"Nick Rabig!" the others exclaimed in one breath.
"Right," grinned Billy. "I knew that would get you. Nick seems to be as popular with you as poison ivy at a church picnic."
"What cat dragged it in?" groaned Bart.
"Our unlucky day," growled Frank. "I knew something would happen when I picked up the wrong shoe this morning."
"But how did he get back?" asked Bart, his curiosity overcoming his repugnance.
"Came in on his own feet," replied Billy. "Escaped, so he says, after performing prodigies of valor. To hear Nick talk you'd think he'd wiped out half the German army."
His comrades laughed.
"I suppose we ought to kill the fatted calf," said Frank sarcastically.
"Where's the calf?" asked Bart. "Unless we take Billy here," he added as an afterthought.
He dodged the pass that Billy made at him, and just then Fred Anderson, another young soldier, strolled up.