“Oh, we won’t go home till evenin’!” sang Clem.
“Till mornin’, you blamed fool! D-don’t ye know the words?” Don shouted, tickled to give Clem a dig. “Aw, dry up an’ let me sing it! Thish-a-way it goes: Oh, we won’t get home till mornin’, till broad-s-say—.”
With a grinding of brakes the ambulance came to a sudden stop, almost even with the long, low car by the roadside. “S-say,” continued Don, “any—you blokes got a drink? One good service man to another; eh, friend? Just a little nip—you fellers are Red Cross, ain’t you? Eh? Les’ see—. Hands up! Both of you, quick! One move and you’re dead men! Out, fellows, and put a rope on them!”
One of the spies, the weazen fellow, began to protest in excellent English:
“What do you mean by this? We haven’t done anything to—.” But Duncan snatched up a clump of grass roots and shoved it into the fellow’s mouth. The other man cowered back and tried at first to keep his face away from the electric bull’s-eye Clem threw on them. Through Duncan’s dexterity with strong twine taken from Don’s toolbox, both men had their arms tied behind them in a jiffy so that they winced with the pain.
“Do you fellows think this is funny? Let us loose, at once! We have no time for jokes!” demanded the taller one, gazing at Don’s revolver in a manner that showed he knew it was no joke.
“But you had time to play one of your kind of jokes on that poor wounded soldier up on the hill,” Clem returned and the thin face of the spy grew ghastly white. “We haven’t been up on the hill,” he asserted—but another wad of grass-roots stopped his talk also. Don took the bull’s-eye from Clem and threw it into the tall man’s face.
“Well, Stapley, I guess you know him; don’t you?”
“The fellow on the train, sure enough,” Clem said.