Edward Stratemeyer - The Putnam Hall Cadets - or, Good Times in School and Out

“Hurrah!” came another shout, as the captain stepped down.

“Battalion, attention!” came the command, a moment later. “Carry arms! Present arms! Support arms! Shoulder arms! Forward, march!”

“Tap! tap! tap-tap-tap!” went the drums, and off moved the young soldiers. They marched around the parade ground twice, and then into the mess-hall, where each cadet took his place at one or another of the long dining tables. It was a spirited scene, and one calculated to make the heart of each boy bound with enthusiasm.

“Your name is on that list, Jack,” whispered a cadet sitting near. “I saw Peleg Snuggers tacking it up in the gym as I came away.” Peleg Snuggers was the general utility man around Putnam Hall.

“I hope you are on it, too, Joe,” answered Jack.

“I am,” returned Joe Nelson, who was a quiet and studious cadet, hailing from Philadelphia. “And Andy Snow and Henry Lee are on it, too,” he went on. “I think – ”

“Silence at the table!” broke in the rough voice of Josiah Crabtree. “If I hear any more of that, I’ll send you away without your supper!”

“Oh,” murmured Joe Nelson. It was rarely that he had any trouble with any of the teachers.

“Say, but old Crabtree is crusty enough to make pie of,” was Pepper’s whispered comment.

“Silence, I say!” thundered the first assistant. “I will have silence!” And he looked around the board so fiercely that hardly anybody dared to say another word.

At the next table sat Dan Baxter and Mumps, the sneak. The former scowled darkly at Jack and Andy, while the sneak put his tongue into his cheek at them.

“I’m going to fix Mumps,” whispered Pepper, who had been told of the occurrence in the school yard, and watching his chance, he leaned back in his chair and dropped a bit of sharp fish-bone down inside the sneak’s collar.

At first the sneak did not notice what had been done, but then he made a side turn and of a sudden uttered a yell of pain.

“Hi! who’s sticking me with a pin?” he roared. “Drop it!”

He glanced around, but the boys on both sides of him were busy with their eating.

“What is it, Master Fenwick?” questioned George Strong, the second assistant.

“Somebody stuck me with a – Oh, I’m stuck again! Oh! oh! Something is down my back!” And the sneak began to wiggle from side to side. “Oh, dear me!”

“You had better leave the room and find out what is the matter,” said the teacher, and still twisting and squirming, Mumps left the mess-hall in a hurry.

“Baxter, do you know anything of this?”

“No, sir.”

“It is strange; what could be the matter?”

There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sneak came back and dropped into his chair.

“It was a fish-bone – awfully sharp, too,” he said. “Somebody must have dropped it down my back, sir.”

There was a titter, in which our friends joined. Pepper winked at Jack, Andy, and Joe Nelson, and they understood.

As soon as the meal was over, the cadets rushed off to the library of Putnam Hall and to the gymnasium, to scan the list of names the master had mentioned.

“Bart Conners is at the head,” said Andy. “Harry Blossom comes next, Jack is third, Henry Lee fourth, myself fifth, Dave Kearney sixth, Stuffer Singleton next, and Dan Baxter next.”

“And those are the ones who may be made major,” came from a cadet named Dale Blackmore, one of the leading athletes of the academy.

“You are up next, Dale,” returned Jack. “That means you may become a captain.”

“I’d rather be captain of the football team,” answered Dale, with a smile.

As soon as the list was scanned, an animated discussion took place regarding the merits of the different candidates. As among men, and especially politicians, there was a good bit of “log-rolling” and electioneering.

“I think Henry Lee ought to be major,” said Jack. “He is one of our best soldiers.”

“He is no better soldier than you are, Jack,” returned Andy.

“Just what I say,” came from Pepper. “Jack ought to be major, and Henry one of the captains.”

“Dan Baxter is working hard to become major,” came from a cadet who had just strolled in. “Somebody told me he was actually trying to buy votes!”

“Buy them? Do you mean with money?” queried Jack.

“So somebody told me.”

“Oh, that can’t be true, Jerry. Why, who in this school would be mean enough to sell his vote?”

“Well, Baxter has got a wad of rocks all right enough. I saw the money myself.”

“I’m going to watch him,” came from Pepper, and he motioned for Andy Snow to go along.

“What will you do, if you learn he is really offering money for votes?” questioned Andy, as they hurried away.

“I don’t know yet, Andy. But it would be a mean piece of business. Why, in politics that is bribery, and they can arrest a man for it.”

“I know that – but it’s seldom a briber is caught.”

It was not difficult to trace Dan Baxter. From a small cadet they learned he was down by the lake, back of the row of bathing-houses.

By going down to the boathouse first, and then stealing along a fringe of bushes skirting the lake shore, they reached the bath-houses without being seen. As it was past the bathing season, the houses were supposed to be “out of commission,” and locked up, but one of them – the largest – stood wide open.

“Well, that is the chance of your life, if you only know it,” reached their ears, in the voice of Dan Baxter. “Besides, you know well enough that I would make as good a major as anybody in the school.”

“That’s a fine way to blow one’s own horn,” murmured Pepper.

“And what will you give me, Baxter, if I work for you?” came from a big boy named Gus Coulter. He, too, was a bully, and, coming from humble parentage, had very little spending money.

“I’ll give you five dollars, Gus.”

“Will you give it to me now?”

“Yes, if you’ll promise to do all you can to elect me major.”

“All right, then, hand over the money,” answered Gus Coulter. “I’d just as soon work for you as anybody.”

“Why can’t I have a fiver, too?” put in Mumps, who was present. “I’ll work as hard as Gus.”

“I’ll give you two dollars, Mumps,” said the bully. “I can’t afford any more.”

“Where do I come in on this?” came from a lad named Paxton.

“I’ll give you two dollars, too, Nick, if you’ll vote for me and try to get others to do so, too.”

“Humph! Aren’t my services worth as much as Gus Coulter’s?” demanded Nick Paxton.

“Well, if I’m elected I’ll give you two dollars more.”

“Very well, hand over the dough, Dan. As Gus says, I’d just as soon work for you as for anybody.”

“What a barefaced thing to do!” whispered Andy Snow. “Baxter can’t have a bit of honor about him!”

“The others are just as bad – to take his money,” whispered Pepper in return. “If they – who’s this?”

“Hullo, what are you doing here?” demanded a rough voice behind them, and a cadet named Sabine appeared on the scene.

“Who is there?” cried Dan Baxter, and rushed from the bath-house. “Humph! Pepper Ditmore and Andy Snow! So you’ve been spying on us, eh? That’s a nice business to be into, I must say!”

“Have they been spying on us?” queried Mumps, and turned slightly pale.

“Yes, they have been spying – I caught them at it,” came from Billy Sabine. “What have you fellows been up to here?” he added, anxiously.

“Never mind just now,” answered Dan Baxter. He looked much disconcerted. “Just step in here a minute, will you?” he requested, of Pepper and Andy.