Dick Prescotts Third Year at West Point | Page 9

just because we're cadets, and because
half-baked Army officers are supposed to be somebody in the social
world, Greg and I are getting so much social mail that we fear we shall
have to hire a secretary for the summer."
"Nobody will bother us, I guess," grimaced Tom. "Most people here
probably think that, because we're engineers, we run locomotives.
That's what the word 'engineer' suggests to ignoramuses. Now, the man
who runs a locomotive should properly be called an engine-tender, or
engineman, while it's the fellow who surveys and bosses the building of
a railroad that is the engineer. You get a smattering of engineering
work at West Point, don't you?"
"We've been at math. and drawing, so far," Dick explained. "That all
leads up to the engineering instruction that we shall have to take up in
September."

"Oh, I dare say you'll get a very fair smattering of engineering,"
assented Tom. "It's nothing like the real practice that we get, though,
out in the field with the survey and construction parties. I guess you
fellows, after your grind in the High School, found West Point math.
pretty easy, didn't you?"
Dick laughed merrily before he answered.
"Tom, the math. that a fellow gets in High School would take up about
three months at West Point. How are you on math., now?"
"Oh, not so fearfully rotten," replied Reade complacently. "Harry and I
have had to dig up a lot of new math. since we've taken on with an
engineering corps in the field. Harry, trot up some of the kind of
mathematics that we have to use."
"Wait a moment," put in Dick. "Greg, sketch out an easy one from the
math. problems we have to dig into at West Point. Give 'em something
light from conic sections first."
Cadet Holmes sketched out, on the back of an envelope, the
demonstration of a short problem.
Tom and Harry looked on laughingly, at first. Then their eyes began to
open.
"Do you really have to dig up that sort of stuff at West Point,"
demanded Reade.
"Yes," nodded Dick. "And now I'll show you another easy one,
belonging to descriptive geometry."
The two young engineers looked on and listened for a few moments.
"Stop!" commanded Hazelton, at last. "My head is beginning to buzz!"
"If that's the sort of gibberish you have to learn, I'm more than ever
glad that I didn't go to West Point," proclaimed Reade.

The old-time chums had eaten their fill of ice cream some time before,
but they still sat about the table, chatting gayly.
"There's one thing you never really told us about in your letters,"
muttered Tom. "You wrote us that Bert Dodge had resigned from the
Military Academy, but you didn't tell us why. Now, that fellow, Dodge,
never gave up anything good that he didn't have to give up. Was he
kicked out of the Academy?"
"That story isn't known in Gridley," replied Prescott, lowering his voice.
"Dodge tells people that he left because he didn't like the crowd or the
life there. We haven't changed the story any since our return. We'll tell
you fellows, for we never used to have any secrets from you in the old
days. But you mustn't pass the yarn around."
"No," grimaced Greg. "You mustn't tell the story around. Dodge has
threatened to have us imprisoned for life, for criminal libel, if we allow
his secret to reach profane ears."
"Just why did Dodge leave West Point?" asked Reade.
"He was invited to," replied Prescott, "by a class committee on honor."
"I thought it was something like that," grunted Reade.
Then, in low tones that could not be overheard by other patrons of the
ice cream place, Dick Prescott told the story of Dodge's cribbing at
West Point, and of the way that Bert nearly succeeded in palming his
guilt off on to Prescott.
"I'd believe every word of that yarn, even if a plumb stranger told it to
me," declared Hazelton. "It has all the earmarks of truth. It's a complete
story of just what Bert Dodge would do in one form or another, in any
walk of life."
"But you fellows won't repeat insisted Dick.
"And thereby have us consigned to prison cells for the balance of our

unworthy lives?" mocked Greg.
"You know us better than to think that we'd blab," retorted Tom half
indignantly.
"You had a right to know, though," Prescott went on.
"Dick & Co. always were a close corporation," laughed Hazelton. "And
I hope the time will never come when we can't tell our secrets to each
other."
"I am sorry you fellows have so short a leave," murmured Dick.
"Why, What would you want us to do!" queried Tom.
"Greg and I would be tickled to death if