Mark stopped, unable to express the thought that was in his mind. The colonel saw his agitation.
"What is your wish?" he inquired.
"Powers!" cried Mark. "He must not be dismissed."
The colonel started then and gazed at him in amazement.
"Not be dismissed!" he echoed. "What on earth is Powers to you?"
"To me? He is everything that one friend can be to another. I have known him but two months, sir, but in those two months I have come to care more for him than for any human being I have ever known—except my mother. He has stood by me in every danger; he has been as true as ever a friend on earth. He would die for me, sir—you saw what he did to-day. I have seen him do braver things than that, and I know that he has the heart of a lion. If he goes—I—I do not see how I can stay!"
"But, my dear sir," cried the colonel, still surprised, "think of the discipline! You do not know what you ask. I cannot have my cadets carry on in that manner."
"What I have told you no one knows but you and I, and two others I can trust. The surgeon knows it, and that is all. He can call it temporary insanity, sunstroke—a thousand things!"
"That is not the point. It is the man himself, his contempt for authority, for law and order, his lacking the instincts of a gentleman, his——"
"You are mistaken," interrupted Mark, forgetting entirely in his excitement that he was talking to the dreaded superintendent. "You were never more mistaken in your life! Texas has all the instincts of a gentleman; he has a true heart, sir. But think where he was brought up. He is a cowboy, and to get drunk is the only amusement he knows at home. He has no more idea right now that it is wrong to drink than to eat. His own father, he told me, got him drunk when he was ten years old."