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Dick Prescott's Fourth Year at West Point, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 17. Ready For The Army-Navy Game |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. 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. _ |
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