“Shoot nuthin’! Man, man, how come yo’ lef’ de barrel plum empty? Dey wuz no ca’tridge in de barrel. Ah cocked her ’en pulled de trigger ’en cocked her again ’en pulled ’en she wouldn’t go off nohow ’en by de time Ah projecated whar de troble was, dem fellahs wuz a flyin’ down de road lak Ol’ Man Scratch wuz a huntin’ ’em. But ’tain’t so much Ah keer ef dey is gone so’s yu ain’ daid.”
“Well, I care!” Don was clearly regaining his senses. “But it was my fault, Wash. I never thought to pump a cartridge into the barrel, and what a fool I was to pull that door open and not be ready. That villain was laying for me and, say, their car wasn’t crippled much, either.”
In the roadway, where the disabled car had stood, lay two monkey-wrenches and a small bolt which probably had pivoted a brake rod. At the rate of speed that car had started to gain, there would probably be no use for brakes!
“We’ve got to get back and report this fellow,” Don said, returning his rifle to its case, and the revolver to its holster on his belt. “We’ve got only about twenty minutes’ run yet, I think. Say, I feel like ten fools to let those devils get away. Keep your eye open for an M. P. on the road.”
But not more than five minutes elapsed before the boys sighted a big touring car, with half a dozen khaki-clad men in it, tearing along toward them. Don stopped and signaled to the soldiers to do the same. They dashed up with screeching brakes, and Don stared. In the front seat, with the driver sat Clem Stapley.
All ill feeling in Don’s mind was swept aside by the business at hand. Its nature and the comradeship that natives of the same distant country in a foreign land and in a common cause naturally abolish personal ill feeling. So he shouted:
“Hello, Clem! Say, fellows, there are two spies right ahead; they just—”
“In a Red Cross car?” asked a man on the rear seat; he was an M. P. “We’re looking for them. Got word at the French evacuation hospital. Two did you say?”
“Yes, and they’re getting away at a lively rate. Clem, one of them is the same German we saw in the train; the one that got away after they blew up the mills, over home. I’ve seen him before, too, north of here. He—”