On Guard Part 27

"All at once?" inquired Mark, with a tinge of irony.

"No, sir. Separately, and in fair fight."

Mark was thoughtful and silent again.

"The consequences," he said, at last, "are unpleasant. The consequences of swallowing so gross and unmerited an insult as Mr. Wright's, given before hundreds of people, are more unpleasant still. Dewey!"

That young man sprang to his feet with an excited "B'gee!"

"Dewey," said Mark, in slow and measured tones, and never once taking his eyes off the three stern cadets, "Dewey, you will return for me, please, to Mr. Wright's tent. Tell Mr. Wright for me that I demand an apology by this evening--or else that he name a time and place. And tell him finally that if he refuses I shall consider myself unfortunately obliged to knock him down the first time I see him."

"Bully, b'gee!"

"Wow!"

The six plebes had leaped to their feet as one man, with a wild hurrah!

Oh, could anything have been better than that? Those three cadets had fairly quailed before Mark's bold and sudden, yet calm defiance.

"I think, gentlemen," said he, "that my purposes are clear to you now.

And I bid you good-morning."

Half a minute later Mark was buried in the wild embraces and congratulations of his hilarious friends; Texas was dancing a Spanish fandango about the inclosure, and Dewey, red and excited, was on his way to camp as fast as his delighted legs could carry him.

"B'gee!" he kept chuckling. "B'gee, we'll wipe the spots off of 'em, b'gee. Whoop!" The more excited Dewey got the more b'gees he was accustomed to put in.

He was back again at the Siege Battery ten minutes later, this time even more excited, more red, more breathless than ever.

"B'gee!" he gasped. "I got it. He'll--he'll--b'gee, he'll fight."

"Whoop!" roared Texas.

"Yes," continued Dewey, "and b'gee, you can bet there'll be fun! You see, he wants to fight. He's no coward, I could see that, and he's mad as thunder because the cla.s.s won't let him. And b'gee, I chucked in a few hints about his being afraid, which made him madder still, so that when I fired out that last part about knocking him down if he didn't, b'gee, he was wild. Oh, say! He hopped about that tent like--like Texas is doing now--and b'gee he wanted to have it out right away."

"Whoop!" roared Texas. "Let's go up now! I'll help! Let's----"

"Sit on him and keep him quiet," laughed Mark, shoving Texas into a corner. "Now go on."

"We couldn't fight at Fort Clinton, b'gee," continued Dewey still gasping for breath, "because the cadets would have learned. And so finally, b'gee, he said we'd get a boat and cross the Hudson. How's that?"

"When?" cried Mark.

"To-morrow morning first thing, b'gee!"

Texas had escaped by this time and was dancing about once more. And the rest of the Seven were about ready to join him. This was the greatest bit of excitement of all. The most B. J. thing they had ever done, defying the whole first cla.s.s and going out of cadet limits besides.

There never were seven lads more full of fun than these boys; and never had they seen a chance for quite so much fun as in this daring venture.

The seven adjourned for dinner soon after that. As they "fell in" on the company street it was evident to Mark that the story of his bold defiance, his desperate stroke, was all about the place even then. It was known to the first cla.s.s, and to the yearling enemies, and even to the plebes, who stared at him in awe and wondered where on earth he had gotten the "nerve" to dare to do what he had. For Mark Mallory stood pledged by his defiance to fight the whole corps of cadets.

He bore his notoriety easily; he returned the stares of his enemies with cool and merry indifference, and as he cleaned his musket and turned out for drill, or made the dust about the camp fly while on "police duty,"

there was nothing about him to lead any one to suspect that he was, of all West Point's plebes and even cadets, the most conspicuous, the most talked of.

The story spread so far that it reached the ears of a certain very dear friend of his. An orderly handed him a note late that afternoon; he knew the handwriting well by this time and he opened the letter and read it hastily:

"DEAR MR. MALLORY: Please come over to the hotel as soon as you can. I have some important news for the Seven, and for you particularly.

"Your friend,

"GRACE FULLER."

Mark went, wondering what could be "up," and he found that it was about that same all-important affair that Grace wanted to see him.

"I hear you are going to fight," she began as soon as she saw him; there was a worried smile on her face which made Mark smile involuntarily.

"It's nothing very desperate," he answered. "So you needn't be alarmed.

You see it's necessary for me to fight once in a while else you and I couldn't play all our beautiful B. J. tricks."

"I guess you'd better go then," she laughed. "But I don't like it a bit.

You'll come home all bruised up and covered with court-plaster, and I shan't have anything to do with you until you get handsome again."

"Thanks for that last word 'again,'" responded he with a laugh. Then, he added, more seriously, "How did you find all this out? I thought none of the cadets were going to speak to you since the hop?"

"Pooh!" said Grace. "You didn't suppose they meant that, did you? Half of them are beginning to capitulate already. I knew they wouldn't hold out."

"I knew it too," thought Mark to himself; he was watching the girl's beautiful face, with its expression of action and life.

"It seems then that all my rivals are back again," he said, aloud.

"None of them are your rivals," answered the girl; and then she added, quickly: "But that wasn't what I sent for you to tell you. I have been finding out some more secrets. I think if I keep on practicing on the cadets I'll be quite a diplomatist and confidence man by and by."

"What have you found out now?"

"Simply that the whole first cla.s.s proposes to keep you from fighting."

"I knew that before," said Mark.

"Yes," answered Grace. "But you didn't know that they knew you and Wright were going to cross the river to settle it."

"Do they know that, too?" cried Mark.

"They do; and moreover they intend to keep watch on you, and if you leave camp to-night you'll have the whole cla.s.s to follow you."

Mark looked interested at that.

"I can see," he said, "that I am going to have no small amount of fun out of this business. I wish you could manage to use a little of your diplomacy in helping me escape."

"And I wish," added Grace, gazing at him with the same anxious look he had noticed before, "I wish I could help you do the fighting too. I hate to think of your being hurt."

"It hurts me to have you look so unhappy," said Mark, seriously. "I can stand the other. As a fighter I don't think you would make much of a success. This is a case of 'angels for council; devils for war.'"