THE STORY CARRIED ON THE WIND
"Oh, I fixed it all right," insisted Jordan confidently.
He was speaking in a rather low tone, but the breeze carried every
word to the ears of the listeners.
"You're talking just to hear yourself talking," sneered the stranger
coarsely.
"No; I'm not, Henckley," retorted the cadet.
"What was the trick, then?"
"Don't you wish you knew?" laughed Jordan.
"I don't care much," replied the stranger named Henckley. "But
I can't just picture you as doing anything extremely clever.
Even if it was luck, as you say, I can't figure how you were smart
enough to know how to profit by it. That's why I'm just a bit
curious, but no more."
"Why, you see, it happened this way," went on Jordan. "I saw
Prescott, that night back into camp, going into the tent of the
O.C. I thought that perhaps Prescott was going there in order
to say more about the matter that he had reported me for that
forenoon. So I moved close and listened. It seemed that some
of the plebes had been running the guard nights. Lieutenant Denton
asked the fellow Prescott, who is a cadet captain, to keep a watch
and stop plebes before they had a chance to get on the other side
of the guard line.
"Well, I knew the point at which plebes were in the habit of getting
past the guard line, and so did Prescott, I guess. So, a little
after taps, I slipped outside the guard near where I judged Prescott
would be watching. Then, after I had heard him speak with the
cadet sentry I presently stooped low in the bushes and lit a cigar.
Then I stood up straight and the glowing end of the cigar showed
from where Prescott stood. He did just what a fellow like him
feels bound to do, and what I knew he'd do. He hailed me. I
acted as though I wanted to get away, then allowed myself to be
overhauled. I was reported, of course, and made to pay the penalty.
But I was able to make the other fellows in the class believe
that Prescott had trailed me, on purpose to rub it into me. That
looked like over zeal, backed by a grudge, and the first class
swallowed it in fine shape. They gave him the silence, but had
not made it permanent Coventry. Then he caught another man, named
Durville, for going off the post in 'cit.' clothes, and that settled
the case against that fellow Prescott. But it was my trick that
made all the rest possible."
"I don't see that that was anything very clever," rejoined Henckley.
"I told you, didn't I," argued Jordan, "that it was as much luck
as cleverness."
"What part of it was clever, anyway?" jeered Henckley.
"Why, putting the whole game through, and making the class take
it up, yet doing it all so that the trick could never be traced
back to me," replied Jordan.
In the shadow, Durville turned briskly, gripping Dick's hand with
his own.
Douglass saw. After a bare instant's hesitation the class president
also took Prescott's hand, giving it a mighty squeeze.
In the joy of that friendly grasp from his own classmen, Dick
Prescott almost felt that all the bitterness of the last few months
had been wiped out in a second.
Then Douglass stepped out from the shadow, his face stern and set.
"Perhaps you will want to stop talking, Mr. Jordan," he called.
"Your conversation has not been a private one!"
With the strong wind blowing away from Jordan, that cadet heard
only a rumble of voices. Both he and Henckley, however, caught
sight of the advancing figures.
"Hello! What are you fellows doing here?" demanded the money
lender, with blustering indignation.
"I might ask that question of you, fellow, but I won't, for I
already know," replied Cadet Douglass, fixing his eyes on the
stranger.
"You've been listening to our talk?" demanded Henckley angrily,
while Jordan, after his first gasp of dismay, seemed to shrivel
back against the wall of Cullum Hall.
"Mr. Jordan," continued the class president, facing the dismayed
one in gray uniform, "I don't believe the significance of this
meeting has escaped you?"
"No-o-o," wailed Jordan in misery.
"Now, see here, young fellows, don't you go and blab what you've
been spying on just now," remonstrated Mr. Henckley, a note of
dismay creeping into his tone.
"It can hardly concern you, sir," flashed Cadet Douglass, wheeling
upon the money shark. "Yet I suppose it does, too. For now I
do not see how Mr. Jordan can hope to remain at the Military Academy.
That, I suppose, may possibly affect your security for the money
which, I take it, Mr. Jordan has borrowed from you."
"But you won't blab, and have him kicked out?" coaxed Mr. Henckley,
his voice now wholly wheedling.
"What the cadets may see fit to do for their own protection is hardly
a matter that can be discussed with you, sir," returned Douglass
coldly.
"Oh, now see here, there are ways and ways," spoke Henckley in
a wheedling tone. "Let's all be friendly."
Before Douglass could guess what was happening the money shark
had pressed a hand against the cadet's. With an impatient gesture
Douglass shook his own hand free. But something like paper remained
in his palm. Douglass held up that hand, and discovered that it held
a banknote that Henckley had slipped into Douglass' hand as a bribe.
Cadet Douglass calmly tore that banknote in bits and flung it
off on the breeze. The fragments were out of sight in an instant.
Then Douglass coolly knocked the money shark down.
"Come along, fellows," spoke the class president quietly, and
turned on his heel.
"Confound you, Mr. Fresh, I'll report this to the superintendent,"
bellowed Henckley.
"Do!" called Douglass in cool contempt over his shoulder.
Douglass, Durville and Prescott tramped together around to the
front of Cullum Hall.
There Douglass again paused to hold out his hand, remarking:
"Mr. Prescott, the class meeting is not to be held until Monday
evening. All I am privileged to say is that I think what we have
overheard tonight will very materially affect the class action.
I am very grateful to you, my dear sir, for having called us."
Durville, too, held out his hand in sign that the past grudge was
forgotten so far as he was concerned.
Full of a new happiness, Dick trudged back to cadet barracks.
Finding Greg Holmes in, Prescott imparted the wonderful news.
Greg leaped up delightedly, pumphandling his chum's arm and patting
him on the back.
"Come out all right?" sputtered Holmes. "Of course it will, and
I always knew it would."
Meanwhile Cadet Jordan was surveying Henckley with a look of mingled
rage, disgust and consternation.
"Now, you've gone and done it, you bull-necked, toad-brained idiot!"
cried the elegant Mr. Jordan.
"Why didn't you pay up like a man, and this would never have happened,"
growled Henckley, rubbing the spot where Douglass had struck him.
"Pay up like a man?" sneered Jordan. "Well, this affair has one
small, good side to it. You've got me run out of the cadet corps,
but-----"
"Out of the cadet corps?" screamed Henckley. "Then what becomes
of what you owe me?"
"That's something you'll have to settle to your own satisfaction,"
jeered the dismayed cadet. "I can offer you no help."
Jordan turned on his heel, starting to walk away, when Mr. Henckley
leaped after him, seizing him by the arm.
"See here-----" began the money shark hoarsely.
"Let go of my arm," warned Jordan in a rage, "or I'll hit you
harder than Douglass did."
As the money lender shrank back out of Jordan's reach, the cadet
strode off swiftly.
Mr. Jordan was in his bed when the subdivision inspector went
through the rooms that night.
At morning roll call, however, Jordan did not answer.
An investigation showed that he had gone. All his uniforms and
other equipment he had left behind, from which it was judged that
Jordan had, in some way, managed to get hold of an outfit of civilian
attire.
Jordan had deserted, with a heart full of hate for Dick Prescott,
with whom the deserter swore to be "even" before the academic year
was out.