As if there was anything I could do!
“You listen to me, Leona! If he doesn’t come pretty soon, you go right up to that General and confess the whole business! I’m not going to be worried like this!”
I had to laugh at that. She wasn’t going to be worried like this! And I should tell the General! Why, they’d probably crucify me and send Leon to Atlanta for life! I told her to sit tight and not to worry—everything would straighten out sooner or later. “And I’m all right, anyway,” I added for good measure. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Well—you call me the minute he arrives,” she insisted.
“Surely,” I agreed. “And if he doesn’t arrive—I mean if he calls you and says he can’t get here, tell him to lie low until you hear from me. If he doesn’t show up in time, I’ll send a letter to you for him. He’ll have to stay out of sight if he doesn’t show up here.”
Well, I finally got away from that phone and back to my bunk. We were going to Hoboken that night, as sure as my name was Leona Canwick. That is, somebody was going—was it me?
But I couldn’t help wondering what I’d do if Leon didn’t arrive. I couldn’t think of a thing to do except do what he would do if he were here. I’d be in for one sweet time! If I got caught in this thing, thank God I wouldn’t have to worry about one of those inspections for probably a month. Perhaps I could figure out some way of evading it by that time. But, oh, I did wish Leon would come! And I went back to the headquarters building again to wait for him.
Something told me that he wasn’t anywhere near the camp! Any other man would have got there, if he had to break both legs and a couple of ribs. But not my dear sweet concaveman of a brother!
But as long as I was there, there was hope. When I left this camp, sometime before midnight—or rather, if I had not left it before that—the die would be cast, and there would certainly be hell to pay in more ways than one.
What a wonderful adventure this had turned out to be!!!