“Then it shouldn’t take them more than an hour at the most to get over here,” remarked the tired scout master. “Granting that they mean to come, which I certainly hope turns out to be so.”
“Well, we’ve sure done our duty all right, Hugh,” asserted Ralph, who was breathing hard, as though he had actually run both ways.
“And that’s all any scout can do, I should say,” added Billy Worth, who had hurried over to hear what Ralph had to report, for the others knew the nature of the errand on which he had been dispatched.
“Yes, no one can blame us for anything that happens now,” Hugh declared. “All the same, I’ll be glad to see that Red Cross ambulance turning up here.”
“You’re worrying about that poor fellow who’s been shot through the body, Hugh?” suggested Billy. “The padrone put a guard around him to keep his wife away. She wants to just throw herself on him, and shriek. My stars! but they’re a queer lot, ain’t they? But they’ve got feelings as much as any of the rest of us. Listen! wasn’t that a motor horn blowing then?”
“Sounded more to me like a cow mooing, Billy,” said Ralph. “There’s the identical animal right now over in that yard yonder, tied to a tree.”
Billy looked in the direction in which Ralph pointed, and then laughed.
“Guess that’s one on me, Hugh,” he remarked, “but then I’m not to blame for feeling nervous over things, with all this responsibility shoved onto our poor shoulders.”
“No one’s blaming you a bit, Billy,” he was told; “in fact, we’re all doing our duty in a way that couldn’t be beaten. Some day later on we’ll look back at this happening and wonder how we ever managed to survive the ordeal.”
Billy was looking around as though he wanted to make sure the coast was clear before he said something he had on his mind.