Hal and Noll were bright, typical American boys when, at the age of eighteen, back in their New Jersey home town, they decided that their careers in life were to be found through enlisting in the Army.
It was in April that they enlisted, after which they were sent to a recruit rendezvous near New York City. At the recruit rendezvous the two young "rookies," as recruits are commonly termed in the service, were whipped very thoroughly into shape.
While at the recruit rendezvous the two rookies distinguished themselves by preventing the desertion of a corporal who was in arrest. For this service they were commended in orders.
On the way to their regiment in Colorado the boys were present when an attempt was made to hold up the United States mail train. An Army officer, Major Davis, of the Seventeenth Cavalry, ordered them to assist him in resisting an attack on the mail car. In the encounter that followed some of the train robbers were shot, others then surrendering to Major Davis. That same night Major Davis wired the colonel of the Thirty-fourth, speaking of the young recruits in high terms for their prompt obedience and their grit under trying circumstances. So Overton and Terry, on joining their regiment the next morning, found themselves in high favor.
Of course the young soldiers had to endure the usual amount of "hazing" when they took up their new life in the squad room. But this they did with a combination of grit and good humor that soon won them the respect of the older soldiers.
Then came a period of great excitement on the post. Despite the fact that an entire battalion of the Thirty-fourth was stationed at Fort Clowdry, a gang of burglars visited the quarters of married officers on dark nights, and invariably succeeded in getting away with substantial booty.
It was young Private Overton who, when on sentry duty up in officers' row, was first to detect the burglars as they were leaving a house that they had robbed. Before the guard arrived Private Hal Overton had a spirited battle with the decamping thieves. One of them turned out to be Tip Branders, a young bully who had once lived in the home town of Hal and Noll. Branders had robbed his own mother and had drifted west, falling in with bad company. Hal and Noll then remembered a rock-strewn, distant part of the post where they had once met Tip, and there they led a squad of soldiers, under an officer. Here, after another brief but spirited battle, the escaped burglars had been caught; and here also all the booty stolen from the quarters along officers' row was recovered.
Both young soldiers had now received great credit for their daring and clever work. Moreover, both had gone on rapidly in the thorough learning of their new work as soldiers of the regular Army.
And now the month of August had come around. Both young soldiers were now on the high road to efficiency and success in their strenuous new life.
Readers of the "High School Boys' Series" and the "West Point Series" will be quick to recognize another young man who has been briefly introduced in the opening of this present volume—Lieutenant Dick Prescott, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and just recently appointed to his regiment, the Thirty-fourth. With Lieutenant Prescott was Lieutenant Greg Holmes, who will be remembered as Prescott's close chum in the High School and West Point days.