“Oh! not far, you can depend on it, Bumpus,” he said, “because they haven’t been gone long, and would have to tramp it. I reckon now they’d just want to get say half a mile or so outside the place, so the racket they kick up won’t reach the ears of their folks here.”
“Undo the package, Allan,” said Thad, with a business-like air.
This being done disclosed three stout whips of the type often spoken of as “cowhides.” Bumpus immediately took possession of one, and seemed to be as tickled as a child with a new toy.
“They’re just prime stuff, Thad,” he asserted. “Course I’ve never dusted any fellow’s jacket with such a thing, and I don’t hanker after the job now; but what has to be can’t be helped. I’ll promise you to do my level best to sting their legs, for that’s the best way, I take it.”
Giraffe looked at the whips rather enviously. Possibly he almost felt sorry he had displayed that ferocious club so hastily; only for that he might have been given one of the cowhides to manipulate, instead of Bumpus.
They had by this time left the village behind them. The river lay on their left, and the further bank was not very far away. Thad was watching the road in advance, as though mentally figuring on where they would run across the ambuscade planned by these bellicose Belgian boys.
“There’s some sort of a turn I can see up yonder, Thad,” ventured Giraffe, with his neck stretched in his favorite manner when sighting things, and which peculiarity had given him his queer nick-name.
“Yes, it’s a bend, all right,” added Allan.
“Just around a place like that would offer a fine chance to jump out on us, I’d think,” suggested Giraffe.
He was bending down while speaking, and taking hold of his cudgel as though intending to be ready when the call to duty came.