I could hardly believe my eyes or my ears, but managed to shout back, “Yes, yes, I’m an American.  Are you?” I asked dubiously.

“You betcha I’m a ’Merican,” he replied, coming quickly up to me.  It was my turn again.

“What are you doing down here—­fighting?” I put in fatuously.

“What the hell you think I’m doing?” he rejoined.

I now felt quite sure that he was an American.  Further offerings of similar “language of small variety but great strength” testified to his sojourn in the States.

“You betcha I’m a ’Merican,” he reiterated, “though I was over there but two years.  My name is August Bidden.  I worked in a lumber-mill in Wagner, Wisconsin.  Came back here to visit my family.  The war broke out.  I was a Reservist and joined my regiment.  I’m here on scout-duty.  Got to find out when the Germans come back into the city.”

“Been in any battles?”

“You betcha,” he replied.

“Kill any Germans?”

“You betcha.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“You betcha.”

“Any around here now?”

“You betcha.  A lot of them down in the bushes over the brook.”  Then his eyes flashed a sudden fire as though an inspired idea had struck him.  “There’s no superior officer around,” he exclaimed confidentially.  “Come right down with me and you can take a pot-shot at the damned Boches with my rifle.”  He said it with the air of a man offering a rare treat to his best friend.  I felt that it devolved on me to exhibit a proper zest for this little shooting-party and save my reputation without risking my skin.  So I said eagerly: 

“Now are you dead sure that the Germans are down there!” implying that I couldn’t afford any time unless the shooting was good.

“You betcha they’re down there,” was his disconcerting reply.  “You can see their green-gray uniforms.  I counted sixteen or seventeen of them.”

The thought of that sixteen-to-one shot made my cheeks take on the color of the German uniforms.  The naked truth was my last resort.  It was the only thing that could prevent my zealous friend from dragging me forcibly down to the brookside.  He may have heard the chattering of my teeth.  At any rate he looked up and exclaimed, “What’s the matter?  You ’fraid?”

I replied without any hesitation, “You betcha.”

The happy arrival of the photographer at this juncture, however, redeemed my fallen reputation; for a soldier is always peculiarly amenable to the charms of the camera and is even willing to quit fighting to get his picture taken.

This photograph happens to hit off our little episode exactly.  It shows Ridden serene, smiling, confident, and my sort of evasive hangdog look as though, in popular parlance, I had just “got one put over me.”