There was a wistfulness in the kind query that went to the boy’s jouncing heart and made him resolve to be shaken to a pulp sooner than deprive Dad of a chance to see the one woman in the ambulance corps.
“Nope!” he lied blithely. “I’m getting to enjoy it fine.”
Their horses plodded along at a comfortable walk, neck and neck, and the boy breathed more easily and shifted his position in the torturing saddle. Emp took advantage of the slackened pace to dart to the roadside and begin to explore truculently a quite-deserted woodchuck hole.
“Sic ’im, Emp!” encouraged Jimmie. “Dig ’im out, boy! Wrassle ’im!”
Thus exhorted, Emp bent his entire canine energy to the task of unearthing a woodchuck from the hole where no woodchuck was. The dog’s yellow forepaws flew like pistons, widening the mouth of the hole; and his red little tongue was speedily flaked with earth.
Backward from the swift-plied paws, as he dug, flew a cloud of yellow dust.
And a generous share of that same yellow dust was hurled against the spotless gaiters and new baggy trousers of a corporal of Zouaves who chanced to be passing by, on foot, at that side of the road.
The corporal, with a single glance at the cause of this defacing of his dandified raiment, swore fluently and launched a kick at the highly industrious Emp. Jimmie cried out in indignant protest. The kick, conscientiously, but too hastily, delivered, barely grazed the flank of the burrowing dog.
Emp, at the alien touch, ceased his excavations and whirled about to investigate. He was just in time to witness the start of the second and even more vicious kick.
With admirable strategy, Emp leaped to one side as the gaitered calf swung past him and, in practically the same motion, sunk his white little teeth in the Zouave’s other gaiter.