Straightway Buck had bolted.
Blaine, following him with his eyes, saw Buck doff his aviator's cap as
he reached the group that also included an elderly man and lady, and
another matronly form which was easily recognized by many as the head
nurse in charge of the new Red Cross stations within the American
sector.
"Durn me if he isn't shaking hands with those girls!" soliloquized
Lafe. "The cheek of him! If he wasn't such a mighty good fellow, I'd
call him down!"
But Blaine was a pretty good chap himself. He and Erwin had come
together and were exchanging cordial small talk concerning what had
happened to each recently, when he again saw Buck with these visitors
strolling leisurely by towards the nearest landing stage. Towards this
place a pair of swift scouts were making, on their return from the
German front somewhere east.
"Know those folks?" he idly queried of Orris, now a corporal.
"Bet your life! Say, Lafe, who doesn't know of Senator Knute Walsen of
Idaho? He's a big man, over here to supervise our rail transportation
in France. See those two Red Cross girls? They're his daughters.
Taking courses in nursing, I hear, and right at the front too.
Wouldn't that get you? Who is that showing them round?"
"That is Buck Bangs, from Butte, Montana -- Our old Buck! What d'ye
think of that, bo?"
"He seems quite intimate with 'em, don't he? Where'd he meet up with
that crowd, Lafe?"
"Well, he and I sort o' dropped in on the girls just before we were in
the relief station.
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