“Wonderful!” said Don. “You do have a lucid flash now and then.” But before Clem could reply Don began to enlighten the spy:
“I guess you remember us back there in America. We got off at Lofton, too. We got your cronies, Shultz and the whiskered chap, and I got your pard up near Montdidier.”
Of course the man could make no reply. Don continued:
“Duncan, you can run my car, I guess. You take these nice chaps into camp. In about half an hour they’ll face a firing squad.”
But Duncan shook his head. “What’s in me has got to come out. I’m an ambulance driver and working to save people—ours and theirs, too—but that don’t say I don’t just love gettin’ square more’n anything else on this green earth! I told the corporal here I have a little Indian in me. I have a heap and it’s reached high mark right now. It might get the corporal in trouble and it may get me in trouble, but I reckon you’re out of it, Richards. No matter; what I want is to be the firing squad that fixes these blood-smeared polecats. But I don’t want to do it with a gun. You just leave it to me. I’m goin’ to take ’em over here in this field an’ stick a knife into—”
“No, Duncan, you are not going to do anything of the kind!” Don said in horror. “I won’t consent to this being anything irregular. You may go along and see them shot, if you want to, but you can’t knife them. Hold on there! Put that knife up, or I’m going to shoot it out of your fingers. It would just about break my heart to hurt you, old man, because I know you’re good stuff, but don’t try that thing. Come, you’ve got more white blood in you than Indian and don’t imitate these Huns.”
Duncan stood looking earnestly at Don while he spoke. Then, without a word, he put his long-bladed claspknife into his pocket.
“You take my car, because it’s surer than this one, and get these chaps where they’ll do no more harm. I’ll run their car and I’ll have them send out for yours and fix it. I hope they’ll let you get into the squad that does the shooting.”
“I don’t like to deprive you of your own car,” Duncan said. It was easy to see that the fellow was true-blue, even if an act of savagery made his blood boil with desire for personal revenge.