orward had
thrown their forces into confusion. Brigades and regiments had become
badly mixed and it took some time to straighten matters out.

But if the Germans did not know how matters stood, the Allied
commanders knew it only too well. It was this that explained the
agitation that the boys had noticed in the general the night before.
He had been called upon to close the gap. Upon his shoulders rested
for the time the salvation of the Allied cause.

If he had had sufficient forces at his command, the problem would have
been comparatively simple, provided he had been given time to solve it.
But he had neither time nor men. He had only fifty cavalrymen. He
lacked guns and ammunition. The hard-pressed armies at the right and
left were battling desperately against the on-rushing German hordes and
could spare him little.

"Looks as if he had to make bricks without straw," said Frank to Bart
the next morning, when the state of things had been explained by the
orderly who had taken them in charge.

"It's a case of must," said Bart, "and from the squint I had at the
general last night he's the one who can do the job if it can be done at
all."

"Will you stay and help?" asked the orderly. "Every man will help.
The general's picked up three hundred American engineers working on a
road nearby. Every one of them has thrown down his pick and shouldered
a rifle."

"Bully for the engineers!" cried Frank.

"Will you stay?" asked the orderly. "Of course you can return to your
own command if you want to."

"Will we stay?" exclaimed Frank. "Give me a gun. I know my captain
would be willing."

"You can't drive us away," Bart almost shouted.

It was a scratch army that the general finally got together. Some of
his men had never handled a gun before. Some were drivers, some were
telegraph linemen, some were cooks. But he made the most of what he
had. He himself was here, there and everywhere, having trees felled to
obstruct the roads, planting machine guns in strategic places, digging
shallow trenches, resting neither by day or night.

Frank and Bart worked like beavers. They were placed in charge of
machine-gun crews, and their deadly weapons kept spitting fire until
they were almost too hot to handle. Again and again they beat back
German detachments. They fought like fiends. They never expected to
come out of that fight alive. The odds seemed too tremendous.

"It's like Custer's last charge," panted F