Chapter 3. Dick & Co. Again

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_ CHAPTER III. DICK & CO. AGAIN

"Hey, there, you galoot! You thin, long-drawn-out seven feet of tin soldier!"

After having been home a week, Dick Prescott flushed as he wheeled about to meet this jeering greeting.

In another instant every trace of his wrath had vanished.

"Tom Reade!" hailed Dick in great delight, turning and rushing at his old High School chum. "And good little Harry Hazelton!"

It was, indeed, the young engineer pair, Reade and Hazelton, old-time members of Dick & Co., the great High School crowd of Gridley. Reade and Hazelton, after finishing at the High School, had gone out to Colorado to serve under the engineer in charge of a great piece of railway construction work. The adventures of Tom and Harry, in the wild spots of the West, are fully set forth in the volumes of the _Young Engineers Series_.

"The last fellow I expected to meet in Gridley!" cried Dick, overflowing with delight as he stuck out both hands at once and grasped theirs.

"Well, we are, aren't we?" demanded Reade.

"You are---what?"

"The last fellows you've met in Gridley. But where's Greg?"

"If he's out of bed," grinned Prescott, "he's in cit. clothes."

"Carrying a rifle and marching the lock-step---the route-step, I mean---has dulled your brain," growled Tom Reade. "Is Greg in Gridley?"

"What scoundrel is taking my name in vein?" demanded Holmes, coming upon the trio.

Then there were hearty greetings, all over again. But in the end Reade looked Greg over from head to foot.

"Do they make you sleep on a stretcher at West Point?" Tom wanted to know. "Or what do they do, to pull a pair of galoots out to the length that you two have attained."

"It's the physical training and the military drills," explained Prescott, laughing. "But my! You fellows look like the Indian's head on a copper cent!"

Tom and Harry were, indeed, highly bronzed by the hot southwestern sun. Harry, in fact, was well on the way to being black, so burned had he become by his last few months of work.

"I hope, if you fellows are ever allowed to go forth into the Army, you'll get your first station down in Arizona," teased Tom.

"I don't," retorted Greg, "if it will make us look like you two."

"Oh, it won't," broke in Harry mockingly. "You see, we have to work down in Arizona. But you fellows wouldn't. We've seen some thing of the soldiery down in that part of the world, and they're the laziest crowd you ever saw. Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down in Arizona!"

"But how do you fellows come to be home at this time?" asked Dick.

"Homesick!" sighed Tom. "The fellows in our engineer corps are entitled to some leave. So Harry and I waited until we had enough leave piled up, and then we started back for Gridley."

"Well, it's hot on this corner," muttered Greg, "and there's an ice cream place down the block, where the electric fans are going. Let's make a raid on the place. Do you fellows remember when we were happy if we could buy a ten-cent plate and then get by ourselves with six spoons to dip into the ice cream? Come on! Let's get good and square for those days."

"Yes; it is hot here on this corner," assented Dick.

"Hot?" demanded Reade impatiently.

"Humph! Harry and I were just regretting that we hadn't worn our top coats today. We came to Gridley to cool off, and this old town seems like a heaven of coolness after the baked-brown alkali deserts of Arizona."

"Double orders for each one of us," explained Harry, after the quartette of one time High School chums had seated themselves under a buzzing fan.

Now, the chums of old days had time to look each other over more closely.

Tom and Harry were taller than in the old High School days, but they had not quite reached the height of Dick and Greg. Both of the young civil engineers, besides being heavily bronzed, were thin and sinewy looking. Thin as they were, both looked the pictures of health. Though Tom and Harry did not "advertise" their tailors as well as did the two West Point cadets, nevertheless the pair of young civil engineers looked prosperous. They had the general air of being the kind of young men who are destined to succeed splendidly in life.

Before the ice cream---the first double order, that is---reached the table, all of the young men were plunged into stories of their adventures during the last two years. Readers of these two series are familiar with the adventures that the young men discussed.

"You've been getting a heap more excitement out of life, you two," Prescott admitted frankly. "Still, from my point of view, I wouldn't swap with you."

"Just as bughouse on West Point and the Army as ever, are you?" quizzed Hazelton.

"Just as much, and always will be," Dick nodded, beaming.

"I can't share your enthusiasm," laughed Hazelton. "We've seen the Army in the West, and they're a lazy, little-account lot."

Instead of getting angry, however, Dick and Greg laughed outright.

"I wish we had you at West Point for forty-eight hours, right in barracks and Academic Building," declared Greg, his eyes dancing. "Whew! But you'd be able to view real world from a new angle!"

"Oh, maybe at West Point," nodded Hazelton teasingly. "But afterwards, in the Army, it's just one dream of indolence."

"Well, what do the Army officers actually do, out your ways" challenged Greg.

"Why, they---well, they-----"

"You don't know a blessed thing about it, do you?" dared Greg. "I thought not. You see, we do know something about what Army officers do with their time. That's what we're learning at West Point."

"Don't let's fight," pleaded Tom pathetically. "Fellows, we may never meet again. Before another year rolls around Hazelton and I may have been scalped and burned by the Apaches, and you fellows may have died at West Point, from nervous prostration brought on by overeating and lack of exercise. So let's be good friends during the little time that we may have together."

"When you get time," put in Dick dryly, "you might as well tell us when you reached Gridley."

"After ten o'clock last night," supplied Harry. "Of course, we had to go home first. But this morning we set out to find you. We knew, of course, that any place would be likelier than your homes, so we tried Main Street first."

"Many folks were glad to see you?" asked Tom.

"Too many," sighed Dick. "That remark doesn't apply to any old friends, but there are a good many who always turned up their noses at us in the old days. Now, just because we're cadets, and because half-baked Army officers are supposed to be somebody in the social world, Greg and I are getting so much social mail that we fear we shall have to hire a secretary for the summer."

"Nobody will bother _us_, I guess," grimaced Tom. "Most people here probably think that, because we're engineers, we run locomotives. That's what the word 'engineer' suggests to ignoramuses. Now, the man who runs a locomotive should properly be called an engine-tender, or engineman, while it's the fellow who surveys and bosses the building of a railroad that is the engineer. You get a smattering of engineering work at West Point, don't you?"

"We've been at math. and drawing, so far," Dick explained. "That all leads up to the engineering instruction that we shall have to take up in September."

"Oh, I dare say you'll get a very fair smattering of engineering," assented Tom. "It's nothing like the real practice that we get, though, out in the field with the survey and construction parties. I guess you fellows, after your grind in the High School, found West Point math. pretty easy, didn't you?"

Dick laughed merrily before he answered.

"Tom, the math. that a fellow gets in High School would take up about three months at West Point. How are you on math., now?"

"Oh, not so fearfully rotten," replied Reade complacently. "Harry and I have had to dig up a lot of new math. since we've taken on with an engineering corps in the field. Harry, trot up some of the kind of mathematics that we have to use."

"Wait a moment," put in Dick. "Greg, sketch out an easy one from the math. problems we have to dig into at West Point. Give 'em something light from conic sections first."

Cadet Holmes sketched out, on the back of an envelope, the demonstration of a short problem.

Tom and Harry looked on laughingly, at first. Then their eyes began to open.

"Do you really have to dig up that sort of stuff at West Point," demanded Reade.

"Yes," nodded Dick. "And now I'll show you another easy one, belonging to descriptive geometry."

The two young engineers looked on and listened for a few moments.

"Stop!" commanded Hazelton, at last. "My head is beginning to buzz!"

"If that's the sort of gibberish you have to learn, I'm more than ever glad that I didn't go to West Point," proclaimed Reade.

The old-time chums had eaten their fill of ice cream some time before, but they still sat about the table, chatting gayly.

"There's one thing you never really told us about in your letters," muttered Tom. "You wrote us that Bert Dodge had resigned from the Military Academy, but you didn't tell us why. Now, that fellow, Dodge, never gave up anything good that he didn't have to give up. Was he kicked out of the Academy?"

"That story isn't known in Gridley," replied Prescott, lowering his voice. "Dodge tells people that he left because he didn't like the crowd or the life there. We haven't changed the story any since our return. We'll tell you fellows, for we never used to have any secrets from you in the old days. But you mustn't pass the yarn around."

"No," grimaced Greg. "You mustn't tell the story around. Dodge has threatened to have us imprisoned for life, for criminal libel, if we allow his secret to reach profane ears."

"Just why did Dodge leave West Point?" asked Reade.

"He was invited to," replied Prescott, "by a class committee on honor."

"I thought it was something like that," grunted Reade.

Then, in low tones that could not be overheard by other patrons of the ice cream place, Dick Prescott told the story of Dodge's cribbing at West Point, and of the way that Bert nearly succeeded in palming his guilt off on to Prescott.

"I'd believe every word of that yarn, even if a plumb stranger told it to me," declared Hazelton. "It has all the earmarks of truth. It's a complete story of just what Bert Dodge would do in one form or another, in any walk of life."

"But you fellows won't repeat insisted Dick.

"And thereby have us consigned to prison cells for the balance of our unworthy lives?" mocked Greg.

"You know us better than to think that we'd blab," retorted Tom half indignantly.

"You had a right to know, though," Prescott went on.

"Dick & Co. always were a close corporation," laughed Hazelton. "And I hope the time will never come when we can't tell our secrets to each other."

"I am sorry you fellows have so short a leave," murmured Dick.

"Why, What would you want us to do!" queried Tom.

"Greg and I would be tickled to death if you were going to be here all summer," Dick answered. "In the first place, just for the sake of having your company. In the next place, we'd think it great if you could go back to West Point with us when our furlough is over. If you could be there, over a Saturday and a Sunday, we'd have time to show you a lot about the life there. You'd feel acquainted from the start, for lots of the fellows of our class have heard about you. You'd get a great reception."

"Gridley must seem dull, after your life in the West," mused Cadet Holmes.

"Oh, I don't believe there's any place where you get excitement all the time," declared Tom. "And there's no place so dull that it doesn't have a little excitement once in a while."

Bang! bang! bang! sounded several sharp explosions of firearms out in the street.

"There's some, right now!" muttered Greg, jumping up. "Come along!"

Bang! bang! bang!

As they ran forward toward the door of the ice cream place the young men saw people fleeing in frantic haste along Main Street.

Five or six of these fugitives darted into the ice cream place. As they did so, Chief of Police Simmons backed into the same doorway. He had his revolver in his right hand, while he called back over his shoulder to the owner of the store:

"Granby, telephone the station for my reserves. The Indians and cowboys of the Wild West Show are on a rampage, and shooting up Gridley. Tell Sergeant Cluny, from me, to bring the reserves on the run!"

Bang! bang! bang!

Up the street came a picturesque, dangerous looking group. Three men in cowboy hats, flannel shirts and "chaps," with revolver holsters dangling from their belts, and each with a pair of automatic revolvers in his hands, came along. Just behind this trio were two indians, painted and wearing gaudy blankets. The Indian were armed like the cowboys. It was evident that all the members of the wild band were partially intoxicated.

Bang! bang! bang!

"Get back into the store, you young men!" ordered Chief Simmons crisply. "These heathen are pie-eyed and they'll shoot you up quicker than a flash!"

"Who, That lot of freaks?" demanded Tom contemptuously. "Dick! Greg! Indians are the specialty of the Army. You go after the redskins, while Harry and I tame these bad men!"

Like a flash, ere Chief Simmons could interfere, the four young men were off. Straight up to the "raiders" dashed the former High School boys.

One of the Indians wheeled, firing a fusillade just over Prescott's head.

"Oh, stop that noise!" ordered Dick dryly.

Before the Indian could guess it, Prescott had leaped in, had grabbed the redskin by a famous old Gridley football tackle and had sent the rampaging Indian to the ground Greg, equally reckless, floored the other Indian and sat on his chest.

Tom Reade made a bolt for the fiercest-looking cowboy.

"Stop spoiling the pure air on a hot day, and give me those guns!" commanded Reade, going straight at the fellow.

The big cowboy wheeled, aiming both weapons at Reade.

"Get back!" ordered the shooter. "If ye don't I'll pump ye full of hole-makers! I'm bad! I'm a wolf, and this is my day to howl. I'm a wolf---d'ye catch that, partners?"

"Then back to the menagerie for yours!" muttered Reade dryly. "And first of all fork those guns over. You're making the air smell of sulphur."

"Get back! I'm bad, I tell ye!"

"You, bad; you cheap Piute from Rhode Island!" sniffed Tom contemptuously.

Reaching forward, quick as a flash, Reade twisted a revolver from the fellow's left hand.

"Now, pass me the other," continued Tom. "If you don't I'll wring that wooden head of yours from your neck! I'm coming, now!"

Having tossed the captured revolver in the street behind him, Reade made a sudden leap at the "bad wolf."

"Hold on!" cried the fellow sheepishly. "Don't get excited. Here it is; take it!"

Seeing how readily their companion had surrendered, the other two headed Hazelton's demand for their weapons.

From the doorway Chief Simmons had looked on at this brief, bloodless battle like one dazed.

From up and down Main street at respectful distances, crowds of Gridleyites gazed in stupefied wonder.

"Come on out, Chief, and talk to these naughty boys!" called Tom good-humoredly. "They didn't mean to be troublesome, but Fourth of July had got into their blood."

The police reserves came running up now. First of all, the revolvers of the five wild ones were gathered up. Then the officers turned to the prisoners that had been captured by the West Point cadets and the Young Engineers.

"These fellows are only medicine-show cowboys," Tom explained, with a grin, to the chief of police. "I know the real kind---and these sorry specimens are not it. Probably these fellows have never been west of Ohio."

"You're an Indian, I'm pretty sure," said Cadet Prescott to the painted redskin whom he now held by one arm. "But you're a tame Indian. What part of Maine do you come from?"

"Yes, I'm an Indian," grinned Dick's captive "I own a farm on the east end of Long Island."

"Humph! You've been through the pubic schools, too?" demanded Dick.

"Yes, sir."

Greg's Indian was quite as docile. The police now had the weapons of all the party, except one automatic weapon that Greg was examining. "Yah!" grinned Holmes. "This gun is loaded with blank cartridges. I guess all the others were, too."

The guess was a wholly correct one.

By this time the Main Street crowd, wholly over its fright, was crowding about the police and their captives.

"Say, this seems like old times!" called Sam Foss, laughingly. "Dick & Co. right in the thick the excitement."

"There hasn't been any," grinned Prescott.

At this instant a new actor arrived on the scene. Wild Charlie, the Indian medicine "doctor," immaculate in black frock suit and patent leather shoes, with a handsome sombrero spread over the glistening black hair that hung down over his shoulders, rushed up.

"Let these people go, Chief," begged the picturesque quack doctor. "I'll pay for any damage they've done."

Chief Simmons looked the long-haired "doctor" over with a broad grin.

"You're Wild Charlie, are you?" demanded the chief.

"Yes, partner."

"What part of Vermont do you come from! Or is Germany your hailing place, Wild Charlie?"

"Don't josh me too hard, Chief," pleaded the medicine fakir "Will you let my people go, if I settle?"

"These terrors," retorted Chief Simmons, "are about due for thirty days for disturbing the peace."

"But that would bust my summer season, Chief," pleaded "Wild Charlie."

"Oh, don't run these innocents in, Chief," urged Tom Reade. "They aren't really bad, and they admitted it as soon as we told 'em so. These people are not dangerous---only a bit nervous."

"See here, Wild Charlie," grinned the chief of police, "I don't want to do anything to make you wilder. I'll let these human picture books go on condition that you take your show at once and clear on out of town."

"I may just as well go," sighed the long-haired one. "This job has ruined my business here. And say, Chief, won't you break the guns and knock the cartridges out, and then let me have the guns, too? They cost a lot of money!"

But on this point Chief Simmons was firm.

"No, sirree! You can take your infant terrors and load them on the first train away from here. But the revolvers are confiscated, Wild Charlie, and they'll stay here. You can try to recover the revolvers by a civil suit, if you want to risk it in court. Otherwise, make your get-away as fast as you can. I'll admit that your outfit had the josh on me, and had me tickling the wire for the reserves. But just now the town holds two West Point cadets, and two young engineers from the real West, which makes Gridley no place to turn a vaudeville powder-play loose in."

"Wild Charlie" and his band fled as fast as they could, for the crowd was jeering loudly and talking of taking all six to the nearest horse-trough for a ducking.

"Is that the best the old town can do for excitement in these days?" laughed Reade, as soon as our young friends had separated themselves from the laughing crowd and had started on a stroll.

"Why, that little episode was doing well enough for any town," smiled Dick. "A laugh is better than a fight, any day."

"Queer text for a soldier to preach from," grinned Hazelton.

"Not a bit," Dick retorted. "The soldier, above all men, hates a fight, for the soldier knows he's the only one that's likely to get hurt."

"Oho!"

"Yes; and moreover," broke in Greg, "armies aren't organized, in the first place, for fighting, but for preserving peace."

"Just as railroads are built to keep people from traveling," jeered Reade.

"If we don't look out the greatest excitement that we'll find today will be starting a fight among ourselves," warned Harry dryly.

"Rot!" scoffed Tom. "The old chums of Dick & Co. couldn't fight each other, any more that they can avoid joshing each other."

Though none of the chums guessed it, excitement enough for two of them, possible, was brewing in another part of Gridley at that moment.

Bert Dodge was talking almost in whispers with a young fellow named Fessenden, who had discharged from the bank in which Bert's father was vice president.

"You do my trick---put it through for me, Fessenden---and I'll do my best with my father to get you back in the bank," Bert promised.

"Even if I fail in that, I'll pay you well, in addition to the money I've just given you."

"Oh, it won't be a hard job to put through," nodded young Fessenden, understandingly. "I can find two fellows who have nerve enough, and who will go into court and swear to anything I want them to."

"That's the talk!" glowed young Dodge. "You will testify that Dick Prescott was talking with you, and that he told innumerable lies to blacken my name that he libeled me!" _

Read next: Chapter 4. What About Mr. Cameron?

Read previous: Chapter 2. Brass Meets Gold

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