"Mark Mallory's got to be taken down."
This suggestion was good, only rather indefinite, which indefiniteness was remarked by one of the crowd, Merry Vance, the cadet who had interposed the same objection before. Merry was a tall, slender youth, with a whitish hue that suggested dissipation, and a fine, scornful curve to his lips that suggested meanness no less clearly.
"It's all very well to say we've got to do him," said he, "but that don't say how. As I said, we can't find a man in our class to whip him fair. And we can't tackle him in a crowd because in the first place he seems to have his own gang, and in the second place none of us dares to touch him. I know I don't, for one."
"Pooh!" laughed Bull, scornfully. "I'm not afraid of him."
"Me either!" chimed in the little Baby, doubling up his fists.
"All right," said the other. "Only I noticed you both kept good and quiet when he stepped up to loosen Indian."
There was an awkward silence for a few minutes after that; Bull Harris could think of nothing to say, for he knew the charge was true; and as for Baby Edwards, he never said anything until after his big friend had set him an example.
"We can't get him into any trouble with the authorities, either," continued Vance at last. "In fact, I don't know what we are to do."
"He's simply turned West Point's customs topsy-turvy," groaned another. "Why, when we were plebes nobody ever dared to think of defying a yearling. And this Mallory and his gang are running the place. No one dares to haze a plebe any more."
"Talking about that," said Gus Murray, another yearling who had just strolled up. "Talking about that, just see what happened to me not five minutes ago. Met one of the confounded beasts—that fellow, by the way, we did up, though it don't seem to have done him the least bit of good—just as B. J. as ever. You know who I mean, the rather handsome chap they call Dewey. He went to pass the color guard up at camp just now and he didn't raise his hat. The sentry called him down for it, and then as he went off I said to him: 'You ought to know better than that, plebe.' 'Thank you,' says he, and when I told him he should say 'sir' to a higher cadet, what on earth do you suppose he had the impudence to say?"