Produced by Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THROUGH THE WHEAT THROUGH THE WHEAT BY THOMAS BOYD CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK · LONDON 1923 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published April, 1923 [Illustration] THROUGH THE WHEAT I Dusk, like soft blue smoke, fell with the dying spring air and settled upon the northern French village. In the uncertain light one and two story buildings set along the crooked street showed crisply, bearing a resemblance to false teeth in an ash-old face. To young Hicks, disconsolate as he leaned against the outer wall of the French canteen, upon whose smooth white surface his body made an unseemly blot, life was worth very little. For nine interminable months William Hicks had been in France, shunted from one place to another, acting out the odious office of the military police, working as a stevedore beside evil-odored blacks, helping to build cantonments and reservoirs for new soldiers ever arriving from the United States. And he was supposed to be a soldier. He had enlisted with at least the tacit understanding that he was some day to fight. At the recruiting office in Cincinnati the bespangled sergeant had told him: “Join the marines and see some real action.” And the heart of William Hicks had fled to the rich brogue and campaign ribbons that the sergeant professionally wore. But was this action? Was this war? Was this for what William Hicks had come to France? Well, he told himself, it was not. Soldiering with a shovel. A hell of a way to treat a white man. There were plenty of people to dig holes in the ground, but not many of them could qualify as sharpshooters. And Hicks swelled his chest a trifle, noticing the glint of the metal marksmanship badge on his tunic.