiers. But Cash merely nodded cryptically, as always he did when he thought his foreigner fellow soldiers were trying to take advantage of his supposed ignorance. And he swung back to the theme nearest his heart.

"Now about that snipin' business," he pursued, "even if the Cap don't want too many of 'em shot up, he sure won't be so cantankerous as to keep me from tryin' to git that thirteenth feller! I mean the one that kep' blazin' at me whiles I kep' blazin' at him; an' the both of us too cute to show an inch of target to t'other or stay in the same patch of cover after we'd fired. That Dutchy sure c'n scout grand! He's a born woodsman. An' you-all don't want it to be said the Germans has got a better sniper than what we've got, do you? Well, that's jes' what will be said by everyone in this yer county unless you let me down him. Come on, Sarge! Let me go back arter him! I been thinkin' up a trick gran'ther got off'n th' Injuns. It oughter land him sure. Let me go try!

I b'lieve that feller can't weigh an ounce less'n two-twenty. Leave me have one more go arter him; and I'll bring him in to prove it!"

Top Sergeant Mahan's patience stopped fraying, and ripped from end to end.

"You seem to think this war is a cross between a mountain feud and a deer hunt!" he growled. "Isn't there any way of hammering through your ivory mine that we aren't here to pick off unsuspecting Germans and make a tally of the kill? And we aren't here to brag about the size of the men we shoot either. We're here, you and I, to obey orders and do our work. You'll get plenty of shooting before you go home again, don't worry. Only you'll do it the way you're told to. After all the time you've spent in the hoosgow since you joined, I should think you'd know that."

But Cash Wyble did not know it. He said so-loudly, offensively, blasphemously. He said many things-things that in any other army than his own would have landed him against a blank wall facing a firing squad. Then he slouched off by himself to grumble.

As far as Cash Wyble was concerned the war was a failure-a total failure. The one bright spot in its workaday monotony was blurred for him by the orders of his stupid superiors. In his vivid imagination that elusive German sniper gradually attained a weight not far from three hundred pounds.

In sour silence Cash sulked through the rest of the day's routine. In his heart boiled black rebellion. He had learned his soldier trade, back at Camp Lee, because it had been very strongly impressed upon him that he would go to jail if he did not. For the same reason he had not tried to desert. He had all the true mountaineer horror for prison. He had toned down his native temper and stubbornness because failure to do so always landed him in the guardhouse-a place that, to his mind, was almost as terrible as jail.

But out here in the wilderness there were no jails. At least Cash had seen none. And he had it on the authority of Top Sergeant Mahan himself that this part of France was not within the legal jurisdiction of West Virginia-the only region, as far as Cash actually knew, where men are put in prison for their misdeeds. Hence the rules governing Camp Lee could not be supposed to obtain out here. All of which comforted Cash not a little.

To him "patriotism" was a word as meaningless as was "discipline." The law of force he recognized-the law that had hog-tied him and flung him into the Army. But the higher law which makes men risk their all, right blithely, that their country and civilization may triumph-this was as much a mystery to Cash Wyble as to any army mule.

Just now he detested the country that had dragged him away from his lean shack and forbade him to disport himself as he chose in No Man's Land.

He hated his country; he hated his Army; he hated his regiment. Most of all he loathed his captain and Top Sergeant Mahan.

At Camp Lee he had learned to comport himself more or less like a civilized recruit because there was no breach of discipline worth the penalty of the guardhouse. Out here it was different.

That night Private Ca.s.sius Wyble got hold of two other men's emergency rations, a bountiful supply of water and a stuffing pocketful of cartridges. With these and his adored rifle he eluded the sentries-a ridiculously easy feat for so skilled a woodsman-and went over the top and on into No Man's Land.

By daylight he had trailed and potted a German sniper.

By sunrise he had located the man against whom he had sworn his strategy feud-the German who had put him on his mettle two days before.

Cash did not see his foe. And when from the edge of a rock he fired at a puff of smoke in a clump of trees no resultant body came tumbling earthward. And thirty seconds later a bullet from quite another part of the clump spatted hotly against the rock edge five inches from his head.

Cash smiled beatifically. He recognized the tactics of his former opponent. And once more the merry game was on.

To make perfectly certain of his rival's ident.i.ty Cash wiggled low in the undergrowth until he came to a jut of rock about seven feet long and two feet high. Lying at full length behind this low barrier, and parallel to it, Cash put his hat on the toe of his boot and cautiously lifted his foot until the hat's sugar-loaf crown protruded a few inches above the top of the rock.

On the instant, from the tree clump, snapped the report of a rifle. The bullet, ignoring the hat, nicked the rock comb precisely above Cash's upturned face. He nodded approval, for it told him that his enemy was not only a good forest fighter but that he recognized the same skill in Wyble.

Thus began two days of delightful pastime for the exiled mountaineer.

Thus, too, began a series of offensive and defensive maneuvers worthy of Natty b.u.mppo and Old Sleuth combined.

It was not until Cash abandoned the hunt long enough to find and shoot another German sniper and appropriate the latter's uniform that he was able, under cover of dusk, to get near enough to the tree clump for a fair sight of his antagonist. At which juncture a snap shot from the hip ended the duel.

Cash's initial thrill of triumph, even then, was dampened. For the sniper-to whom by this time he had credited the size of Goliath at the very least-proved to be a wizened little fellow, not much more than five feet tall.

Still Cash had won. He had outgeneraled a mighty clever sharpshooter. He had gotten what he came out for, and two other snipers, besides. It was not a bad bag. As there was nothing else to stay there for, and as his water was gone, as well as nearly all his cartridges, Cash shouldered his rifle and plodded wearily back to camp for a night's rest.

There to his amazed indignation he was not received as a hero, even when he sought to recount his successful adventures. Instead, he was arrested at once on a charge of technical desertion, and was lodged in the local subst.i.tute for a regular guardhouse.