Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer
P >> Percy Keese Fitzhugh >> Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer[Illustration: TOM TURNED ON HIS SEARCHLIGHT AND SAW A GERMAN SOLDIER,
HATLESS AND COATLESS. Frontispiece (Page 8)]
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
BY PERCY K. FITZHUGH
AUTHOR OF
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT, TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP, TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER,
TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY R. EMMETT OWEN
PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK.
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Copyright, 1918, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface vii
I. For Service as Required 1
II. Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 8
III. The Old Compass 14
IV. The Old Familiar Faces 20
V. Getting Ready 25
VI. Over the Top 36
VII. A Shot 45
VIII. In the Woods 50
IX. The Mysterious Fugitive 57
X. The Jersey Snipe 62
XI. On Guard 68
XII. What's In a Name? 73
XIII. The Fountains of Destruction 79
XIV. Tom Uses His First Bullet 84
XV. The Gun Pit 89
XVI. Prisoners 97
XVII. Shades of Archibald Archer 105
XVIII. The Big Coup 111
XIX. Tom is Questioned 119
XX. The Major's Papers 127
XXI. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere 133
XXII. "Uncle Sam" 140
XXIII. Up a Tree 150
XXIV. "To Him That Overcometh" 156
XXV. "What You Have to Do--" 162
XXVI. A Surprise 169
XXVII. Smoke and Fire 175
XXVIII. "Made in Germany" 184
XXIX. "Now You See It, Now You Don't" 194
XXX. He Disappears 205
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PREFACE
It was good advice that Rudyard Kipling gave his "young British soldier"
in regard to the latter's rifle:
"She's human as you are--you treat her as sich
And she'll fight for the young British soldier."
Tommy Atkins' rifle was by no means the first inanimate or dumb thing to
prove human and to deserve human treatment. Animals of all sorts have
been given this quality. Jack London's dog, in _The Call of the Wild_,
has human interest. So has the immortal _Black Beauty_.
But we are not concerned with animals now. Kipling's ocean liner has
human interest--a soul. I need not tell you that a boat is human. Its
every erratic quality of crankiness, its veritable heroism under stress,
its temperament (if you like that word) makes it very human indeed. That
is why a man will often let his boat rot rather than sell it.
This is not true of all inanimate things. It depends. I have never heard
of a steam roller or a poison gas bomb being beloved by anybody. I
should not care to associate with a hand grenade. It is a matter of
taste; I dare say I could learn to love a British tank, but I could
never make a friend and confidante of a balloon. An aeroplane might
prove a good pal--we shall have to see.
Davy Crockett actually made a friend and confidante of his famous gun,
_Betsy_. And _Betsy_ is known in history. It is said that the gun crews
on armed liners have found this human quality in their guns, and many of
these have been given names--_Billy Sunday_, _Teddy Roosevelt_, etc.
I need not tell you that a camp-fire is human and that trees are human.
The pioneers of old, pressing into the dim wilderness, christened their
old flintlocks and talked to them as a man may talk to a man. The
woodsman's axe was "deare and greatly beloved," we are told.
The hard-pressed Indian warrior knelt in the forest and besought that
life-long comrade, his bow, not to desert or fail him. King Philip kept
in his quiver a favorite arrow which he never used because it had
earned retirement by saving his own life.
What Paul Revere may have said to his horse in that stirring midnight
ride we do not know. But may we not suppose that he urged his trusty
steed forward with resolute and inspiring words about the glorious
errand they were upon?
Perhaps the lonely ringer of the immortal bell up in the Old South
steeple muttered some urgent word of incentive to that iron clanger as
it beat against its ringing wall of brass.
So I have made _Uncle Sam_, the motorcycle, the friend and companion of
_Tom Slade_. I have withheld none of their confidences--or trifling
differences. I dare say they were both weary and impatient at times.
If he is not companionable to you, then so much the worse for you and
for our story. But he was the friend, the inseparable associate and
co-patriot of _Tom Slade, the Dispatch Rider_.
You will not like him any the less because of the noise he made in
trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire
wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin
can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound
with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you
are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had
better not read this book.
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
CHAPTER I
FOR SERVICE AS REQUIRED
Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road sped the dispatch-rider. Out
of the East he had come, where the battle line runs between blue
mountains and the country is quiet and peaceful, and the boys in khaki
long for action and think wistfully of Picardy and Flanders. He was a
lucky young fellow, this dispatch-rider, and all the boys had told him
so.
"We'll miss you, Thatchy," they had said.
And "Thatchy" had answered characteristically, "I'm sorry, too, kind of,
in a way."
His name was not Thatchy, but they had called him so because his thick
shock of light hair, which persisted in falling down over his forehead
and ears, had not a little the appearance of the thatched roofs on the
French peasant's cottages. He, with a loquacious young companion, had
blown into the Toul sector from no one seemed to know exactly where,
more than that he had originally been a ship's boy, had been in a German
prison camp, and had escaped through Alsace and reached the American
forces after a perilous journey.
Lately he had been running back and forth on his motorcycle between the
lines and points south in a region which had not been defiled by the
invader, but now he was going far into the West "for service as
required."
That was what the slip of paper from headquarters had said, and he did
not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they
would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood
of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that
undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War
Council at Versailles. But Thatchy did not mind that kind of talk.
West of Revigny, he crossed the old trench line, and came into the area
which the Blond Beast had crossed and devastated in the first year of
the war. Planks lay across the empty trenches and as he rode over first
the French and then the enemy ditches, he looked down and could see in
the moonlight some of the ghastly trophies of war. Somehow they affected
him more than had the fresher results of combat which he had seen even
in the quiet sector he had left.
Silently he sped along the thirty-mile stretch from Revigny to Chalons,
where a little group of French children pressed about him when he paused
for gasoline.
"Yankee!" they called, chattering at him and meddling with his machine.
"Le cheveu!" one brazen youngster shouted, running his hand through his
own hair by way of demonstrating Thatchy's most conspicuous
characteristic.
Thatchy poked him good-humoredly. "La route, est-belle bonne?" he asked.
The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing
at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of
explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and
Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.
"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take that one," he said more
to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word
_salient_ took a chance on _nose_ and jumped up and down in joyous
abandon, calling, "Bump le nez--le _salient_!" apparently in keen
appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.
He rode away with a clamoring chorus behind him and he heard one brazen
youngster boldly mimicking his manner of asking if the roads were good.
These children lived in tumble-down houses which were all but ruins, and
played in shell holes as if these cruel, ragged gaps in the earth had
been made by the kind Boche for their especial entertainment.
A mile or two west of Chalons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a
makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the
remnants of the former span.
On he sped, along the quiet, moonlit road, through the little village of
Thibie, past many a quaint old heavily-roofed brick cottage, over the
stream at Chaintrix and into Vertus, and along the straight, even
stretch of road for Montmirail. Not so long ago he might have gone from
Chalons in a bee-line from Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck
out like a huge snout now, as if it were sniffing in longing
anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it
and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting
from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons
passed by in the quiet night, moving southward. He knew now what it
meant to go into the West. One after another they passed in deathlike
stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the
moonlight. As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns
in the north. Many stretchers, borne by men afoot, followed the wagons
and he could hear the groans of those who tossed restlessly upon them.
"Look out for shell holes," he heard someone say. So there were
Americans in the fighting, he thought.
He ran along the edge of the hills now on the fifteen-mile stretch to
Meaux, where he intended to follow the road northward through Senlis and
across the old trenches near Clermont. He could hear the booming all the
while, but it seemed weary and spent, like a runner who has slackened
his pace and begun to pant.
At Meaux he crossed the path of another silent cavalcade of stretchers
and ambulances and wounded soldiers who were being supported as they
limped along. They spoke in French and one voice came out of an
ambulance, seeming hollow and far off, as though from a grave. Then came
a lot of German prisoners tramping along, some sullen and some with a
fine air of bravado sneering at their guards.
The rider knew where he was going and how to get there and he did not
venture any inquiries either as to his way or what had been going on.
Happenings in Flanders and Picardy are known in America before they are
known to the boys in Alsace. He knew there was fighting in the West and
that Fritz had poked a big bulge into the French line, for his superiors
had given him a road map with the bulge pencilled upon it so that he
might go around it and not bump his nose into it, as he had said. But he
had not expected to see such obvious signs of fighting and it made him
realize that at last he was getting into the war with a vengeance.
Instead of following the road leading northwest out of Meaux, he took
the one leading northeast up through Villers-Cotterets, intending to run
along the edge of the forest to Campiegne and then verge westward to
the billet villages northwest of Montdidier, where he was to report.
This route brought him within ten miles of the west arm of the salient,
but the way was quiet and there was no sign of the fighting as he rode
along in the woody solitude. It reminded him of his home far back in
America and of the woods where he and his scout companions had camped
and hiked and followed the peaceful pursuits of stalking and trailing.
He was thinking of home as he rode leisurely along the winding forest
road, when suddenly he was startled by a rustling sound among the trees.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in pursuance of his general instructions
for such an emergency, at the same time drawing his pistol. "Halt!"
He was the scout again now, keen, observant. But there was no answer to
his challenge and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits, peering into the
tree-studded solitude, waiting.
Then suddenly, close by him he heard that unmistakable sound, the
clanking of a chain, and accompanying it a voice saying, "Kamerad."
CHAPTER TWO
AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
Tom Slade, dispatch-rider, knew well enough what _kamerad_ meant. He had
learned at least that much of German warfare and German honor, even in
the quiet Toul sector. He knew that the German olive branch was
poisoned; that German treachery was a fine art--a part of the German
efficiency. Had not Private Coleburn, whom Tom knew well, listened to
that kindly uttered word and been stabbed with a Prussian bayonet in the
darkness of No Man's Land?
"Stand up," said Tom. "Nobody can talk to _me_ crouching down like
that."
"Ach!" said the voice in the unmistakable tone of pain. "Vot goot--see!"
Tom turned on his searchlight and saw crawling toward him a German
soldier, hatless and coatless, whose white face seemed all the more pale
and ghastly for the smear of blood upon it. He was quite without arms,
in proof of which he raised his open hands and slapped his sides and
hips. As he did so a long piece of heavy chain, which was manacled to
his wrist clanged and rattled.
"Ach!" he said, shaking his head as if in agony.
"Put your hands down. All right," said Tom. "Can you speak English?"
"Kamerad," he repeated and shrugged his shoulders as if that were
enough.
"You escape?" said Tom, trying to make himself understood. "How did you
get back of the French lines?"
"Shot broke--yach," the man said, his face lapsing again into a hopeless
expression of suffering.
"All right," said Tom, simply. "Comrade--I say it too. All right?"
The soldier's face showed unmistakable relief through his suffering.
"Let's see what's the matter," Tom said, though he knew the other only
vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the
light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which
was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his
suffering was the raw condition of his wrist where the manacle
encircled it and the heavy chain pulled. It seemed to Tom as if this
cruel sore might have been caused by the chain dragging behind him and
perhaps catching on the ground as he fled.
"The French didn't put that on?" he queried, rather puzzled.
The soldier shook his head. "Herr General," said he.
"Not the Americans?"
"Herr General--gun."
Then suddenly there flashed into Tom's mind something he had heard about
German artillerymen being chained to their guns. So that was it. And
some French gunner, or an American maybe, had unconsciously set this
poor wretch free by smashing his chain with a shell.
"You're in the French lines," Tom said. "Did you mean to come here?
You're a prisoner."
"Ach, diss iss petter," the man said, only half understanding.
"Yes, I guess it is," said Tom. "I'll bind your foot up and then I'll
take that chain off if I can and bind your wrist. Then we'll have to
find the nearest dressing station. I suppose you got lost in this
forest. I been in the German forest myself," he added; "it's
fine--better than this. I got to admit they've got fine lakes there."
Whether he said this by way of comforting the stranger--though he knew
the man understood but little of it--or just out of the blunt honesty
which refused to twist everything German into a thing of evil, it would
be hard to say. He had about him that quality of candor which could not
be shaken even by righteous enmity.
Tearing two strips from his shirt, he used the narrower one to make a
tourniquet, which he tied above the man's ankle.
"If you haven't got poison in it, it won't be so bad," he said. "Now
I'll take off that chain."
He raised his machine upon its rest so that the power wheel was free of
the ground. Then, to the wounded Boche's puzzled surprise, he removed
the tire and fumbling in his little tool kit he took out a piece of
emery cloth which he used for cleaning his plugs and platinum contact
points, and bent it over the edge of the rim, binding it to the spokes
with the length of insulated wire which he always carried. It was a
crude and makeshift contrivance at best, but at last he succeeded, by
dint of much bending and winding and tying of the pliable copper wire
among the spokes of the wheel, in fastening the emery cloth over the
fairly sharp rim so that it stayed in place when he started his power
and in about two revolutions it cut a piece of wire with which he tested
the power of his improvised mechanical file.
"Often I sharpened a jackknife that way on the fly-wheel of a motor
boat," he said. The Boche did not understand him, but he was quick to
see the possibilities of this whirling hacksaw and he seemed to
acknowledge, with as much grace as a German may, the Yankee ingenuity of
his liberator.
"Give me your wrist," said Tom, reaching for it; "I won't hurt it any
more than I have to; here--here's a good scheme."
He carefully stuffed his handkerchief around under the metal band which
encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to
receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch
again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding
it upon the edge of the concave tire bed.
If the emery cloth had extended all the way around the wheel he could
have taken the manacle off in less time than it had taken Kaiser Bill to
lock it on, for the contrivance rivalled a buzzsaw. As it was, he had
to stop every minute or two to rearrange the worn emery cloth and bind
it in place anew. But for all that he succeeded in less than fifteen
minutes in working a furrow almost through the metal band so that a
little careful manipulating and squeezing and pressing of it enabled him
to break it and force it open.
"There you are," he said, removing the handkerchief so as to get a
better look at the cruel sore beneath; "didn't hurt much, did it? That's
what Uncle Sam's trying to do for all the rest of you fellers--only you
haven't got sense enough to know it."
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD COMPASS
Tom took the limping Boche, his first war prisoner, to the Red Cross
station at Vivieres where they had knives and scissors and bandages and
antiseptics, but nothing with which to remove Prussian manacles, and all
the king's horses and all the king's men and the willing, kindly nurses
there could have done little for the poor Boche if Tom Slade, alias
Thatchy, had not administered his own particular kind of first aid.
The French doctors sent him forth with unstinted praise which he only
half understood, and as he sped along the road for Compiegne he wondered
who could have been the allied gunner who at long range had cut Fritzie
loose from the piece of artillery to which he had been chained.
"That feller and I did a good job anyway," he thought.
At Compiegne the whole town was in a ferment as he passed through.
Hundreds of refugees with mule carts and wheelbarrows laden with their
household goods, were leaving the town in anticipation of the German
advance. They made a mournful procession as they passed out of the town
along the south road with babies crying and children clamoring about the
clumsy, overladen vehicles. He saw many boys in khaki here and there and
it cheered and inspired him to know that his country was represented in
the fighting. He had to pause in the street to let a company of them
pass by on their way northward to the trench line and it did his heart
good to hear their cheery laughter and typical American banter.
"Got any cigarettes, kiddo?" one called.
"Where you going--north?" asked another.
"To the billets west of Montdidier," Tom answered. "I'm for new service.
I came from Toul sector."
"Good-_night_! That's Sleepy Hollow over there."
From Compiegne he followed the road across the Aronde and up through
Mery and Tricot into Le Cardonnois. The roads were full of Americans and
as he passed a little company of them he called,
"How far is ----?" naming the village of his destination.
"About two miles," one of them answered; "straight north."
"Tell 'em to give 'em Hell," another called.
This laconic utterance was the first intimation which Tom had that
anything special was brewing in the neighborhood, and he answered with
characteristic literalness, "All right, I will."
The road northward from Le Cardonnois was through a hilly country, where
there were few houses. About half a mile farther on he reached the
junction of another road which appeared also to lead northward, verging
slightly in an easterly direction. He had made so many turns that he was
a little puzzled as to which was the true north road, so he stopped and
took out the trusty little compass which he always carried, and held it
in the glare of his headlight, thinking to verify his course.
Undoubtedly the westward road was the one leading to his destination for
as he walked a little way along the other road he found that it bent
still more to the eastward and he believed that it must reach the French
front after another mile or two.
As he looked again at the cheap, tin-encased compass he smiled a little
ruefully, for it reminded him of Archibald Archer, with whom he had
escaped from the prison camp in Germany and made his perilous flight
through the Black Forest into Switzerland and to the American forces
near Toul.
Archibald Archer! Where, in all that war-scourged country, was Archibald
Archer now, Tom wondered. No doubt, chatting familiarly with generals
and field marshals somewhere, in blithe disregard of dignity and
authority; for he was a brazen youngster and an indefatigable souvenir
hunter.
So vivid were Tom's thoughts of Archer that, being off his machine, he
sat down by the roadside to eat the rations which his anxiety to reach
his destination had deterred him from eating before.
"That's just like him," he thought, holding the compass out so that it
caught the subdued rays of his dimmed headlight; "always marking things
up, or whittling his initials or looking for souvenirs."
The particular specimen of Archer's handiwork which opened this train of
reminiscence was part and parcel of the mischievous habit which
apparently had begun very early in his career, when he renovated the
habiliments of the heroes and statesmen in his school geography by
pencilling high hats and sunbonnets on their honored heads and giving
them flowing moustaches and frock coats.
In the prison camp from which they had escaped he had carved his
initials on fence and shack, but his masterpiece was the conversion of
the N on this same glassless compass into a very presentable S (though
turned sideways) and the S into a very presentable N.
The occasion of his doing this was a singular experience the two boys
had had in their flight through Germany when, after being carried across
a lake on a floating island while asleep, they had swum back and
retraced their steps northward supposing that they were still going
south.
"Either we're wrong or the compass is wrong, Slady," the bewildered
Archer had said, and he had forthwith altered the compass points before
they discovered the explanation of their singular experience.
After reaching the American forces Archer had gone forth to more
adventures and new glories in the transportation department, the line of
his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him
no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom,
whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's
sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too,
though he had to be careful always to remember that it was the "wrong
way round."
"He'll turn up like a bad penny some day," he thought now, smiling a
little. "He said he'd bring me the clock from a Paris cathedral for a
souvenir, and he'd change the twelve to twenty-two on it."
He remembered that he had asked Archer _what_ cathedral in Paris, and
Archer had answered, "The Cathedral de la Plaster of Paris."