Norma Kent stirred uneasily. Her army cot creaked.

“You’ll have to lie still,” she told herself sternly. “You’ll keep the other girls awake.”

Even as she thought this, the girl on the cot next to her own half rose to whisper:

“We’re Mrs. Hobby’s horses now.”

“That’s the girl called Betty,” Norma thought as she barely suppressed a disturbing laugh.

“Shish,” she managed to whisper. Then all was silent where, row on row, fifty girls were sleeping. Fifty! And Norma had spoken to barely half a dozen of them! It was all very strange.

Strange and exciting. Yes, it had surely been all that. They had all been jumpy, nervous as colts, on the train from Chicago. If they were walking down the aisle and the train tipped, they had laughed loudly. They had been high-pitched, nervous laughs. And why not? Had they not launched themselves on a new and striking adventure?

As Norma recalled all this she suddenly started, then rose silently on one shoulder. She had caught a flash of light where no light was supposed to be.

“A flash of light,” she whispered silently. At the same instant she caught the gleam of light once more. This time she located it—at the head of the cot by the nearest window.

“Rosa Rosetti!” she thought, with a start. She did not know the girl, barely recalled her name. She had a beaming smile, yet beyond doubt was foreign-born.

“What would you do if you suspected that someone was a spy?” That question had, not twenty-four hours before, been put to her by a very important person. She had answered as best she could. Had her answer been the correct one? Her reply had been:

“Nothing. At least, not at once.”

Now she settled back in her place. The flash of light from the head of Rosa Rosetti’s cot did not shine again. Nor did Norma Kent fall asleep at once.

“A flash of light in the night,” she was thinking. “How very unimportant!”

And yet, as her thoughts drifted back to her childhood days not so long ago—she was barely twenty-one now and just out of college—she recalled a story told by her father, a World War veteran. The story dealt with a stranger in an American uniform who, claiming to be lost from his outfit, had found refuge in their billet for the night.

“That night,” her father had said, “flashes of light were noticed at the window of our attic lodging. And that night, too, our village was bombed.”

“Suppose we are bombed tonight?” the girl thought. Then she laughed silently, for she was lodged deep in the heart of Iowa, at old Fort Des Moines.

As the name drifted through her dreamy thoughts, it gave her a start. She was fully awake again, for the full weight of the tremendous move she had made came crashing back upon her.

“I’m a WAC,” she whispered, “a WAC! I’m in the Army now!”

Yes, that was it. She was a member of the Woman’s Army Corps. So, too, were all the girls sleeping so peacefully there. Here at Fort Des Moines in four short weeks they would receive their basic training. And then—“I may drive a truck,” she thought with a thrill, “or operate an army short-wave set, or help watch for enemy planes along the seacoast, or—” she caught her breath, “I may be sent overseas.” North Africa, the Solomons, the bleak shores of Alaska—all these and more drifted before her mind’s eye.

“Come what may,” she whispered, “I am ready!”

She might have fallen asleep then had not a cot less than ten feet from her given out a low creak as a tall, strong girl, who had caught her eye from the first, sat straight up in her bed to whisper three words.

The words were whispered in a foreign tongue. Norma was mildly shocked at hearing them whispered here in the night.

“She was talking in her sleep,” Norma assured herself as the girl settled quietly back in her place. Then it came to her with the force of a blow. “She too might be a spy!”

“What nonsense!” she chided herself. “How jittery I am tonight! I’ll go to sleep. And here’s hoping I don’t dream.”

She did fall asleep, and she did not dream.

From some place very, very far away, a bugle was blowing and someone seemed to sing, “I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up. I can’t get ’em up in the morning.” Then an alarm clock went off with a bang and Norma, the WAC recruit, was awake.

Her feet hit the floor with a slap and she was putting on her clothes before she knew it. A race to the washroom, a hasty hair-do, a dash of color to her cheeks and, twenty minutes later, together with thirty other raw recruits, she lined up for Assembly.

It was bitter cold. A sharp wind was blowing. A bleak dawn was showing in the east. Norma shivered in spite of her thick tweed coat. She looked at the slender girl next to her and was ashamed. The girl’s lips were blue. Her thin and threadbare coat flapped in the breeze. She wanted to wrap this girl inside her coat, but did not. This would be quite unsoldierlike. So she stood at rigid attention. But out of the corner of her mouth she said:

“It won’t be long now. Those soldier suits we’ll wear are grand.”

“It wo-won’t be-be long!” the girl replied cheerfully through chattering teeth.

Norma permitted herself one quick flashing look to right and left. To her right, beyond the slender girl, stood the tall girl who had whispered so strangely in her sleep. Wrapped in a long black fur coat she stood primly at attention. There was something about this girl’s prim indifference to those about her that irritated Norma.

She turned to the left to find herself looking into a pair of smiling blue eyes. The girl said never a word but her bright smile spoke volumes. This girl’s dress, short squirrelskin coat, heavy skirt, neat shoes, and small hat spoke both of taste and money. Beyond this girl stood the little Italian who flashed a light at night. She stood, lips parted, eyes shining, sturdy young body erect, very sure of herself and unafraid.

“Whatever happens, I’m going to like her a lot, and that can’t be helped,” Norma assured herself.

Five minutes later they were all back in the barracks making up their bunks and preparing for a busy day ahead.

“Bedding down Mrs. Hobby’s horses,” said a laughing voice.

“Say! What does that mean?” Norma demanded, looking up from her work into a pair of laughing blue eyes.

“Don’t you know?” asked the other girl, as she sat down on her cot.

“I don’t. That’s a fact,” Norma admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you. But first,” the other girl put out a hand, “my name’s Betty Gale. Something tells me that we’ve both just finished college and that we’re likely to be pals in this great adventure until death or some Lady Major does us part.”

“You’re right in the first count,” Norma laughed. “And I hope you are in the second. My name is Norma Kent.”

“Swell,” said Betty Gale. “Now—about Mrs. Hobby’s Horses.”