“Maybe they were afraid that you would run away,” drawled the teamster. “Sergeant Scott says you’re too skittish to turn loose.”
“The sergeant will be putting handcuffs on us next,” laughed Billy.
The teamster set his teeth in a plug of tobacco, snapped the whiplash over the big bay team and with a twinkle in his eye started the verse of some soldier ditty:
“‘Said Colonel Malone to the sergeant bold,
These are the traps I give you to hold,
If they are gone when I come back
You’re just the boy I’ll put on the rack.’”
“That’s just it,” added the teamster, changing from song to the usual drawl, “if the sergeant lets you come to harm the colonel would cut the stripes from his coat. And what’s more the sergeant is kind of struck on you himself. Git-ap,”—to the horses.
It was at the crossing of the Lys at Warneton that the boys had another baptism of fire.
The crossing was strongly held by the Germans with a barricade loopholed at the bottom to enable the men to fire while lying down. The Allies’ cavalry, with the artillery, blew the barricade to pieces and scattered the defenders.