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!