“Lost—strayed—and stolen—Guess I’m all three of ’em—tous ensemble, as the Frogs would rattle in that darn machine gun language of theirs,” muttered McGee as he shifted the weight of a blanket roll that looked as if it contained a Baby Grand piano and a fat-legged stool.
“Well, I’ll find the outfit before the guerre encores, anyhow. If I don’t I’ll turn myself in for salvage—anythin’ to keep from bein’ an M. P. or gettin’ in the Quartermaster Corps. Those guys don’t——”
Honk!... Honk!... Honk!...
Jimmy shut his mouth and got himself off of the road, just in time to miss being pressed into an old-fashioned pancake under the wheels of a truck that whizzed by like an Austrian 88.
“Great Gods! I’d rather promenade along the top of a trench in broad daylight than leave my life in the hands of those fool truck-drivers. They ain’t got a bit of respect for a man’s body—ought to let ’em drive a tank across No Man’s Land under a barrage once or twice—maybe then they’d quit tryin’ to kill us poor guys that’s fightin’ this guerre.”
McGee thought some pretty hard things about truck drivers in general after getting that load off his chest and started to make another hill, being careful to hang close to the side of the road.
“What outfit, Buddy?”
Jimmy McGee stopped still in his tracks, steadied himself against his cane to keep from rolling back down the steep hill, and shook himself so roughly before answering that the tinware, brass, steel and other whatnots which were a part of his baggage made a noise like the cows coming home.
“Twenty-Sixth Division, Jack,” he shot back, as if he were putting over a little barrage all by himself.
Then he advanced cautiously to inspect the strange-looking person who had asked him the old familiar question. For a passing moment Jimmy was pretty sure that the old gas had got to his eyes at last, or that his thoughts were getting the best of him. Surely the man who sat on the grass and was all rigged up like the soldiers in the Sunday papers and popular monthlies, must be a model—A sort of guide or index for his kind, thought Jimmy.