“Get ’em, men! Get all three of them!” the lieutenant shouted and three guns spoke with flaming malice. Don fired again. Unable to see enough of the spy and conscious of his first error, he took quick, low, accurate aim at a fleeing officer and knew intuitively, as any expert marksman may call his shot on a target, that the bullet had hit the fellow between the shoulders. With something of a shudder at seeing the German go down the boy tried again to draw sight, but unsuccessfully; the fellow was quick, elusive and fortunate with his protecting trees. Herbert, master of the rifle, fired but once. The other Hun officer fell. Five or six shots went after the spy, but without avail, making him all the more wary. And at that the big mountaineer grew furious. Jennings towered above his fellows, climbing upon the rocks and leaning far out from the spruce shadows. His marksmanship was superb; the spy was so far among the trees that the others, even Herbert and Gill stopped firing. But Jennings’ bullets cut a twig right over the khaki-clad fugitive’s head; then splintered the bark beside him as he dodged around a tree; then tore the cloth from his hip and seared the flesh. Again one shot ripped open his sleeve. But the fellow ran on until hidden behind several large trees growing close together. Naturally the American squad had not been the only observers of this brief and exciting episode; a Hun squad of machine gunners, locating on the hillside a little to the north of the spruces and almost level with them, saw clearly whence the firing came, spied the mountaineer’s figure and immediately got busy. Jennings turned about, defeated in his effort, but elated, nevertheless. “I ain’t never shot no closter, even to a ol’ groundhog huntin’ his hole; hev I, buddy?” he said to Gill. “No, nor anybody. That was drawin’ a bead some fine. An’ him movin’ an’ dodgin’ that way worse’n a cottontail through corn. Fine work, boy; fine work! I couldn’t done any better me own self.” The big mountaineer glowed with pride; nothing pleased him more than genuine praise from his life-long pal. Jennings stood straight on the rock and swelled his chest. “Jest you wait, Lieutenant, till I git a chanct t’ draw on the ol’ Kaiser at about three hundred yards! I’ll clip that ol’ fish tail o’ his’n on his lip fust on one side, then on t’other an’ then plant one right here.” Jennings raised his hand and tapped his forehead; with a broad grin he gazed down at the others, then suddenly toppled forward and pitched headlong among them. At the same instant a dozen leaden slugs pounded, flattened, glanced from the rocks where Jennings had stood and half of those fired from the machine gun had hit him. CHAPTER XIX RETALIATION “LIEUTENANT, I ain’t complainin’, I ain’t kickin’ an’ I don’t want to disobey no orders, but please let me go out an’ round up them polecats on the hill, that killed my buddy. I knows just where they’re at an’ I can do it. Please, sir, I want t’ go.”