“Get out of this, and in a hurry, too,” snapped the other instantly.
“We certainly can’t keep on going forward, for a fact,” admitted Josh, still filled with gloom and disappointment; “those chaps’d gobble us up like fun, and it’d be good-bye to our bully wheels.”
“Course they’d take us for Britishers, from our khaki uniforms,” admitted Hanky Panky; “and say, if they once got their hands on us they’d snatch all our papers away in a hurry. I’m counting on keeping that one our friend Albert gave us, to show the boys over in old Garland when we get back home; because they’ll never believe half we expect to tell ’em if we don’t have some evidence to prove it.”
“Huh! That isn’t the worst by a long shot,” continued Josh. “Don’t you see our having those papers on our precious persons would make it look like we might be spies, working in the interest of Belgium and France? You just better believe we don’t want to be nabbed by the Kaiser’s men, not if we know what’s good for us, and I reckon we do.”
“The worst is yet to come!” exclaimed Rod just then; “look off there to the left and tell me what you see moving across those fields toward the road back of us.”
Hardly had he said this than loud outcries arose from his two companions.
“Why, Rod, they’re whole regiments of the Germans, and they’re deploying so as to cut off our retreat, you see!” cried Hanky Panky, in a near panic.
“I don’t expect they’ve even noticed us as yet,” Rod went on to say; “but all the same if ever they do reach the road we’ll be caught like rats in a trap.”
“Looks like we might be between two fires,” said Josh, frowning savagely; “what can we do about it, Rod?”
It was second nature for the other fellows to depend on their leader whenever a knotty problem arose that needed solving. And seldom did Rod disappoint their expectations. He came up smiling on the present occasion.