href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@47696@[email protected]#chap21" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Patched Wings in the Dawn

Barry and Chick Were Among the First to Leave

CHAPTER ONE

The bus from San Antonio pulled in to the curb and stopped. The door snapped open. Half a dozen uniformed upperclassmen wearing grim expressions moved closer to the vehicle.

“Roll out of it, you Misters!” bawled their leader in a voice of authority. “Shake the lead out of your shoes! Pop to it!”

Barry Blake and Chick Enders were among the first out of the bus, but they were not quick enough to suit the reception committee.

“Are you all crippled?” rasped the spokesman of the upperclass “processors.” “Come alive and fall in—here, on this line. Dress right! I said dress—don’t stick your necks out. Atten-shun! Hope you haven’t forgotten all the military drill you learned at primary. You, Mister! Rack it back. Eyes on a point. And out with your chest if you have any. Keep those thumbs at your trouser seams.... All right! Here’s your baggage tag. Write your name on it. Tag your baggage—and make it snappy. Stand at attention when you’ve finished. Hurry! That’s it.... Take baggage in left hand—left, not right. And wipe off your smile, Mister! ’Sbetter.... Mister Danvers, you will now take charge of these dum-dums.”

Barry was sweating. The blazing Texas sun was in his eyes. His chest ached for a normal, relaxed breath; yet he dared not move. Mister Danvers’ barking command came as a sharp relief.

“Right face.... Forward, march! Hup! Hup! Hup! Pull those chins back. Hup! Hup! Eyes on a point! And hold your right hands still—this isn’t a goose-step. Hup! Hup! Shoulders back—grab a brace—you’re in the Army now! Hup! Hup! Dee-tachment, halt!”

For more strained moments the new arrivals stood on the arched stoop of the Cadet Administration Building and listened to acid instructions. The talk dealt with the proper manner of reporting for duty. The tone of it, however, showed the processor’s profound doubt of the “dum-dums’” ability to do anything properly. It was deliberately maddening.

Barry Blake felt a wave of hot resentment sweep over him. A second later cool reason met it and drove it back.

“They’re just trying to see if we underclassmen can take it,” he told himself. “A cadet’s got to learn how to be an officer and a gentleman, in any situation. They’re teaching us the quick, hard way, that’s all!”

Barry held his tough, well-proportioned muscles a little less stiffly. He wondered how Chick Enders was taking the processor’s verbal jabs. From where he stood he could see Chick’s short, bandy-legged figure quiver under the barrage of upperclass sarcasm. Chick’s good-natured mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were pale blue slits above his pug nose. The homely cadet was having a hard job trying not to explode.

Suddenly he relaxed, and Barry, seeing it, chuckled inwardly. He had known Chick Enders since they were both in kindergarten. When he got angry, the kid’s blond bristles would stick up like the fuzz of a newly hatched chick. That always meant a fight, unless Chick’s sense of humor got the upper hand, as it had just now.

While the processor’s stinging remarks continued, Barry’s memory flashed back to the day that he and Chick had graduated from the Craryville High School. Barry had been valedictorian of the class, and Chick, he recalled, had been prouder of the fact than anyone.