[CHAPTER XII]
Tim
Don Richards’ new helper on the Red Cross ambulance was an under-sized, red-headed Irishman by the name of Tim Casey. He was a month or two short of nineteen winters and, as he expressed it, an undetermined number of summers, but judging by the bleached-out color of his hair, which he assured Don was originally as black as a nigger’s pocket, there must have been a long siege of sunny months. County Kerry was his birthplace and his native village was noted for its big men, his own father being almost a walking church steeple and his numerous brothers all six-footers. Tim was the only short one—“the runt in the litter,” he called himself.
“But if yez are proper anxious to know an’ ye look loike ye couldn’t survive the day out wid not knowin’ all o’ me fam’ly histhry, Oi’ll tell yez this: Phw’at was left out o’ me body was put in me head, do yez moind? for by the holy Saint Macherel, Oi’m the smartest o’ the bunch. Me faither’s poorer than whin he was born, an’ me brithers couldn’t foind pennies if they growed on the grass. But me? Faith, if wan o’ these here boche zizzers don’t have me name wrote on it, thin whin the war’s over Oi’m goin’ to America an’ make a million pounds, loike me friend Mike McCarty did!”
“Good for you! That’s nearly five million dollars. Hope you get it,” said Don.
“Thanks. Could yez lend me phw’at they call two francs, now, to git us both some sweet, brown, mushy things, loike candy, but diff’runt? It’s me own treat, now.”
“Chocolate? Sure. Here you are. You can get them at the Y. M. C. A. hut in an abri back of the woods and near our dressing station,” Don informed him, and a little later the two lads were enjoying mouthfuls of very satisfying sweetness, as they waited for more wounded to be brought out to them. And as they waited Don turned to a sentry to ask some questions. The sentry was glad to impart:
“The P. C. came over a little while ago and I heard him tell the medical sergeant, here in the doorway, that they had a message from the evacuation hospital about a Hun in a Red Cross ambulance getting away around the woods here. The man I relieved said he saw the fellow go past, and he went a whizzing, but he didn’t question him; nobody does anything with the Red Cross on it. The P. C. said that they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man, nor the ambulance, since and they think he must have been heading for another sector. He can rip off his red crosses there and let on he’s something else important. They do those stunts. But if he’s caught, it’s good-night for him!”
Don was keenly disappointed. He had sent some very well directed bullets straight after the escaping car, but they must have hit the sides at an angle and glanced off. However cold-blooded and murderous it appeared thus to shoot down a man, even a declared and vicious enemy, the boy had done this deed against one who had murdered his dear pal, Billy Mearns. Moreover, Don had wanted to write to his father and to Mr. Stapley, at home, that the escaped man who had helped to blow up the mills had been discovered and accounted for. Don felt sure that this fake Red Cross driver and spy was the same man—the narrow-eyed, tall individual that he and Clem Stapley had spotted and listened to on the train coming from Brighton, more than three months ago.