He tiptoed down the stairs and, freeing Patchou from his fastening, answered Slim’s impatient halloo.
“Gotta find a commissary dump somewhere down the road,” Slim explained. “Weller says it cain’t be far. Them 90th Division cooks told him about it.”
After his long imprisonment, Patchou was blissfully happy. He ran rings around Slim and André. He found excitement in every newly blasted hole in the mossy walls, and inviting scents everywhere.
Slim marched rapidly along for nearly half a mile, with André keeping up at a trot. Then Slim said, “Best we begin to ask questions now. Who, ’round here, knows everything?”
André pointed to a house ahead. “That’s M. Valjean’s home there. He’s the cobbler. He will know.”
M. Valjean listened eagerly to André’s query. Did he know where there was an American food dump headquarters nearby?
“Ah-h, oui, oui, certainement,” the cobbler responded enthusiastically, and gave detailed directions in a flood of rapid French.
André said, “I know where it is.” He added, “Merci,” to M. Valjean.
“You sure?” Slim frowned. “Sounded as if it must be on the Russian border, what-all I could make of it.”
“I am sure, Slim,” André replied. “It is my own schoolhouse.”