Billy, you aren’t kilt entirely, eh? Well, then, hop out and crank her; maybe that volcano didn’t stall her. We’ll turn round, if she runs, and hunt for those stretcher chaps; guess we can find ’em. Say, I’ll bet they’re sorry they saw us coming.”

“No, for here they come again! It could not have reached them. Oooh, but wasn’t it a daisy? For about one second I longed to be back in the good, old United States. Hah! Wait till I spin her. There she goes as fine as a hand organ!”

Don backed and turned the car; then the lads went to the German.

“Well, Fritz, feel better?” Don asked, speaking English.

No answer; a blank stare. Billy comprehended and at once got some fun out of the incident. It was a funereal affair that didn’t have a humorous side for him. He held his spread hand, palm down, over his head, moved it about like the flying of an airplane, pointed to it and to the Hun with his other finger; then making the hand take a big drop through the air and double up on the ground again pointed to the airman. The latter understood at once and scowled at his combined rescuers and captors; then flopped back on the stretcher. The boys restored him to his place in the car and turned to meet the men from the dressing-station. They all looked fagged out, tired beyond endurance. As a matter of fact, they were to keep on many more hours longer. Their conversation was brief, but to the point.

“Red Cross? Get these men back as quickly as you can and return at once. We are in an abri there by the woods. Tell Major Little that the lieutenant wants more ambulances right away. We have eleven wounded; two ‘going West.’”

“All right, I’ll put the juice to her, Sergeant?” Don saw the three bent stripes on the man’s sleeve. The four shifted the wounded, one of whom was unconscious, to the unfolded white stretchers of the car, strapped them down, folded their own brown army stretchers and turned back.

“What does he mean by ‘going West’?” Billy whispered, as they got under way.

“Dying,” replied Don. “Guess it’s an Indian phrase—‘toward the setting sun.’ Poor chaps!”

“O my! I’m afraid one of these,” Billy pointed his thumb over his shoulder, “won’t stay ‘East’ long. I hope he does, but you see, I really ought to study medicine. I get hunches about that sort of thing, you know.”

They flew over the even ground, and moved slowly over the rough. Again in the farm road they were swiftly passing the house when a cry from one of their passengers arrested their attention. It was a cry for water.

Don pressed down his brake and turned to Billy. “That canteen—” he began.

“I think that a real cold drink,” suggested the young man, “would do more good. Oughtn’t they to have a well here? Suppose I see.”

“We’ll both go and get a pull, too; then bring some back. Come on!” Don said.

The quaint little half-stone domicile, in the very midst of this shell-torn area, faced directly east; the rear was, therefore, away and thus somewhat sheltered from the enemy’s lines. There had been a French or American dressing station in the front room, but a German 77-m. shell had come along and demolished the wall and a portion of the interior. The boys quickly passed under the newly leafing fruit trees, where bird arrivals were singing, and reached the rear of the house. Here, in the mellowing spring-time warmth, an old woman and an old man were sitting; the one on the door step, the other, upon an ancient stone seat, leaning his head on his cane. By the side of the old woman’s knee a little child of about four years gazed up at the visitors with wide-open, blue eyes.

Don, knowing no French and forgetting that Billy knew a little, resorted to pantomime. He made a cup of his hand and lifted it to his lips; the old man pronounced the word water very distinctly and pointed to a well-sweep among the shrubbery. While Don drew forth a moss-covered bucket of water that looked sparkling, Billy was recalling his school-day language and getting information. Yes, the old couple were trusting in the mercy of a Higher Power; if it were His will to take them, well and good, but they hoped it would be quick and without suffering. Rather than leave their lifetime abode, where they had always known comfort and happiness, they would risk the present dangers, which they hardly seemed to realize. They would dare almost anything rather than wander to strange regions.

And here was little Marie, happy with her grandparents, though her father had died in the war and her mother from grief and illness soon after. Well, the good General Foch, now that he had been made commander of all the armies, would soon chase the wicked boches away. The French would fight on forever, and so would the good English. And then the Americans were coming, they said. Were the young men English?

American! “Vive l’ Amerique!” Ah, it was good to see them. And how soon, oh, how soon would the great army arrive and rid France, dear, suffering, half-destroyed France, from the wicked, hateful boches? “A bas les boches!”

Don had taken water to the wounded men, two of whom received it eagerly; the other lay in a stupor. The passengers, the boy now saw, were two Frenchman, besides the German airman.

“Come on, Billy!” Don called, and shaking hands with the old people and lifting the child for a kiss, hastened away. As he leaped into the machine and Billy ran to the front end, grasping the crank, they heard again, now not high overhead, the roar of a flying motor and there came an airplane, marked with the black Maltese cross, sailing across their road and very nearly over them.

“I guess he can see our Red Cross sign,” Billy said, but Don, having heard many stories, was taking no chances; he started and flew swiftly down the road. Blam! Something exploded far behind them and to one side of the road. Again, within a few seconds, another detonation, much nearer, came to their ears. Billy was craning his neck out of the side of the car.

“He’s after us! Would you think it? I suspect he’ll get us, too, unless we beat him out to the soldiers. They’ve got anti-aircraft guns, haven’t they, Don?”

“Sure, and he’s got to go some. Just watch us!”

It was a race for a few seconds, though the airman must have been wary, flying low as he did. He could not gain on the car, and soon, with a long sweep, he was turning back, flying now even lower. Where were the Allied airmen? Not one in sight! As Don neared the main road again and reached the little hillock he slowed up, on hearing the crack of light artillery in the fields. The anti-aircraft guns had got busy and the Hun had reason to keep his distance. But if he was foiled in his attempt to wreck an Allied Red Cross ambulance he surely meant to find some prey for his perverted desire to destroy. He had seen the place from where the ambulance had started as he approached; certainly there must be a dressing station in the little farm house.

Billy, looking back then, saw it. The murderous Hun flew lower still over the spot of peacefulness and beauty; if he had any sense of pastoral loveliness, hate and the German desire for mastery had drowned it all. Something falling straight down from the airplane passed exactly over the little stone and frame dwelling and then a great column of flame, of black and gray smoke, of stones and bits of splintered wood leaped upward and sunk to earth again. A cloud of smoke and dust drifted away in the wind.

“Oh, Don! The house, the old people, the little girl!” said Billy with a sob, and Don, clamping down his brakes, gazed at his companion. It was the first time he had seen him with anything different from a smile on his gentle face, even when danger was literally heaped up in front of them. But now the young man’s soft eyes had a horror in them and a gray pallor had taken the place of the pink, almost girlish complexion.

Don looked back and saw the holocaust wrought by the Hun.

“That—that murderous devil!” he exclaimed.

The wounded airman in the car turn his face toward Don and made a remark in German, probably not expecting it to be understood. Don replied in German:

“One of your airmen has blown up the little farmhouse where we got the drink! No doubt the good people are killed!”

“But it is war and a good hit is to be praised. Besides, these degenerate French—”

Don turned on the fellow with the glare of an angry wildcat; in his excitement his German mostly gave way to English.

“What’s that? You teufel! You say that! And when we are treating you decently? Well, we shall just fix you, you—!”

“Oooh, Don! Look, look!”

The airman had once more turned about, evidently to fly back over his work of destruction to feast his eyes on its completeness. Then he met his Waterloo. The long swerves took him beyond and near the woods, where a French 75, aimed by a cool-headed American gunner barked upward just once. With a burst of flame the airplane pitched to the earth. The brutal driver, who refused to respect an ambulance, a supposed dressing station, or the modest home of non-combatants, was probably strapped on his seat and unable to extricate himself went down to the most horrible of deaths.

“Ah, he got his, all righty!” Don shouted; then turning: “And here’s another who’s going to get his! Billy, this Hun, this skunk here, is praising the act of that devil! We’ll just dump him out and let him lie here and suffer and bleed to death. Come on; give a hand!”

“No, no, Don! You can’t mean that. It would not be humane.”

“Humane? I’d be humane to a dog, a cat, a worm even, I hope, but not to a thing like this. Come—!”

“‘As they should do unto you’, Don. I know this is war and he’s a Hun, but it’s all the more of an excuse that he is only partly human; he doesn’t know any better and he has feelings, some. Let’s go on, Don, please, now.” Don leaped to his seat with Billy and they continued on their way.