On Guard.
by Upton Sinclair.
CHAPTER I.
A LETTER FROM A "FURLOUGH MAN."
"A letter for me, did you say?"
The speaker was a tall, handsome lad, a plebe at the West Point Military Academy. At the moment he was gazing inquiringly out of the tent door at a small orderly.
The boy handed him an envelope, and the other glanced at it.
"Cadet Mark Mallory, West Point, N. Y.," was the address.
"I guess that"s for me," he said. "Thank you. h.e.l.lo in there, Texas!
Here"s a letter from Wicks Merritt."
This last remark was addressed to another cadet in the tent. "Texas,"
officially known as Jeremiah Powers, a tall, rather stoop-shouldered youth, with a bronzed skin and a pair of shining gray eyes, appeared in the doorway and watched his friend with interest while he read.
"What does he say, Mark?" he inquired, when the latter finished.
"Lots," responded Mark. "Lots that"ll interest our crowd. They ought to be through sprucing up by this time, so bring "em over here and I"ll read it."
"Sprucing up" is West Point for the morning house-cleaning in the summer camp. A half hour is allowed to it immediately after breakfast, and it is followed by "the A. M. inspection."
In response to Mark"s suggestion, Texas slipped over to the tent in back of theirs in "B Company" Street, and called its three occupants. They came over and joined those in Mark"s tent; and then Mark took out the letter he had just received.
"I"ve got something here," said he, "that I think ought to interest all of us. I guess I"ll have time to read it before inspection. We are a secret society, aren"t we?"
"That"s what we are," a.s.sented the other six.
"But what"s that got to do with it?" added Texas.
"And we"ve banded ourselves together for the purpose of preventing the yearlings from hazing us?" continued Mark, without noticing his friend"s inquiry. "Well, it seems that they"ve been doing about the same thing down at Annapolis, too. This is from Wicks Merritt, a second cla.s.s cadet up here, who"s home on furlough this summer. He took a trip to Annapolis, and this is what he says. Listen very dutifully now, and don"t get impatient:
"DEAR MALLORY: I have heard a lot about you since the last time I wrote. Several of the fellows have written to me, and they haven"t been able to mention anything but you. They tell me you are kicking up a fine old fuss in West Point during my absence. They say that you won"t let anybody haze you. They say that you"ve gotten a lot of plebes around you to back you up, and that the yearlings are half wild in consequence.
"I don"t know what to make of you. You always were an extraordinary genius, and I suppose you have to do things in your own sweet way, whether it"s rescuing ferryboats or sailboats or express trains, or else locking us yearlings in ice houses. I cannot imagine what will be the end of the matter. I am sure the yearlings will never give in.
"I"m told that when they tried to lick you into submission you did up Billy Williams, the best fighter in the cla.s.s. Also that Bull Harris, whom I warned you against as being a sneaky fellow, tried to get you dismissed by skinning you on demerits, but that you circ.u.mvented that. Also that you and your friends have made it hot for him ever since, upon which fact I congratulate you.
"I don"t know what the yearlings will do next, but I imagine that they"re "stalled." Since you"ve started, I suppose the best thing for you to do is to keep up the good work and not let them rest. But for Heaven"s sake, don"t let any of them see this! They"d cut me for aiding and abetting a plebe rebellion. You are certainly the boldest plebe that every struck West Point; n.o.body in our cla.s.s ever dared to do what you"ve done.
"It seems, though, that you have imitators, or else that you are imitating somebody. Down here at Annapolis this year pretty much the same state of affairs is going on just now. There"s a plebe down here by the name of Clif Faraday (I"ve met him, and I told him about you), and he"s raising the very old boy with the third cla.s.s fellows. It seems that he outwitted them in all their hazing schemes, and has got them guessing at what he"ll do next, which is about as B. J. as anything you ever did, I imagine. It looks as if plebes both at West Point and here would get off with almost no hazing this year. And it"s all on account of you, too.
"Genius knows no precedent, they say. Farewell.
"Your friend,
"WICKS MERRITT.
"P. S.--They tell me you"ve saved the life of Judge Fuller"s daughter. Just take a word of advice--make the most of your opportunity! She"s the prettiest girl around the place, and the nicest, too, and she has half the corps wild over her. If you can make friends with her, I think the yearlings would stop hazing you at her command."
Mark finished the reading of the letter and gazed at his comrades, smiling.
"You see," he said, "our fame has spread even to Annapolis. Gentlemen, I propose three cheers for our crowd!"
"An" three fo" Clif Faraday!" cried Texas.
"Only don"t give any of them," added Mark, "for somebody might hear us."
There was a moment"s pause after that, broken by a protest from one of the Seven, Joseph Smith, of Indianapolis, popularly known as "Indian,"
a fat, gullible youth, who was the laughingstock of the post.
"I tell you," said he, his round eyes swelling with indignation, "I don"t think what Clif Faraday did was a bit more B. J. than some of our tricks!" (B. J. is West Point dialect for "fresh.")
"That"s what I say, too, b"gee!" chimed in another, a handsome, merry-eyed chap with a happy faculty of putting every one in a good humor when he laughed. "Just look at how Mark shut two of "em up in an ice house. Or look at how, when they took Indian off to the observatory to haze him, b"gee, we made "em think the place was afire and had "em all scared to death, and the fire battalion turning out besides. Now, b"gee, I want to know where you can beat that!"
And his sentiment was echoed with approval by the remainder of those present. The seven had by this time scattered themselves about the tent in picturesque and characteristic att.i.tudes, listening to the discussion carried on by the excitable Master Dewey.
First of all and foremost was the grave and learned "Parson," the Boston geologist. The Parson was stretched on his back in one corner with nothing but his long, bony shanks visible. Somehow or other Parson Stanard always managed to keep those legs of his with their covering of pale green socks the most conspicuous thing about him.
Sitting erect and stately on the locker, was Master Chauncey, the "dude"
of the party. A few weeks of West Point had already worked wonders with Chauncey; his aristocratic friends on Fifth Avenue would scarcely have known him. In the first place, he, with the rest of the plebes, were compelled to walk, whenever they went abroad, with "head erect, chest out, eyes to the front, little fingers on the seams of the trousers, palms outward." Try this and you will find, as Chauncey was finding, that it is hard to do that and at the same time keep up the correct London "stoop." Chauncey had been obliged to leave his cane and monocle behind him also, and a few days later, when plebe fatigue uniforms were donned, his imported clothes and high collar went by the board, too.
But Chauncey still clung to his accent, "bah Jove;" and was still known to the seven as "the man with a tutor and a hyphen"--his name being Mount-Bonsall, if you please--and to the rest of the corps as the dude who most did up six yearlings.
The corner opposite the Parson"s contained the dozing figure of Methusalem Zebediah Chelvers, the "farmer" from Kansas, popularly known as "Sleepy."
Sleepy never did anything or said anything unless he had to; the seven had known him for weeks now, and knew no more about him than at the start. Sleepy was still sleepy, and that was all.
The other members of this bold and desperate secret "anti-hazing"
society were Dewey, the prize story-teller of the party, "b"gee;"
Indian, the "prize pig;" Texas, a wild and woolly cowboy just from the plains, with a right arm that had paralyzed four cadets in as many minutes, and, last of all, Mark Mallory, the leader.
"Just look at the things we"ve done, b"gee!" continued Dewey. "Look at the times they"ve tried to haze us and we"ve outwitted them! See how we had the nerve to yank "em out of bed the other night, b"gee. Or, if that isn"t enough, just think of Bull Harris."
This last remark was greeted with a chuckle of laughter from the seven, in which even Sleepy found sufficient energy to join. And, indeed, the recollection was enough to make one laugh.
As readers of the first books in this series, "Off for West Point" and "A Cadet"s Honor," know, Bull Harris was the sworn enemy of the seven, and of Mark in particular. He never had ceased plotting in his mean, cowardly way to get Mark into trouble, and it was the joy of the plebes"
lives to outwit him. On the day previous they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Given a bloodhound that had been sent out from a neighboring village to trail a burglar who had stepped into a barrel of pitch, the seven had put pitch on Bull Harris" shoe and started the dog after him during the evening"s dress parade. The dog had chewed Bull"s trousers to ribbons, had broken up the parade, had made Bull the laughingstock of the place and earned him the deathless nickname of "Bull, the Burglar." Naturally, Bull was wild with rage, and the seven with hilarity.
They were still chuckling over it and the general discomfiture of the yearling cla.s.s and their own future prospects as triumphant plebes, when inspection put an end to the discussion and scattered the crowd.