THE ENEMIES HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING
After that February hop, Cadet Prescott appeared to give himself
over to one dominating ambition.
That ambition was to secure higher standing in his class.
He became a "bone," and tried so hard to delight his instructors
that he was suspected of boning bootlick with the Academic Board.
For Prescott had dropped Laura out of his mind.
That is to say, he had tried to do it, and Prescott was a young
man with a strong will.
Belle's words, instead of spurring him on to do something that his
own peculiar sense of honor forbade, had killed his vague dream.
After all, Dick reasoned, it was Laura's own good and greatest
happiness that must be considered.
Leonard Cameron, a rising and prosperous young merchant in Gridley,
would doubtless be able to give Laura a much better place in the
world.
In the matter of income, Cameron doubtless enjoyed three or four
times as much as the annual pay of a second lieutenant ($1,700)
amounts to. Besides, Cameron was not much in the way of risking
his life, while an Army officer may be killed at any time, even
in an ordinary riot. A lieutenants widow received only her pension
of a comparatively few dollars a month.
"It would have been almost criminal for me to have thought of
tying Laura's future up to mine," Dick told himself savagely,
as he took a lonely stroll one March afternoon. "I'll have nothing
but my pay, if I do graduate. A fellow like Cameron can allow
his wife more for pin money than my whole years pay will come
to. Really, I've no right to marry any but a rich girl, who has
her own income. And, even if I fell in love with a rich girl,
I wouldn't have the nerve to propose to her. I'd feel like a
cheap fortune hunter."
Having made up his mind to put Laura Bentley out of his inner
thoughts, Prescott did not write her as often as formerly.
He wrote often enough, and pleasantly enough to preserve the
courtesies of life. Yet keen-witted Belle Meade was not long in
discovering, from what Laura thought were chance remarks, that
Dick was "dropping away" as a correspondent.
So, too, Laura's letters were fewer and briefer.
"Dick didn't really care for her, I guess," Belle decided, almost
vengefully. "Then the bigger idiot he is, for there aren't many
girls like Laura born in any one century! But Dick sees a good
many girls at West Point, and perhaps he has grown indifferent
to his old friends. There are a good many very 'swell' girls
who visit West Point, too. Horrors! I wonder if Dick and Greg
think that we are too countrified?"
After the first few weeks, with his resolute nature triumphing
over anything that he set his mind to, Prescott found himself
thinking less about Cameron. It was practically a settled matter,
anyway, between Laura and Cameron, so Dick thought, and Cadet
Prescott had his greatly improved standing in his class to console
him for any losses in other directions. Yet Dick would not have
dared to confess, even to himself, how little class standing did
console him.
So hard had been study in the last few weeks that Prescott had
all but forgotten the existence of turnback Haynes. They were
not in the same section in any of the studies, nor did the two
mingle at all in barracks life. Neither went to the hops now,
either.
"Is Prescott afraid of me---or what?" wondered Haynes. "Perhaps
he hopes I have forgotten him, but I haven't. One thing is clear
he doesn't intend to do anything about that train incident, or
he'd have done it long ago. If he thinks I have forgotten my
dislike of him, he may be glad enough to have it just that way.
Bah, as if I could ever get over my dislike for a bootlick like
Prescott! I'd like to get him out of the Army for good! I wonder
if I can't, between now and June? I'd like my future in the Army
a whole lot better with Prescott out of it."
So Haynes began taking to moody, lonely walks when he had any
time for such outlet to his evil, feelings.
It is one of the strangest freaks of queer human nature that one
who has once done another an injury ever after hates the injured
one with an added intensity of hatred.
Turnback Haynes was quite able to convince himself that Dick Prescott,
who avoided him, was really his worst enemy in the world.
So, one Saturday afternoon, in early April, it chanced that Dick
and Cadet Haynes took to the same stretch of less-traveled road
over beyond engineers' quarters.
Suddenly, going in opposite directions, they met face to face
at a sharp bend in the road.
"Oh, you?" remarked Haynes, in a harsh, sneering voice.
Prescott barely nodded coldly, and would have passed on, but Haynes
stepped fairly in his path.
"Prescott," cried the turnback, "I don't like you!"
"Then we are about even in our estimate of each other," responded
Dick indifferently.
"Were you following me up, just now?"
"Why, as I have a memory, I might more properly suppose that you
had been prowling on my trail," retorted Dick, eyeing his enemy
sternly.
"Humph! What do you mean by that?" demanded Haynes bristling.
"Do you deny, Haynes, that on the night when we were returning
from the Army-navy game you pushed me from the rear platform of
the train?"
Cadet Prescott spoke without visible excitement, but gazed deeply
into the shifty, angry eyes of the other.
Haynes swallowed hard. Then he replied gruffly:
"No; I don't deny it."
"Why did you do that, Haynes?"
"I haven't admitted that I did do it."
"You know that you did, though."
"Humph!"
"Why did you do it?"
"I'll tell you, then," hissed the turnback. "It was because neither
West Point nor the Army is going to be big enough for both of us!"
"When do you intend to resign?" demanded prescott coolly
"Re-----" gasped Haynes "Resign? I?"
Then you imagine that I am going to quit, or that you're going
to force me to do so? retorted Prescott. "Haynes, even up to
this hour I have hesitated to believe the half evidence of my
own eyes. I have tried to convince myself that no man who wears
the honored gray of West Point could do such a dastardly piece
of work. And you have as good as admitted it to me."
"Well," sneered the turnback, what do you think you're going to
do about it?"
"If I knew," glared Dick, "I wouldn't tell you until the time
came."
"It will never come," laughed Haynes harshly. "That is, your
time of triumph over me will never come. What else may happen
it is yet a little too early to say."
Cadet Prescott felt all the cold rage that was possible to him
surging up inside.
"Haynes," he went on, "it may seem odd of me to ask a favor from
you."
"Very odd, indeed!" sneered the turnback.
"It is a very slight favor," continued Prescott, "and it is this:
Don't at any time venture to address me, except upon official
business."
With that Prescott stepped resolutely around the cadet in his
path, and went forward at a stiff stride.
Haynes remained for some moments where he was, gazing after Dick
with a curious, leering look.
"Prescott is a coward---that's what he is!" muttered the turnback.
"If he weren't, I said enough to him just now to cause him to
leap at my throat. Humph! Anyone can beat a coward, and without
credit. Prescott, your days at the Military Academy are numbered!
You, an Army officer? Humph!"
Though it would be hard to understand why, Haynes felt much better
after that brief interview. Perhaps it was because, all along,
he had feared Cadet Prescott. Now the turnback no longer feared
his enemy in the corps.
How would the feud end? How could it end?