"Victory! Victory!" cried those who had listened to the announcement.
"My mother says just what yours says, Tom. I needn't come home unless we win."
"The girl I'm going to marry said that, too!"
"If we go back with the Gray army at our heels we shall strike a worse fire than if we stick!"
Stransky was thinking that they had to do more than hold the Grays. Before he should see his girl they had to take back the lost territory. He carried two pictures of Minna in his mind: one when she had struck him in the face as he had tried to kiss her and the other as he said good-by at the kitchen door. There was not much encouragement in either.
"But when she gets better acquainted with me there's no telling!" he kept thinking. "I was fighting out of cussedness at first. Now I'm fighting for her and to keep what is ours!"