"Wow! Whoop! Who'll expel me? Come out yere, you ole officers, an' try it! Wow!"
Texas was on the warpath again. This time headed straight for West Point.
And riding behind him with desperate speed, scarcely fifty yards in the rear, was Mark, pursuing with all his might, and trembling with alarm as he thought of what that desperate cowboy might do when once he reached the post.
For West Point, and the crowded parade ground, were not a quarter of a mile away.
CHAPTER XI.
TEXAS RAIDS WEST POINT.
The summer season is a gay one at West Point. During the winter cadet life is a serious round of drill and duty, but after that comes a three months' holiday, when cadets put on their best uniforms and welcome mothers and sisters and other fellows' sisters to the post. There are hops then, and full dress parades, and exhibition drills galore.
It was one of these drills that was going on that morning, perhaps of all of them the most showy and interesting to the stranger. And the mothers and sisters and other fellows' sisters were out in full force to see it.
"Light artillery drill" is practice in the handling and firing of field cannon. The cadets learn to handle heavy guns also, practicing with the "siege and seacoast batteries" that front on the southern shore of the Hudson. But the drill with the field pieces is held on the cavalry plain, a broad, turfless field just south of the camp.
The field presented a pretty sight on that morning. It was surrounded with a wall of trees, behind which, to the south, the somber gray stone of barracks stood out, with the academy building, the chapel and the library. To the north the white tents of the camp shone through the trees and a little further to the left, the Battle Monument rose above them and caught on its marble sides the glistening rays of the sun. Beneath the trees all around the plain and crowding the steps of the buildings, were scattered groups of spectators, the gay dresses of the women helping to make a setting of color.