Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line Part 15

"Six!"

"That's fine. Couldn't be better. Get down now, there may be a Hun barrage in a minute. They'll be ripping mad when they find out what's happened. This was one of their main posts, and Prussians were on guard."

Jerry and Ned were each guarding a Hun prisoner, making him walk along ahead with upraised hands, while the guns, taken away from the Germans themselves, served as compelling weapons.

Into the trenches they had left a short time before the raiders made their way, and went to the dugout where they were to report. There the commanding officer of that sector met them.

Coming into the comparatively well-lighted place from the darkness, Jerry blinked as he looked at the captured Germans and then glanced to see how badly Ned was hurt.

He saw that his chum was pale, and noted blood on his hands, but Ned smiled in a rea.s.suring way. Then, for the first time, Jerry noticed that Bob was not with them.

"Where's Chunky?" he demanded.

"Who?" asked the lieutenant. "I thought we only left Black, Jones, and Porter behind. Is there another missing?"

"Bob Baker, sir," answered Jerry. "But he was with us when we got back within our own wire. I was talking to him."

"Send out a searching party!" ordered the captain. "It is possible he was. .h.i.t and didn't say anything about it, or a stray bullet may have found him after he reached our lines. Send out and see!"

CHAPTER XIII

"JUST LIKE HIM!"

Jerry and Ned both confessed, afterward, that the sinking feeling, which seemed to carry their hearts away down into their muddy shoes, was greater at the knowledge that Bob was missing than it had been when they set out in the darkness to raid the Germans across the desolate stretch of No Man's Land.

It was all so unexpected. He had gone through the baptism of fire with them--he had helped capture the Huns--and had been, seemingly, all right on the return trip. And then, on the very threshold of his own army home, so to speak, he had disappeared.

"Did any one see him fall or hear of his being hit?" asked the lieutenant, as he prepared to lead out a searching party. Ned and Jerry, of course, and by rights, would be members of it.

"No, he was right near me, Sir, and he said particularly, when I asked him, that he was only scratched," declared Jerry. "I made sure Ned was the worst hurt."

"How much are you hurt?" asked the captain, turning to Jerry's chum.

"Oh, it's only a scratch, Sir," was the quick answer. "I can't feel it now."

Ned did not speak the exact truth, but he did not want to be kept back from the search.

"Very well," said the captain. "You may go, but don't go too far. Much as we would like to find Baker we must not take too many chances and endanger this whole post. Be as quick as you can."

With their hearts torn between a desire for vengeance and apprehension, Ned and Jerry went out with the others. The riot started by the raid had quieted down, and it was possible for the searchers to advance above their own trenches without drawing the German fire.

First the sentries who had been on duty near the gap in the American wire were questioned. They had seen the party depart and come back, but they had not noticed any member of it fall as though wounded, and they were positive no Germans had been able to get near enough to capture Private Baker.

"But what can have happened to him?" asked the lieutenant.

"He may have been wounded internally, and didn't speak of it, Sir,"

suggested Ned, whose own wound was troubling him woefully. "Then he may have become so weak that he fell in the trench somewhere without a sound."

"That is possible. We must make a careful search."

This was done with pocket flashlights, for any general illumination would have, perhaps, drawn a German attack. But no sign of Bob was revealed. It was most mysterious, how he could disappear so suddenly and completely. Of course, in the general confusion, much more than this might have happened and not been noticed. But unless he had gone back after speaking to Jerry, he must either have fallen well within the American lines or have been captured there. And the last did not seem possible.

"Well," said the lieutenant, "we'll have to go over in No Man's Land and take a chance there. He must have gone back after something, and been potted. I'll have to go back and report and----"

He paused to listen. The tramp of approaching feet could be heard along the trench. Every man stood at attention, for it was possible that the enemy had slipped in between sentries and were going to pay a return visit.

But a moment later the murmur of voices was heard--voices that were unmistakably American. Some one asked:

"Is your squad stationed here?"

"About here, yes, Sir," was the answer, coming out of the darkness.

"It's Chunky!" cried Jerry.

"That's Bob!" added Ned, joyously.

And a moment later there came into the dim light of the flashlights the stout chum himself, escorted by three soldiers. He seemed to be all right, and he carried something that was not a grenade, in one hand.

"Where have you been, Chunky?" demanded Jerry. "We've been looking everywhere for you."

"Yes," added the lieutenant, "will you please explain why you did not report back with the rest of us?"

Bob seemed a trifle surprised at the rather stern order, but he smiled and answered:

"Why, I thought, as long as we got back all right, I was relieved from duty, so I went to get something to eat."

"Something to eat!" exclaimed the lieutenant.

"Something to eat," calmly repeated Bob. "You see it was this way. I was terribly hungry----"

"Nothing unusual," murmured Jerry, but the stout lad, paying no attention to the interruption, went on:

"So when I got back with the rest, after we captured the Huns, I smelled something cooking farther up in our trenches. I knew some of the fellows on duty there, and I felt sure they'd give me something to eat. It was liberty links they were cooking, sir, and----"

"Liberty links!" interrupted the lieutenant. "What are those?"

"They used to be called Frankfurters," explained Bob with a grin; "but since the war that's too German. So I went to get some liberty links, and I got 'em!" he added with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Well! Well!" exclaimed the lieutenant. And then, as he thought of what Bob and the others had gone through with that night, he had not the heart to add more.

"I only meant to run up in a hurry to where they were cooking 'em,"

explained Bob, "and come back with some for my bunkies. But I got to talking and eating----"

"Mostly eating," murmured Jerry.