“What else could all this mean?” was Harper’s way of reply. His arm swept the whole horizon, north, westward, south, and then up toward the east. “Haven’t you noticed the immense numbers of the Engineering Corps that are being brought up? Thousands upon thousands of them.”
“And the truck trains,” Tom supplemented. “Buck Granger told me last night that he heard a captain and a lieutenant talking, and how many of those trucks do you think they said already are here?”
“Don’t know. Couldn’t even guess. How many?”
“More than three thousand, and they’re still coming in by scores every hour.”
“It means business,” Harper assented, nodding his head vigorously. “It means business, and on a tremendous scale. Why, just this morning—”
But just at that moment their conversation was interrupted. Their school chum and army pal, Ollie Ogden, burst in upon them, wrathful to the point of pitched battle, and at the time too breathless to speak.
“Have you seen—,” he demanded, and then gasped for another breath. “Have you seen—.”
“Yes,” ventured Tom, in friendly mockery, winking at Harper, “We’ve seen a lot. But just what do you refer to?”
“MAUD!” almost shrieked the angered Ollie. “Have you seen that gol darned mule?”
George Harper and Tom Walton went into gales of uncontrollable laughter. Had they seen Maud? They sure had. Harper saw her on her way—whither it led she refused to say—and Tom had encountered her on the journey.