tle if we want to save Iggy."
"All right, just as you say!" murmured Roger, as he began to rise.
It was not without a natural feeling of timidity that he cautiously
elevated himself first to his knees and then to his feet. As for
Jimmy, he had impulsively stood upright.
"Come on!" he yelled above the din of battle. "Come on!"
He started on a run over the shell-torn ground, with what remained of
the barbed wire entanglements here and there.
"I'm coming!" answered Roger.
He expected any moment to receive a bullet, or to be utterly blasted
from the earth by some terrible shell explosion. And Jimmy confessed,
later, that he felt the same fear. But these fears did not hold back
the Khaki Boys from continuing on to the rescue of their comrade--if
he was in a condition to be rescued.
"Where's the place?" cried Roger to his chum, when they had covered
several yards in a hasty rush toward the rear.
"Must be somewhere around here," answered Jimmy, looking about
him. That part of No Man's Land where they then were, seemingly was
deserted by all save the dead. If there had been any injured they had
been taken well back behind the lines by stretcher bearers.
For a time Roger and Jimmy feared they might be considered deserters,
coming toward the rear as they were doing, and away from the fighting,
and aside from mere scratches neither of them showing any wounds.
Though if they had been hurt that would have been an excuse for making
a retreat.
But no one observed the two--there was no one to observe them, in
fact. They were some distance from their own trenches, and immediately
back of them--toward the German lines--there had been a division in
the fighting, so that the battle waged on either wing, as it were.
"Look in all the shell holes!" directed Jimmy. "The shell burst right
in front, or to one side of poor Iggy. He was blown into a shell hole,
of that I'm pretty sure."
"There's a hole--a big one, too," said Roger. "But there's no one
in it--only dead!" and he turned away, for some of those dead were
comrades who, the night before, had been in the trenches with him and
his chums.
But the Khaki Boys were hardened to scenes like this now. Too many
times had they seen the dead and dying. There was no time to nurse
one's feelings.
"Come on! Come on!" cried Jimmy feverishly. "We've got to be quick!
Iggy may bleed to death if he's hurt anything like I think he is."
"Yes, and this place may be a regular le
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