The day was fading into evening as the car went over the first ridge and dropped out of sight of Clair and the sprawling hospital in which Ruth Fielding had worked so many weeks.
She felt that she had grown old—and grown old rapidly—since coming to her present work in France. She was the only American in that hospital, for the United States Expeditionary Forces had only of late taken over this sector of the battle line and no changes had been made in the unity of the workers at Clair.
They all loved Ruth there, from the matron and the surgeon-in-chief down to the last orderly and porter. Although her work was supposed to be entirely in the supply department, she gave much of her time to the patients themselves.
Those who could not write, or could not read, were aided by the American girl. If there was extra work in the wards (and that happened whenever the opposing forces on the front became active) Ruth was called on to help the nurses.
Thus far no American wounded had been brought into the Clair Hospital—a fact easily understood, as the entire force save Ruth was French. It would not be long, however, before the American Red Cross would take over that hospital and the French wounded would be sent to the base hospital at Lyse, where Ruth had first worked on coming to France.
Up to this very moment—and not an unexciting moment it was—Ruth Fielding had never been so far away from Clair in this direction. In the distance, as they mounted another ridge, she saw the flaring lights which she had long since learned marked the battle front. The guns still muttered.
Now and again they passed cavities where the great shells had burst. But most of these were ancient marmite holes and the grass was again growing in them, or water stood slimy and knee-deep, and, on the edges of these pools, frogs croaked their evensong.
There were not many farmhouses in this direction. Indeed, this part of France was "old-fashioned" in that the agricultural people lived in little villages for the most part and went daily to their fields to work, gathering at night for self-protection as they had done since feudal times.
Now and again the ambulance passed within sight of a ruined chateau. The Germans had left none intact when they had advanced first into this part of the country. They rolled through two tiny villages which remained merely battered heaps of ruins.
Orchards were razed; even the shade trees beside the pleasant roads had been scored with the ax and now stood gaunt and dead. Some were splintered freshly by German shells. As the light faded and the road grew dim, Ruth Fielding saw many ugly objects which marked the "frightfulness" of the usurpers. It all had a depressing effect on the girl's spirits.
"Are you hungry, Miss Ruth?" Charlie Bragg asked her at last.
"I expect I shall be, Charlie," she replied. "Our tea at the chateau was almost a fantom tea."
"Gosh! isn't it so?" he said slangily. "What these French folks live on would starve me to death. Mighty glad to have regular Yankee rations. But," he added, "we'll be too late to get chow when we come to the hospital, I am afraid. We'll try Mother Gervaise."
"Who is Mother Gervaise?" asked Ruth, glad to have some topic of conversation with the ambulance driver.
"She's an old woman who used to be cook at one of these chateaux here, they say. She'll feed us well for four francs each."
"Four francs!"
"Sure. Price has gone up," said Charlie dryly. "These French folk are bound to think that every American is a millionaire. And I don't know but it is worth it," and he grinned. "Think of being looked on as a John D. Rockefeller everywhere you go! I'd never rise to such a height in the States."
"No, I presume not," Ruth admitted with a laugh. "But how is it that this Mother Gervaise, as you call her, is not afraid to stay here?"
"She stays to watch the gold grow in her stocking," Charlie replied, shrugging his shoulders almost as significantly as a Frenchman.
"Oh! Is she that much of a miser?"
"You've said it. She stayed when the Germans first came and fed them. When they retreated she stayed and met the advancing British (the French did not come first) with hot soup, and changed her price from pfennigs to shillings. Get her to tell you about it. It is worth listening to—her experience."
Charlie Bragg stopped the car suddenly and got out. Ruth looked ahead with curiosity. The road seemed rather smooth and quite unoccupied. There was a group of trees, tortured by gunfire, which hid a turn in the track and what lay beyond. Charlie was tinkering with the engine of the machine.
"What is the matter?" Ruth ventured to ask.
"Nothing—yet," he returned. "But we've got to get around that next turn in a hurry."
"Why?"
"It's a wicked corner," said Charlie. "I might as well tell you—then you won't squeal if anything happens."
"Oh! Do you think I am a squealer?" she demanded rather tartly.
"I don't know," and he grinned again. He was an imp of mischief, this Charlie Bragg, and she did not know how to take him.
"You're not 'spoofing me,' as our British brothers put it?"
"It's an honest-to-goodness bad corner—especially at night," Charlie returned quite seriously now. "Boches know we fellows have to use it——"
"You mean the ambulances?"
"Yep. They spot us. We run without lights, you know; but every once in a while they drop a shell there. They have the range perfectly. They caught one of my bunkies there only a week ago."
"Oh, Charlie! An American?"
"No. Scotch. Only Scotty in this section, and a mighty nice fellow. Well, he'll never drive that boat again."
"Oh!" gasped Ruth. "Was he killed?"
"Shucks! No!" scoffed Charlie. "But his ambulance was smashed to bits. Luckily he hadn't any load with him at the time. But it would have been all one to the Boches."
Bragg got in beside the girl again, tried out his levers, and suddenly shot the car ahead.
"Hang on!" cried Charlie Bragg under his breath.
The ambulance shot down to the corner. It was all black shadow there, and, as Charlie intimated, he dared use no lights. If there was an obstruction they would crash into it!
The dusk had fallen suddenly. The sky was overcast, so not a star flecked the firmament. Through the gloom the ambulance raced, the young fellow stooping low over the steering wheel, trying to peer ahead.
How many hundreds of times had he made similar runs? Ruth had never before appreciated just what it meant to be driving an ambulance through these roads so near the battle front.
For five minutes a heavy gun had not spoken. Suddenly the horizon ahead lit up with a broad white flare. There came the resonant report of a huge gun—so distant that Ruth knew it could be nothing but a German Bertha.
Almost instantly the whine of a shell was audible—coming nearer and nearer! Ruth Fielding, cowering on the seat of the automobile, felt as though the awful missile must be aimed directly at her!
The car shot around the curve where the broken trees stood. With a yell like that of a lost soul—a demon from the Pit—the shell went over their heads and exploded in the grove.
The ambulance was spattered with a hail that might have been shrapnel, or stones and gravel—Ruth did not know. The hood sheltered her. She was on the far side of the seat, anyway.
And then, with a shout of warning, Charlie shut down and tried to stop the car within its own length. Ruth saw a hole yawning before them—a pit in the very middle of the road.
"They've dropped one here since I came along!" yelled the young man, just as the ambulance pitched, nose first, into the cavity.
They were stalled. Suppose the Boches sent another shell hurtling to this spot? They were likely to be wiped out in a breath.
Neither Ruth nor the driver was thrown out of the stalled ambulance. But Charlie jumped out in a hurry and held out his hand to the girl.
"You got to beat it away from here, Miss Ruth," he urged. "Another of those shells is likely to drop any minute. Hurry!"
Ruth had no desire to stay at that perilous corner of the road; but when she started away from the stalled car she found that she was alone.
"Aren't you coming, Charlie Bragg?" she demanded, turning back.
"Go on! Go on!" he urged her. "I've got to get this old flivver out of the mud. Keep right on to a little house you'll see on the left under the bank. Don't go past it in the dark. That's Mother Gervaise's cottage. It's out of reach of the Boches' shells."
"But you'll be killed, Charlie Bragg!" wailed the girl, suddenly realizing all the peril of their situation.
"Haven't ever been killed yet," he returned. "I tell you I've got to get this flivver out of the hole. These supplies have got to be taken to that field hospital. They're needed. I can't leave 'em here and run."
"But you expect me to run!" burst out Ruth, in sudden indignation.
"You can't help here. No use your taking a chance. You'll be in enough danger later. Now, you go on, Miss Ruth. Scoot! Here comes another!"
They heard the whine of the flying shell almost on top of the thud of the distant gun. Charlie seized her hand and they ran up the road for several yards. Then he stopped short, as the shell burst—this time far to the left of the stalled ambulance.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed. "You've got me rattled, too. Here! I'll go along to Mother Gervaise with you. Some of the fellows may be there and I can get help. Come on."
"Oh, Charlie!" murmured the girl. "I'm afraid for you."
"Trying to make me a quitter, are you?" he demanded. "Don't you know that if the Boches get you, they get you, and that's all there is to it? And one way or another that fliver's got to be got out of that hole."
Ruth was silenced. This young fellow—"boy" he called him in her own mind—had a quality of courage that shamed her. It was just the kind of bravery needed for the work he was doing in the war—a measure of recklessness that keeps one from counting the cost too exactly. Charlie Bragg had a philosophy of his own that kept him cheerful in the face of peril and was eminently practical at just this time.
He hurried her along the road, his hand under her elbow, seemingly able to see in the dark like a cat. But it was all black before Ruth's eyes, and she stumbled more than once. Her knees felt weak.
"I—I am scared, Charlie," she confessed, almost in a whisper.
"Yep. So was I, at first. But you know a fellow can't give in to it. If he does he'll never get to be a first-class ambulance driver. I bet some of the boys will be here at Mother Gervaise's and I can get help."
Another moment, and they seemed to turn a corner in the road and Ruth saw a small patch of light at the left of the roadway. She made it out to be an open window—the swinging shutter flung back against the wall. There was no glass in the opening.
"There it is," Charlie said. "You might have passed it right by, alone. You see, the house is close up against the high bank, and the hill is between us and the front. The Boches can't drop a shell here. It's a regular wayfarer's rest. There's a car—and another. We'll be all right now."
Ruth saw the outlines of the two cars parked beside the road. The young fellow led her directly toward the patch of yellow lamplight. She saw finally a broad, thatched cottage, the eaves of the high-peaked roof almost within reach as they came to the door.
Charlie Bragg knocked, then, without waiting for a summons to enter, lifted the wooden latch and shoved the sagging door open.
"Hello, folks!" he said. "Got shelter for a couple of babes in the woods? I got stalled down there at the Devil's Corner, and—— Let me introduce Miss Fielding. She's real folks like ourselves."
He had pushed Ruth in and entered behind her. Two young men—plainly Americans—rose from the table where they were eating. A squarely built woman bent over the fire at the end of the room. She did not look around from her culinary task.
"Hello, Bragg!" was the response from the other ambulance drivers.
"Cub Holdness and Mr. Francis Dwyer," said Charlie, introducing the two. "I've got stalled, fellows."
He swiftly told of the accident and the two young men left the table. The Frenchwoman turned and waddled toward the table, stirring spoon in hand and volubly objecting.
"Non, non!" she cried. "You would spoil the so-good ragout. If you do not eat it while it is hot——"
"The ragout can be heated over," put in Charlie. "But if the Boches get my car with a shell—good-night! Come on, fellows. And bring a rope. I believe we three can pull the old girl out."
The boys tramped out of the cottage. Mother Gervaise turned to Ruth and stared at her with very bright, black eyes.
She was a broad-faced woman, brown and hearty-looking, and with a more intelligent appearance than many of the peasants Ruth had seen. She wore sabots with her skirt tucked up to clear her bare ankles. Her teeth were broad and strong and white, and she showed them well as she smiled.
"The mademoiselle is Americaine?" she said. "Like these ambulanciers? Ah! brave boys, these. And mademoiselle is of the Croix Rouge, is it not?"
"I am working in the hospital at Clair," Ruth told her. "I am on my way with supplies to a station nearer the front."
"Ma foi!" exclaimed Mother Gervaise. "This has been a bad business. You will sup, Mademoiselle, yes?"
"I will, indeed. The accident has not taken away my appetite."
"Isn't it so? We must eat, no matter what next happens," said the woman. "Me, now! I am alone. My whole family have been destroyed. My husband and his brother—both have been killed. I had no children. Now I think it is as well, for children are not going to have much chance in France for years to come. All my neighbors have scattered, too."
"Then you have always lived here? Even before the war?" Ruth asked.
"Oui, Mademoiselle. Always. I was born right in that corner yonder, on a straw pallet. The best bed my mother had. We have grown rich since those days," and she shrugged her shoulders.
"I was an only child and the farm and cot came to me. Of course, I had plenty of the young men come to make love to me and my farm. I would have none of that kind. Some said I went through the wood and picked up a crooked stick after all. But Pierre and me—ma foi! We were happy, even if the old father and Pierre's brother must come here to live, too.
"The old father he die before the Germans come. I thank le bon Dieu for that. Pierre and his brother were mobilized and gone before the horde of les Boches come along this road. I am here alone, then. I begin making coffee and soup for them. Well, yes! They are men, too, and become hungry and exhausted. I please them and they treat me well. I learn what it means to make money—cash-money; and so I stay. Money is good, Mademoiselle.
"I might have wished poison into their soup; but that would not have killed them. And had I doctored it myself I would have been hung, and been no better off. So I made friends," and she smiled grimly.
"But I learned how boastful men could be—especially Germans. One—he was a major and one of the nobility—stayed here overnight. He promised to take me back to Germany when the war was over—which would be in a few weeks. They were to be in Paris in a few days then.
"He promised I would be proud when I became all German. France, he said, would never be a separate country again. For most of the people—my people—he said, were weaklings. They would emigrate to America and the remaining would intermarry with Germans. So all France would become Germany.
"When he was awake, he was full of bombast, that major! When he was asleep he snored outrageously. Ugh! For the first time in my life I hate anybody," declared Mother Gervaise, shuddering.
"But he paid me well for his lodging. And his men paid me for the soup. They marched past steadily for two days. Then they were gone and the country all about was peaceful for a week. At the end of that time they come back."
Here Mother Gervaise smiled, but it was a victorious smile. Her face lighted up and her eyes shone again.
"Pellmell back they came," she repeated. "It was a retreat. Many had lost their guns and their packs. I had no soup for them. I said I had lost my poulets and all. But it was not so. I had them hidden.
"The orderly of my major came in here, threw up his hands, and shouted: 'No Paris! No Paris!' And then he tramped on with his fellows. They chopped the trees and blew up many houses. But mine was marked, as the Boches did in those first days: 'These are good people. Let them be.' So I was not molested," finished Mother Gervaise.
"Now, sit you down, Mademoiselle, at the table. Here where I have spread a napkin. The ragout——
"Bless us and save us!" she added, as a sudden roar of voices sounded outside the cot and the throaty rattle of a motor engine. "Whom have we here?"
She went to the door and flung it open. Ruth hesitated at the chair in which she had been about to be seated. Outside she saw bunched several uniformed men. They were hilariously pushing into the cottage, thrusting the excited Mother Gervaise aside.
Ruth Fielding's rising fear was quenched when she saw the faces of the newcomers more clearly. They were those of young men belonging to the American Expeditionary Forces, as their uniforms betrayed. And they were teasing Mother Gervaise in the free and easy way of American youth.
Nor was she anywhere near as angry as she assumed. They pushed her into the cottage and crowded in themselves before they saw Ruth standing at the end of the long table. Then, quite suddenly, their voices fell.
Not so Mother Gervaise. She fetched one of her tormentors a sharp smack with the palm of her hand.
"Un vaurien!" she cried, meaning, in the slang of the day, "good-for-nothing." "You would take my house by storm! Do you think it is a Boche dugout you charge when you come to Mother Gervaise?"
The silence of the rough and careless fellows was becoming marked. Already the Frenchwoman was noticing it. She turned, saw their eyes fixed upon Ruth, and remarked:
"Ha! It's well they respect the mademoiselle. Come in, wicked ones, and shut the door."
Ruth, relieved, saw that all were young commissioned officers—a very, very young captain, two first lieutenants, and several subalterns. They bowed rather bashfully to Ruth, and could not take their eyes off her.
One finally said: "You must be the lady at the Clair Hospital—Miss Fielding? You're the only American girl at that station."
"I am Miss Fielding," Ruth returned. Her eyes shone, her tone grew softer. She saw that he belonged to Tom Cameron's regiment. "I have a friend in your regiment—Mr. Cameron. Lieutenant Thomas Cameron. Is he on duty with you?"
Their respectful silence when they tumbled in and saw her was marked. But the utter dumbness that followed this question was so impressive that Ruth could almost hear her own heart beat.
"What—— He is not hurt?" she cried, looking from one to the other.
"I believe not, Miss Fielding," the captain said. "He is not on duty with us. I can tell you nothing about Lieutenant Cameron."
The decision with which he spoke and the expression upon the faces of the others, appalled the girl. She could not find breath to ask another question.
Mother Gervaise bustled forward to set upon the napkin she had spread a plate of the ragout for Ruth. The latter sank into the chair. The young officers gathered upon the other side of the hearth. They were hopelessly dumb.
There was a noise outside—the chugging of a car. It was a welcome relief. The door opened again and Charlie Bragg and the other two boys entered.
"Well, the Boches didn't get us that time," said Charlie, with satisfaction. "Nor the old fliver, either. Hello! Here's General Haig and all his staff. Or is it General Disorder? Hurry up with the Mulligan, Mother Gervaise—we've got to gobble and go."
He slipped into the seat next to Ruth, smiling at her. He was just a hungry, slangy boy. But those others——
Ruth could scarcely force the food down; but she determined to make a meal for her body's sake. She did not know what was before her—how much work, or how hard it would be, before she obtained another meal. She managed to ask:
"Is the car all right again, Charlie?"
"You can't bust it!" he declared enthusiastically. "The Britishers make all manner of fun of 'em. Call 'em 'mechanical fleas' and all that. But with a hammer, a monkey-wrench, and some bale-wire, a fellow can perform major and minor operations on a fliver in the middle of a garageless wilderness and come through all right when better cars are left for the junk department to gather up and salvage."
The other two ambulance drivers to whom Ruth had been introduced came to the table and finished their suppers, Mother Gervaise grumblingly dishing up more hot stew for them.
"It is for you and such as you I slave and slave," she said. "And what thanks do I get?"
"For la zozotte do you work, Mother," said one, laughing. "And who would want better thanks than money?"
But Ruth kissed the woman when she rose to depart. She believed Mother Gervaise was "tender under her rough skin," as is the saying.
The young officers had not come to the table while Ruth remained; nor did Charlie pay much attention to them. At least, he did not try to introduce them, and Ruth was glad of that.
There was something wrong. There was a mystery. Why should Tom Cameron's own associates act so oddly when his name was mentioned?
She merely bowed to the officers, but shook hands with Charlie's brother ambulanciers. There seemed to her something very wholesome and fine about these youths who drove the ambulances. They had—most of them—come to France and enlisted in their present employment before the United States got into the war at all.
She suspected that many of them were of that class known about their home neighborhoods as "that boy of Jones'," or "that Jackson kid." In other words, their overflow of animal spirits, or ambition, or whatever it was, had probably made them something of a trial to their neighbors, if not to their families.
Ruth began to see them in a sort of golden glow of heroism. They were the truer heroes because they denied this designation. Charlie grew red and gruff if she as much as suggested that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. Yet she knew he had written a book about his first year's experiences and his brother had found a publisher for it in New York. His share of the proceeds from that book was going to the Red Cross.
Into the ambulance they climbed, and again they were rolling over the dark and rough road. Ruth gathered together all her courage and asked:
"Do you know anything about Tom Cameron?"
"Tom Cameron?"
"Yes," she said. "I want to know what's happened to him, Charlie."
"For the love of Pete!" gasped the young fellow. "I didn't know anything had happened to him—again."
"I must know," Ruth told him, her voice quivering. "Some of those officers belonged to his battalion. All were of his regiment. But when I asked about him they refused to answer."
"You don't mean it!" Plainly Charlie Bragg was nonplussed. "I thought they acted funny," he said, with a sudden grin, which she sensed rather than saw. "But I thought it was girlitis. It has a terrible effect upon these fellows that haven't seen a real American girl for so long."
"I am serious, Charlie," she told him. "Something has happened to Tom—or about him. It seems to me that those officers were afraid to speak of it. As though there was something—something disgraceful about it!"
"Oh, say!" murmured Charlie. "That's not sense, you know."
"Of course Tom could do nothing disgraceful. But why should those men be afraid to speak of him?" cried the shaken girl. "He can't be wounded again. That can't be it. Haven't you heard a word?"
She suddenly realized that her companion had grown silent. He made no comment now upon her speech. She waited a full minute before bursting out again:
"You have heard something, Charlie! Something about Tom!"
"I—I don't know," he muttered. "I didn't know it was Tom."
"What is it?" she demanded with rising eagerness.
"I don't know that it's about Cameron now," he muttered. "I should hope not."
"Charlie Bragg! Do you want to drive me wild?" she demanded, clutching at his arm.
"Hold on! You'll have us in the ditch," he warned her.
"You answer me—at once!" she commanded.
"Oh—— But what can I say? I don't know anything. I don't believe Tom Cameron would be tricky—not a bit. And as for selling out to the Boches——"
"What do you mean?" almost shrieked the girl. "Are you crazy, Charlie Bragg?"
"There you go," he grumbled. "I told you I didn't know anything—for sure. But I heard some gossip."
"About Tom?"
"I didn't know it was about Tom. And I don't know now. But what you say about how funny those chaps acted——"
"Do explain!" begged Ruth. "Come right out with it, Charlie."
"Why, I heard a chap had been accused of giving information to the enemy. Yes. One of our own chaps—an American. It's said he met a Boche spy on listening post—right out there between the lines. He was seen twice."
"Not Tom?"
"No name told when I heard it. First a fellow saw him talking to a figure that stole away toward the German line. This fellow told his top sergeant, and toppy told his captain. They waited and watched. Three men saw the same thing happen. They were going to have the blamed traitor up before the brass hats when all of a sudden he disappeared."
"Who disappeared?" gasped Ruth Fielding.
"This chap they suspect gave information to the Boches. He's gone—like that!"
"Captured?" questioned Ruth breathlessly.
"Or gone over to them," returned Charlie, with evident unwillingness.
Ruth sighed. "But that never could be Tom Cameron!"
"You wouldn't think so," was the reply. "But that's all I can guess that those fellows had in mind when they would not answer you—good gracious, look at that!"
He braked madly. The ambulance rocked and came to an abrupt standstill. Across the track, scarcely two yards before the nose of the car, had dashed a white object, which, soundlessly, was gone in half a minute—swallowed up in the shadowy field beside the road.
"We see it again, Ruth," said Charlie Bragg, with a strange solemnity.
"What do you mean?" she demanded, but her voice, too, shook.
"The werwolf. That dog—whatever it is. Ghost or despatch-bearer, whatever you call it. I got a good sight of it again, Miss Ruth. Didn't you?"
That the peasants of the surrounding territory should believe in that old and wicked legend of the werwolf was not to be considered strange. There is not a country in Europe where the tale of the human being who can change his form at will to that of a wolf, is not repeated.
Ruth Fielding had come across the superstition—and for the first time in the company of Charlie Bragg—as she had approached the town of Clair to begin her work in that hospital some months before.
This same white figure which they had both now glimpsed had crossed the road, flying as it was now toward the trenches. The werwolf, as the superstitious French peasants declared it to be, crossed both to and from the battle line; for it was frequently seen.
It was of this mystery Henriette Dupay had spoken in the library of the chateau that very afternoon. The Dupays believed absolutely in the reality of the werwolf.
Only, they were not of those who connected the "Thing" with the lady of the chateau. Although Ruth Fielding had reason to believe that the police authorities trusted the Countess Marchand and were sure of her loyalty, many of the peasants about the chateau believed that the werwolf was the unfortunate countess herself in diabolical form.
And even Ruth could not help feeling a qualm, as she saw the fast-disappearing creature—ghost or what-not—that fled into the darkness.
"Gosh!" murmured the slangy Charlie Bragg. "Enough to give a fellow heart-disease. I thought I was going to run it down."
"I wonder," said Ruth slowly, as he again started the car, "if it would not have been a good thing if you had run it down."
"Can't bust up a ghost that way, Miss Ruth," he returned, beginning to chuckle again.
"Talk sense, Charlie," she urged, forgetting for the moment the subject of the suspicion resting upon Tom Cameron and giving her mind to this other mystery. "You know, I've an idea this foolishness about a white wolf can be easily explained."
"Go ahead and explain," he returned. "I'm free to confess it's got me guessing."
"I believe it is the big greyhound, Bubu, that belongs to the Chateau Marchand. It is sent on errands to and from the frontier."
"Canine spy?" chuckled Charlie.
"I don't know just what he does. But I did think that the old serving woman, Bessie, that the countess brought with her from Mexico so many years ago, knew all about Bubu's escapades. But Bessie is not at the chateau now."
"Oh," said Charlie, "she was the woman who went off with those two crooks who helped your friend, Mrs. Rose Mantel, rob the Red Cross supply department."
"Not my friend, I should hope!" Ruth said sharply, for the matter Charlie touched upon was still a tender subject with the girl.
Her mind dwelt for a moment upon the presence of Major Henri Marchand at the chateau. He was there, and the greyhound, Bubu, was running at large again at night. Was there not something significant in the two facts? But she said nothing regarding this suspicion to the ambulance driver.
Instead, she came back to the subject which had occupied their minds previous to the appearance of the white object that had crossed the road.
"Of course, it is quite ridiculous," she said, "to think of Tommy Cameron doing anything at all treacherous. I can imagine his doing almost anything reckless, but always on the right side."
"Some little hero, is he?" chuckled Charlie Bragg.
"I think he is the stuff of which heroes are made—just like yourself, Charlie Bragg."
"Oh! I say!" he objected. "Now you are getting personal."
"Then don't try to be funny with me," declared Ruth earnestly. "I have too good an opinion of all our well-brought-up American boys—to which class both Tom and you belong—to believe that any of them could be made under any conditions to betray their fellows."
"Oh, as to that!" he admitted. "Nor any of our roughnecks, either. We've got a mighty fine army over here, rank and file. Deliberately, I doubt if any of them would give information to the Heinies. But they do say that when the Huns capture a man, if they want information, they don't care what they do to him to get it. The old police third degree isn't a patch on what these Boches do."
"I am not afraid that even torture would make Tom do anything mean," she said, with a little sob. "But these officers back there at that cottage must actually believe that he has gone over to the enemy."
"If Cameron is the fellow I heard about this morning," Charlie said gloomily enough, "it is generally believed that he has been two days beyond the lines—and he didn't have to go."
"Oh! Impossible!"
"I'm repeating what I heard. This flurry during the afternoon is an outcome of his disappearance. The German guns caught a train of ammunition camions and smashed things up pretty badly. Many tricks like that pulled off will make us mighty short of ammunition in this sector. Then Heinie can come over the top and do with us just as he pleases. Naturally, if the boys believe Cameron is at fault, they are going to be as sore on him as a boil."
"It would be utterly impossible for Tom to do such a thing!" the girl declared with finality.
Her assurance made the matter no less terrible. Ruth had no belief at all in Tom's willingly giving himself up to the enemy. Had there been a hundred witnesses to see him go, she would have denied the possibility of his being a traitor.
But she was very silent during the rest of that wild ride. Now and then they were stopped by sentinels and had to show their papers. At least, the Red Cross girl had to show hers. Charlie was pretty well known by everybody in this part of the war zone.
They would come to a dugout in the hillside, or a half-hidden hut, and be challenged by a sentinel, or by one of the military police. A pocket lamp would play upon Ruth's face, then upon her passport, and the sentinel would grunt, salute, and the car would plunge on again. It seemed to Ruth as though this went on for hours.
All the time her brain was active with the possibilities surrounding Tom Cameron's disappearance. What could really have happened to him? Should she write to Helen in Paris, or to his father in America, of the mystery? Indeed, would the censor let such news pass?
Once she had believed Tom seriously wounded, and for several days had hunted for him, expecting to find him mutilated. Fortunately her expectations at that time had been unfounded.
It seemed now, however, as though there could be no doubt but something very dreadful had happened to her friend. Added to his peril, too, was this awful suspicion that others seemed to hold regarding Tom's faithfulness.
It was going to be very hard, indeed, for Ruth Fielding to keep her mind on her work in the Red Cross while this uncertainty regarding Lieutenant Cameron remained.
There was the flash of a lamp ahead.
"Here we are!" cried Charlie Bragg, in a tone of relief, bringing the car to a rocking stop.
Ruth Fielding could see but little as she looked out from under the hood of the ambulance. Yet she imagined there was a ridge of land behind the compound at the entrance to which they had halted.
Charlie got out and helped her down. A second man appeared in the gateway of the stockade beside the sentinel. The girl approached with the ambulance driver, who said:
"Here she is, Doc. And a load of stuff she says you'll need. This is Miss Fielding—and she's a regular good fellow. Doctor Monteith, Miss Fielding."
"I am glad to see you," the surgeon said warmly, taking the bag from Ruth and seizing her cold hand in his warm clasp. "We are very busy here and very short of supplies. Our stores were utterly destroyed when——"
He did not finish his statement, but ushered her into the compound. There were a few twinkling lights. She saw that there were a number of huts within this enclosure, each being, of course, a ward.
They left Charlie Bragg and an orderly to remove the supplies from the ambulance while the surgeon took Ruth to the hut that was to be her own. On the way they passed a crushed and shapeless mass that might once, the girl thought, have been another hut.
"Is that——?" she asked, pointing.
"Yes. The shell dropped squarely on it. We got her out from under the wreckage after putting out the fire. She was killed instantly," said the surgeon. "You are not frightened, Miss Fielding?"
"Why—yes," she said gravely. "I have, however, been frightened before. We have had night air raids at Clair. But, as Charlie Bragg says, 'I have not been killed yet.'"
"That is the way to look at it," he said cheerfully. "It's the only way. Back in all our minds is the expectation of sudden death, I suppose. Only—if it is sudden! That is what we pray for—if it is to come."
"I know," Ruth said softly. "But let us keep from thinking of it. Who is this lady?" she asked a moment later.
"Ah!" said the gentlemanly surgeon, seeing the figure in the doorway of the new supply hut. "It is our matron, Mrs. Strang. A lovely lady. I will leave you to her kindness."
He introduced the girl to the elderly woman, who examined Ruth with frank curiosity as she entered the hut.
"You are a real American, I presume," the woman said, smiling.
"I hope so."
"Not to be frightened by what has happened here already?"
"We expect such sad happenings, do we not?"
"Yes. We must. But this was a terrible thing. They say," the matron observed, "that it was the result of treachery."
"Oh! You do not mean——?"
"They say a man has sold a map of this whole sector to the Boches. A man—faugh! There are such creatures in all armies. Perhaps there are more among our forces than we know of. They say many of foreign blood among the Expeditionary Force are secretly against the war and are friends of the enemy."
"I cannot believe that!" cried Ruth. "We are becoming tainted with the fears of the French. Because they have found so many spies!"
"We will find just as many, perhaps," said Mrs. Strang, bitterly. "France is a republic and the United States is a republic. Does freedom breed traitors, I wonder?"
"I guess," Ruth said gently, "that we may have been too kind to certain classes of immigrants to the United States. Unused to liberty they spell it l-i-c-e-n-s-e."
"There are people other than ignorant foreigners who must be watched in these awful times," the matron said bitterly. "There are teachers in our colleges who sneer at patriotism just as they sneer at religion. Whisper, Miss Fielding! I am told that the very man they suspect in this dreadful thing—the American who has sold a map of this sector to the Germans—came from one of our foremost colleges, and is an American bred and born."
Ruth could not speak in answer to this. Her heart throbbed painfully in her throat. To so accuse Tom Cameron of heartless and dastardly treachery!
She could not defend him. To defend was to accuse! If everybody believed this awful thing——
Ruth was just as sure of Tom Cameron's guiltlessness as she was of her own faithfulness. But how damning the circumstantial evidence must be against him!
She was thankful she heard nothing more of this thing that night. Charlie and other men brought in the supplies. She could not arrange them then, for she was exhausted. She only waited to lock the door when all the supplies were placed, and then found the hut where the women of the Red Cross slept.
She had here a narrow cot, a locker and chair, and the privacy of a movable screen. Nothing else.
This was real "soldiering," as she soon found. Her experiences at Lyse and at Clair had been nothing like this. In one town she had lived at a pension, while at the latter hospital she had had her own little cell in the annex.
However, the girl of the Red Mill never thought of complaining. If these other earnest girls and women could stand such rough experiences why not she?
She slept and dreamed of home—of the Red Mill and Uncle Jabez and Aunt Alvirah Boggs, with her murmured, "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" She was again a child and roamed the woods and fields along the Lumano River with Tom Cameron and Helen.
"I wish I were at home! I wish I were at home!" was her waking thought.
It was the first time she had whispered that wish since leaving the States. But never before had her heart been so sore and her spirit so depressed.
When, some weeks before, she had believed Tom Cameron seriously wounded, she had been frightened and anxious only. Now the whole world seemed to have gone wrong. There was nobody with whom she could confer about this awful trouble.
She arose, and, after making her toilet and before breakfast, went out of the hut. She beheld an entirely different looking landscape from that which she was used to about Clair.
Through the gateway of the compound she saw a rutted road, with dun fields beyond. Behind, the ridge rose abruptly between the hospital and the battle front.
A red-headed young Irishman in khaki stood at the gateway, or tramped up and down with his rifle on his shoulder. He could not look at the girl without grinning, and Ruth smiled in return.
"'Tis a broth of a mornin', Miss," he whispered, as she drew near. "Be you the new lady Charlie Bra-a-agg brought over last night?"
"Yes. I am to take the place of the girl who—who——"
She faltered and could not go on. The Irish lad nodded and blinked rapidly.
"Bedad!" he muttered. "We'll make the Boches pay for that when we go over the top. Never fear."
He halted abruptly, became preternaturally grave, and presented arms. The young surgeon, Dr. Monteith, who had met Ruth the night before, tramped in from a morning walk.
"Good morning, Miss Fielding. Did you sleep?"
She confessed that she did. He smiled, but there was a deep crease between his eyes.
"I am glad you are up betimes. We need some of your supplies. Can I send the orderlies with the schedule soon?"
"Oh, yes! I will try to be ready in half an hour," she cried, turning quickly toward the hut, of which she carried the key.
"Wait! Wait!" he called. "No such hurry as all that. You have not breakfasted, I imagine? Well, never neglect your food. It is vital. I shall not send to you until half-past eight."
He saluted and went on. Ruth went to the hut in which the nurses messed. The night shift had just come in and she found them a pleasant, if serious, lot of women. And of all nationalities by blood—truly American!
There was an air about the nurses in the field hospital different from those she had met in institutions farther back from the battle line. There were serious girls there, but there was always a spatter of irresponsibles as well.
Here the nurses were like soldiers—and soldiers in active and dangerous service. There was a marked reserve about them and an expression of countenance that reminded Ruth of some of the nuns she had seen at home—a serenity that seemed to announce that they had given over worldly thoughts and that their minds were fixed upon higher things.
There was a hushed way of speaking, too, that impressed Ruth. It was as though they listened all the time for something. Was it for the whine of the shells that sometimes came over the ridge and dropped perilously near the hospital?
As the day went on, however, the girl found that there was considerably more cheerfulness and light-heartedness in and about the hospital than she supposed would be found here. Having straightened out her own hut and supplied the various wards with what they needed for the day, she went about, getting acquainted.
It was a large hospital and there were many huts. In each of these shelters were from two dozen to forty patients. A nurse and an orderly took care of each hut, with a night attendant. Everybody was busy.
There were many visitors, too—visitors of all kinds and for all imaginary reasons. People came in automobiles; these had passes from military authorities to see and bring comforts to the wounded. And there were more modest visitors who came on foot and brought baskets of jams and jellies and cakes and home-made luxuries that were eagerly welcomed by the wounded. For soldiers everywhere—whether well or ill—develop a sweet tooth.
Into the compound about midafternoon Ruth saw a tall figure slouch with a basket on his arm. It had begun to drizzle, as it so often does during the winter in Northern France, and this man wore a bedrabbled cloak—a brigandish-looking cloak—over his blue smock.
She had never seen such a figure before; and yet, there was something about the man that seemed familiar to the keen-eyed girl.
"Who is he?" she asked a nurse standing with her at the door of a ward, and pointing to the man slouching along with his basket across the open way.
"Oh, that? It is Nicko, the chocolate peddler," said the nurse carelessly. "A harmless fellow. Not quite right—here," and she tapped her own forehead significantly. "You understand? They say he lived here when first the Boches used their nasty gas, and he was caught in a cellar where a gas bomb exploded, and it affected his brain. It does that sometimes, you know," she added sadly.
Ruth's eyes had followed the chocolate seller intently. Around a corner of a hut swung the surgeon, who was already the girl's friend. He all but ran against the slouching figure, and he spoke sharply to the man.
For an instant the chocolate peddler straightened. He stood, indeed, in a very soldierly fashion. Then, as the quick-tempered surgeon strode on, Nicko bowed. He bowed from the hips—and Ruth gasped as she saw the obeisance. Only yesterday she had seen a man bow in that same way!