CHAPTER XIII

A TEST OF PLUCK

“I hear we’re in for another big time.”

It was three weeks after the unfortunate affair of the lost films and the moving picture boys were beginning to recover somewhat from their disappointment, though the hope of ultimately recovering the films never for a moment left their minds.

Joe, too, owing to his splendid constitution and the fact that his injury had not been as serious as they at first supposed, had recovered in a remarkably short time and was, as he expressed it, “once more game for anything.”

“What do you mean?” asked the latter in response to Blake’s statement. “More work at the front?”

“Yes, if you want to call it work,” answered Blake happily. “I call it the biggest kind of a lark.”

“Come across, will you?” requested Joe somewhat impatiently. “You have a habit of enjoying things all by yourself. What is it this time? More battle pictures?”

“Yes,” answered Blake, thoughtfully chewing a piece of long grass. “Only this time our boys are going to do the attacking. Just small raiding parties, I guess, more to get the lay of the land than anything else. Hello, whom have we here?”

The exclamation was caused by the arrival upon the scene of Mr. Christopher Cutler Piper, gloom producer and disperser, and Charlie.

“No one much,” said Joe disconsolately, in reply to Blake’s exclamation. “Gee, why does something always happen to take the joy out of life!”

“I hope you don’t mean me,” said C. C., grinning with unusual good nature. “On the contrary, I have come for the express purpose of putting more joy into your young lives. Glad to see you up and around again so soon, Joe, old man,” he added, turning to the latter. “It was more than I expected.”

“Or hoped?” added Joe, grinning.

“There you go,” C. C. was protesting, when Charlie interrupted.

“Do you know what was the main topic of conversation on the way up?” he asked wickedly.

“No. What?” they asked together while C. C. assumed an injured air.

“How disappointed C. C. was in Joe for not doing what was expected of him and kicking off in a nice orderly manner,” replied Macaroni, enjoying C. C.’s discomfiture to the utmost. “He, at least, expected him to be considerate enough to lose a couple of legs.”

“What do you think I am?” C. C. demanded indignantly.

“Something pretty bad,” responded Macaroni, unabashed.

Seeing that a separate little war of its own was about to be started, Blake hastily intervened.

“See anything of Mr. Hadley?” he asked of Mr. Piper. “Said he’d be along in half an hour and after an hour he still keeps himself in the background. I wonder what’s the idea.”

“Captured by the Boches, maybe,” suggested C. C., hopefully. “I told him he’d get his some day, prying around in places he had no business to be.”

“There he is now,” said Charlie, as the manager came hurrying toward them with a worried look on his face. “Gee, now I wonder what’s up. He looks as if the war was lost.”

Mr. Hadley seemed, indeed, to be laboring under some excitement, for while he was still some distance away he made a megaphone of his hands and shouted his question at them.

“Are you fellows ready to start?” he wanted to know. “We’ve got just ten minutes to get there before the party commences.”

“Get where, before what party?” Charlie was murmuring as Mr. Hadley hurried up to them. “Some day that man will start something and then he’ll die of heart failure. It would be just as easy to tell you what he’s getting at first as last.”

“Well, I suppose he makes the mistake of leaving something to your intelligence,” remarked Blake.

“_What_ a mistake,” sighed Joe.

Before the badgered Macaroni had time to answer to either of these insults the excited Mr. Hadley was upon them and issuing orders with the rapidity of lightning.

“Got your machine fixed, Blake--all the stuff ready? That’s right. Now for some pictures to replace those others. Come on, a little speed, boys. Got your nerve with you?”

As this was his usual question before they went into action, and as the moving picture boys considered they had answered it effectively more than once, they made no reply now, only prepared to follow the leader with all the dispatch possible.

“I feel like the babes in the wood,” Charlie confided in a breathless undertone, as they hurried on toward the scene of action. “I know not where I go.”

“Doesn’t make any difference, as long as you keep going,” Blake returned cheerfully.

“Probably all end up in a hole in the ground,” gloomed a voice close by and they turned in surprise to find C. C. trudging on beside them.

“Gee, you here?” exclaimed Macaroni with appalling candor. “I forgot all about you.”

“Thanks,” said C. C. bitterly. “That’s all I get for trying to be a friend in need.”

“But we’re not in need,” countered Mac airily. “When we are we’ll send you a telegram, so you can attend the funeral.”

“What’s the idea, anyway?” queried Joe with interest.

“Coming to catch a little Boche?” Blake added jocularly. “Put him in a cage and send him to some nice little French girl as a souvenir?”

“Well, say,” remarked C. C. with animation. “That may not be such a joke as it sounds, the capturing part, anyway.”

“Yes, better men than you have done it,” remarked Charlie soberly. “They say wonders never cease.”

“How are you going to do it, C. C.?” asked Joe with a grin. “Going to get a mouse trap and bait it with limburger?”

“Say, what do you think?” C. C. was beginning indignantly when Mr. Hadley paused and waited impatiently for them to come up.

“This work is something like the other,” he told them, hurriedly, “only that this time our boys are going to attack. It’s up to you to catch the start and then follow it up to the grand finish. I’m expecting big results.”

“But suppose our boys get the worst of it?” Charlie suggested. “Suppose they have to retreat?”

“Then you fall back with them, of course,” said Mr. Hadley impatiently, “and take your chance with the rest. But they won’t retreat. Now, are you ready?”

“All ready,” they responded promptly and once more went forward with all caution toward the trenches.

There was no chance for light badinage now, or conversation of any sort. Silent as ghosts, the boys stole forward through the woodland.

Exactly as they had done upon that former occasion, they slipped into the trenches and took their appointed places. C. C., exhibiting unexpected courage, took up his stand beside them.

Then, in a silence that strained every nerve to the breaking point, they stood and waited.

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