“You have the right stuff in you, boy,” continued the captain, eyeing him. “You’ve made a good start, but you can’t continue knocking around this way. The frontier won’t last forever. When the telegraph comes through, connecting the West with the East, the Pony Express will have to quit; and there’ll soon be a railroad, and then the stage coach business will have to quit. If we have war (and things look like it), I’ll be ordered out; so will the other officers and men here, and what will happen to you is a problem. See? If you want to go to West Point you ought to begin preparing, so as to be ready when you’re old enough to enter. It’s no easy matter to take the course at the Academy; but it’s the finest education in the world, even if you don’t stay in the army. I don’t want you to go there with the idea of being a fighting man. Army officers are the last persons of all to wish for fighting. The army has a great work to do outside of war. We’re supposed to civilize the country and keep it peaceful. At West Point your body is built up, and what you learn, you learn thoroughly. You come out fit to meet every kind of emergency. What do you say? If you say ‘yes,’ then I’ll make application for you to the President direct and ask him to appoint you ‘at large,’ as he has a right to do, just as if you were my own son.” “Yes, sir,” stammered Davy, red. “I’d like to go.” “Good!” exclaimed the captain, shaking with him. “I’ll make arrangements so that if I’m ordered out you’ll be in the right hands.” Events seemed to occur fast. By Pony Express dispatches and the tissue newspapers it was learned that South Carolina had withdrawn from the Union and that the other Southern States were following suit. Abraham Lincoln in his inauguration address besought peace but stood firmly for a United States. His address was carried from Saint Joseph to Sacramento, 1966 miles, in seven days and seventeen hours――a new record. But when arrived the word that on April 12 the South Carolina troops had bombarded Fort Sumter, then everybody knew that the war had begun. Another important thing, also, occurred. Before spring a stranger who created considerable talk came through by stage bound west. He was Mr. Edward Creighton――a pleasant gentleman with an Irish face; and was on his way to Salt Lake looking over the country with a view to putting in a telegraph line through to Salt Lake City. A California company was to build from California east to Salt Lake and it was rumored that the Government offered a payment of $40,000 a year to the company that reached Salt Lake the first. This meant, of course, a line clear across from the Missouri to the Pacific coast. In the hurly-burly of troops preparing to leave for the front in the East, Davy had the idea that he, too, should go as a drummer boy, maybe. The sight of Billy Cody hurrying through was hard to bear.