READY FOR THE ARMY-NAVY GAME
In between times, in the strenuous hours that followed, Dick found
the time, somehow, to write two letters of moment.
One was to his mother, the other to Laura Bentley. In both he
told how the last bar to his happiness in the Army had been removed.
Yet Dick did not go very deeply into details. He merely explained
that the class had discovered, on indisputable evidence, that
he had been dealt with unjustly. He made it plain, however, that
he was now again in high favor with his class, and that he had
even been honored by reelection to the class presidency.
"Greg, you send Dave Darrin a short note for me, will you?" begged
Dick, as he toiled away at the missive to Laura. "Old Dave will
want only the bare facts; that will be enough for him. He'll
cheerfully wait for details until some time when we're all graduated
and meet in the service."
Dave Darrin's reply was short, but characteristic:
"Of course dear old Dick came through all right! He's the kind
of fellow that always does and always must come through all
right---otherwise there'd be no particular use in being manly."
No word came from the missing Jordan. Truth to tell, no one seemed
to care, outside of the young man's father. It is rare, indeed,
that a cadet deserts, and when he does, unless he has taken government
property with him, no effort is made to find him.
By the end of the week, Dick Prescott was the hope of the Army nine,
as he had once been of the eleven.
A cadet is always in condition. His daily training keeps him there.
So Dick had only to give his arm a little extra work, increasing
it some each day.
"Do you think I'm going to be in satisfactory shape, sir?" Dick
asked the Army coach Friday afternoon.
"If something doesn't happen to you, Prescott, you're going to
be the strongest, speediest pitcher I've ever seen on the Army
nine," replied Lieutenant Lawrence.
"Isn't that saying a good deal, sir?"
"Yes; but you're the sort of athlete that one may say a great
deal about," replied Lieutenant Lawrence, with a confident smile.
"And Mr. Holmes is very nearly as good a man as you are."
"I always thought him fully as good, even better," replied Prescott.
"There isn't much to choose between you," admitted coach. "I wish
we could always look for such men on our Army teams."
"You can one of these days, sir."
"When will that day come?"
"It will come, sir, when public-spirited citizens everywhere go in
strongly for athletics in the High Schools, as they did in the town
where Holmes and I received our earlier training."
The letter from Cadet Prescott's mother came almost by return
mail. She had never for a moment lost faith, she wrote, that
all would come out right with her boy, and she was heartily glad
that her faith had been justified. She was sorry, indeed, for
that unfortunate other cadet whose enmity for Dick had been his
own undoing in the long run.
It was some days later when Laura's letter reached the now eager
pitcher of the Army nine.
Now that letter was cordial enough in every way, and Laura made
no secret of her delight and of her pride in her friend.
"Yet there's something lacking here," murmured Prescott uneasily,
as he read the letter through once more. "What is it? Laura
writes as if she were trying to show more reserve with me than
she did once. What is the matter? Has she cooled toward me at
just the time when I shall soon be able to offer her my name and
my future?"
The thought was torment. Nor, of course, did Dick fail to remember
all about that prosperous and agreeable Gridley merchant, Leonard
Cameron, who, for upwards of two years, had been one of Miss Bentley's
most devoted admirers.
"I suppose he's the kind of fellow who is calculated to please
a woman," mused Dick with a sinking at heart. "And Cameron has
had the great advantage of being right on the spot all the time.
Moreover, he has had his future mapped out for him, while I wasn't
assured about my own, and he hasn't been afraid to speak. Great
Scott, I must wait until the night of the graduation ball before
I can speak and find out how the land lies for me. But is Laura
coming to that hop?"
Again Dick ran hastily through the letter. Yet, look as he would,
he could find no allusion of Laura's to coming on for the Graduation
Hop.
"What an idiot I am!" growled Prescott to himself. "I'm certain
I forgot to ask her, in my last letter. If I did, it was solely
because I've always been so sure that she'd be on here for
graduation week as a matter of course."
After pacing his room for a few moments, Dick sat down and wrote
feverishly back to Laura Bentley, asking her if she were coming
on for graduation and the hop.
"I've always looked forward to having you here as a matter of
course on that great occasion," Dick penned, "so I'm not very
certain that I have made the invitation as explicit as I've meant
to. But you'll come, won't you, Laura? It would be a poor graduation
for me, without your face in the throng, for the others will be
strangers to me. Won't you please write promptly and set my mind
at ease on this vital point?"
In three days Laura's answer came. Unless unavoidably prevented
she would be on hand during a part of graduation week.
"And I certainly want to attend the graduation hop," Laura added,
"for it will probably be the only one that I shall ever have a
chance to attend."
"Now, what does she mean by that last statement?" pondered Dick,
finding new cause for worry. "Does she mean that she expects
to cut the Army after this year? Is she really planning to marry
that fellow Cameron? Gracious, how time has flown during these
hurried years at West Point! For two years past Laura has been
fully old enough to wed! What a folly she'd commit in waiting
all these years for backward me to get ready to open my lips!
Yes; I guess it's going to be Cameron."
Cadet Prescott compressed his lips grimly, but he was soldier
enough to be game and face the music.
"I've got to be patient a few weeks more, and take the chances,"
Dick told himself, as he scurried away to daily ball practice.
"With a rival in the field I wouldn't dare, anyway, to trust
my fate to a pleading set down on paper. But I'll send Laura
a letter once a week now, anyway. She may guess from that, as
graduation approaches, that I am sending my thoughts more and
more in her direction."
With the bravery of which he was so capable, Dick ceased his worry
about his sweetheart as much as he could, and threw his leisure
hours heartily into his work in the ball squad.
It will not be possible to describe the games of the season in
detail. There were twenty scheduled games in all, though three
were called off on account of rain. The Army won twelve out of
sixteen games played with college teams. Dick and Greg were the
battery in the heaviest nine of the winning games, and in one
of the games lost.
Prescott and Holmes had no difficulty in putting up a game that
has sent them down in history as being the best Army battery to
that date.
But the Navy, that year, had an exceptionally fine team, too,
with Dave Darrin and Dalzell for its star battery.
"This is the game we've got to win, fellows," called out Durville
earnestly, two days before the Annapolis nine was due at West
Point in the latter part of May. "We've done finely this year,
better than we had hoped. But, after all, what is it to beat
every other college, and then have to go down before the Navy in
defeat at the end?"
"Who says we're going down in defeat?" grumbled Greg.
"If you say we're not, you and Prescott, then you can do a lot
to hearten us up," continued Durville, with a sharp glance at the
star battery pair.
"See here, old ramrod, you know all about that Annapolis battery,"
broke in Hackett, of the nine. "What about them as ball players?
I understand you went to school with Darrin and Dalzell. Do
that pair play ball the way they do football?"
"Yes," nodded Dick. "If anything, they play baseball better."
"But you and Holmesy put them out at football. Can't you do it
on the diamond, too?" insisted Hackett.
"I hope so, but Greg and I will feel a lot more like bragging,
possibly, after we've played the game through. There isn't much
brag about us now, eh, Greg?"
"Not much," confessed Greg. "And you fellows want to remember
that old ramrod and I are to play only two out of the nine positions.
Don't depend on us to play the whole game for the Army."
"Of course not," agreed Hackett, perhaps a bit tartly. "But if
the other seven of us were wonders we'd stand no show unless we
had a battery that can do up these awful ogres of the Navy nine."
"Oh, you're better than the Navy battery, aren't you, old ramrod?"
demanded Beckwith.
"No, we're not," replied Dick slowly, thoughtfully.
"Don't tell us that the salt-water catcher and pitcher are ahead
of you two!" protested Durville with new anxiety.
"If either crowd is better, they're likely to be It," murmured Dick.
Thereupon all in the dressing room wheeled to take a look at Greg.
But young Holmes nodded his head in confirmation.
"Don't talk that way," pleaded Beckwith.
"You'll have us all scared cold before we touch foot to the field
day after to-morrow."
"Just what I said," grumbled Greg. "Some of the fellows on the
Army nine expect two men who are not above the average to win the
whole game."
From all private and newspaper accounts many of the West Point
fans were inclined to the belief that the Navy outpointed the
Army in the matter of battery. It had been so the year before
when, as readers of "_Dave Darrin's Third Year At Annapolis_" will
recall, the Navy had succeeded in carrying the game away with
neatness and despatch.
"You young men have simply got to hustle and keep cool. That's
all you can do," urged Lieutenant Lawrence. "We haven't had so
good a nine in years. Whatever you do, don't lie down at the
last moment, and give up to the Navy the only game of the year that
is really worth winning."
Then came two hard afternoons of practice. Every onlooker watched
Dick and Greg closely, anxious to make sure that neither young man
was going stale.
With each added hour it must be confessed that anxiety at West
Point rose another notch.
Then came the day of the game. Even the tireless and merciless
instructors over in the Academic Building eased up a bit on the
cadets that day, if ever the instructors did such a thing.
The Annapolis nine arrived before one o'clock and was promptly
taken to dinner.
All that forenoon, the factions had been gathering.
Most of the visitors, to be sure, came to "root" for the Army,
though there were not wanting several good-sized crowds that came
to cheer and urge the Navy young men on to victory.
By noon there were three thousand outsiders on the West Point
reservation. Afternoon trains, stages and automobiles brought
crowds after that. By three o'clock everyone that expected to
see the game had arrived. There were now nine thousand people
on the grandstands and along the sides.
"Nine?" repeated Durville in the dressing room, when the word
was brought to him. "Five thousand used to be about the usual
crowd, I believe. Old ramrod, you and Holmesy are surely responsible
for the other four thousand. Darrin and Dalzell can't have done
it all, for the Navy always travels light on baggage when headed
this way. Yes, you and Holmesy have dragged the crowd in."
"Quit your joshing," muttered Greg, who was bending over his shoe
laces.
"Yes; cut it. We can stand it better after the game," laughed Dick.
"Get your men out in five minutes more, Durville," called Lieutenant
Lawrence, looking in. "The Navy fellows have been on the field
ten minutes already. You want to limber up your men a bit before
game is called."
Already the sound had reached dressing quarters of the visiting
fans cheering for the Navy.
In three minutes more the cheering ascended with four times as
much volume, for now Durville marched the picked Army nine on
to the field, and the fans on the stands caught sight of these
trim young soldiers.
"I've got a hunch you'll do it for us to-day," whispered Beckwith
in Prescott's ear.
"Look out. A little hunch is a dangerous thing," retorted Dick,
with a grim smile.