Buzz shifted uncomfortably. "He's a bigger guy than I am. I bet he's over six foot. The papers was always telling how he played football at that college he went to."
Casey spoke up again. "They say he didn't wait for this here draft. He's goin' to Fort Sheridan, around Chicago somewhere, to be made a officer."
"Yeh, them rich guys, they got it all their own way," Spider spoke up, gloomily. "They—"
From down the street came a dull, muffled thud-thud-thud-thud. Already Chippewa, Wisconsin, had learned to recognise it. Grand Avenue, none too crowded on this mid-week night, pressed to the curb to see. Down the street they stared toward the moving mass that came steadily nearer. The listless group on the corner stiffened into something like interest.
"Company G," said Red. "I hear they're leavin' in a couple of days."
And down the street they came, thud-thud-thud, Company G, headed for the new red-brick Armory for the building of which they had engineered everything from subscription dances and exhibition drills to turkey raffles. Chippewa had never taken Company G very seriously until now. How could it, when Company G was made up of Willie Kemp, who clerked in Hassell's shoe store; Fred Garvey, the reporter on the Chippewa Eagle; Hermie Knapp, the real-estate man, and Earl Hanson who came around in the morning for your grocery order.
Thud-thud-thud-thud. And to Chippewa, standing at the curb, quite suddenly these every-day men and boys were transformed into something remote and almost terrible. Something grim. Something sacrificial. Something sacred.
Thud-thud-thud-thud. Looking straight ahead.
"The poor boobs," said Spider, and spat, and laughed.
The company passed on down the street—vanished. Grand Avenue went its way.