The Brighton Boys at Chateau-ThierryDriscoll, James R.
General
The Brighton Boys at Chateau-Thierry
Driscoll, James R.
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- France -- Juvenile fiction
With a grinding of brakes the ambulance came to a sudden stop, almost
even with the long, low car by the roadside. “S-say,” continued Don,
“any--you blokes got a drink? One good service man to another; eh,
friend? Just a little nip--you fellers are Red Cross, ain’t you? Eh?
Les’ see--. Hands up! Both of you, quick! One move and you’re dead
men! Out, fellows, and put a rope on them!”
One of the spies, the weazen fellow, began to protest in excellent
English:
“What do you mean by this? We haven’t done anything to--.” But Duncan
snatched up a clump of grass roots and shoved it into the fellow’s
mouth. The other man cowered back and tried at first to keep his
face away from the electric bull’s-eye Clem threw on them. Through
Duncan’s dexterity with strong twine taken from Don’s toolbox, both
men had their arms tied behind them in a jiffy so that they winced
with the pain.
“Do you fellows think this is funny? Let us loose, at once! We have
no time for jokes!” demanded the taller one, gazing at Don’s revolver
in a manner that showed he knew it was no joke.
“But you had time to play one of your kind of jokes on that poor
wounded soldier up on the hill,” Clem returned and the thin face of
the spy grew ghastly white. “We haven’t been up on the hill,” he
asserted--but another wad of grass-roots stopped his talk also. Don
took the bull’s-eye from Clem and threw it into the tall man’s face.
“Well, Stapley, I guess you know him; don’t you?”
“The fellow on the train, sure enough,” Clem said.
“Wonderful!” said Don. “You do have a lucid flash now and then.” But
before Clem could reply Don began to enlighten the spy:
“I guess you remember us back there in America. We got off at Lofton,
too. We got your cronies, Shultz and the whiskered chap, and I got
your pard up near Montdidier.”
Of course the man could make no reply. Don continued:
“Duncan, you can run my car, I guess. You take these nice chaps into
camp. In about half an hour they’ll face a firing squad.”
But Duncan shook his head. “What’s in me has got to come out. I’m
an ambulance driver and working to save people--ours and theirs,
too--but that don’t say I don’t just love gettin’ square more’n
anything else on this green earth! I told the corporal here I have
a little Indian in me. I have a heap and it’s reached high mark
right now. It might get the corporal in trouble and it may get me in
trouble, but I reckon you’re out of it, Richards. No matter; what
I want is to be the firing squad that fixes these blood-smeared
polecats. But I don’t want to do it with a gun. You just leave it to
me. I’m goin’ to take ’em over here in this field an’ stick a knife
into--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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