"I got to thank you because you named it after me," said Tom. "And I _got to thank you_ that you gave me the chance to get it to name after you, Tommy. Well, you see it was this way," Roscoe went on in a half whisper; "there were half a dozen of us over here in the woods and we'd just cleaned out a machine gun nest when we saw this miniature forest moving along. I thought it was a decorated moving van." "That's the trouble with them," agreed Tom; "they're no good in the woods; they're clumsy. They're punk scouts." "Scouts!" Roscoe chuckled. "If we had to fight this gang of cut-throats and murderers in the woods where old What's-his-name--Custer--had to fight the Indians, take it from me, we'd have them wiped up in a month. That fellow's idea of camouflaging was to bury himself under a couple of tons of green stuff and then move the whole business along like a clumsy old Zeppelin. I can camouflage myself with a branch with ten leaves on it by studying the light." "Anybody can see you've learned something about scouting--that's one sure thing," said Tom proudly. "_One sure thing!_" Roscoe laughed inaudibly. "It's the same old Tommy Slade. Well, I was just going to bean this geezer when my officer told me I'd better follow him." "I was following him, too," said Tom; "stalking is the word you ought to use." "Captain thought he might be up to something special. So I followed--_stalked_--how's that?" "All right." "So I stalked him and when I saw he was following the stream I made a detour and waited for him right here. You see what he was up to? Way down in Cantigny they could turn a switch and start this blamed poison, half a dozen hogsheads of it, flowing into the stream. They waited till they lost the town before they turned the switch, and they probably thought they could poison us Americans by wholesale. Maybe they had some reason to think the blamed thing hadn't worked, and sent this fellow up. I beaned him just as he was going to turn the stop-cock." "Maybe you saved a whole lot of lives, hey?" said Tom proudly. Roscoe shrugged his shoulder in that careless way he had. "I'll be glad to meet any more that come along," he said. It was well that Tom Slade's first sight of deliberate killing was in connection with so despicable a proceeding as the wholesale poisoning of a stream. He could feel no pity for the man who, fleeing from those who fought cleanly and like men instead of beasts, had sought to pour this potent liquid of anguish and death into the running crystal water. Such acts, it seemed to him, were quite removed from the sphere of honorable, manly fighting. As a scout he had learned that it was wrong even to bathe in a stream whence drinking water was obtained, and at camp he had always scrupulously observed this good rule. He felt that it was cowardly to defile the waters of a brook. It was not a "mailed fist" at all which could do such things, but a fist dripping with poison.