When they got through eating it was beginning to grow dusk. Josh remarked that he guessed he would saunter out to stretch his legs, and at the same time see the extent of damage inflicted by the brief occupation of the village by the raiders.
“They say those Uhlans can make a howling wilderness of a Paradise quicker than any men on the face of the earth, once they set out to do things,” Josh explained as he picked up his hat, “and I’d like to find out if there’s any truth in the yarn.”
Rod told him to “mind his eye,” and not wander away, since with the night coming on there could be no telling what danger might not hover over his head.
“For all we know some of those Germans may still be hanging about,” added Hanky Panky, “and I’d really feel better if Rod loaned you his gun.”
“Oh, come! there’s no necessity of Josh going out at all if he has to load himself down with deadly weapons like that,” laughed Rod.
Josh had his little outing, and returned in good time. He acted as though he did not regret his determination, and Hanky Panky, knowing from the signs that the other must have seen something worth while, immediately set to work “pumping” him, being filled with curiosity.
“You ran across something while you were out, Josh, and I’d thank you to open up and tell us about it,” he went on to say. “Did the French chaps with the baggy red trousers and the big yell manage to bring down any of the German raiders when they used up so much powder and ball?”
“I believe they did, for one woman who could talk some English managed to tell me the zouaves took three prisoners back with them, and in addition one fellow who would have to be buried, she said, because he was dead.”
Hanky Panky would have shivered at one time on hearing such gruesome news, but after witnessing the terrible sights accompanying the battle along the bank of the Marne he somehow seemed to think little of it.
“Was that all you saw or heard, Josh?” he continued, bent on making the other confess to the limit.