He looked at Mickey thoughtfully as the young American applied a compress to the wound and placed a roll of bandage to it clamping it in place. He watched Mickey as he rolled the bandage about his arm, and added: “With all that freedom, you will naturally think of escaping.…”

  “Naturally,” agreed Mickey.

  The Nazi smiled.

  “You will be pursued,” he warned.

  “Those are the chances I’ll have to take, sir,” Mickey grinned. He finished his job. The medical kit the Commandant had given him was complete. It was assembled with typical German precision for every field emergency.

  “There you are, sir,” Mickey said. “What next?”

  “Report to my Chief Surgeon,” he said. “He will assign you to your job.”

  The Chief Surgeon was unlike the Colonel. He was brusque, almost to offensiveness. But Mickey did not mind the man. He was used to Nazi arrogance. When the man learned that Mickey had studied in Breslau, he softened a little. But not much.

  * * * *

  The American was assigned to the Russian prisoners. The men liked that. They had heard of the American doctors who had come up from Iran and were doing a fine job. They had heard of Mikhail Tchekov, the American born of Russian parents, and heard that he was an excellent man.

  He looked about him for Von Starheim, but the man was nowhere to be seen. He asked the German Sergeant of the Guard about him. The man knew Mickey and liked him. He had treated him for a swollen gland and reduced the pain and size so quickly, that the man asked him if he could do anything for him.

  “Yes,” replied the American. “I haven’t seen Captain Von Starheim all day. Has he been transferred?”

  “Oh, yes,” the Nazi Sergeant replied. “He was given a company of two hundred men with machine guns to go out and find the guerrilla Koslovitch. They say he and his band have been picking off our men like flies. I suppose he’s somewhere up in the mountains looking for him.”

  Mickey had examined all the Russian prisoners; had talked to them of Koslovitch, and one by one they stuck their tongue in their cheeks and smiled knowingly.

  No. They had not seen Koslovitch. But they had heard of the exploits he and his little band of fifty had perpetrated. They had sniped at Nazis for months and sent more than their quota back to Germany in pine boxes, when their bodies were found or, with transportation from the Caucasus difficult, saw them laid to rest under Russian soil. They believed that all good Germans were those laid to rest under any soil.

  The Russians told him of many things Koslovitch had done; destroyed an airdrome; smashed a hundred Stuka dive bombers on the ground; blew up an ammunition dump; and many other equally dangerous and courageous pieces of destruction.

  In making the rounds two days later, he found a new man—or rather, a boy—in one of the prison tents. No one knew how he got in—not even his tent mates, and they didn’t ask questions. He was there—and he was wounded.

  Mickey examined the boy.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked in Russian.

  The boy did not answer. He merely scrutinized Mickey’s face in an effort to discover what he wanted to find there.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” asked the American.

  “You are Mikhail Tchekov,” asked the youngster. His dark Caucasian eyes continued to gaze piercingly at the American.

  “Yes,” replied Mickey quietly. The other prisoners had stepped out of the tent. He saw their shadows plastered against the canvas, as if standing guard over it. “Yes, I am Mikhail Tchekov. Why do you ask?”

  “You will come with me tonight,” the boy replied. It was the tone of authority. It was not a request but an order.

  * * * *

  Mickey looked at the youth. He was ragged. Not in uniform; slightly dirty with the mud of the Caucasus caked on his leather boots split at the vamp. As Mickey dressed the flesh wound on the boy’s arm, he said:

  “That sounds like an order.”

  “It is an order, Comrade,” said the boy. He could not have been more than fifteen; in years, that is, but in attitude, experience, the boy seemed a hundred. Mickey had never met anyone quite like him before and he studied the bronzed, serious face that bore the marks of great responsibility.

  “If I should refuse to go with you?” asked Mickey.

  “You cannot refuse,” the boy told him firmly. “We are comrades with one aim; to destroy the Nazi lice and everything they stand for if we are ever to have peace in this world again.” His eyes narrowed a little as if he was determined to have his way no matter what it cost. “You will not refuse.”

  Mickey smiled at the boy’s confidence; his self-assurance.

  “How do you know we can get out of here?” he asked.

  A wise smile crept over the small face; his lips became compressed with a tinge of contempt. “I got in,” he boasted. “We’ll get out. You leave that to me.”

  “Who sent you to me?” asked Mickey.

  “Koslovitch, the guerrilla,” replied the boy suddenly. “His band needs a doctor. You are the only one we know of here we can trust. Besides,” he added, “you are an American. You represent everything all free men admire, and respect and love and die for.” The boy’s eyes shone with an almost holy light. “Koslovitch loves his country and is ready to give his life for it. Just as your countrymen did in 1776. You can’t refuse to help him or his wounded men.”

  Mickey knew right then and there that he couldn’t.

  “What time shall I meet you and where?” he asked putting the finishing touches to the job of patching up the boy.

  “Here, at this tent,” he said. The tent stood on the end of the line near the barbed wire enclosure.

  “What time?”

  “At twelve o’clock,” replied the boy. “They change the guard then and for five minutes there is no one near this tent.”

  “The barbed wire is electrified,” warned Mickey.

  “I know. I have a pair of insulated wire cutters. We’ll cut our way through.”

  “I don’t need to do that,” explained Mickey. “I have the freedom of the camp. I’ll meet you on the other side.”

  “That won’t do,” replied the boy. “You will be followed. Do it my way and we’ll have no trouble.”

  Mickey had never met so positive a person before. The kid certainly had what it takes to lead men, he thought. Someday this youngster would be a figure in Russian politics, he expected. Mickey agreed. He would meet the boy at the appointed place and hour.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “You can call me Feodor,” the boy replied. “And—oh, yes. Fill your bag with plenty of bandages and other medical supplies we’ll need for our men.”

  “That’s the simplest part of the job,” replied Mickey.

  * * * *

  At five minutes to twelve that night, Mickey approached the tent at the end of the line. As he reached the middle of the tent street, he was halted by a sentry. He moved closer to the man so that he could be recognized in the dark. His bag hung heavy in his hand.

  “I’ve a patient with a high fever in the last tent,” he explained. “I’m just going to look in on him.”

  “Very well, Herr doktor,” replied the sentry. “I’m sorry I stopped you. Pass.”

  “Thank you,” said Mickey. “Can’t be too careful these dark nights.”

  “Quite right, sir,” agreed the man.

  As Mickey entered the tent, the four men lay on their straw-filled mattresses on the tent floor.

  “Feodor,” whispered Mickey.

  “Ready,” replied the boy in a whisper. “Is the coast clear?”

  “I’ll see,” answered the American. He pushed the tent flap cautiously aside and peered out. He turned around and whispered, “All clear.”

  Feodor dropped to his knees; looked out and crawled to the barbed wire fence. He hesitated in some tall grass near one of the fence posts as the guards changed places. He waited a few breathless moments and with thickly rubber-gloved hands he grasped the electrically charged wire near the ground and lifted it high enough to allow his body to pass silently through. Mickey followed after passing his bag through the large opening Feodor made for him. Carefully, the young Russian replaced the wire against the post. So skillfully did he do the job that even in broad daylight, it would not be discovered.

  “So that’s how you got in,” whispered Mickey.

  “Come,” whispered Feodor, “and keep well down to the ground.” The noise of boots on gravel reached them. “Down!” commanded the boy and automatically, as though he were accustomed to complying with the other’s orders, Mickey dropped to his knees and hid in some underbrush.

  The black shadow of the sentry retracing his path outside the enclosure passed not more than five feet away. They waited with bated breath until the man was out of earshot.

  “Come!” whispered Feodor, and grabbing Mickey by the arm led him on the double to a clump of maple trees about a hundred yards away and to a small thicket of willows that lined the Kuban River about a half-mile from the camp.

  They reached one large tree set back from the river. Its foliage was denser than the others. Like a monkey, agile, strong, Feodor disappeared into the branches above and soon descended with a large bundle.

  “Help me with this,” he commanded.

  Mickey smiled at the boy’s tone, but took his orders good-naturedly. He helped him open up what proved to be a rubber boat. In the dark the youngster found the valve. A second later, there was a sharp hissing noise as the boat took shape. This boy had evidently prepared for all emergencies.

  “So this is how you got down here from the hills,” said Mickey.

  “I came down with the current from the Elbrus,” explained Feodor. “I brought a gas bottle with me and hid it with the boat after I had deflated it.” He finished the job of inflation. He looked toward the river. “It will be harder going back,” he said. “We will have to row against the current.”

  “Where are your oars?” asked Mickey.

  “I hid them in that farthermost tree,” he indicated, pointing to a willow on the edge of the river whose branches and leaves were kept wet as they dripped into the Kuban.

  * * * *

  They carried the rubber boat and set it down under the deep shadow of this willow. Feodor climbed into the tree and returned with two small paddles and another object.

  “What else have you got there?” asked Mickey curiously.

  “A submachine gun,” explained Feodor.

  “You thought to bring everything, didn’t you?”

  “I have to get you back to the men,” explained Feodor.

  “And to Koslovitch,” added Mickey.

  “And to Koslovitch,” agreed Feodor.

  It was more difficult to paddle up the fast-running current of the restless Kuban that even Feodor had anticipated. Both men paddled desperately against the rapidly-moving waters that roared down from the great mountain. They kept inshore for the resistance was lessened there by its close proximity to the banks. The paddling was less difficult.

  Dawn broke over them as they continued to paddle up the stream that was less than a half-mile wide. It was broad daylight when they rounded the bend in the river and came upon the railroad bridge that crossed it while they were still several miles from Batalpashinsk.

  Mickey remembered that his hospital unit had escaped to there. At least, he thought they were still there but Feodor told him:

  “They were driven out again and have gone on to Pyatigorsk where our Kuban Cossacks are holding the Germans back,” he told Mickey. “Just how long they can hold out there, I don’t know. But they are determined not to let the Nazi rats infest more of the valley than they can help.”

  As the boat reached the trestle that held the railroad tracks above the Kuban, Feodor ordered: “Stop paddling,” and grabbed for one of the piles on the south bank of the river.

  “This is as far as we dare go now on the river in broad daylight,” he said. “We’ll hide the boat under the bridge and go to one of the collective farms nearby where many of the farmers are getting ready to evacuate their farms for places out of the battle areas. We may be able to get a lift from there to the foothills around Elbrus.”

  He drew the boat up the bank under the trestle and deflated it. Feodor rolled it up and hid it under a depression that was hardly observable even when one stood near it.

  “You seem to know this country pretty well, Feodor,” remarked Mickey.

  Feodor was not a braggart. He spoke as one having authority; but there was no arrogance in his replies. He was a strange youth, Mickey observed. All the boy said was:

  “Pretty well.”

  They walked up to a woman collectivist farmer who was loading a wagon with her furniture, bedding, and what food she had left. With her was her son of ten. Her head was wrapped in her shawl of wool; the youngster’s close cropped head was covered with a homemade cap.

  Feodor strode officiously over to the woman. He was not much more than a child himself in years. Mickey saw him whisper something in the woman’s ear. She clapped her hand to her mouth as if to suppress a scream of delight and prevent her shouting the thing he had whispered to her. She looked toward the young American doctor in a now water-stained, mud-spattered American uniform and grinned happily. He heard her say in her native Russian:

  “Of course, I’ll help. With all my heart—with all my life if necessary.”

  * * * *

  That was the Soviet man or woman’s cry. It rose in every corner, light or dark, in the nation. It was the cry that would one day send the Nazi hordes reeling back to the rat holes in Germany from whence they had come.

  “She will take us right to our destination,” Feodor told him. “Isn’t that nice?”

  They helped the woman load her wagon, leaving a space in the center of the cart for themselves to step into. She put the finishing touches to the job by throwing her bedding in over them as they crouched, completely hidden even from possible searchers.

  The woman gave them a whole loaf of black bread and some milk, and as the wagon dragged along the stretch of road winding through the foothills of the Caucasus, the mountain undulated for miles ahead of them, their tips snow-crested and white; their bases green-carpeted, and brown.

  Across the Kuban Steppes they rode; the two chestnut-colored horses drawing the cart behind them; and behind the cart two cows and several sheep and pigs followed in their wake.

  “Her husband is a member of Koslovitch’s guerrillas,” explained Feodor. “He is lying wounded in the cave and she was going to him to help nurse him. When I told her who you were, Comrade, it made her very happy.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Mickey.

  Through a very tiny crack in the piled up goods over his head and on all sides of him, Mickey could see the winding mountain pass over which the cart was plodding several hours later stretch far to the west. Beyond that, he caught a glimpse of the glacial peak of Mount Elbrus.

  “You came a long way to get a doctor,” remarked Mickey to his young companion.

  “I tried two other places first,” explained Feodor. “One was Pyatigorsk, the other Batalpashinsk. I was told they could spare none, but that you and four other doctors were taken prisoner and would probably be available if I could get you out.” He smiled a boyish smile; the first Mickey had seen on the youngster’s serious face. “Well,” he added, “here you are.”

  Mickey laughed.

  But the laugh was cut short. Automobile engines suddenly snorted in upon them. The sound of them drove down from the hills. With a roar they were upon the little wagon and seemed to be coming upon them from all sides. A man shouted in Russian at the woman.

  “Stop!” he cried. “Stop your wagon!”

  The cart was pulled up short. The furniture and bedding and other of the woman’s belongings shifted but not sufficiently to expose the hidden men. Feodor reached for the machine gun at his feet. His grip fastened upon the stock. Mickey could see a peculiar light creep into the boy’s eyes; his bronzed face darkened; his jaw tightened with grim determination. The Russian had a tinge of German as it drifted through to them.

  “Where are you going?” the voice said.

  “I am going to join my husband who is wounded,” replied the woman truthfully.

  “What have you got there on your cart?” demanded the voice.

  “Just my furniture, my bedding, a few pots and pans,” she said calmly. “Nothing else.”

  * * * *

  Mickey admired the woman’s courage. She knew that if he and Feodor were uncovered by the Nazis, not only would they be shot on the spot, but the woman and her son would die with them. Yet her voice was steady, calm, emotionless.

  “Search the wagon,” cried the voice.

  Mickey went hot and cold all over. They were sunk now, he thought. He and Feodor sank to the floor of the cart as pieces of furniture were yanked off the wagon and thrown to the ground.

  Feodor raised the muzzle of his machine gun, readying it into position for attack. He might die, but he would not die alone.

  “We are looking for guerrillas,” went on the voice. “Have you seen any on your way up here?”

  “Oh, no,” replied the woman.

  “If you had you would tell us, wouldn’t you, my good woman?” went on the man.

  “Of course,” she replied, “if you insisted on it.”

  “You’re a filthy Russian liar,” cried the man.

  The unloading continued. Mickey and Feodor were perspiring in their anxiety. They did not want to be caught. They did not fear for themselves, but for the brave woman and the child with her. The Germans ripped off a bundle of bedding that roofed in the hidden men. They were getting closer to the men. For some unknown reason they stopped with the first bundle of bedding. Had they lifted the second, they would have uncovered the two men.

  The Heinie above stopped searching. The furniture and bedding were scattered about the road surrounding the wagon. Some of the lighter pieces were broken.

  “Herr Oberst,” he called down, “there is nothing but this filthy peasant stuff on this cart. The woman spoke the truth.”