And so, as soon as they were well out of hearing, Fred scrambled out, leaving his dangerous coats and helmets behind, and began trudging boldly along the road. He did not know the character of the wooded section through which the road now ran, and it seemed to him that he would be safer in the road than if he tried to walk under cover.
Fred was very tired. And, now that the excitement was fading, he was beginning to realize that he had not escaped entirely scatheless from the wreck of the car. Every bone and muscle in his body was sore and aching, and he wondered how many black and blue spots he would find when he got a chance to look for them.
By Ivan's reckoning, he had something like two miles to go to reach the Russian outposts. He was now in a sort of No Man's Land that lay between the two armies. And, indeed, before long, he saw fires twinkling ahead-the fires of the Russians. That was as he came to the crossroad of which Boris had spoken. It seemed that his troubles must be nearly over. And just then he heard a clatter of hoofs and saw, riding up the crossroad toward him, a troop of German Uhlans. He began running. But they had seen him and gave chase. He dared not stop. On he ran, hoping that the Russians were nearer than their fires. CHAPTER XVII
AN OLD ENEMYSuddenly over Fred's head there was a peculiar whistling. He had never heard that sound before, but somehow he knew by instinct what it was. He was under fire! Behind him were the shots, but the firing was wild and at random. He plunged into the bushes now, for to do so was to choose the lesser of two evils. He was fairly safe, so sheltered from the bullets, since if they could not see him, the Uhlans would not be likely to fire at him at all. And while it was certain that they could follow him in and catch him if he stayed in the brush, he would delay them at least, and the Russians were so near that they might hear the firing and come up.
That came about even sooner than he had thought possible. He stopped, panting. The Uhlans were close on his trail by this time, and he heard them coming up. But then came a sudden shouting of orders, and, a moment later, a furious fusillade that was answered from the Russian side. Over the rattle of the firing, too, came a sound he remembered well, though he had heard it only once before-the yelling of charging Cossacks. For the second time the wild Russian horsemen had come to his rescue in the nick of time!
But this time there was more of a fight, since the two little bodies of horsemen were far more evenly matched than had been the case when General Suvaroff had led his daring raid behind the German lines in the effort to capture von Hindenburg. For five minutes the fighting was fast and furious. Fred could hear the clash of steel against steel and the spiteful spitting of revolvers and automatic pistols. Then the wild Russian shout of victory arose, and he heard sounds of galloping fast dying away. Even though he could see nothing, he knew which side had won.
"Thank Heaven!" he said to himself. "I wonder if they couldn't chase them and raid the culvert. There aren't so many troops there! Then we could surely get Boris away from them."
But the first thing to do, of course, was to come out of his cover and make himself known to his rescuers. There was a certain risk in even that simple procedure, and Fred was not so carried away by the excitement of the fight as to forget it. There was more than a chance that if he broke out, the Russians would mistake him for some German who had tried to escape by taking refuge in the brush, and that they would shoot without waiting to make sure. But he had to take the chance, and he minimized the risk as much as he could by tying his white handkerchief to a stick and carrying it before him as he pushed his way into the ditch.
He waved this as he emerged. At first no one saw him. Then a Cossack spied him and sent his horse straight at him. Fred leaped aside as he saw that the man meant to ride him down, and, shouting, waved his white flag. He dodged the first assault, but the Cossack spun his pony around in little more than his own length, and waving his dangerous lance, came at him again. He shouted again, and waved his white flag harder than ever. That would not have saved him, however, but just as the Cossack lunged and Fred threw himself down, sure that he would either be speared or trampled by the horse, an officer dashed up and struck up the lance with his sword.
"Don't you see the white flag?" he roared. "We do not kill men who surrender!"
"They say that the Germans are hanging every Cossack they capture," said the man, sullenly.
"Never mind what they say!" said the officer. "Hello! That man is not a soldier at all!"
"Neither soldier nor German!" cried Fred in Russian, springing up. "Those Uhlans were chasing me! I have just escaped from the German lines. I did not think that I should fare as badly among my friends as among the enemy!"
"Nor shall you, friend!" said the Russian officer with a laugh. "So you are a Russian? Well, you look as if you might be anything!"
"I'm afraid I do," said Fred, a bit ruefully. He could imagine, even though he could not see himself, that the Russian was quite right. He was caked with dirt. In the fall from the automobile, as he had discovered while he was walking away from the wreck, he had sustained a nasty cut over the eye, which, though it was not painful, had bled a good deal. And this had made his appearance even worse than it had been before. His clothes were torn, too.
"Who are you, and where do you come from?" asked the Russian.
In a few words Fred told his story. When he said that he had left Boris Suvaroff a prisoner at the culvert, with a broken leg, the officer started.
"Can't you go after him?" Fred pleaded. "They have very few men there. You could sweep them away."
"Not with this force. And I should not dare to go so far without special orders," said the officer. "We could not charge the culvert, and, approaching it from this side, we should have to ride uphill. But I am sure that when those in command know your story, a force will be sent to rescue Prince Boris. Come with us now. I will get you a horse if you are able to ride. The Uhlans left some behind!"
Fred could ride, and said so. And in a few minutes he was riding toward the fires that twinkled before them, side by side with the Russian officer, who was anxious to know all that Fred could tell him.
"That was splendid!" he cried enthusiastically when he heard how Fred had discovered the real purpose of the Germans by his ruse in pretending to be deaf and dumb. "And it means, too, that we will get some real work to do here in this quarter. I thought at first that the army in the north would get all the fighting. We have been sitting here for nearly a week, doing nothing. This is the first skirmish we have had, for our orders are not to bring on an action, but only to prevent the enemy from coming toward us if they show any sign of attacking."
"If what I have heard is true, there will be an advance from this quarter soon," said Fred. "If the Germans are to be outflanked, it must be by the troops here. And that ought to mean as much fighting as anyone could hope to get."
"That is what we are looking for," said the officer. "But you-you will be glad of a rest for a time, I should think!"
"I want to get my cousin back," said Fred. "It was hard to leave him."
"It was the only thing to do. You saved his life as well as your own by going. And one who saves a Suvaroff does a fine thing for Russia in these days-if this Boris is like the rest of the breed."
"Oh, we have never known!" said Fred, suddenly remembering. "Did General Suvaroff get back safely after he failed to catch General von Hindenburg?"
"He did! He had less than a thousand men, and he rode for sixty miles or more through a whole German army! He was intercepted but when he found a German brigade lined up in his path, instead of trying to circle around it, and so giving the Germans time to surround him, he cut right through it!" answered the officer, smiling.