id="pgepubid00016">UNDER FIRE

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.

CHAPTER V