Dick Prescottss Fourth Year at West Point | Page 4

Engineer privates---soldiers of the Regular Army---were busy taking care of the pontoon boats and other bridge material.
Marching his men inside the encampment, Dick halted them.
"Detachment dismissed!" he called out.
There was a quick break for first and third class tents. These young men were in field uniforms---sombreros, gray flannel shirts, flannel trousers and leggings. Most of them were dripping with perspiration under the hot August sun.
They were all hot and dusty, and their hands stained with tar. Within a very few minutes every man in the detachment must be washed irreproachably clean, without sign of perspiration. They must be in uniforms of immaculate white duck trousers and gray fatigue blouses, wearing cleanly polished shoes, and ready to march to dinner.
A great deal to be accomplished in a few minutes by the average American boy! Yet let one of these cadets be late at dinner formation, without an unquestionably good excuse, and he must pay the penalty in demerits. These demerits, according to their number, bring loss of prized privileges.
Cadet Jordan, having done little, was among the first to be clean and presentable. Immaculate, trim and trig he looked as he stepped from his tent, but on his face lay a scowl that boded ill for his appetite at the coming dinner.
Dick was a master of swift toilets. He was on the company street almost immediately after Jordan had stepped out under the shadow of a tree.
"Prescott," began Jordan stiffly, "I want a word or two with you."
"Yes?" asked Dick, looking keenly at his classmate. "Very good."
"Why did you report me this morning?"
"Because you performed the work in an indolent, laggard manner, even after I had cautioned you."
"Do you consider yourself called upon to be a judge of your classmates?"
"When I am detailed in command over them in any duty---yes."
"Shall I tell you what I think of you for reporting me?"
"It would be in bad taste, at least," Dick answered. "It is against the regulations for a cadet to call another to account for reporting him officially."
"Oh, bother the regulations!"
"If that is actually your view," replied Dick, with a smile, "then I will leave you to the enjoyment of your discovery concerning the regulations."
"Prescott, you are a prig!" snapped Mr. Jordan.
"If it were necessary to determine that, as a matter of fact," answered Dick coolly, though he flushed somewhat, "I would rather leave it to a decision of the class."
"Oh, I know you have plenty of bootlicks," sneered Jordan. "I also know that you are class president. But that is no reason why you should act as though you thought yourself a bigger man than the President of the United States."
"Jordan, has the sun been affecting your head this forenoon?" demanded Dick, with another keen look at his classmate.
"Well, you do act as though you thought yourself bigger than the President," insisted Jordan sneeringly.
"I am a cadet, not yet capable of being a second lieutenant, in the Army," Dick replied, regaining his coolness. "The President is commander-in-chief of the combined Army and Navy."
"You are utterly puffed up with your own importance," cried Jordan hotly, though in a discreetly low voice. "Prescott, you are-----"
Something in Jordan's eyes warned Dick that a vile insult was coming in an instant.
"Stop!" commanded Prescott, shooting a look full of warning at his classmate. "Jordan, don't say anything that will compel me to knock you down in plain sight of the camp. It's years since such a thing as that has happened at West Point!"
"Oh, you lordly brute!" sneered Jordan, his face alternately white and aflame with unreasoning anger. "Prescott, you had it in for me. That was why you reported me this morning. That was why you put me in line for demerits and punishment tour walking. You are bound to use your little, petty authority to humble and humiliate me. I shall call you out for this!"
"If you do," shot back Dick, "I shall decline to fight you. It would be against regulations and against all the traditions of the corps for me to arbitrate, by a fight, the question of whether I did right to report you."
"You refuse a fight," warned Jordan, with a malicious grin, "and I'll denounce you all through the class!"
"Denounce me, then, if you wish," retorted Dick in cool contempt, "and you'll bring trouble down on your own head instead. No class requires, or permits, a member to fight in defence of his official conduct."
"Prescott is turning coward, then, is he?"
"You or any other man who presumes to say it knows well enough that he is thereby lying," came quickly from between Prescott's teeth.
"Why, hang you, you-----"
"You'd better hush for a moment," warned Prescott. "Here comes the corps adjutant, and I think he is looking for you."
"Yes! With a message of discipline from the O.C. just because I was reported by