“This is most provoking!” said one of the officers. “It means that we must try to stop some passing car and get them to help us. When they see it is the General’s car that is in trouble they will feel in duty bound to aid us, no matter whether they really want to or not. But I just hate the job of stopping any one for that purpose as it always makes any one provoked to be so hailed on the road.”
“Here comes a farmer driving a pair of horses hitched to an old wagon. Let us stop him. I think his horses can pull us out if we all push,” suggested another of the officers.
“Now is my chance!” thought Billy, and he was just about to chew at the rope around his neck when the farmer came up and stopped opposite them to see if he could help them any.
“Yes,” replied one of the officers. “You are just the man we have been looking for to give us a lift out of this ditch.”
“Wal, that is a purty durn big car of your’n. But I guess my hosses kin pull her out. That is, if I only had a rope to tie to the back of my wagon, but I can’t get hide nor hair of any rope or chain or nothin’.”
“We have a rope,” answered one of the officers. “We always carry a good strong rope for just such purposes under one of the seats. Here, Jean, get it out and we will see how soon these horses can pull us out.”
Jean, the chauffeur, stopped working on the tire to get the rope, but alas! when he looked under the seat no rope was there. From the fury into which the officers flew, Billy thought they were going to kill the fellow on the spot for his carelessness, first running out of water and now finding no rope.
“You are discharged the minute you get us to camp!” roared the superior officer. “And what is more, I shall see that the General has you severely punished. What if the enemy were at our heels and we were trying to escape from them, or we had important dispatches that must get to Headquarters to change some movement of the army that would mean the saving of hundreds and thousands of lives?”
At last the chauffeur managed to say, “Could we not use the rope that is around the goat’s neck to pull the car out of the sand? It is a very long one. In fact, it is the rope that belongs under the seat. In my excitement I forgot I had used it to tie the goat.”
“Of course we can! And to keep him from escaping we can tie him with one of the farmer’s reins.”