It was no use to discipline O. Fisher. He was an enlisted man, and knew his rights. He recognized the competency of the medicine men in Washington to declare war, but he was quite sure of his own right to go or stay according as they furnished him, or failed to furnish him, a decent chief. So far as O. Fisher could see, Captain Mahan was the only man in the army worth following, for the rest had all been brought up within doors. He paid small attention to Lieutenant Gregg, because Gregg thought that Fisher meant a fisherman, whereas it meant an animal as retiring as a fox and sometimes as fierce as a weasel. The first of June came, and with it marching orders. They proceeded to the vicinity of Mezy, on the southern bank of the Marne east of Chateau-Thierry. That evening Marvin explained to his orderly what it was all about. A Sioux named Ludendorf was driving at Paris, the city where the girl kissed O. Fisher, and was now within fifty miles of it. The Bwan’s advancing line was forty miles long and noisy. It had got as far as the river, but must get no farther. O. Fisher listened with interest. He sat there on the straw in the dugout, holding a shoe and a brush. His head was thrown back, and there was a deep vertical line between the eyebrows. “How would you like to be my guide?” “I am,” said O. Fisher, whose memory for the sacred word “sir” was none of the best. “No, if you act as guide you will not have to shine shoes.” O. Fisher scorned to reply, and resumed his labors. “Very well, then. Tomorrow you can begin to get acquainted with this terrain. Some day I shall ask you whether you can find a clump of trees in the night.” For a month the Thirty-eighth lay near Mezy. Marvin’s company was finally stationed close to the village, on the brow of a hill overlooking the river. Just below it was the railroad that runs along the southern bank, and to the left was the brook called Surmelin. In the middle of July the regiment got its chance. Soon after midnight on the morning of the fifteenth the German guns began to pound in earnest. Marvin’s company awoke and got into position. O. Fisher was stationed in a tree to note what was going to happen. He knew where the northern bank ought to be, and there he fixed his gaze. Before dawn he saw something moving. The enemy was launching boats. He slipped down, reported, and was ordered back. The dawn came up through cannon smoke, but he was used to forest fires. He saw boat after boat put out, and one destroyed by a shot. He saw two get across, only to be met by grenade and bayonet. But still they came, as if all the wolves on earth were swimming across. The American boys on the southern shore were caught by the throat and clawed down into the mud. Countless Germans blurred with smoke were taking open formation the minute they landed. They streamed into the valley of the Surmelin.