Chapter XVII: A Mighty Stone Roller

CAREFUL examination revealed that Roque's injury was not of broken bones, but a severe sprain, due to the twisting suspension from the bush which had checked his fall. Schneider had gone down feet foremost, breaking through the growth until he struck the ledge.

"I didn't expect Mr. Roque so soon," he said, with a face-wide grin, "but I knew him by his legs, and gave him an open-arm reception."

"Until Schneider reached for me," related the secret agent, "I thought there was nothing underneath but the bottom of nowhere. It was certainly a curious accident, all in all, the two of us tumbling as we did, stopping in the very same place, and both of us alive to tell it."

"There was mighty near a good third on your peculiar track," interposed Henri, "for Billy had set his heels for that very slide which you two took."

"If it had not been for Henri," asserted Billy, "there is no telling how deep I would have gone."

"And if it had not been for both of you, there was hardly more to look for than a miserable end for Schneider and me. We could have proceeded neither up nor down, for there was nothing to put hand or toe into for many rods either way."

Roque did not propose that the boys should lose any of their dues for gallant achievement by other belief than that two lives had actually depended upon their prowess.

When Schneider intimated that he thought it was time for another attempt to find material for a fire, there were two young rebels emphatically against the proposition.

"We'll move where there is wood in sight," was the joint declaration.

Roque agreed that a change of base was desirable, and a flight from the mountain top was in immediate order.

As the machines descended and followed a lower course, ghastly reminders of the struggle that had recently taken place in and along the pass were easily discernible from the lookout seat of the biplanes--the melting snow on the slopes revealing many bodies of Austrians and Russians.

In a clearing at the edge of a considerable forest the aëroplanes again settled, the observers being first convinced that there was no military occupation, especially hostile, of the wooded tract.

"This beats the mountain roost a mile and a half," declared Billy, the leader in hopping out of the aircraft.

In a big hole in the ground, dug by the impact of a cannon ball, Schneider started a brush fire, and in a few minutes was passing hot coffee around.

"I must say," observed Roque, between bites at a sandwich of corned beef and hardtack, "that I don't seem to be getting anywhere on this trip except into pitfalls. All this is sheer waste of time. I had hoped to see a relief march to Przemysl begun within a day, but here we are tied in a knot, and not a step forward."

"Well," consoled Schneider, "you gave them the route that could be won with the least difficulty."

"But what's the good of that when the opening wedge couldn't be driven?" impatiently queried Roque.

Schneider scratched his head. He had no answer.

"There is one thing sure," exclaimed the secret agent, "and that is, I must be on the move, for this isn't the only fish scorching in the pan."

Billy just then edged into the conversation. He had made an alarming discovery. The petrol supply in the biplane tanks was at low mark. The aviators had expected to replenish long before this, and the disaster at Lupkow had spoiled their last chance.

"Oil nearly out, sir," were the words that brought Roque to his feet like a jumping-jack.

"The devil you say!"

Here was a quandary that completely upset the chief.

"We ought to have filled day before yesterday," explained Billy, "but you know why we didn't."

"The only thing to do that I see," advanced Henri, "is to add the supply of one machine to that of the other, and two of us hunt for the new camp of the Austrians."

"They could fix us all right," assured Schneider, "for there is quite a number of aëroplanes with the force which was driven back."

"It was my intent to get in touch once more with this corps, but it was not my intent to divide this party in the going. It cannot be helped, though, and it may take but a few hours at most. You are sure" (turning to Billy) "that you cannot raise enough power for both motors to go the distance?"

"I fear, sir, that both machines would be stranded in less than an hour; and, with all this uncertainty as to how far we would have to go, there is no telling into what kind of place and under what circumstances we would be compelled to drop. There would be much less odds against the one-machine plan."

"It's up to you to prove it," challenged Roque, "for you and I are going to make the trial."

The transfer of the petrol accomplished, Schneider and Henri were left in sole possession of the camp in the woods, after a last strained look at the departing biplane, a little blot on the sky, finally dissolving in the mist of the mountain top.

"Let's knock about a bit," said Schneider, suiting action to the words by starting up the nearest slope, where the gloomy pines were farther apart than in the dense growth below.

"Ah! Here's where the Russians must have gotten a severe jolt. See here, my young friend"--Schneider pointing at a scattered ground array of discarded rifles, knapsacks, sheepskin coats, and many caisson shells in baskets. "Not so very long ago, either, for you will notice that all this is on the top of the snow and not under it. You can safely wager that here, and at this season, it is not very long between snows."

Here and there were other objects, stiff and stark, that sent a shudder up Henri's spine.

Picking their way still higher to the apex of the ridge, the man and boy had view of a land depression, bowl shaped, almost cleared of snow by exposure to the sun, being free of shade or shadow.

Something on the far side of the bowl, catching a golden ray from above, glittered like a big diamond. Henri called Schneider's attention to the flashing point.

"Worth a walk across," conceded the soldier-aviator, moving that way. Henri, interest aroused, made it a point to outpace his companion.

Drawing nearer, the investigators saw, in half-sitting posture, back against a blanket roll, a soldier--in dark-blue uniform, Austrian infantry--marked by emblems of rank, including a sparkling decoration on the breast.

A silver flask lay close by, alongside of sword and belt.

Schneider dropped to his knees, seized one of the nerveless hands of the officer, and fingered the pulse of the lifted wrist. The old campaigner had noted that the blood curdle in a tunic fold was yet unfrozen.

"Hand me that flask."

Henri quickly complied with his comrade's request, first unscrewing the metal top. Schneider tenderly moved the head of the officer to his own shoulder and poured the contents of the flask through the livid lips.

"He lives!" cried Schneider.

The evidence was a faint flutter of the eyelids, a twitching of fingers and labored breathing.

Henri unrolled the blanket that served as a backrest, made a pillow of the wounded soldier's knapsack, and Schneider shifted his burden to this new resting place.

It was not long until the vigorous first aid rendered by the aviators found a more marked response--the heretofore unconscious officer looked up at the anxious faces of the workers, and perceptibly smiled through the beard that concealed his mouth.

He had comprehended that he did not owe a Russian for the help that had come to him in this extremity.

Schneider addressed him in the familiar tongue of the Fatherland, and Henri also added a word of sympathy and encouragement in the same tongue, at the time bending his head in the hope of a word in reply.

That word was spoken, and others in faltering train.

"He says his name is Schwimmer, Johann Schwimmer--captain."

"A captain without a regiment," was Schneider's sad comment, his eyes bending further afield, where corpses in blue, in heaps and singly, marked the path of deadly artillery practice.

"It does look as if we are caring for the only survivor," said Henri, realizing that Schneider's mournful observation was founded upon fact.

That Captain Schwimmer understood what was passing between his rescuers was manifest, for stoic though he was, he covered his eyes with a trembling hand and his breast heaved convulsively.

At the moment there was a startling diversion--the whip-like crack of rifles from the opposite edge of the bowl, at the very point where the aviators had stood when first attracted by the shining point on the captain's tunic.

Spat, spat--bullets boring the earth close to the right, left, and at the very feet of the trio on the ridge.

Schneider, again a firebrand without sentiment, coolly unslung the carbine from his shoulder, and put a shot across that evidently counted, for it raised a death-yell.

Without further ado, the soldier-airman plumped down on the ground, with his back to the sufferer on the blanket, and hoisted upon his broad shoulders the sorely wounded soldier, who faintly protested, and urged Schneider not to so hamper himself.

But you might as well argue with the wind; the sorrel-top warrior was up and away, making little of his load, Henri sprinting at his heels.

The firing company of Russians, either stragglers from the rear of a corps or scouts in advance of one, had evidently no intention of permitting the escape of several prospective prisoners, and they took up the chase as eagerly as the sporting pursuers of a deer, whooping and shooting as they bounded in a body across the separating hollow.

But for the good start made, Schneider could not have possibly, extra-weighted as he was, maintained speed enough to have gained even the base of the mountain for which he was heading. As it resulted, the carrier and the carried had hardly reached the first level, some fifty feet up, when the Muscovite marksmen were in close target range, and a leaden pellet among the many flattening against the rocks clipped the visor of Henri's cap as he cast a last look at the oncoming crowd before climbing like a squirrel into the rocky shelter above.

Schneider had placed Captain Schwimmer out of any possible line of fire from below, and was doing some return shooting on his own account. Unluckily for this style of defense, all of the surplus ammunition was in the locker of the biplane back in the woods, and the few rounds in the aviator's pockets were soon exhausted.

Henri knew that such was the situation by the fervid remarks of his companion.

But such was the angle of the aviators' perch that there could be no attack except from the front, and even that was a climbing approach.

It occurred to Henri, considering the lay of the land, that lead was not the only effective substance with which to repel boarders.

The ground was loaded with natural ammunition--loose rocks and rocks, thousands of them, from fist size up to a ton.

"Hey, old scout," hailed the boy, "give them a dose of dornicks."

Schneider took the hint with a burst of approbation.

"Two heads are better than one," he facetiously declared, hauling off his greatcoat for greater freedom as a heaver.

A dozen or more of the pursuing party were working up the acute elevation when the first huge stone thundered down the incline. The boulder made as clean a sweep as a well-placed ball in a bunch of ninepins.

"A ten-strike!" whooped Schneider. "Set 'em up again in the other alley!"

The Russians back-tracked for a time, finding a better range to fire at the defenders on the mountainside, and such was the fusillade that Schneider and Henri were compelled to stay in cover to save their skins.

"They can't work that game, though, to support a scaling force," said Schneider, "for the same fire would catch the scalers. If they come any nearer we can fix them, all right. But what a mercy it is that they haven't a field gun with them."

"As it is, we can't stave them off very long," added Henri. "When it gets dark the stone-rolling game won't work."

"Let me tell you, young man, when that hour comes, all they'll find here will be an empty nest."

The veteran had a moving plan up his sleeve, and the chief reason he had for making this stand was to give the injured captain a little more time to mend.

A scalp wound was what had laid the officer low, and since recovering consciousness he had rallied remarkably. In the soldier's knapsack, which Henri had thoughtfully carried, notwithstanding the hasty leave-taking, was three days' rations, and the invalid had also been strengthened by the food his new friends prevailed upon him to swallow.

During the day Schneider several times checked an effort of their foes to reach the height by starting a little avalanche of rocks at the critical moment.

In the periods of enforced peace, he cast an eye about for a likely way for quick retreat.

The way presented itself in the shape of a fallen pine that bridged a narrow pass, deeply dividing this isolated level from the mountain chain that widely extended back of the occupied position, and rose in serried crags to the very skyline.

It was a nerve-testing prospect, alluring alone to a professional rope walker.

"We'll tackle it in short order," resolutely declared Schneider, after final survey.