Once, when the train was delayed at a junction the three Cresville friends got out, as did hundreds of others, to “stretch their legs.” There was another train-load of young soldiers on a siding, having come from another camp, and lads from this were also walking up and down.
As Ned, Bob and Jerry stood together, looking at a group of recruits who had been trained in Texas, they heard a voice saying: 52
“This drafting business makes me sick! I don’t like it at all!”
“Maybe you’d rather have been passed over,” suggested some one.
“Naw, you get me wrong!” was the answer. “I want to fight all right, but I want to do it my own way. I’d have enlisted in the air service if they’d given me time enough. I was thinking of it when the draft law went into effect, and then I couldn’t. I know a lot about airships. I used to run one, and I invented one, too.”
“Did it fly?” some one wanted to know.
“It would have if it hadn’t been for some mean fellows in my town who didn’t want me to beat them,” was the announcement. “You wait until I get on the other side! I’ll show ’em what flying is, if they give me the chance, and Jerry Hopkins and his pals sha’n’t stop me, either!”
“Did you hear that?” asked Ned in a low voice.
“I should say so!” exclaimed Bob. “We ought to know who that is.”
“Noddy Nixon, without a doubt!” remarked Jerry. “And up to his old tricks! I hope he isn’t going on the same transport with us!”