CHAPTER XVIII

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 cla.s.s.

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, d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k was "dropping away" as a correspondent.

So, too, Laura's letters were fewer and briefer.

"d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k thought, and Cadet Prescott had his greatly improved standing in his cla.s.s to console him for any losses in other directions. Yet d.i.c.k would not have dared to confess, even to himself, how little cla.s.s 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 d.i.c.k Prescott, who avoided him, was really his worst enemy in the world.

So, one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, in early April, it chanced that d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, "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.