CHAPTER V
CHEATING THE EYE
“Dandy car you’ve got there,” commented Blake, as the big machine purred along with scarcely a jar, yet so swiftly that the miles were fairly eaten up.
“It runs like a dream,” observed Joe.
“It’s a lallapalooza,” added Macaroni.
“The old girl does move along rather lively,” agreed the lieutenant with a touch of pride in his voice. “Everything that Uncle Sam sends over is mighty good stuff. There’s nothing too good for the army boys.”
“Maybe the Germans wouldn’t like to get hold of a few of these,” chuckled Blake. “I hear they’re so short of rubber now that they’ve stopped using tires, and their old machines go clanking along like so much scrap iron over the pavement.”
“They’ll be short of more things than rubber before we get through with them,” remarked the lieutenant.
“Short of breath if they keep on running as they have for the last few days,” laughed Blake.
“They’ll be good Marathon runners before our boys finish the job,” grinned Joe.
“Look out for that shell hole, Lieutenant,” cautioned Mac.
“I see it,” responded the officer, as he deftly guided his car past the edge of a deep crater in the center of the road. “Lucky it’s daytime instead of night, or we might have had a spill. It’s a shame,” he added. “These roads of Northern France were among the finest in the world, but they’ll all be shot to pieces before this war is over.”
They had gone several miles when Blake remarked:
“That’s a pretty big patch of woodland we’re coming to, Lieutenant. Does the road pass right through it?”
The officer seemed to be busy with one of the clutches and apparently did not hear the question. The car kept on with unabated speed directly toward the trees.
“Something funny about those trees, don’t you think?” Joe asked curiously.
“In what way?” queried Blake.
“Why, there doesn’t seem to be a leaf stirring,” replied Joe, “and yet there’s a pretty good breeze blowing down here.”
Nearer and nearer the car sped towards the woods.
“Look out, Lieutenant,” cried Mac as he reached forward to clutch the officer’s arm. “You’re going to run right into that tree.”
Baker paid no attention and a shout of alarm rose from all three as the machine made straight for a mighty oak.
Then suddenly the oak seemed to split apart, two sentries stood one on either side of where the tree had been standing, and, as though by magic, the car glided into a vast rectangular space that the boys saw at once was one of Uncle Sam’s army training camps.
They looked at each other sheepishly, while the lieutenant broke into a roar of laughter.
“Stung!” exclaimed Blake.
“One on us,” admitted Joe.
“I sure thought we were goners that time,” muttered Mac, a little shamefacedly, yet with unmistakable relief for escape from what had seemed to be imminent peril.
“You movie boys were from Missouri and wanted to be shown,” chaffed the lieutenant good-naturedly. “Well, I’ve shown you, haven’t I?”
“We acknowledge the corn,” admitted Blake with a laugh. “Whoever rigged up that fake curtain was a sure enough artist.”
“He’d make a dandy bunco steerer,” grinned Joe. “He’s certainly a gay deceiver.”
“It isn’t ‘he,’ it’s ‘they,’” corrected the officer. “There’s been an army of men at work on this curtain. You see, it stretches away for nearly half a mile. If German batteries caught sight of that, they’d simply think it was a patch of woods, and no matter how closely they looked at it through their glasses they couldn’t see any one stirring and they wouldn’t waste any shells on it.”
“And you don’t even have to knock to get in here,” laughed Blake. “Those sentries seemed to spring from the ground.”
“They saw us coming,” explained the lieutenant, “and at the right moment they touched a spring and the curtain rolled back on either side.”
“It’s certainly great stuff,” commented Blake, as the moving picture boys and their assistant looked about them with interest.
“I see you’re protected from the sky, too,” observed Joe, as he looked up at great strips of canvas arranged at intervals over sections of the road.
“Yes,” replied Baker, “that’s to fool the aviators. Those strips are covered with grass so that it makes the place look just like an ordinary field. The men who are in training here carry on their work under those strips of canvas so that they can’t be seen from above.”
“The aviators or somebody got that horse though,” said Charlie, as he pointed to where a horse was lying stiff and stark by the side of the road.
“Poor old brute,” murmured Joe Duncan, sympathetically.
“I should think they’d get him out of the way as soon as possible,” said Blake, sniffing the air. “It’s pretty hot weather to leave him lying around.”
As he spoke, a soldier emerged from the body of the horse, stood up to his full height of six feet or more, stretched himself, yawned, and then as he caught sight of the lieutenant came smartly at salute.
The boys hardly dared to look at Baker, who was shaking with inward laughter.
“What a bunch of come-ons we are,” groaned Blake.
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut after this,” asseverated Joe.
“And your nose, too, when you come near dead horses,” joked the lieutenant. “But come close now and let’s have a look at this defunct animal.”
The boys examined the dummy horse with some chagrin but great curiosity. It was an exact reproduction of what a dead horse would appear to be. The body was swelled beyond the normal size, the head hung limp, and two of the legs extended stiffly into the air. It was made of hide stretched over a framework of bamboo.
“See how light it is,” said the officer.
Joe and Blake put their hands beneath it and lifted it easily into the air.
“That makes it easy to transport,” explained Baker. “The camouflage corps can rig up one of these in a few minutes. Then it can be slipped out at night anywhere in No Man’s Land not far from the German lines. There’s a scout inside it with a rifle and a pair of field glasses and he can find out most of what the enemy’s doing or planning to do. To the Germans it’s only one dead horse among many, and they don’t tumble to it. Get inside, Larkin,” he directed, turning to the young soldier, “and show us just how the thing is worked.”
With a grin the man obeyed, slipping into the large cavity and arranging himself comfortably upon his side.
“Now come around to this side of the horse,” said the lieutenant to the boys.
They did as directed and saw the wicked-looking muzzle of Larkin’s rifle pointed toward them through a hole in the hide.
“There he is,” said Baker with a laugh, “all ready for business. As snug and comfortable as you please.”
“Pretty cramped though,” remarked Blake. “He hasn’t room enough to change his mind.”
“No,” admitted the lieutenant, “he hasn’t all the comforts of home, but still he does well enough, and that repeating rifle of his would certainly give the Huns a surprise party if they came prowling around too near. Only the other day, one of our boys in a contraption like this wiped out an entire German patrol of half a dozen men. The Heinies didn’t know where the bullets were coming from. But come along now and we’ll see some things these fakirs are doing.
“Look at that tree,” he said, after they had walked a little further. “Do you see anything strange about it?”
“I don’t know about trees,” said Blake suspiciously. “Since you fooled us when you were running into that fake oak tree back there I’ve grown distrustful.”
“Oh, this is a real tree,” laughed the lieutenant. “I give you my word for that. But look at it closely. Anyone in it?”
“Not a soul,” declared Joe promptly.
“Wouldn’t want to bet on it, would you?” asked Baker.
“I wouldn’t bet on anything in this dump,” said Joe emphatically. “I wouldn’t even bet that I’m alive.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, “there is a man there, just as big and tall a man as any of us four, and he isn’t hiding behind the trunk or any branch of it either. You’re looking at him right now and you don’t see him.”
The boys rubbed their eyes and looked more closely. It was not a thickly branched tree, the sun was streaming through it, and they were sure they could see every inch of it that was toward them. And Lieutenant Baker had assured them that the man was not on the further side of the tree.
“Well. I’ll put you out of your misery,” laughed the lieutenant. “Just fix your eyes on the trunk about two-thirds of the way up. Notice anything unusual up there?”
“Seems to me it’s a little thicker there,” pronounced Blake.
“Bulges out a bit,” observed Joe.
“Seems to me to be a little crinkly like a caterpillar,” commented Charlie.
The lieutenant gave a whistle and then the resemblance to a caterpillar became more pronounced as the whole trunk seemed to crinkle into successive waves until the foot of the tree was reached. Then with a quick motion a part of the bark seemed to detach itself from the tree and to come directly toward them.
“That’s all right, Thompson,” said the officer. “Open up.”
A flap fell from the head of the figure and they saw the face of a man, rather red from exertion, but wearing a broad smile.
“A little comedy I had staged for your benefit,” laughed the lieutenant. “I’d phoned over to them that we were coming and gave them a tip to let us see what they could do in the way of tree climbing. Come a little closer, Thompson, and let’s have a look at you. Or rather, back up against the tree and show us how those stripes of yours harmonize with the bark.”
The man did as directed and they crowded around him.
It was astonishing to see how perfect was the harmony between the markings of the tree and the garb the man wore. The tree had gray and white marks, and these were duplicated perfectly in the man’s costume. At the distance of a few rods it was most difficult to detect the difference.
“We use these for sniping,” observed the lieutenant. “On a settled portion of the front we have perhaps twenty, fifty or a hundred of these men, stationed in tall trees that command almost the entire space of No Man’s Land in that particular section. Even their rifles are striped in the same way so as to make no contrast against the background of the tree. The men are crack shots and they’ve saved many a Heinie the trouble of taking the long hike back to the Rhine.”
“Well,” remarked Blake, taking a long breath, “this would be no place for a man with delirium tremens.”
“I’d be a candidate for a padded cell myself if I stayed here long enough,” affirmed Joe.
“I’m going to hold tight onto my plate at chow to-night,” said Mac, “or I’ll expect to see it vanish out of my hand. I’ve lost confidence in everything. Is this solid ground I’m walking on, or is that camouflaged, too?”
“We haven’t got quite as far as that yet,” replied Lieutenant Baker with a laugh.
For the next hour the moving picture boys sauntered about the camp, finding new marvels at every step. Concrete observation posts that seemed to be mere inequalities in the ground, waving ferns and grasses from which protruded the muzzles of fourteen-inch guns, innocent-looking roadways that really were yawning pits covered lightly with rushes and sods that gave way at the slightest pressure, wooden guns, dummy tanks and a host of other cunning appliances designed to bewilder and mystify the enemy.
“Well,” said Blake, when at length they had reluctantly torn themselves away and were seated once more in the army car, “I have a new respect for the art of camouflage. I didn’t dream that they’d carried it to such an extent.”
“Yes,” put in Mac, “it isn’t only the doughboys with bullets that are winning this war. The artists, too, are doing their bit in beating the Huns.”
“For my part,” said Joe, as the lieutenant threw in the clutch and the car started, “it seems to me like a page from the Arabian Nights. All we need now is a genii coming out of the neck of a bottle and the thing would be complete.”
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