Opening pages

TOM SLADE MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH- BEARER BY PERCY K. FITZHUGH Author of TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT, TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP, TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER, TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS, ETC. illustrated by R. EMMETT OWEN published with the approval of THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS  ::  NEW YORK.

Chapter		Page
	Preface	vii
I	For Service As Required	1
II	Aid and Comfort To The Enemy	8
III	The Old Compass	14
IV	The Old Familiar Faces	20
V	Getting Ready	25
VI	Over the Top	36
VII	A Shot	45
VIII	In the Woods	50
IX	The Mysterious Fugitive	57
X	The Jersey Snipe	62
XI	On Guard	68
XII	What's In a Name?	73
XIII	The Fountains of Destruction	79
XIV	Tom Uses His First Bullet	84
XV	The Gun Pit	89
XVI	Prisoners	97
XVII	Shades of Archibald Archer	105
XVIII	The Big Coup	111
XIX	Tom is Questioned	119
XX	The Major's Papers	127
XXI	The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere	133
XXII	"Uncle Sam"	140
XXIII	Up a Tree	150
XXIV	"To Him That Overcometh"	156
XXV	"What You Have to Do—"	162
XXVI	A Surprise	169
XXVII	Smoke and Fire	175
XXVIII	"Made in Germany"	184
XXIX	"Now You See It, Now You Don't"	194
XXX	He Disappears	205

PREFACE

It was good advice that Rudyard Kipling gave his "young British soldier" in regard to the latter's rifle:

"She's human as you are—you treat her as sich And she'll fight for the young British soldier."

Tommy Atkins' rifle was by no means the first inanimate or dumb thing to prove human and to deserve human treatment. Animals of all sorts have been given this quality. Jack London's dog, in The Call of the Wild, has human interest. So has the immortal Black Beauty.

But we are not concerned with animals now. Kipling's ocean liner has human interest—a soul. I need not tell you that a boat is human. Its every erratic quality of crankiness, its veritable heroism under stress, its temperament (if you like that word) makes it very human indeed. That is why a man will often let his boat rot rather than sell it.

This is not true of all inanimate things. It depends. I have never heard of a steam roller or a poison gas bomb being beloved by anybody. I should not care to associate with a hand grenade. It is a matter of taste; I dare say I could learn to love a British tank, but I could never make a friend and confidante of a balloon. An aeroplane might prove a good pal—we shall have to see.

Davy Crockett actually made a friend and confidante of his famous gun, Betsy. And Betsy is known in history. It is said that the gun crews on armed liners have found this human quality in their guns, and many of these have been given names—Billy Sunday, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.

I need not tell you that a camp-fire is human and that trees are human.

The pioneers of old, pressing into the dim wilderness, christened their old flintlocks and talked to them as a man may talk to a man. The woodsman's axe was "deare and greatly beloved," we are told.

The hard-pressed Indian warrior knelt in the forest and besought that life-long comrade, his bow, not to desert or fail him. King Philip kept in his quiver a favorite arrow which he never used because it had earned retirement by saving his own life.

What Paul Revere may have said to his horse in that stirring midnight ride we do not know. But may we not suppose that he urged his trusty steed forward with resolute and inspiring words about the glorious errand they were upon?

Perhaps the lonely ringer of the immortal bell up in the Old South steeple muttered some urgent word of incentive to that iron clanger as it beat against its ringing wall of brass.

So I have made Uncle Sam, the motorcycle, the friend and companion of Tom Slade. I have withheld none of their confidences—or trifling differences. I dare say they were both weary and impatient at times.

If he is not companionable to you, then so much the worse for you and for our story. But he was the friend, the inseparable associate and co-patriot of Tom Slade, the Dispatch Rider.

You will not like him any the less because of the noise he made in trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had better not read this book.

TOM SLADE

MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER