The Mercer Boys in the Ghost Patrol Read online

  5 A Fight and a Stampede

  Captain Jim made his way around the last of the tents that formed the ACompany row and then paused. With a motion that combined speed withcaution he stepped out of sight behind the slope of the tent, his eyesnarrowed, senses alert.

  He was on his way to the section of the camp allotted to the cavalryhorses. It was midafternoon and active drill was over for the day. Mostof the young soldiers were in swimming, a few played baseball out in theblazing sun, and a few with less energy lay in the shade. Jim haddismounted rather hurriedly to make a report and he was on his way tosee that the cadet orderlies had properly taken care of his horse.

  The horses were just before him at the present moment, a score or moreof restless, high-strung mounts. No orderly or cavalryman was with themat the moment and no one save one cadet could be seen. This cadet wasacting queerly, and Jim’s attention was the more quickly attracted whenhe saw that the lone cadet was Dick Rowen.

  Rowen’s campaign hat was in his crooked arm and he was standing directlyin front of Jim’s horse, Squall. From time to time Rowen lookedfurtively around the camp to see if anyone was observing him, but hefailed to see the cavalry captain. The lone cadet dipped his hand intothe hat and extended something to the horse. Squall appeared to reachout eagerly for whatever it was each time, but the neck of another horseobscured from Jim what it was that Rowen was feeding his horse.

  “Now, what the dickens can that fellow be doing?” Jim puzzled. “He seemsto be unusually kind to my horse, and it looks suspicious to me. Ofcourse, it is possible that Rowen likes horses and is feeding them, buthe knows that one is mine. Maybe he doesn’t carry his grudges as far asthe animals!”

  One of the objects that Rowen was feeding to the horse dropped to theground, rolling a short distance. As soon as Jim recognized it he becameindignant.

  “A green apple! A lot he knows about horses! If he wants to be kind tothem he should pick something else beside—”

  He stopped short in his thought. Rowen looked right and left again andthen moved off a few paces to the left, reaching down for a bucket ofwater. With this in his hand he walked back to the horse, raised it tohis eager lips, and tilted the bucket.

  Jim Mercer waited to see no more. The whole cowardly trick was plain tohim now. Each cavalryman was required to keep his mount in perfectcondition and no excuse would be accepted for failure to do so. He couldpicture Squall after his meal of green apples and his drink of coldwater, rolling in agony for hours, and himself severely blamed forcriminal neglect. The boy’s eyes blazed in fury as he hurled himself inRowen’s direction.

  He was on top of the boy before Rowen was aware of him. Rowen turnedstartled eyes in his direction, his face paling swiftly. The tongue ofthe horse had just touched the water’s surface when Jim landed his fistwith all his force on the cheek of the cadet.

  Rowen went down promptly, the bucket of water spilling all over hisuniform. A dull red spot showed where Jim’s fist landed, and Rowenrolled over with a faint bleat. With bulging eyes he looked up to whereJim towered over him.

  “Why, you contemptible, sneaking coward!” Jim, his voice trembling,exploded with emotion. “You intended to bloat my horse so that I woulddo ‘growl duty’ for neglect, did you? How about the hours of agony thatthe horse would suffer? Did you think of that? Get on your feet, becauseI’m going to thrash you until you won’t be able to walk for the rest ofthe summer!”

  “If you lay your hands on me, Mercer, I’ll report you to the colonel,”cried Rowen, cowed at Jim’s attitude. The captain was ablaze with wrath.

  “Tell the colonel all you want to, but I’m going to put you in theinfirmary for a month,” promised Jim, reaching for the collar of thefallen cadet.

  At that moment Terry, Jordan, Don and Vench came around the end of thetent row. They had been playing ball and were on their way to changeclothes for a swim. They saw the two before them and hurried over.

  “Look here, gentlemen,” commanded Jordan, briskly. “You can’t fight incamp. What’s the row, anyway?”

  “Mercer knocked me down,” complained Rowen, while Don pulled Jim away.Don was surprised to feel how violently Jim was trembling.

  “Why did you knock Rowen down, Mercer?” Jordan asked.

  Jim did not in the least mind Jordan’s commanding tone. Although theywere both captains of divisions, and Jim was therefore an equal as anofficer, Jordan nevertheless claimed a slight privilege as the seniorcaptain of the school. In the following year, their last one atWoodcrest, Jim would be senior captain of the cavalry, with the unusualrecord of having held that post for three years. His heroism at Hill 31,when he rescued Vench, had won him that rank. But in the final year Donwould be promoted from the infantry lieutenant to Senior Cadet Captainof the Corps, thus ranking a step higher than Jim, for all the latter’sthree years of captaincy in the cavalry.

  Jim readily related the story of the short fight. He felt that theaction was so cowardly and sneaking that Rowen did not deserve to haveit hushed up. The faces of the cadets described their feelings as thestory was told. Rowen turned white to red-faced as he saw the looks castin his direction.

  “I don’t care so much about the punishment I would have received,” Jimsaid in conclusion, “but how any guy in the world with a grain of commondecency in him would stoop to give a horse hours of agony is more than Ican see. You fellows can see the evidences of his guilt on the ground,the pail and the apple. When you came along I was about to give him thebiggest licking he ever got in his life!”

  “Get up, Rowen!” commanded the senior captain, sternly. “We are not onduty, or I’d put up with this trick just long enough to order you underarrest! I don’t mind telling you frankly that you won’t last long enoughin the corps to ever graduate if this story gets out!”

  “I don’t care a hang about the corps!” snapped Rowen. “How about Mercerhere? Don’t forget that he struck me.”

  “I won’t forget him for doing it, instead I will remember him gratefullyfor doing it. Perhaps it was too bad that we arrived just as we did.”

  Rowen looked up at Jordan shamefaced yet still belligerent. “I’ll geteven with you boys! Just wait and see. And you can’t prove I harmed yourold horse, either, Mercer.” With these remarks, Rowen turned on his heeland strode away, his chin high in the air.

  “Gee! How do you like that?” Terry exclaimed. “He sure has some nervecarrying a grudge after what’s happened just now!”

  “I thought I had met up with a lot of the mean, tricky people!”exclaimed Jordan. “But that beats me!”

  “What about the horse, Jim?” Don asked.

  “I’ll have to duck over to the canteen and get out some of the horsemedicine and then run him around until he gets over the effects of thegreen apples,” replied the cavalry captain. “No water for you, Squallold boy, until you have lost the effects of your unexpected meal.”

  While Jim was looking after the horse the others walked over to thetents, talking the matter over. All of them were deeply upset by thetotal unjustness of it all.

  “Just because Jim slipped on the springboard and made a dive likeRowen’s!” said Vench. “I can’t understand some fellows.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” replied Don, slowly. “For a long time Rowen hashad a grouch against all of us; for no particular reason at all. He’sthe kind of boy who just seems to have trouble wherever he goes.”

  It was not until they were preparing for bed that evening that the threeboys had an opportunity to further discuss the afternoon’s incident.

  “Is your horse OK?” Terry asked, kicking off his shoes.

  “Yes,” Jim answered. “As long as he didn’t get a big drink of waterhe—Oh, golly!”

  “What’s the matter?” the other two asked, aroused at the dismay in Jim’stone.

  “I’ve lost my belt,” Jim returned. “I had it on when I went to thecorral, and I guess I must have dropped it there. I’ll have to go backan
d find it.”

  “You’ve got to have it for inspection tomorrow,” said Don. “Wait ashake, and I’ll go back with you.”

  “No, you won’t,” vetoed Jim. “I can sneak out myself and make the tripin record time. No use in running the risk of having you reported withme. Douglas is patrolling post Number Five and I can slip through him.”

  “Yes, but the guard will have been changed by the time you get back,”Terry reminded him. “Then what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll just have to take my chances and slip through while he is at thefar end of the patrol,” replied Jim, putting his shirt on again. “Ishould have seen to it that I didn’t drop my belt, that’s all. Youfellows go to sleep, and I’ll soon be back.”

  “OK,” agreed Don. “Good luck, kid!”

  “Thanks,” murmured Jim, looking carefully from the flap of the tent.“See you later.”

  With that he was gone, slipping back of the tents and keeping well inthe shadows. At the edge of the camp he waited until he saw Douglasstanding with his back toward him. Then Jim slipped by him and plungedinto the woods.

  It didn’t take him long to reach the spot where the horses werecorralled and after a little hunting he found his belt. It had droppedclose to the foot of a clump of bushes and was out of the direct rays ofthe moon. Buckling it around his waist Jim began his return journey tothe camp.

  But now, as he approached the place, he became very cautious. He musttrust to luck to slip past the man at the post and it would be no easytask.

  He decided that perhaps by flitting along past the animals he could moreeasily gain the corner of the nearest company street and by lying on hisstomach in the shadow of a tent he could escape the eyes of the cadetuntil it was safe to move on. With this thought in mind Jim moved to thehorses and then paused.

  There was a tall white shape close to the animals, and they had sensedthe presence of the thing. It looked to be a very tall man shrouded inwhite, and he was at the moment near the foremost horses. Forgetting hisunusual position Jim rushed forward to see what was going on.

  The shape before him heard his quick step, turned toward him, and thenmoved with an agility that astonished the cadet captain. Slapping theflanks of the horses right and left the man in white started themmoving. Jim jumped forward.

  “Hey, you!” he cried. “What are you doing to those horses?”

  The figure in white took to the trees swiftly and Jim was unable to stophim. For the horses, frightened by something, perhaps the white shapeitself, moved with increasing speed out of the corral. Before Jim couldcall to them it had developed into a wild stampede, and the horses wereheaded like a cyclone for the nearest tents.