"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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l hurtling to this spot? They were likely to be wiped out in a breath.
CHAPTER V
MOTHER GERVAISE
Neither Ruth nor the driver was thrown out of the stalled ambulance.
But Charlie jumped out in a hurry and held out his hand to the girl.
"You got to beat it away from here, Miss Ruth," he urged. "Another of those sh.e.l.ls is likely to drop any minute. Hurry!"
Ruth had no desire to stay at that perilous corner of the road; but when she started away from the stalled car she found that she was alone.
"Aren"t you coming, Charlie Bragg?" she demanded, turning back.
"Go on! Go on!" he urged her. "I"ve got to get this old flivver out of the mud. Keep right on to a little house you"ll see on the left under the bank. Don"t go past it in the dark. That"s Mother Gervaise"s cottage. It"s out of reach of the Boches" sh.e.l.ls."
"But you"ll be killed, Charlie Bragg!" wailed the girl, suddenly realizing all the peril of their situation.
"Haven"t ever been killed yet," he returned. "I tell you I"ve got to get this flivver out of the hole. These supplies have got to be taken to that field hospital. They"re needed. I can"t leave "em here and run."