30th May, Early morning: A morning as any other

Davy had gotten away safe from Hakeswill; he was still looking over his shoulder every few steps, however. He was doubly grateful to Goliath, who'd not only rescued him and Pye from Sykes, but had kept the sergeant busy while they could make their escape. Of course, Goliath hadn't done that deliberately, but still, he'd been very handy. He was probably going to get flogged for it. Hakeswill wouldn't let him off easy. Maybe Davy would track him down later and find some way to pay him back; he owed him a little more than just the worth of one rabbit by now.

He held Pye's torn and shredded jacket wadded up in his arms as he ran. By now he had figured out that the strips of cloth they had used to tie up Sykes' hands came from the jacket. It was too late to try to get them back, however. Maybe Lucy could find some green wool to replace the missing pieces; she had plenty of scraps in her mending basket, and she was a dab hand. He could give this back to Pye later, all fixed, and wouldn't Pye be pleased about that?

He swerved to avoid being seen as he caught sight of another man in the Rifleman's green with red facings.

Bachmeier and Weber turned to the path that they were directed. While Weber gazed left, seeking a patch of green and red, or even some white of a shirt, Bachmeier looked right and searched for movement rather then an actual outline. They did not even come far when Bachmeier stopped and looked at the spot again. For a moment there he thought something moved. It had to be small, as it made very litle sound and it had to be light footed too. Just as he wanted to raise an alarm, he saw the small rabbit hop past at a speed.

He gazed at it with a sigh. It would have been a fine dinner if they had the time to catch it. When he began to turn, a glimpse of red caught his eye. A red collar, some green too. A small brat that ran with it like his heels were on fire. He cursed and hissed a warning to Weber. They weren't certain if that was Pye's, but the boy was running and he had something resembling their coat!

Weber and Bachmeier both broke into a run, calling out to others that they have found something.

Somebody was calling out in a heavily-accented voice. Had the missing Rifleman been found? Mayden looked up from the patch of ground with the stirred-up dirt, in time to see two 60th men dash off after something. It was like calling hounds to the hunt. Before he was even aware what he was doing, Mayden was gone bounding after them.

"Pye! Zack Pye!" Where could he be? If he didn't show up soon, they'd have to go back to the others and report that he'd run. And Cotton had never heard of a Rifleman deserting. He didn't want Pye to be the first.

He paused as Bachmeier called something, but they were off to the side, and didn't need him to join them.

"Pye!" Where could the lad have got to? He didn't want to give up, to see the look on the Captain's face when he heard their report. Not now, after everything else that had happened over the past few days.

"What are they shouting about?" Palmer asked Cotton, and then ran to join the others without waiting for a response. He soon saw the cause of the commotion. They had been chasing a boy who was a mess of blood and who was carrying a rifleman's jacket. "Stop, boy! What's happened?"

The rifleman caught sight of Davy, and he cursed in some foreign language - must have been one of those Germans, Davy thought, as he took off running like a deer. He wasn't sure what they'd want with him, but it couldn't be a good thing to be caught by the Riflemen straight after he'd just gotten away from the scene of a fight. It might be trouble for him somehow. Better to try to escape and get away clean than to get nabbed by Hakeswill - what if these Riflemen kept him here until the Sergeant finally finished with Goliath and then came after him?

He risked one glance backwards, and was horrified to see that two others had joined the chase and he now had four men bearing down on him. Davy put in a burst of speed, but he was already tired, and his legs weren't nearly as long as theirs. They were gaining on him.

He shouldn't have looked back at them; right at that moment Davy's foot landed in a rabbit hole and twisted underneath him. He went down all in a tumble, rolling over his shoulder. Kicking out at the one that had nearly grabbed hold of him, Davy struggled to get away, holding tightly onto the coat. It was Pye's; no way any of them were getting it away from him. "No! Le' us go!"

No response from a familiar rifleman. It was as good as if he had disappeared into the ground or got taken away by the river. However, as the chase began, the boy was very real. Bachmeier was not yet certain what the boy carried, but it looked all too familiar. If it was really a coat and he was correct, then they needed to know why a child such as this, bloodied with injury, ran off with it.

"Warte mal!" He shouted. He almost had him. The boy looked back. He reconised them and seemed to still be running. No innocent man would do so, only a guilty mind! But the error of looking back to see how far the 'hounds' were was made evident in the riflemen's favour. The boy lost footing, went into a tumble and then Bachmeier was on him, managing to grab hold of one arm. But boy was this one a kicker. A fiesty little beast. Bachmeier lost grip and gained a throbbing pain on his leg for it.

Weber pushed past to get a hold of the boy. He sensed the 95th rifleman was rather close by: "Cotton. Come over here!" The man shouted catching sight of a button on the mess of green and red.

"Stop, ease up, lads!" Zeb Palmer cried as a couple of riflemen pounced on the boy. They had surrounded him now, and there was no where else for him to run. They could see now that the blood on his shirt was his own, streaming from his nose. "Easy, boy, we ain't gonna hurt you," Palmer said, holding up his hands. The kid looked to be a bit younger than Joe Cavender and full of fright like a cornered animal. "We just want to know where you got that jacket. Did you take it from a rifleman and he gave you a bloody nose for it?"

Someone was calling his name, but it didn't sound like Pye's voice. Palmer was with them, though, and could speak English just as well as Cotton could. But where was their newest Rifleman? Cotton was growing increasingly concerned. Much more of this hunting for him and Vickery would know that something was up, because Cotton would turn up late with his morning tea.

"Pye! C'mon, mate, where are you?!"

He'd kicked one of the German riflemen good and hard, but the second one had laid hold of him and wrapped his arms around Davy's torso. He was still hanging onto the coat with one arm, refusing to give it up, even though he couldn't struggle free as easily like that. He wasn't going to leave it behind for them. He curled himself around the coat like a turtle, even while Weber held him hoisted up in the air, and glared at them all resentfully. One of them was yelling for Pye. Why were they looking for him? What did they want with him? Davy figured it was better not to tell them anything.

"Ah foun' i'," he said defiantly to Palmer. "Ah've done nowt wron'. Le' us go!"

"Leave him be, Weber!" Palmer snapped. He turned to the boy again, trying to control his irritation. "Sure, nothing wrong with finding sommat. Where'd you find it? Will you show us? We happen to be looking for a rifleman what's disappeared."

"Why ye lookin' fer him?" Davy asked warily. Sure as anything, it was Pye they were looking for, and who knew if they meant anything good by it? Someone had already obviously found Pye and already done him a mischief. "Ah've no' seen nowt."

He certainly wasn't leading them back to Hakeswill either.

Palmer clenched his jaw and tried to be patient. "Because he's one of us. See? Same jackets. We want to make sure he don't get into trouble. Breaking lads' noses or the like."

"Do you have his coat?" Weber asked with his accented English." and if you don't who did you pinch it off?" He eyed the ragged state of the coat sceptically. A brawl with this child would not have caused such damage. It could have been, he stole it of the quartermaster's wagon. Some old damaged up thing that was used for scrap fabric or meant to be scrapped once the buttons were taken off.

Palmer's words, which seemed to be meant to set him against Pye, just confirmed the idea that Davy had been forming. They were hunting him for no good purpose. And he wasn't going to help them! "Ah divvent lift nowt nither," Davy said firmly. "Ah foond i' lyin' aboot; no halfers! Lossie, findie, seekie, keepie." He clutched it to him even more tightly.

Zeb Palmer looked around impatiently. "Gabe, get over here!" he called. Cotton was better at this sort of thing. "So, fair enough. If you just found it lyin' about, you won't mind showin' us where, aye? And then we can get someone to look at that nose of yours."

That sounded like Palmer yelling his name. He turned and headed in the direction the shout had come from.

"What's up?" he called when he saw Palmer. Who was the kid with him, and... that looked like Pye's jacket, only it was in a sorry state. He hurried over.

"Lad says he found that jacket," Palmer said briefly, a strong note of irritation in his voice.

The jacket was in a sorry state indeed. Mayden wrinkled his nose. What the hell had happened...?

"Should be startin' combin' the grounds here'bouts?" He asked.

Cotton looked from one to the other. "Is that Pye's?" he asked, addressing the question to the gathered group at large. He looked at the lad. "You found it? Would you tell us where? 'Cause we think it might belong to a friend of ourn, an' he might need us help."

Davy hadn't trusted the Germans one bit, and Palmer had been a little better - stopped the stupid foreigner from doing anything horrible to him, for one. The new one, though, he took a different tone in asking. Davy watched him warily for a moment. He still wasn't going to take anything for granted.

"He's yer marra is he? Wha's yer nyem?" Davy asked Cotton, and then looked to Palmer and the others, clearly putting the same question to them.

"Here, lad," Mayden said, pulling his neckcloth loose and holding it out. "Stop your nose up some, wouldja?"

Davy eyed the neckcloth, then glanced at Palmer, who'd mentioned fixing his nose already, too. If they were trying to cozen up to him, he was wise to their tricks. He took the neckcloth anyway, and stuffed it up under his nose. It hurt to just touch his nose with it, but he gritted his teeth and ignored that. He wasn't about to let the riflemen think he was a baby.

"I'm Palmer, and I'm his mate, aye," Palmer volunteered, impatient to get these niceties over. "We all are, all of us. What about you then? What's your name?" Then a thought dawned on him. "You got a sister what follows the 33rd?"

"Palmer, slow down a bit - more haste, less speed," Cotton said. "I'm Cotton. I bin lookin' after Pye since he joined us Riflemen, an' now we can't find him and we'm worried he might've gone off some'rs an' got hisself into trouble - we want to help, him bein' a mate of ourn, see."