“Here, you Billy, stand still while I take this rope off your neck.” The chauffeur stood on the step, leaning through the open door of the tonneau as he untied the rope that was around Billy’s neck, with the farmer standing behind him ready to hand him one of his reins to secure Billy again.
“Here is a good chance to escape,” thought Billy. “To be sure, I will have to run the chance of one of the officers shooting me, but I will take it. For I would rather be shot than carried back to camp and shut up with a lot of German prisoners.”
At the moment Billy was forming his plan of escape, all the officers were fussing on the car at one place or another trying to dig out the wheels by shoveling a path for them in the sand.
Seeing all this, Billy made up his mind he would butt the chauffeur so hard he would knock all the breath out of him so he could not cry out and give the alarm. So just as the farmer stepped close behind the chauffeur to hand him the rein, and the rope was off Billy’s neck, Billy gave a plunge forward and planted his head in the middle of the chauffeur’s stomach, sending him backward with all the breath knocked out of his body and with such force that he hit the farmer and sent him sprawling on his back, with his head hanging over the ditch. Now just as his head hit the ditch, the officer who was shoveling a path for the car raised up and the farmer in turn hit him and sent him flying into the ditch. There were three men disposed of in one butt. That left only two to shoot or pursue him, and both of these were on the far side of the auto and had not noticed anything as their heads were down and they were busy tugging big stones out of the way of the wheels. So Billy had a good start of a hundred yards or more before the officer who had been sent rolling into the ditch could right himself and give the alarm. By the time he found out what really had hit him, Billy had run to the side of the road, jumped a fence and disappeared in a thick woods. The officer’s anger knew no bounds, and he swore a blue streak and fired two shots after Billy.
“Thunder and lightning, I would not have had that goat escape for a million dollars,” he exclaimed.
“Bet your small change first,” counseled another.
“Yes; his escape puts us in a pretty light, doesn’t it? Five able-bodied men not able to keep one goat in an auto! To be sure, one man was not a man, only an idiot of a chauffeur,” he stormed.
“Say, Jean, you better stop working on that tire and go hang yourself with the rope in your hand!” scoffed the third, “for you are likely to be hung in earnest when you get to camp for all the mistakes you have made to-day, to say nothing of losing the goat besides.”
But poor Jean heard this not at all for he was still unconscious from Billy’s terrific butt.