Frank Merriwell, Jr.'s, Helping Hand; Or, Fair Play and No Favors

by Burt L. Standish

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“SPOOKS.”

When Merriwell and Clancy reached Tinaja Wells and the Ophir camp, late in the afternoon, it was with the disagreeable feeling that friendly rivalry between the two clubs had received a setback by recent events from which it could never recover. Merry at once sought Handy, captain of the Ophir team, Ballard and Hannibal Bradlaugh—the latter the son of the club’s president—and went into a star-chamber session with them.

All the unpleasant details of the afternoon were gone over, and Ballard, Brad, and Handy listened to them with absorbing interest.

“What can we expect,” burst out Brad indignantly, when the recital was finished, “while such a measly pup as Lenning bosses the Gold Hill crowd? So long as he’s the king-pin over there, you couldn’t foster a friendly spirit between the two clubs in a thousand years.”

“That dynamite cartridge gets my goat,” growled Ballard. “That pleasant habit Lenning has of trying to assassinate the fellows he doesn’t like will put him behind the bars one of these days. Thunder! Why, it doesn’t seem possible he could be such a reckless fool.”

“He’s dangerous,” said Merriwell quietly, “but I don’t think he’s exactly responsible when his temper’s roused.”

“Take it from me,” observed Handy, “there’s something on the fellow’s conscience. Fear of being found out is goading him to desperate things. He can’t go on like this; something has got to be done to stop him before he commits a sure-enough crime.”

“What’s to be done?” asked Frank. “Tell the colonel?”

“The colonel!” exclaimed Ballard. “Why, Chip, Lenning has got the colonel under his thumb. You can’t do a thing with Hawtrey. Just breathe a whisper against Lenning to the colonel and there’ll be fireworks. It beats creation the way Lenning is able to pull the wool over his uncle’s eyes. Darrel, now, is worth a dozen fellows of Lenning’s stripe. I’ve been with Darrel for three days at Dolliver’s place, and I’ve got to know him pretty well. He’s a prince, that’s what he is; and yet that confounded old muttonhead of a colonel won’t have a thing to do with him. When I think about it, sometimes, I get so mad I feel as though I’d explode.”

“We’d better sleep over this, fellows,” suggested Merriwell, “and see if we can’t think out some move that will be right and proper. Things are mighty unsatisfactory, as they are. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything bump me so hard as what happened this afternoon.”

It was in this way that the important matter was dismissed temporarily. During supper, and for the rest of that evening, the boys tried to forget it. When they crawled into their blankets, at ten o’clock, Merriwell’s mind got busy with the far-reaching subject in spite of himself.

A guard of three was posted every night. Frank heard the guards changed at eleven o’clock. Fritz Gesundheit, the Dutch boy who did the cooking for the camp, was to be one of the midwatch. It took all of ten minutes for one of the lads who was going off duty to get Fritz out of the land of dreams and into a fitting realization of the fact that it was his turn at sentry-go.

Ghost stories had been indulged in around the camp fire during the evening. Fritz had listened to the wild yarns with both ears, while washing and putting away the supper dishes. More than once the cold shivers had crept up his backbone, and he had felt the carroty hair rising straight up on his head. When called for guard duty, he was snoring away with his head under the blankets.

Fritz’ post was below the flat, and in a part of the cañon where the moonlight sifted through the trees in wavering silvery patches. Every patch looked like a ghost, and the cañon was filled with them.

Fritz was about as eager to go on duty that night as he would have been to walk into a den of hungry bears. But Silva, the Mexican packer, was also one of the midwatch, and between Fritz and Silva was a feud of several days’ standing. Fritz would have scorned to show the white feather with Silva looking on, and so he armed himself with a stout club and a half a dozen ham sandwiches and waddled feebly down the side of the flat and into the ghostly shadows of the cañon.

Once a picketed horse gave a snort, and Fritz went straight into the air for at least five feet. A little later Uncle Sam, the professor’s mule, let out a “hee haw” that sounded like thunder in the cañon, and Fritz almost went into a swoon. Every little while Fritz imagined a quivering splash of moonlight was a spook, and he would groan to himself and crowd between the rocks, and say his prayers backward, forward, and sideways.

Finally, as nothing came up and grabbed him, he began to feel somewhat reassured. He thought of his sandwiches and started to eat one.

“Shpooks iss nodding, I bed you,” he communed with himself. “Nodding nefer hurt nopody at all, und I vill eat und forged aboudt it. Vat a peacefulness is der nighdt! How calm iss der moon und der leedle shtars! Oh, I lofe der nighdt, you bed my life, und I—himmelblitzen, vat iss dot?”

Fritz jumped, laid down his half-eaten sandwich on a bowlder beside him, and peered wildly around. He could see nothing but the shadowy live stock belonging to the camp, and yet, very distinctly, he had heard a pat, pat, pat as of something traveling among the bowlders.

“Id vas nodding some more,” he chattered. “Imachination makes some monkey-doodle pitzness mit me. I vill eat der sandvich und forged aboudt it.”

He reached for the sandwich, and a horrifying surprise ran through him. The sandwich was not where he had left it. Nor had it fallen off the rock.

“Br-r-r!” shivered Fritz. “Dere iss a keveerness here, py shiminy Grismus! Iss a shpook hungry dot he comes und takes my sandvich?”

For several minutes Fritz sat in a huddle and wondered what he had better do about it. He would have eased his tense feelings with a yell if Silva hadn’t been around to hear. It wouldn’t do to let the Mexican know he was scared. With trembling hands, Fritz dug down into his rations for another sandwich. Laying the sandwich down for a moment, he bent to twist the mouth of the paper sack in which his lunch was stowed. When he straightened again, and reached for the sandwich, another thrill of horror convulsed him. It was gone.

“Py shimineddy,” Fritz fluttered, “dis iss gedding vorse as I can tell! Vat iss habbening mit me? Iss it a shpook sandvich? Sooch now-you-see-him-und-now-you-don’t pitzness I don’t like.” Fritz, just then, had an illuminating idea which not only calmed his fears but aroused his wrath. “I bed my life id iss dot greaser feller playing some chokes mit me. I set some draps, und ven I catch him, I preak him in doo, so hellup me!”

With another sandwich Fritz baited his trap. Laying the sandwich on the bowlder’s top, he sank down until his eyes were level with it and the rest of his body hidden in gloom; then, lifting his hands ready to make a grab, he waited.

Pat, pat came a mysterious sound from the other side of the bowlder. That must be Silva, Fritz thought, coming up on his hands and knees.

“Now, I bet you someding for nodding,” Fritz chuckled, “I get him!”

Something reared up out of the darkness on the other side of the bowlder. Fritz grabbed, and his hands closed on an object that felt like a buffalo robe and squirmed like an eel. Another moment and Fritz had an armful, for the object plunged straight at him over the bowlder.

“Hellup! hellup!” he howled, as he tumbled backward and began rolling over and over. “Hellup, I say, oder I vas a gone Dutchman!”

Then, for several moments, Fritz was altogether too busy for words. The thing in his arms clawed, and snapped, and snarled. Fritz continued to roll with it, sometimes underneath, sometimes on top. He was too scared to let go, and too scared to hold on; and while he floundered and plunged about among the rocks, the boys began to run out of the tents, wondering what the nation was the matter. At last, locating the excitement in the cañon, they began racing over the edge of the flat. As it happened, Merriwell was in the lead.

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[CHAPTER XXIX.]
THE COLONEL CALLS.

When Merriwell was close to the spot where the rolling, tumbling, and howling was going on, a blot of shadow darted through the sifting moonlight and was swallowed up in the gloom of the lower gulch. As the shadow disappeared, a long, quavering coyote yelp floated back on the night wind.

A thrill ran through Merriwell’s nerves. Was it a coyote or a coyote dog that had flung past him and given vent to that yelp? Instinctively he knew that it was the wretched mongrel for whose life he and Clancy had battled in the vicinity of Camp Hawtrey.

Merriwell was conscious of an uncanny feeling, which laid hold of him as that eerie yelp echoed through the cañon. What Hotchkiss had told him about coyote dogs was no doubt responsible for it. With an exclamation of impatience he flung the feeling from him and went on to where a figure was sitting up on the ground among the rocks.

“Py shinks, it vas nod a shpook,” the figure was muttering. “A shpook iss nodding, und dis vat I hat in my handts vas more as dot. Yas, you bet my life!”

“Carrots!” exclaimed Merry. “Say,” and he laughed, scenting a joke of some sort, “what’s the matter with you?”

“I schust hat a fight mit a bear dot vas pigger as a house,” Fritz cried. “I hat nodding but my hands, und I vas shoking der life oudt oof dot bear ven you come oop und schkared him avay mit himselluf. Vy der tickens,” complained Fritz, “don’t you leaf a feller alone ven he catches some bears?”

“Whoosh!” chuckled Clancy, as he and several more lads grouped around the shadowy Fritz. “Fritz was trapping a bear with his bare hands, and he’s mad because we came down here when he yelled for help. If you wanted to be left alone, Carrots, why the deuce did you make such a racket?”

“I got some oxcidements, dot’s all,” Fritz explained, as he squirmed to his feet. “Dot bear vas so pig as a moundain, so hellup me, aber I chuggled him aroundt like anyding. Fairst, I took him py vone leg und drowed him der air in, den I took him by some odder legs und tossed him my headt aroundt, und pooty soon I tropped him der rocks on, und vas chust gedding retty to sit down und make him some brisoners ven you fellers schkared him avay. Vat sort oof pitzness you call dot, hey?”

“Fritz,” laughed Merriwell, “you’re a four-flusher. First, you had that bear as big as a house, and now he’s as big as a mountain. As a matter of fact, Fritz, the animal was about the size of a dog; and, as another matter of fact, it was a dog, a coyote dog. I heard him yelp as he ran down the gulch.”

This came pretty near taking the wind out of Fritz’s sails.

“You t’ink you know more about dot bear as me?” he demanded. “I hat him in my arms, py shinks, und I fight mit him so glose as vat I am to you. I know vat I know, and dot’s all aboudt it.”

“Ay de mi!” cackled the voice of Silva, “he grab one coyote dog and think him so beeg lak mountain! It ees most fonny. Fat gringo no tell coyote dog from bear so beeg lak mountain, huh, huh, huh!”

This, from the hated Silva, was more than Fritz could stand, and he began forthwith to do a war dance and to brandish his fists. The clawing he had received from the coyote dog had not done very much to sweeten his temper.

“So hellup me cracious,” he whooped, “I vill knock you py der mittle oof lasdt veek! No greaser lopster can laugh my face in same as dot.”

He started for Silva, but somebody tripped him and he pitched sprawling upon the rocky ground.

“Get out of here, Silva!” ordered Merriwell. “I don’t want any more fussing between you and Fritz.”

The Mexican retired slowly toward his own post, whistling as though for a missing dog and calling loudly for the animal to “Come, bonita, come, li’l wan—hyah, hyah!”

Fritz was fairly boiling with rage. Merriwell helped him up, ordered him to resume his guard duty, and not to make any further disturbance, or to try to mix things with Silva. Then, laughing heartily among themselves, all the boys went back to their blankets.

“So that coyote dog is hanging around our camp, eh?” muttered Clancy, as he settled down in bed. “I hope to thunder, Chip, he hasn’t transferred his affections from Lenning to you. There’s something about that brute that gives me the creeps.”

“Oh, slush!” answered Merriwell. “You don’t mean to say, Clan, that you’re taking any stock in that stuff Hotchkiss batted up to us?”

“About an abused coyote dog taking the war path as a lone avenger? Well, no, I’m not so superstitious as all that, but I can’t get out of my mind that picture of the miserable brute tied to an ironwood tree, a dynamite cartridge fastened to his tail, and a bunch of hoodlums taking pot shots at him. I can just see that dog, Chip, turning somersaults at the end of the rope while bullets are kicking up the dust all around him.”

“Forget it, Clan,” said his chum shortly; “go to sleep.”

Amid the silence that dropped over the camp, Silva’s voice, from the grove, could be heard calling: “Bonita! li’l wan, coom dis-a-way! Hyah, hyah, hyah!”

Then, from down in the cañon, Fritz would howl wrathfully: “Vait, you greaser scallavag! Bymby, I bed you, I make you vistle by der odder site oof your mout’.”

Finally the Mexican tired of jeering at Fritz, and the boys in the tents succeeded in going to sleep.

Next morning, as Frank was getting into his clothes after a plunge in the swimming pool, he asked Brad and Ballard if they had thought of anything that could be done to straighten out matters between the two athletic clubs.

“I’m by,” said Brad. “What we’re to do is too many for me, Chip.”

“Same here,” spoke up Ballard. “I guess there isn’t a thing we can do but just kick our heels and let things drift.”

Clancy, at that moment, came dancing up the bank, grabbed a rough towel, and began sawing it over his shoulders.

“I’ve thought of a scheme, fellows,” he remarked.

“What sort of a scheme?”

“Lenning’s the stumblingblock. Why not abduct him, lock him up in some quiet place about a thousand miles from Nowhere, and leave him there until the rest of the Gold Hill fellows come to their senses? Take it from me, Chip, that’s the only way we can work through the trick.”

“Quit your joshing, Clan,” growled Merry. “This is serious business.”

“You might just as well lie down on the whole affair so long as Jode Lenning is at large. You know that as well as I do. Whenever he cracks his little whip, everybody in the other camp has to jump—or get out. Bleeker is one of the best players on the Gold Hill eleven, and yet you see what happened to him. He and Hotchkiss have the courage to call their souls their own, and Camp Hawtrey isn’t big enough for them and Lenning.”

“It’s a tough nut to crack,” muttered Merriwell, frowning. “We’re supposed to be fostering a spirit of friendly rivalry with Gold Hill, and here we’ve broken with them entirely. There’ll be music, before long, and of a kind I won’t like to hear. What do you suppose your father will say, Hannibal?”

“Pop’s the clear quill, Chip,” Brad answered. “Half a dozen words of explanation from you will be enough. If he finds fault with you about anything, it will be because you didn’t give Lenning the worst licking he ever had in his life.”

“That may be,” went on Frank, “but it doesn’t better the athletic situation any. I don’t suppose I was—er—very diplomatic. Maybe Clan and I could have saved the coyote dog without harrowing Jode all up, as we did. I didn’t stop to consider that part of it when we interfered with Jode’s amusement.”

“What’s done is done,” said Ballard, “and there’s no use sobbing about it. I guess, after all, Chip, your best move is to give the colonel the facts.”

“Wow!” gulped Clancy. “The fur will begin to fly as soon as Chip tries that. But it’s a cinch that there’s nothing else to be done.”

“If you lay it down to the colonel, Chip,” put in Brad, “don’t hem, and haw, and side-step. Give Jode the limit. Tell Hawtrey everything he ought to know about that rough-neck nephew of his. Throw in all the trimmings.”

“Chip can do it, with ground to spare,” grinned Ballard, “if he once makes up his mind.”

Merriwell leaned against a tree and dropped his chin thoughtfully into his hand. He wasn’t more than two minutes in coming to a conclusion.

“I’m going to Gold Hill,” he announced, “and I’ll start right after dinner.”

“That means you’re going to beard the colonel in his den,” said Clancy. “Want me along as a bodyguard?”

“And me?” asked Ballard.

“No, Pink, I don’t want you, or Clan, or any one else,” Merry answered. “I intend to handle this alone.”

“That’s the stuff!” approved Brad. “You can do more, all by your lonesome, than with half a dozen fellows trailing after you. Hawtrey has a heap of respect for you, Chip. His admiration for your father has something to do with the way he sizes you up, I reckon. He knows you’re a chip of the old block, and a square sportsman from soles to headpiece. If anybody can talk to him about Jode, and get away with it, you’re the one.”

“Well, that’s the program,” said Merriwell grimly, “whether I’m the one or not. When I get after Jode I’m going to handle him without gloves.”

“What will Darrel think about it?” inquired Ballard.

“Search me. I think, though, that he’ll take it all right. Lenning’s actions have reached a point where they’ve got to receive immediate attention.”

Following breakfast, that morning, Frank and his chums, under Professor Phineas Borrodaile’s supervision, took up their studies for the forenoon. No matter what was going on, the professor insisted relentlessly on the three lads applying themselves to their books for the first half of the day.

Merriwell’s attention wandered a good deal. He was wondering how he had better approach the colonel on the delicate subject he had in mind. His acquaintance with Hawtrey was not of very long standing, and he might almost call himself a stranger to the big man of Gold Hill. Frank winced when he thought of broaching the matter—which was largely a family affair—to Lenning’s uncle.

As soon as the forenoon was over, and dinner out of the way, Frank made his preparations for the ride to Gold Hill. While he was engaged with them, Ballard suddenly thrust his head into the tent.

“You won’t need to take that trip to Gold Hill, Chip,” announced Ballard.

“Why not?”

“Because the colonel is here, old man. He’s got a chip on each shoulder, too, if I’m any judge. He wants you, and no one else. Say, but he’s in a temper!”

“I’ve got a job on my hands,” muttered Merry, “and no mistake. Tell him I’ll be along in about two minutes, Pink.”

Frank nerved himself for what he knew was to be an ordeal, and presently he left the tent and made his way toward the place where Colonel Hawtrey, in the worst kind of a temper, was pacing back and forth under the cottonwoods.

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[CHAPTER XXX.]
MERRIWELL MISJUDGED.

The lads of the camp, aware that something momentous was brewing, kept at a discreet distance from the colonel. They were plainly ill at ease, although it was equally plain that they were trying not to show it. Ballard, Clancy, Brad, and Handy formed a little group by themselves. They had inside information as to what was going on, and watched developments with considerably more anxiety than the rest of the campers.

Frank walked briskly up to Colonel Hawtrey and put out his hand with a smile.

“Good afternoon, colonel,” said he pleasantly. “Glad to see you.”

The colonel paid no attention to the extended hand. Leaning back against his saddle horse, he hooked his left arm around the pommel of the saddle and allowed the fingers of his right hand to fumble with a watch chain. His snapping eyes fixed themselves on the frank, handsome face of the lad in front of him.

“Merriwell,” said he cuttingly, “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were a worthy son of your father, and I repeat that I’ve been badly disappointed.”

“I’m sorry for that, sir,” Frank answered, flushing a little as he lowered his hand. “You have been to Camp Hawtrey?”

“I’ve just come from there; and, when I leave here, I’m going back. What have you to say for yourself—anything? I didn’t think you were a rowdy and a trouble maker.”

“You’ve heard one side of the story, colonel,” said Frank, keeping himself well in hand, “and don’t you think, in the interest of fair play, you ought to hear both sides?”

“What else,” demanded the colonel, “do you suppose I came over here for?”

“From your actions it looks as though you had made up your mind that I am in the wrong.”

“I have—I am sure of it. Jode has told me everything, and three of Jode’s companions have vouched for his statements. The testimony is of the very best.”

“Then, if you are so sure you have got the right of it, what was the use of coming here to talk with me?”

Frank was nettled by the colonel’s injustice. He tried hard to restrain himself and to give the older man the respect which was rightfully his due, but a little temper flashed in his words.

“Young man,” was the icy response, “I try to be a true sportsman; and, while you and that red-headed chum of yours have made a sorry exhibition of yourselves, I have an idea as to where the cause lies. You are at fault, of course, but I do not think that you are quite as much at fault as some one else whom I could name.”

“You mean Darrel?” Frank asked quickly.

“Yes.”

“Then,” said Frank warmly, “I want to tell you that you are mistaken, and that Ellis Darrel hadn’t the first thing to do with what happened near Camp Hawtrey yesterday afternoon.”

“You are under the influence of that scapegrace nephew of mine,” stormed the colonel. “Do you think I’m not able to see it? He has set you against Jode. Do you admire a sneak, Merriwell? What, under heavens, has got into you that you can’t see through the plans of that—that young marplot?”

Here was the colonel, wrong in every way because of Lenning’s influence, accusing his other nephew of being a sneak and a marplot. Frank rallied promptly to the defense of his new chum.

“Darrel is not a sneak, sir,” said he. “I’m not under his influence, either, in forming my own estimate of Jode Lenning.”

The colonel tossed his hand deprecatingly.

“Do you deny,” he asked, “that you and Clancy went over to the other camp, yesterday, and stirred up a disgraceful fight with Jode and three of his friends?”

“No, sir, I don’t deny that Clancy and I had trouble with Jode.”

“Clancy knocked Jode down. Do you deny that?”

“No. If Clancy hadn’t knocked him down, I should probably have done it myself. He deserved it. Did Jode tell you that he struck Clancy first?”

“That is not true!” asserted the colonel. “You and your friend began the fight. All Jode and his friends did was to defend themselves. Any lad, with the right sort of spirit, will fight back when he’s set upon. Jode is not a coward. If he hadn’t fought, I should have felt like giving him a trouncing myself.”

It looked to Frank like a hopeless job, trying to set the colonel right. He was so dominated by the influence of Lenning, that he took for gospel all that Lenning told him—especially since Hummer, Lamson, and Parkman vouched for the truth of Lenning’s statements.

“Is Bleeker at Camp Hawtrey, colonel?” inquired Frank calmly. “Or Hotchkiss?”

“Those two fellows have made themselves extremely disagreeable to all the others in our camp,” replied the colonel, “and, very properly, Jode sent them packing.”

“Bleeker and Hotchkiss could tell you a few things about that row, colonel, which Jode and his friends didn’t think necessary to mention.”

“They’re out with Jode, and they’d try to injure him if they could. I don’t care to talk with either of them.”

“Then, colonel, I’m going to tell you what started the racket. If you think Jode acted like a true sportsman, I’ll have nothing more to say. I want you to remember, though, that I was brought up to hate a lie, and that what you hear from me is the truth.”

“Go on,” said the colonel.

“Clancy and I set out for your camp to arrange for a series of competitions,” went on Frank. “We wanted to do everything possible to cause a better feeling between the two clubs, and stirring up trouble was the last thing in our minds. Before we got to the camp, though, we saw Jode and three of his friends blazing away at a coyote dog with a revolver.”

“That coyote dog was a camp robber,” put in the colonel. “It was perfectly right for the boys to shoot him.”

“Why, yes, if it was plain shooting they were going to do; but what right had they to torture the brute?”

“There was nothing in the way of torture whatever,” declared the colonel.

“Is tying a dynamite cartridge to a dog’s tail and lighting the fuse torture?” demanded Frank.

“Nothing of that sort was done.”

Frank gasped. How was he to make any headway against all this misinformation which the colonel had received from Jode? And it was misinformation which the colonel accepted in every detail.

“Colonel,” continued Frank earnestly, “I was there and I know what took place. Clancy and I didn’t interfere, until Jode had ordered one of the boys to light the fuse and another one to cut the dog loose. It was a brutal business. Clancy and I stopped it; and, if we had it to do over, we would stop it again.”

“I shall not dispute with you, Merriwell,” returned the colonel. “I consider that the source of my information is perfectly reliable.”

“I have something else to tell you,” Frank said respectfully, but none the less firmly, “and if you don’t believe me now you will some time. I cut the cartridge away from the dog and threw it off among the rocks. While Clancy and I were talking with Bleeker and Hotchkiss, Jode lighted the fuse and threw the cartridge toward us.”

“Merriwell!” The colonel’s eyes dilated, and angry protest was in his voice.

“Jode,” Frank quietly continued, “never shouted one word of warning when he let that infernal machine fly at us. Bleeker saw it, and he and Hotchkiss began to run. Clancy and I took to our heels and just managed to get out of the way before the cartridge exploded.”

“You are trying to make Jode out a murderous scoundrel,” cried Hawtrey, “and I shall not stay here and listen to such talk.”

“You’d better listen; not only that, but you’d better take Jode in hand and do something with him. He’s crazy. If he tries any more tricks of that sort, I’ll put the matter in the hands of Hawkins, the deputy sheriff.”

Angrily the colonel swung to his saddle. The subject of the dynamite cartridge he did not pursue any further. Evidently Jode had given his version of the affair, and the colonel had more faith in Jode than in Merriwell.

“What I regret most about all this,” said the colonel, speaking from the saddle and in a voice which he tried to make calm and judicial, “is that it breaks off at once all friendly rivalry between the two athletic clubs. The matter is worse, infinitely worse, than it was before you came to Ophir and took a prominent part in the affairs of the Ophir organization. There will be no football game between Gold Hill and Ophir this year.”

Hawtrey snapped out the last words, set his square jaw doggedly, and touched his horse with the spurs. Looking neither to left nor right, he galloped down into the cañon and out of sight along the narrow trail.

Clancy, Ballard, Brad, and Handy hurried over to the place where Merriwell was standing.

“What did he say?” all four of the youngsters asked, in one breath.

“He said a good many things,” Merry answered, “but about the bitterest dose I had to swallow was what he said about the football game with Gold Hill. It’s all off, fellows.”

“All off?” echoed Handy, as though he scarcely believed his ears. “What has a little row with Lenning got to do with that?”

“I guess the colonel thinks we’re a lot of plug-uglies and might turn the game into a Donnybrook fair. Jode has pumped him full, and Lamson, Parkman, and Hummer have backed Jode up in everything. The colonel, of course, is taking their word for it all. He didn’t tell me flatly that I lied, although he might as well have done so. Lenning has made him think, Clan, that you and I went over to Camp Hawtrey just to pick a row.”

“Of course,” said Clancy sardonically, “what else could you expect? How did Jode get around the dynamite cartridge?”

“By saying there wasn’t any such thing.”

“All the colonel has got to do, Chip, is to look at the hole in the ground where it went off.”

“Funny thing about it is,” Merry went on, “the colonel blames Darrel, he thinks Curly goaded us on to pick a row with Lenning.”

That brought a laugh, all the lads wondering how such a foolish notion could be entertained by Hawtrey for a single moment. Lenning, they agreed, must have contrived to give the colonel that impression.

“I’m going down the gulch to talk with Darrel,” said Frank. “If I were you, Handy, I wouldn’t say anything to the boys about the colonel’s calling the football game off. There’s a chance that Mr. Bradlaugh may be able to smooth over the differences, so that the game will be played according to schedule. Want to ride with me, Pink, you and Clan?”

Ballard and Clancy were eager to go with Merriwell and have a talk with Darrel. In a few minutes all three of the chums were mounted and galloping toward Dolliver’s.

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[CHAPTER XXXI.]
DARREL’S RESOLVE.

On the afternoon which witnessed Merriwell’s and Clancy’s disastrous experiences near Camp Hawtrey, Ellis Darrel had been laid up nearly a week with his broken arm. He had been taken to Dolliver’s because the Ophir lads knew that the ranch offered more comforts than could possibly be had in the camp at Tinaja Wells. Dolliver, too, had telephone connection with Ophir, and but little time had been lost in getting a doctor.

Darrel was young and, at the time of his injury, in perfect physical health. A year of roughing it in the West, all the way from British Columbia to Mexico, had put a keen edge on his powers of endurance. For him, therefore, a broken arm did not cause the mischief which would have been the case in one less hardened and robust.

In three or four days he was out of bed, and sitting around Dolliver’s with his arm in a sling. Enforced idleness worried and fretted him. On the very day Frank and Owen had saved the coyote dog, Darrel had begun contemplating a return to Tinaja Wells.

The one thing in all the world which Darrel desired with a full heart was to prove his innocence in the forgery matter. He felt that he could not rest easy a moment until he had probed that forgery to the bottom and had unmasked the person who had written the name of Alvah Hawtrey on the five-hundred-dollar check.

The colonel, after considering the circumstantial evidence, had reached the conclusion that Darrel was the forger. He had therefore turned the boy from his door and would have nothing more to do with him. To wipe that blot from his name was Darrel’s one purpose in life. Merriwell had promised his help, but Darrel believed that it was his duty to do most of the work for himself.

After supper, in the evening of the day so many important events had happened at Camp Hawtrey, Darrel was sitting with the rancher in front of the house.

The cloudless Arizona sky was never more beautiful. When the sun sets in the Southwest, it drops out of sight suddenly, and night falls as swiftly as a drop curtain. One moment it is day; then, almost the next moment, the clear-cut stars are glittering overhead.

The entrance to Mohave Cañon was but a little distance away and facing the front of Dolliver’s house. The opening yawned like a huge black cavity on the sky line, stretching into the far distance amid ominous shadows.

With dreamy eyes young Darrel stared across the trail and into the gloomy gulch. Somehow the last year of his life resembled that cañon as he saw it then. That forgery had flung him into a black and forbidding path, through which he had wandered—and was still wandering—aimlessly. Would he never be able to fight his way out of the gloom and the dishonor and regain his rightful place in his uncle’s esteem, and in the eyes of honest men?

While Dolliver, a man of few words, like all who live much by themselves, sat silently and smoked his short black pipe, and while Darrel still gazed reflectively into the black mouth of the cañon, two figures slowly disentangled themselves from the shadows and bore down on the ranch.

“Some ’un from up the gulch,” Dolliver roused to remark, “mebbyso from Tinaja Wells.”

But they were not from the Wells. As the riders came close and halted, Darrel discovered that they were two whom he knew—Bleeker and Hotchkiss.

“Great jumpin’ sandhills!” exclaimed the voice of Hotchkiss. “That you, Darrel?”

“Sure,” laughed Darrel. “Why not?”

“We reckoned you would still be in bed, El,” spoke up Bleeker. “Must be pulling along in fine shape, eh?”

“How long do you think a busted arm ought to keep a fellow down, anyhow?”

“Depends a heap on the fellow, El. Between you, and me, and the gatepost, I don’t believe anything’ll keep you down very long.”

“Can’t you get off and stop a while?” Darrel asked.

“No. We’re bound for Gold Hill. Been kicked out of Camp Hawtrey.”

“Kicked out? Great Scott! What do you mean by that, Bleek?”

“Down at the bottom of it, we’re friends of yours, and Jode don’t want us around. Something happened up at the camp, this afternoon, that brought matters to a show-down.”

“What was that?”

Bleeker crooked one knee around the saddle horn and rested easily while he told about the trouble over the coyote dog.

“That’s what happened,” said he, when the recital was finished, “and I’ll bet a pound of prunes against a toothpick that Jode’s laying to unload a little of the trouble onto you.”

“How could he do that?” queried Darrel.

“Why, by making his uncle believe that your unholy influence sent Merriwell and Clancy to our camp to kick up a row. Parkham has already been sent to the Hill after the colonel. He’ll be out here, bright and early, to-morrow morning; then Jode will sing his little song and make the colonel believe just what he wants him to. The friendly relations of the two clubs have had a knock-out blow. There’ll be nothing doing, in an athletic way, for some time to come. Pretty tough on Merriwell. But he’ll come out all right, for that’s a way he has. Get well as quick as you can, pard, and then come on to Gold Hill. There are a lot of us there that are ready to fight for you. Buenas noches!”

Bleeker straightened around in his saddle and rattled his spurs. Presently he and Hotchkiss were clattering away along the main trail in the direction of home.

These revelations came to Darrel like a blow. He felt, and perhaps he was right, that Merriwell’s friendship for him had made an enemy of Jode.

“What do you think of that, Dolliver?” asked Darrel, appealing to the rancher.

“Why,” was the answer, “I opine that half brother o’ yourn is about as onnery as they make ’em.”

“I’m the one who is at the bottom of Merriwell’s trouble with Jode.”

“You can’t help it if ye are. Better hit the hay, son. I reckon you’ve been up a heap too long as it is.”

Darrel went to bed that night pondering the subject of Merriwell’s failure to inspire a friendly spirit in the dealings between the two athletic clubs.

“He could have succeeded,” was Darrel’s bitter conclusion, “if it hadn’t been for his friendship for me. What will Jode be trying next, I wonder? Where is that fiendish temper of his going to land him, if something isn’t done to curb it?”

Long into the night Darrel canvassed the unpleasant problem in his mind. As a consequence, he went to sleep about midnight and woke up with the sun at least two hours’ high.

“Has my uncle passed on his way to Camp Hawtrey, Dolliver?” were his first words when he found the rancher.

“All of an hour ago,” was the reply.

“I wanted to talk with him,” muttered Darrel.

“A heap o’ palverin’ you’d ‘a’ done with him,” grunted Dolliver. “The kunnel ain’t eager for no conversation with you, son.”

Darrel realized that, but it did not alter his determination to see if he could not talk with his uncle and try to make things easier for Merriwell.

The morning passed slowly, Darrel deciding one moment that duty called him to Tinaja Wells and Merriwell, and again that his proper course was to ride to Camp Hawtrey and interview the colonel.

Noon came, and Darrel ate little of the food Dolliver had set out on the kitchen table.

“If ye don’t eat,” grumbled Dolliver, “ye can’t expect to git around very soon.”

Darrel’s mind was on something else besides his dinner.

“I wish you’d saddle up a horse for me, Dolliver,” he said. “I’m going to take a ride.”

“More’n likely ye’ll fall off before ye’ve gone fur. Where ye goin’ to ride?”

“Camp Hawtrey.”

“Take a fool’s advice, son, and don’t.”

“I’m going to talk with the colonel. If you won’t put the gear on a horse for me, I reckon I can manage it myself.”

“Oh, I’ll do it, if ye’re bound ter ride. But wait a couple o’ hours. It’s plumb in the heat o’ the day, and ridin’ ’ll come a heap harder for you now than it will later.”

An hour or two would make little difference, and Darrel laid down on his bed for a short rest before taking the ride. He fell asleep almost immediately, and was awakened by a familiar voice trying to get some one over the telephone. It was his uncle, there in the room with him, asking for Bradlaugh’s office. Bradlaugh was not in, evidently.

“Tell him,” said Colonel Hawtrey, “that I’ll talk with him from here late this afternoon. This is mighty important—don’t neglect to tell him that.”

Colonel Hawtrey had just ridden down the cañon after his talk with Merriwell. He was still red and wrathful. As he whirled from the telephone, he was confronted by Darrel.

The boy’s face was as white as the bandage that swathed his arm, but he stood resolutely between his uncle and the open outside door.

“Colonel,” he began, “I want you to listen to me. I’m not talking for myself, but for Merriwell. Don’t think that I——”

“Not a word,” snapped the colonel. “You haven’t anything to say that I care to hear.”

He strode around Darrel. The boy stepped forward to lay a detaining hand on his arm. Roughly the colonel shook him off, hurried from the house, vaulted into the saddle of his waiting horse, and spurred for the cañon. He did not so much as look back.

“Nice way for an uncle to treat his nephew!” exclaimed Dolliver, from a place outside the house near the door. “But I told ye how it ’u’d be,” he added.

“He can’t shake me like that!” cried Darrel. “I’m going to do what I can to straighten out this trouble of Merriwell’s. Get the horse for me, Dolliver, and I’ll hike right after him.”

“Ye’ve got plenty o’ nerve, son, but blame’ poor jedgment,” growled the rancher.

“Why didn’t you call me,” demanded Darrel, “when you saw him coming?”

“Didn’t see him comin’. Didn’t have a notion anybody had dropped in till I saw the strange hoss at the hitchin’ pole.”

“Will you get the horse for me, Mr. Dolliver?”

The “mister” was pretty formal. The fact that Darrel used it proved that he was on edge and would not take “no” for an answer.

Dolliver got the horse and helped Darrel into the saddle. He wished him luck, too, although in the same breath he declared that the boy was running a big risk and would have his trouble for nothing.

Darrel’s pale face was set resolutely as he urged the horse into a gallop and disappeared through the mouth of the cañon.

---

[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE LEDGE AT THE GULCH.

In a great many ways Merriwell had shown his friendship for Ellis Darrel. From the very first, when Darrel had reached the camp at Tinaja Wells as the “boy from Nowhere,” Merriwell had believed in him and had befriended him.

As he rode toward Camp Hawtrey, Darrel recalled how cleverly Merriwell had defended him against the charge of robbing the colonel’s safe. So successful was the defense that even the stern old colonel was forced to admit that Darrel was innocent.

And again, at the time the rope had given way and Darrel had fallen on the cliff, it was Merriwell who had risked his neck to climb to the ledge where Darrel lay unconscious, had fastened a rope about him, and had lowered him to safety. It was Merriwell, too, who had played “a game within a game” on the football field and had taken from Lenning certain evidence of Lenning’s scoundrelly work.

As a slight repayment for all this loyalty and friendship, Darrel felt that he should do what he could to straighten out the misunderstanding between the colonel and Merriwell.

Even if he could get the colonel’s attention, Darrel was doubtful of his ability to sway the colonel toward Merriwell’s side. It was a time, however, when Darrel was resolved to give himself the benefit of every doubt, in the hope of being of some service to his friend.

If Jode was successful in making the colonel believe that Darrel’s influence had caused the trouble between him and Merriwell, then Darrel would do his utmost to set his uncle right on that point. This, very likely, would put an altogether different complexion on the clash about the coyote dog.

If convinced that Darrel had nothing to do with the actions of Merriwell and Clancy, the colonel might be in a receptive mood so far as evidence against Jode was concerned. This, at least, was what Darrel hoped.

A mile or so from the mouth of the cañon the right-hand wall was broken into by the mouth of a gulch. This gulch was the one in which the Gold Hill Boys had pitched their camp.

Years before, a mining company had thrown a dam across the mouth of the gulch. This dam had backed up the water for several miles.

Darrel turned his horse into the gulch and followed a bridle path that led onward close to the water’s edge. Rapidly, as he advanced, the gulch widened out. The slopes on either side of the stream became less steep, pine trees began to show themselves, and flaming poppies, in irregular beds, made the slopes look like terraced gardens.

“First time I ever knew there was a place like this holed away among these hills,” muttered the boy, staring around him with all the delight aroused by a new and pleasant discovery. “It’s a mighty fine place, and no mistake. Where’s that camp, I wonder?”

Pulling the horse to a halt, he lifted himself in the stirrups and peered ahead. He could not see the gleam of the tents, but he did see something else which caused him to utter an exclamation of surprise and disappointment.

In the distance two figures were moving in his direction, on foot. One of them was the colonel, as he could see plainly, and the other was Jode.

“Beastly luck!” grumbled Darrel. “How can I talk with the colonel if Jode’s around? I’ll just leave the horse in the brush and watch them, for a spell. Maybe Jode will leave the colonel, and I’ll get my chance.”

Quickly turning the horse from the trail, Darrel spurred up the slope of the gulch wall for a short distance and rode into a chaparral of mesquite. Here he dismounted, hitched the horse to a scraggly paloverde, and crept back to the edge of the bushes to watch.

He had had no exercise to amount to anything for nearly a week, and he was astonished to find how his exertions tired him. He half reclined as he stared out of the thicket, resting as he watched the trail for the colonel and Jode to appear.

It was plain that the two could not be going far from the camp. Had they been traveling any considerable distance, they would have brought their mounts.

Not many minutes passed before the two hove in sight. Only a little way from the place where Darrel had turned from the trail, the colonel and Jode altered their course and began climbing the slope. The colonel was carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper.

It seemed evident to Darrel that the two from the camp would pass within a few yards of the chaparral. What if they discovered the horse? The boy compressed his lips sternly. If that happened, then he would show himself at once and talk to the colonel, in spite of Jode. But he hoped the horse would not be seen, and that he could watch his chances and have the colonel all to himself for a few minutes.

The climb must have tired the colonel, for he halted and sat down on a convenient bowlder for a brief rest. Jode dropped to the ground at his side. They were not more than twenty feet from Darrel.

“It won’t take me ten minutes to load the hole and set off the charge, Jode,” the colonel was saying, “and then we’ll see what sort of rock we uncover. There’s a vein there—I’m too old a hand at the business to be fooled—but whether it amounts to much or not remains to be seen.”

“You’re mighty clever at this sort of business, Uncle Al,” returned Jode admiringly. “I wish I knew as much about dips, angles, and formations as you do.”

“It won’t be necessary for you to work along that line, my boy,” said the colonel affectionately. “You’re to educate yourself for commercial work, and learn to take care of what I shall one day leave you.”

“I hope,” observed Jode, “that it will be a long time before I shall be called on to do that. There’s no chance, you think, of patching up our differences with the Ophir fellows?”

“No chance—at least, not so long as Merriwell has anything to do with the Ophir team. I’ve cancelled the Thanksgiving Day game.”

“That’s pretty tough! I think, uncle, we could play Ophir, even with Merriwell in their crowd, and show them that we can be square and let bygones be bygones.”

“What you say, Jode, does you a lot of credit. Our boys are gentlemen, however, and not hoodlums. I could not sanction your playing with a team where such a spirit as Merriwell and Clancy showed yesterday is liable to crop out at any moment.”

“Whatever you say goes, Uncle Al. But I wish the thing could be patched up in some way.”

“Well, I don’t see how it can. Mr. Bradlaugh has placed Merriwell in charge of the Ophir eleven, and a team is bound to reflect the spirit of the coach. There’ll be no more exhibitions of petty partisanship between the two clubs if I can help it.” The colonel got up and stooped to lay hold of the bundle he had been carrying. “What’s the matter?” he asked, starting quickly erect.

Jode had given a jump and uttered a startled exclamation.

“I—I thought I saw that coyote dog among the rocks, up toward the ledge,” he answered, in a smothered voice.

“What if you did?”

“Why, I heard—some one in the camp told me—that a coyote dog always lays for the fellow who tries to hurt him or——”

“Stuff and nonsense!” scoffed the colonel. “You ought to be above such superstitious notions, Jode. Never mind if you did catch a glimpse of the dog. Come on and we’ll go up to the ledge and do our work there.”

“I wish I’d brought my revolver,” said Jode, as he again began climbing at his uncle’s side.

“You’ll not need your revolver.”

Contrary to Darrel’s fears, the two passed well to the side of the chaparral. The colonel’s mind was busy with the work that lay ahead of him, and Jode was still plainly experiencing a few qualms on the score of the coyote dog. As he climbed, Jode’s shifty eyes were fixed on the rocks where he believed he had caught sight of the skulking animal.

What Darrel had overheard pass between his half brother and the colonel gave him a queer feeling of regret for the part he was playing. It seemed almost as though he was a spy and an eavesdropper. The colonel’s affection for Jode was deep and sincere, there could not be the slightest doubt; but Jode’s manner, his very talk, to Darrel’s mind, lacked all that the colonel’s so frankly expressed.

“What business is it of mine?” thought Darrel bitterly. “So long as I am under a cloud I have no right to criticize Jode. I wish he’d clear out and give me a chance at the colonel.”

Some twenty or thirty feet above the chaparral, and forty or fifty feet to the left of it, was a ledge of rock standing straight out from the sloping gulch wall. A mass of loose bowlders overhung the ledge.

This was the spot toward which the colonel and Jode were climbing. Observing this, Darrel quietly forced his way upward along one side of the patch of mesquite. At the upper edge of the chaparral he found a rift in the slope. It was like a trench, deep enough to hide a man, and ran straight toward the crest of the gulch wall.

Still watching and hoping for an opportunity to speak a few words in private with the colonel, Darrel crawled into the trench and made his way to a point that was on a level with the top of the ledge. When he finally halted and peered over the edge of the rift, he found that some thirty feet of rough ground separated him from the colonel and Jode.

The colonel was on his knees, carefully opening the parcel he had brought with him. A small coil of fuse and a couple of sticks of dynamite were presently taken from the package.

“There were three sticks here when I wrapped up the package in Gold Hill,” said the colonel, lifting his eyes to Jode’s. “What’s become of the rest of the dynamite?”

“Are you sure?” Jode answered. “Some one must have taken out one of the sticks.”

“Of course I may be mistaken,” muttered the colonel.

Cutting off a length of fuse, he trimmed it with a pocket knife; then, taking a cap from his pocket, he pushed it over the trimmed end. Next, he picked up one of the sticks of giant powder, slit it lengthwise on four sides, and dropped it into a hole that had been drilled in the shelf. The other stick was pushed down on the first, and both were gently tamped down on the cap, which was in the bottom of the hole.

“Now, clear out, Jode,” said the colonel. “It’s only a two-minute length of fuse, and I shall have to scramble for safety when I touch it off.”

Jode jumped from the ledge and hurried to get away among a lot of bowlders at a safe distance. The colonel lighted a match, touched it to the fuse, and Darrel flattened himself out in the bottom of the rift.

The next moment he heard a crash, but it was not the crash of an explosion. A startled cry came from the colonel, and Darrel, thrilled with a weird premonition of disaster, rose to his knees and again looked out over the top of the rift. What he saw, there on the ledge of the gulch wall, caused him to gasp and close his eyes to shut out the horror of it.

---

[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
FOLLOWING DARREL.

Frank and his chums, in riding from Tinaja Wells to Dolliver’s, passed the mouth of the gulch only a few moments after Darrel had ridden into it. Had Frank encountered Darrel, there is no doubt but that he would have persuaded him against going on to Camp Hawtrey. In that event, some very pretty maneuvers of Fate, calculated to benefit Darrel, would have been effectually blocked.

But Merry and his two friends missed their new chum by a scant margin, and galloped on to Dolliver’s. Dolliver, smoking his short black pipe, was sitting in front of his little establishment, mentally considering uncles and nephews, and the foolishness of a kid with a broken arm trying to take a horseback ride before he was well able to be out of bed.

At sight of Merriwell, Ballard, and Clancy, Dolliver’s reflections went off at a fresh angle. He now began to concern himself with the contrariness of human affairs in general.

“Hello, Dolliver!” Frank called, pulling in his black mount, Borak. “How’s Curly?”

“Plumb locoed,” grunted the rancher.

“You don’t mean to say he’s out of his head?” gasped Frank.

“If he ain’t, then, by the jumpin’ hocus-pocus, I never see a feller that was.”

“We’ll have to see about this!”

Frank slid from the saddle and started hurriedly into the house.

“No use lookin’ fer him in the wikiup, Merriwell,” said Dolliver, “kase he ain’t there.”

“Not in the house?” demanded Frank, recoiling in amazement. “Where is he, then?”

“Gone to Camp Hawtrey to make the old kunnel talk with him.”

“What do you know about that!” exclaimed Ballard.

“Thunder!” cried the astounded Clancy.

“How long since he left here?” asked Frank.

“Less’n half an hour.”

“Did he ride?”

“Sartain he did. No more business on a hoss than a two-year-old kid, nuther. He’s wuss to manage than a case o’ the measles, anyways. Howsumever, he would go. He reckoned he could talk with the kunnel and smooth things out fer you.”

“How did he know matters had to be smoothed out for me?”

“Bleeker and Hotchkiss dropped in here on their way to the Hill, and they cut loose about your troubles. That got Darrel all het up. Right arter dinner, to-day, the kunnel himself blowed in here and tried to git Mr. Bradlaugh on the telephone. But Bradlaugh was away on business, I reckon. I wasn’t in the shack at the time, but I heerd the kunnel sayin’ the business was important and that he’d call up later this afternoon. Darrel was in the house, though, and tried to powwow with the kunnel, but the kunnel wouldn’t have it. Runnin’ out, the kunnel climbed his hoss and moseyed up the cañon. Nothin’ ’u’d do but Darrel had to mosey arter him.”

“Here’s news, fellows, and no mistake!” breathed Merriwell.

“Curly wasn’t able to take such a ride,” growled Ballard, “and that’s a cinch.”

“What does he think he can do, anyhow?” asked Clancy. “He’s not on the colonel’s visiting list.”

“Have you any idea what he intended to do, Dolliver?” Merry went on.

“Palaver with that grouchy old uncle o’ his,” replied the rancher. “Jode’s tryin’ to make the kunnel believe Darrel set you up to act like you done. I allow that Darrel wants to disabuse his mind, thinkin’ that if he’s out o’ it you’ll have less trouble comin’ to an understandin’ with Hawtrey.”

“Foolish!” muttered Merriwell. “He couldn’t make the colonel believe any such thing, and it wouldn’t help if he could. I wish we’d get here in time to head Darrel off. What’ll happen to him when he gets to Camp Hawtrey?”

“I don’t opine he’ll ever git there,” and Dolliver shook his head dubiously. “He wa’n’t able to sit a hoss, not noways.”

Frank hurried to Borak and leaped into the saddle.

“Only one thing to do, fellows,” he announced, “and that’s for us to ride for Camp Hawtrey.”

“Bully!” exulted the red-headed chap. “That gang will sure welcome us with open arms.”

“They will that,” agreed Dolliver. “Say, if you go to the kunnel’s camp, jest now, ye’ll have the time o’ your lives.”

“All right,” answered Frank, “I don’t care how hot a time they give us providing we can do something to help Darrel. Come on, fellows!”

He pointed Borak for the mouth of the cañon, and set off at speed. Clancy and Ballard made after him.

The cañon trail was narrow and the riders were obliged to proceed in single file. When they turned into the gulch, however, they were able to ride stirrup to stirrup.

“I don’t like the prospect a little bit,” said Frank. “Now that Bleeker and Hotch have left the Gold Hill camp, there isn’t a fellow there that’s at all friendly toward Darrel.”

“Hawtrey’s there,” suggested Ballard. “Don’t forget that, Chip. Hawtrey won’t have anything to do with Curly, but you can bet he won’t let Jode rough things up with him.”

“That’s right, Pink. Darrel must be a little hazy in his mind to start for the Gold Hill camp at such a time as this.”

“He’s trying to do you a good turn, Chip,” suggested Clancy.

“Sure he is—I give him credit for that—but the crazy old lobster can’t do me any good, or himself, either. He ought to stay in the house for another week yet.”

“Bosh!” returned Clancy. “Curly is all rawhide and India rubber. A broken wing hadn’t ought to bother him much more than a mild case of the mumps. You’ll notice we haven’t run across him lying along the road.”

“He’ll stick it out, you can bank on that,” said Ballard. “He’s probably in Camp Hawtrey this minute. That bunch would be pretty yellow if they didn’t treat him right.”

Clancy had a sudden thought.

“Say, Chip,” said he, “we’re taking this hike to help Curly, but I don’t think we’ll do him much good if we plunge full tilt into the camp. They’re a suspicious lot, and they might think it a frame-up of Curly’s. Suppose we reconnoiter a little before we show ourselves?”

“How’ll we reconnoiter, Clan?” asked Merry.

“The top of the gulch wall, about where we were yesterday, is a good place for that.”

“I guess you’ve got the right end of the stick, Clan. If we’re to climb the bank we’d better begin right here. Strikes me this is as good a place as we’ll find, and it’s far enough this side of the camp so we can make the climb without being seen.”

The slope was not steep, but it was easier for the boys to walk up the incline and lead their horses. In perhaps ten minutes they had reached the crest, and were able to take a comprehensive survey of the gulch below.

“Jove!” exclaimed Merry. “There are two fellows on a bowlder down there. See them? They are just below that chaparral of mesquite. One of them looks like the colonel to me. Wonder if the other is Darrel?”

“Not on your life!” murmured Clancy. “The other is Jode.”

“Sure enough!” agreed Ballard. “We’d better lead our horses back from the rim, and drop down on the rocks. If the colonel and Jode happened to look up here, they’d see us.”

Ballard’s suggestion was carried out at once; then, on their knees, the lads continued to peer downward. Presently the colonel and Jode got up and began climbing. They passed well to the left of the chaparral, angled across the face of the slope, and stepped upon a ledge that jutted out from the gulch side.

“I’m next to what’s going on down there,” said Merry. “Remember what Bleek told us, Clan, when I asked him where Jode got that dynamite for the cartridge?”

“He said something about Hawtrey stumbling on a ‘prospect,’” was the answer, “and that Jode was to fill a hole, and the colonel was to load it and set it off.”

“That’s what the colonel is about to do. Let’s move down the gulch a little way and find a place directly over the ledge.”

A hundred yards carried the boys to a spot above the ledge. Masses of splintered granite and loose bowlders covered the slope between the ledge and the crest of the gulch wall. The boys were able to look over the intervening rocks, however, and get a clear view of the ledge level.

Colonel Hawtrey, on his knees, was at work capping a fuse and ramming dynamite into the hole where the blast was to be set off.

“You’re right about it, Chip,” said Clancy. “The colonel’s going to have a little blow-up, down there, and probably he’ll make a ‘strike.’ How many poor prospectors, do you suppose, have passed that ‘prospect’ by? That’s the way things work out, in this world. Here’s the colonel, with more mines and money than he knows what to do with, just falling right over a good thing. Now——”

“Look!” broke in Ballard, grabbing Frank’s arm and pointing downward and to the left of the ledge. “See that long break in the gulch wall, running from the top right down to that bunch of chaparral? Who’s that looking out of it?”

“Darrel!” murmured Merriwell, astounded.

“Curly, as sure as you’re a foot high!” fluttered Clancy. “Now, what the deuce do you suppose he’s up to?”

It was a surprising situation, and no mistake. Darrel, screened in the rift, was cautiously looking out and keeping track of the movements of the colonel and Jode.

“Curly wants to talk with the colonel,” said Frank, after a moment’s thought, “and he’s waiting for Jode to get out of the way.”

“I could slip down that chute,” suggested Ballard, “and slide right into Darrel. We could bring him up here, with us, and——”

“Wait till after the blast,” cut in Merry. “The colonel’s just touching it off.”

“See Jode scramble for the tall rocks!” chuckled Clancy. “He’s not going to take any chances on being knocked over by flying stones.”

“Neither is Curly,” added Ballard. “He has ducked down into the bottom of that hole of his.”

“Two sticks of dynamite will lift a pretty big chunk out of that ledge,” said Merriwell, “and before it lets go we’d better push back a little. The charge——”

The words died on Merry’s lips. A bowlder, just above the ledge, had slipped from its moorings and was rolling over and over, grinding and crashing toward the ledge. The colonel had just risen from lighting the fuse. He saw the bowlder, and tried frantically to get out of the way of it. In his haste, he slipped and fell prone upon the ledge. The next moment the bowlder was upon him!

---

[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
A TANGLE OF EVENTS.

Right from that moment a series of thrilling happenings began below. The slope of the gulch wall was a stage, and from the crest Frank and his chums watched events breathlessly. Horror gripped them and held them spellbound. Instinctively they rose from their crouching positions and stared wide-eyed at the tragic scene below them.

The colonel, as it is already known, had cut off only a two-minute length of fuse. This meant that, in one hundred and twenty seconds from the time he applied the match to the fuse, the gulch wall adjacent to the ledge would be piled with ruin. So, in the short space of two minutes, one weird event heaped itself upon another with amazing rapidity.

Frank and his chums saw it all. Not one detail of the awful drama escaped them. But, as the eye can comprehend infinitely quicker than the tongue can frame a scene in so many words, it will be well to describe each occurrence. At the same time, let it be remembered that most of them happened simultaneously, and that the others fairly jostled each other, so closely did they follow.

It was the falling bowlder that, primarily, caused the tragic situation. This had become loosened, perhaps by the pounding Jode had done in “putting down” that hole for the blast. Poised and ready to tumble, Fate held the bowlder back until the critical moment when the colonel had lighted his two-minute fuse and was on the point of rushing from the ledge.

A cry of horror escaped the lads on the crest when they saw the huge stone apparently about to crush out the life of the fallen man on the ledge. But fortune, in a small way, favored Colonel Hawtrey.

The bowlder crashed to a full stop on the ledge, trapping one of the colonel’s feet. He was held securely, it seemed, for, in spite of his wild struggles, he could not release himself.

He was lying on the stones with his head toward the sputtering fuse, and yet the fuse itself was well beyond the reach of his arms. A terrible fate appeared to be in store for him unless Jode came to his rescue.

The colonel, of course, knew nothing about Darrel being close at hand, so his frantic cries were all directed at Jode.

“Jode!” he shouted. “I’m trapped by a bowlder! Hurry, and tear away the fuse! Jode! Do you hear me?”

At just this moment, when Jode’s presence was so urgently demanded by the colonel, another factor had come bounding into the weird progress of events. The coyote dog had been skulking among the rocks above the ledge. The roar of the falling bowlder had frightened the animal, and he had uttered a wild yelp and started for the top of the gulch wall. Before he reached the crest, he saw Frank and his chums, and whirled and dashed down the slope. His course carried him among the bowlders where Jode had sought refuge from the débris of the blast.

And now, under the colonel’s own eyes, Jode Lenning gave abundant proof of the “yellow streak” in his character. He saw the tawny form of the outcast dog leaping toward him, eyes gleaming, mouth open, and red tongue protruding. Fear seized Jode, for no doubt he believed in the superstition that was held by many of the settlers in those parts, and felt in his soul that the dog was rushing upon him in a vengeful mood.

The frantic shouts of the colonel passed over Jode’s head unheeded. The colonel might be in danger, but Jode was obsessed with the idea that his own danger was fully as great. So, why should he think of his uncle when his own life swung in the balance?

This must have been the trend of Lenning’s reasoning. With a cry of fear, he rushed out from among the rocks and raced for the trail at the foot of the gulch wall.

As a matter of fact, the coyote dog had no designs whatever upon Jode. All the animal was trying to do was to efface himself from the scene as quickly as possible. Very likely, he was more anxious to get away from Jode than Jode was to get away from him.

Howling for help, stumbling, and falling, and rolling, Jode put forth every effort to reach the bottom of the slope. Long before he had accomplished his purpose, the coyote dog had passed him on an angling course and had flickered away down the gulch. Jode, in his excitement, failed to notice this. He had the impression that the enraged brute was still on his trail, and did not slacken his pace.

Colonel Hawtrey, lying helpless on the ledge with the flame of the fuse dancing nearer and nearer to the charge of dynamite, was able to watch his nephew flying down the slope. In that tense moment the boy’s whole nature must have revealed itself to the colonel in a single flash.

Merriwell had not remained long inactive on the crest of the sloping bank. As soon as it became evident that nothing could be expected from Jode, he flung himself among the masses of bowlders and splintered rocks and began a descent toward the ledge.

But the going was difficult, and Merriwell realized, with a sinking heart, that it would be impossible for him to reach the ledge before the charge of dynamite had exploded. Then, at the very moment the realization came home to him, he saw Darrel pawing and scrambling over the rocks toward his uncle.

A hopeful thought plunged through Merriwell’s brain. A light dawned upon him suddenly. Here was the very chance for which Ellis Darrel had been waiting. Fate had taken his affairs in hand, and, in a short two minutes of time, was revealing to the colonel the varying dispositions of his two nephews.

The one who, up to that moment, had had all Hawtrey’s affection and confidence, was bounding and plunging down the slope and abandoning him to his fate. The other, the lad that had been cast adrift and had been looked upon as a ne’er-do-well and a forger, was struggling valiantly to reach his uncle’s side and extinguish the blazing fuse.

There was danger in Darrel’s attempt. He was handicapped in his work because of his useless arm, and he had not a second to spare if he gained the ledge in time. If he failed to reach the ledge before the fuse exploded the cap and the cap set off the dynamite, then not only his uncle but he himself would be killed by the blast.

Darrel must have understood this, yet it made not the slightest difference to him. Furiously he was fighting his way over the rough ground toward the ledge. Again and again he stumbled and fell. His broken arm surely received many an agonizing wrench, but physical pain was as powerless to hold him back as was the prospect of death from his failure to reach the sputtering fuse in time.

Colonel Hawtrey at last became aware that some one else was coming to his rescue. He turned and, with glimmering eyes, watched the fierce efforts of Darrel. The boy’s face was white and haggard, but the same resolution smoldered in his eyes that had fixed itself there when he had left Dolliver’s.

The colonel was calm, now. The old military spirit revived in him, and he turned calculating eyes upon the fuse and measured at a glance the space that separated Darrel from the ledge.

“Stop where you are, El!” the colonel called, commandingly. “You can’t get here in time. If you keep on, two lives instead of one will be lost. Turn back, I tell you!”

Darrel did not answer. Neither did he turn back. He held to his course. There was a smear of red on the bandage that swathed the arm, but he continued to fight his way onward.

As a mere exhibition of pluck, the boy’s work was splendid. But what he was doing reached deeper, and something like admiration filled the colonel’s face as he watched. He tried no longer to make Darrel turn back. Possibly he knew any command of his would be useless.

Jode could be seen at the bottom of the slope. He had at last discovered that the coyote dog was no longer at his heels. Standing in the trail, he looked upward, and, like Frank and his chums, and the colonel, witnessed the gallant struggle his half brother was making.

The work Darrel was doing should have been Lenning’s. That fact could not escape the boy at the foot of the slope. What his thoughts were, in the circumstances, may easily be imagined.

“Good work, Curly!” shouted Merriwell. “You’ll make it, old man!”

This encouragement, coming in Merriwell’s familiar voice, probably carried a big surprise for Darrel. He had no time for surprises, however. Close to the ledge, he flung himself over at full length upon the stones and reached for the fuse.

The blaze had eaten its way to the very mouth of the drilled hole. Darrel dug down into the aperture with his fingers, searing his flesh as he pinched out the fire; then, with a stifled groan, he fell over on his back and lay silent and still.

“We’ll be with you in a minute, colonel,” shouted Frank cheerily, once more beginning to descend. “Darrel has prevented a blow-up, and now everything is going to be all right.”

“Yes,” came from the colonel, in a strained voice that was none too steady, “you’re right about that, Merriwell. I’ll make it my business to see that everything is all right—for Ellis.”

Clancy and Ballard had likewise started down the side of the gulch wall. A tremendous relief had been experienced by both the boys when they had seen Darrel reach the fuse.

“We’ll be down there in a brace of shakes, Chip,” sang out Clancy as he saw Merriwell step to the ledge and move toward the colonel.

Frank was kneeling beside Darrel when Clancy and Ballard reached the ledge.

“Never mind me, Merriwell.” Clancy and Ballard heard the colonel say, “I’m doing well enough for the present. Just look after Darrel, will you?”

“Is he hurt, Chip?” asked Ballard.

“He wasn’t in any shape to make a fight like that,” Merry answered, “and it took the ginger all out of him. He’s fainted, that’s all.”

“One of you go down to the bottom of the gulch and get a little water,” directed the colonel.

“Curly will be all right, sir,” said Frank, “until we get that bowlder off you. Strikes me that you’re in a pretty bad situation.”

“It only seems to be a bad situation. As it happens, there’s a crevice in the bowlder where it rests upon my foot and leg. I’m pinioned here, but I don’t believe I have been injured at all.”

With a steel drill for a lever, Frank pried carefully at the big stone while Clancy and Ballard put their combined weight against it. Their efforts were successful and the bowlder was rolled away.

The colonel pulled himself together and sat up on the ledge.

“That was a close call for me,” he remarked coolly, “and for Ellis, too. Do you think you could carry him down to the water?”

“Easily,” Frank answered.

All three of the boys laid hold of Darrel, gathered him up in their arms and started carefully down the slope. The colonel followed, limping a little as he came.

---

[CHAPTER XXXV.]
A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS.

Lenning had disappeared from the foot of the slope by the time the little party from above had brought their burden to the water’s edge. It was just as well for all concerned that he had not lingered.

Darrel was laid down with a rolled-up coat under his head for a pillow. The boys scooped up water in their hands and allowed it to trickle over the white, unconscious face.

“That was about as nervy a piece of work as I ever saw a fellow do,” remarked Clancy, on his knees at Darrel’s side.

“That’s the sort of a chap Curly is,” spoke up Ballard.

“You’re right, Pink,” said Merriwell shortly.

The colonel’s face was a study. Not much could be learned from it, however, regarding the state of his feelings.

“How is it,” he asked, “that all of you happened to be around at the time I needed help? Did you and your friends come with Ellis, Merriwell?”

“We followed him,” Merry answered.

“Followed him?” echoed the other.

“Why, you see,” Merry explained, “we started for Dolliver’s soon after you left Tinaja Wells, colonel. From what you said, I gathered the impression that you believed Darrel had something to do with the way Clancy and I lit into Lenning, on account of that coyote dog. I was afraid he’d hear of it, and I wanted to talk the matter over with him. Besides, I had it in mind to call up Mr. Bradlaugh on the phone from Dolliver’s, and tell him how matters were getting complicated.”

“I tried that myself,” said the colonel, “but discovered that Mr. Bradlaugh was out of town.” “Perhaps it’s just as well I couldn’t talk with him,” he added.

“When we reached Dolliver’s,” Frank resumed, “we were told that Darrel had left to go to Camp Hawtrey. I didn’t stop to telephone, but turned and followed him!”

“Why did Ellis start for our camp?”

“He wanted to talk with you—to try and patch up our differences on account of what happened yesterday.”

“Just an errand of his own out of mere friendship for you, eh?”

“That’s about the size of it, sir.”

“What did you follow him for?”

“Well,” said Frank bluntly, “I wasn’t sure how he’d be treated at Camp Hawtrey. And then, too, I thought it was foolish of him to try and get you to change your mind regarding me.”

“Ah!” A queer smile crossed the colonel’s face as he bent down to rub the knee that had lately been pinned under the bowlder. “You didn’t have much confidence,” he finished, “in my ideas of fair play?”

“Not when you were banking on information furnished by Jode. I couldn’t——”

“Darrel’s coming around, Chip,” broke in Clancy.

Merriwell stepped close to Darrel’s side. The lad’s eyes were open and he was staring up into the faces that bent over him.

“Gee, what a mix-up!” were Darrel’s first words. “I must have stepped out for a few minutes, I reckon. Who sic’d that coyote dog on Jode?”

“The dog was among the rocks, Curly,” Frank answered. “When the bowlder fell, it scared him out. He tried to get over the top of the gulch wall, but Pink, Clan, and I were there, and so he whirled and rushed for the place where Lenning was holed up. How do you feel?”

“I feel as though I’d been too darned ambitious for a sick man. What the dickens are you doing here, anyway?”

Clancy chuckled.

“We just moseyed along behind you to try and keep you out of trouble,” he laughed. “And we didn’t make out.”

“You followed me from Dolliver’s?”

“Surest thing you know. You were batty to even think of going to the Gold Hill camp. Chip fretted about that, and we all started after you.”

“Well, well!” Darrel changed his position a little and then wriggled into a sitting posture. “Was the colonel hurt?”

“No, my lad,” said the colonel, stepping closer and speaking for himself. “I’m all right, thanks to you. You reached the fuse just in the nick of time, although I’d have sworn you couldn’t make it. What did you mean by disregarding my orders to turn back?”

“I wasn’t caring a whoop about orders,” said Darrel. “If you gave any I don’t believe I heard them, anyhow. I know I pinched out the fire, but what I was wondering was whether you had been hurt by that bowlder.”

The colonel explained how he had escaped injury from the falling rock.

“I’m afraid,” he added, “that you’ve done that arm of yours little good by this day’s work. If you feel able, you might come along to the camp with me. We can make you comfortable there, and——”

Darrel shook his head.

“I’m obliged to you, colonel,” he answered, “but I reckon Dolliver’s is the best place for me for a while.”

“You’re able to ride back there?”

“Yes, and with ground to spare.”

The colonel came closer and stood over Darrel.

“Do you want to shake hands with me?” he asked.

The boy flushed. “I want to,” he answered, “but I’m not going to until—until I can read my title clear. You know what I mean, colonel.”

“I think so,” was Hawtrey’s answer, and it was not difficult for Frank to see that the stern old man was pleased.

“I’d like to ask one thing of you, sir,” Darrel went on.

“What is that?”

“Why, that you’ll take Merriwell’s word as to what happened near Camp Hawtrey yesterday afternoon. If you knew him as well as I do, colonel, you wouldn’t hesitate a minute.”

“I don’t think,” answered the colonel dryly, “that I shall hesitate quite so much as I did yesterday afternoon. I’ll come over to Tinaja Wells this evening, Merriwell,” he finished, turning to Frank, “and then I will have something to add to our interesting conference of this afternoon. Good-by, Darrel! Good-by, my lads.”

The colonel turned and limped off up the gulch in the direction of Camp Hawtrey. He was hardly out of sight before Merriwell stooped down and caught Darrel by the hand.

“Old man,” said he heartily, “you’ve made a big winning this afternoon. If we’d manufactured the thing to order it could not have turned out better. The old colonel had a chance to strike a balance between you and Jode. His eyes have been opened, and he has seen for himself just what sort of a fellow Jode is.”

“It happened just about right, that’s a fact,” returned Darrel. “The old boy has had a hard blow, but you’d never know it to look at him. That’s his way.”

“That picture he saw of Jode, neck-and-necking it down the hill with the coyote dog,” laughed Clancy, “will live in his memory a good long while.”

“What will he say to Jode?” queried Ballard. “I’d like to be around and hear it.”

“No one can ever tell what the colonel will do,” said Darrel. “Jode, I reckon, will have a hard time explaining why he ran down the hill when he ought to have been yanking that blazing fuse out by the roots.”

“We’d better be starting back to Dolliver’s,” put in Merry. “Where’s your horse, Curly?”

Darrel told where the horse had been left. While Merriwell went after it, Clancy and Ballard climbed the slope to get the three mounts that had been left on top of the gulch wall.

Half an hour afterward all the boys were riding down the gulch, en route to Dolliver’s. They formed about the happiest party that had ever traveled that particular trail. There had been a rift in the black clouds of injustice and suspicion that had hung for so long above Darrel’s head, and through the rift the sun of hope was shining. Darrel’s luck had taken a sudden turn for the better.

---

[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
A CHANGE OF MIND.

As soon as the boys reached Dolliver’s, they put Darrel to bed and sent in a telephone call for the doctor. Mr. Bradlaugh was back in town, and he brought the doctor out in his automobile. While an examination was being made to see whether Darrel’s arm had suffered any from the exciting events of the afternoon, Merriwell was out at the car, going over all the details of the affair for Mr. Bradlaugh’s benefit.

Merry began at the beginning, and that means, of course, that he had to start with the coyote dog and the dynamite cartridge. When he had finished, the president of the Ophir Athletic Club was breathing a little harder than usual.

“That’s a most remarkable story, Merriwell,” said he, “and the most remarkable part of it, to my mind, is the way Hawtrey let that pesky nephew of his make a fool of him. He’d call off the football game, would he, just because Jode Lenning happened to get into a scrap with you! Wonder if he thinks that’s good sportsmanship? I wish to thunder he’d got me on the phone and told me about this himself. Say, maybe I wouldn’t have read the riot act to him.”

“The colonel has woke up, Mr. Bradlaugh,” laughed Merry, “and I’ll bet Jode’s about at the end of his string.”

“Let me know what Hawtrey says to you when he calls at the Wells this evening,” said Mr. Bradlaugh. “I think he knows a whole lot more now than he did earlier in the afternoon, but he’s a queer proposition, and you never can tell what he’s going to do. If he’s still a bit offish, I’ll make it a point to see him myself.”

“What do you think about the way we mixed things with Lenning on account of the dog?”

“If you hadn’t mixed things with him,” laughed Mr. Bradlaugh, “you’d have had a chance to mix things with me. Plain brutality to a dumb brute,” he went on, straightening his face, “is more than I’ll take from any man.”

The doctor reported that Darrel’s arm had not been injured materially by the rough usage it had had during the afternoon, but the owner of the arm was warned to stay in bed for several days and not to try any horseback exercise until given permission to do so.

Darrel was in a more cheerful frame of mind, when Frank and his chums left, than he had been in for many a long day. He had accomplished something for himself, and he knew that he would accomplish more. Best of all, he had saved the colonel.

It was late when Merriwell, Clancy, and Ballard got back to Tinaja Wells. Handy and Brad were anxiously awaiting their arrival.

“The boys have got wind of something, Chip,” said Handy, “and they’re all up in the air. I think we’d better break camp and go in to town.”

“I think so, too,” said Merry. “We ought to have a week’s work on the home field before the game with Gold Hill.”

“Why,” spoke up Brad, “I thought that was all off.”

“So it was,” laughed Merriwell, “but I’ve got a hunch that it will be on again before long.”

During supper he repeated for the Ophir lads the same account that he had given to Mr. Bradlaugh at Dolliver’s. As might have been expected, the recital was greeted with delight by all the campers, and the demonstration wound up with a volley of cheers for Ellis Darrel.

It was quite fitting, perhaps, that Colonel Hawtrey should arrive at Tinaja Wells during the cheering. As he strode through the half gloom and into the light of the cook fire, he pulled off his hat and waved it about his gray head.

“You’re cheering my nephew, Ellis Darrel,” he shouted, “and I reckon I ought to be allowed to join in. Now that you’re done with Darrel, why not give three rousers for Merriwell? Come on, boys, all together!”

With that, the cañon fairly rang with a hearty three times three and a tiger. When silence finally settled over the camp, the colonel, still keeping his hat in his hand and his place by the fire, made a brief address to the Ophir fellows:

“I have come here this evening,” said he, “for the purpose of apologizing to Merriwell. I misjudged him, and because of that I crowded him pretty hard in a talk I had with him early in the afternoon. He took it well, and didn’t pitch into me. I suppose,” and the speaker laughed, “that he kept hands off on account of my gray hairs.

“During our conversation, if I remember, I told Merriwell that there would be no further competitions between the Gold Hill and the Ophir athletic organizations, and I declared, in pretty strong terms, that there’d be no football game next Thanksgiving Day. Well, I’ve changed my mind about that. The two clubs are going to meet and mingle in all the contests the games committees can arrange for. And we’re going to act like true sportsmen, every one of us, just as the chip of the old block has acted during his trouble on account of the coyote dog. ‘Fair play and no favor,’ that’s the idea, and we’ll stand up to it as firmly as Merriwell has done. I reckon that will be all.”

Clancy started the cheering for Colonel Hawtrey, and when it was done, all the campers flocked around the colonel and shook him by the hand.

“It’s a great day for Ellis Darrel, Clan,” said Merry to his red-headed chum.

“It’s a great day for everybody, Chip,” answered Clan, “and especially for true sportsmanship between the clubs.”

“A great day for everybody,” qualified Billy Ballard, “except Jode Lenning.”

---

[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
A MATTER OF THIRTY DOLLARS.

“Pink, this is awful!”

Young Merriwell turned a gloomy face toward his chum, Billy Ballard, who sat beside him in the grand stand. Ballard fell back with a groan.

“Awful, but true, Chip,” he answered. “After all the grinding, gruelling work of the last few weeks, the regular eleven can’t any more than hold their own against the scrubs. What’s got into the bunch?”

The scene was that part of the Ophir Athletic Club field which lay directly in front of the grand stand and contained the gridiron. Two teams were sweating and struggling with the pigskin—regulars against the second-string men. The first half was drawing to a close. There had been no scoring. The scrubs, playing like fiends, were meeting the regulars at every point and holding them in a most humiliating way.

The regulars were just back from three weeks of hard practice in the camp at Tinaja Wells. This was the first game since their return to town, and the first of the preliminary matches which Merry had arranged previous to the big game with Ophir’s old and successful rival: Gold Hill.

Merriwell had been looking forward to a fortnight of fine sport, in which the regulars would distinguish themselves in battles with the scrubs and with a cowboy eleven from the Bar Z Ranch, gradually rounding themselves into a harmonious machine which Gold Hill would find invincible. Frank had fondly imagined that the team he had drilled so thoroughly and so conscientiously would go through the remaining two weeks’ of practice in a beautiful romp, piling point upon point in each preliminary skirmish, and going through its less experienced opponents with the ease and finish of veterans. But what he saw that afternoon, from the moment the ball had been put in play, had made him gasp and rub his eyes.

There was no doubt about it, that cherished team had bounced upon a reef. It had started in on the despised scrub with a sort of pitying contempt, evidently planning to exercise restraint and not make too many touchdowns or kick too many goals. And what had it found? Nothing less than a bunch of wild cats, playing to win in a perfect fury of determination, and shaking out the most unexpected tricks from a bag which no one dreamed they possessed.

Frank was more than pleased with the way the scrubs were distinguishing themselves, and more than amazed at the sorry exhibition the regulars were making. The scrubs, for the most part, had remained in town while the club team had been off in Mohave Cañon, training for battle every day and going through a course of sprouts calculated to make each and every member a finished performer.

And now, the result!

In less than five minutes from the kick-off the regulars had lost their contempt for the scrubs. They awoke to a realization that, in some mysterious fashion, the scrubs had been transformed into a little army of brawn and brain—foemen in every way worth of their mettle.

The regulars tried, in a spasm of pique after the Spartan nature of their fight dawned on their minds, to rush the scrubs off the field. But the scrubs wouldn’t be rushed. The regulars gritted their teeth and tried harder. Still nothing doing. A great disappointment took hold of Merry, and he turned to Ballard and put it in the fewest possible words.

Only Merriwell and Ballard were in the grand stand. Under the stand there were dressing rooms for visiting players, and into one of these rooms there had come by stealth a young man with sinister face and evil and greedy eyes. At a distance of ten or fifteen feet from the two lads in the stand, the interloper was peering out from between two board seats, watching the ragged performance of the regular Ophir team and listening to the gloomy remarks that passed between Merry and Ballard. A self-satisfied grin crossed the face of the keen-eyed, keen-eared youth.

That game—and Merriwell was glad in his heart that it was so—was strictly private. The general public was barred.

Had grand stand and bleachers been thrown open to spectators, emissaries from Gold Hill might have crept in to watch for vulnerable points in the work of the Ophir team. For years Gold Hill had been a winner in its games with Ophir, and was ever on the alert for advantages that would help to prevent a slip from its enviable record.

This prowler under the benches, chuckling over the disappointment of the Ophir coach and the ragged work of the Ophir team, was not there for any good. But for his own daring and ingenuity and unscrupulousness, he would not have been there at all.

“Thunder!” muttered Merriwell. “Why, Pink, the team isn’t playing half so well as it did in that little practice game with Gold Hill, on the mesa at Tinaja Wells!”

“It doesn’t look like the same team, Chip,” replied Ballard. “What’s got into them? Mayburn’s a joke at center, Doolittle as right tackle is all that his name implies, and Spink, at quarter, is all balled up. By George! Say, I’ll bet a peck of prunes against a celluloid collar that the scrubs score in the next half.”

“No, they won’t,” gritted Merriwell. He was on his feet, taking personal odds and ends from his trouser’s pockets and stowing them in his coat. At last he threw off the coat and dropped it where he had been sitting. “Come on, Pink,” he added, leaping over the rail and into the field, “you and I have got to get into this.”

The first half was over. Clancy, who was acting as referee, was walking up and down the side lines, telling the sweating club eleven what he thought of them. Merriwell stopped him and did a little talking on his own account. Handy, the captain, seemed utterly demoralized and in a daze. Even the scrubs seemed a bit awed by what they had accomplished.

Merriwell’s temper was struggling to get the best of him. He had tried, to the best of his ability, to make a winning team of the club eleven. But all his work seemed to have gone for nothing. With a tremendous effort he kept his feelings in check. The look on his face, however, was enough for the regulars. They knew how intense was Merriwell’s disappointment, and they realized that they were the cause of it.

“You fellows have got to get together,” said Frank, his voice low and deliberate. “You play as though it was every fellow for himself, and seem to forget what I have been pounding into you about teamwork. Every man is a cog in the machine, and all the cogs have got to work together if you don’t want the machine to go wrong. There were times, Spink,” and he turned not unkindly to the quarter, “when it seemed to me as though you had paralysis of the intellect. It’s just possible that you got rattled because Handy interfered with you. I saw that.” He faced the captain. “I guess you got excited, Handy,” he continued, “when you tried to tease the scrubs and found them giving you a handful. You know better than to mix in with the work of the quarter back, so please restrain yourself during the next half, Mayburn,” and he turned to that husky player, “I’m surprised at you. For the rest of this game Ballard will play your position and I’ll try and fill Spink’s place. It would be fine to have the scrubs score against you, wouldn’t it? Get on your toes and work together during the next half, all of you. And,” he finished, with a grim smile at the scrubs, “I want you fellows to do your best and put it over the regulars—if you can. So far, you’ve played a great game. Keep it up.”

While this talk was going forward, a hand had crept out from between the seats in the grand stand and had groped for Merriwell’s coat. Finding the garment, the fingers of the hand closed on it and withdrew it from sight. At about the time the players took they field for the second half, the coat had been returned, and the greedy, evil eyes were again studying the football field.

There was a decided improvement in the work of the club team after Merriwell and Ballard had taken the places of Spink and Mayburn. But there was no scoring on the part of the regulars, for the scrubs continued to hold them and to fight like madmen for every yard in front of their goal posts. Most of the battling was in scrub territory.

Merriwell had not retired Spink temporarily and taken his place because the quarter back had become rattled. What Merry wanted was to get into the game and study at close and active quarters the unsuspected defects of the Ophir team. All the plays were carefully directed for this one purpose.

When the scoreless game was finished, the regulars started grimly for the gymnasium with the second eleven skylarking around them and joshing them at every step of the way. Frank jumped into the grand stand for his coat and Ballard’s, and then joined his chums on the way to the bathrooms.

“What do you think of the performance, Chip?” queried Clancy ruefully.

“I think,” was the reply, “that we’ll have to put in several days of mighty hard work. Not only that, but I’m going to make one or two changes in the line-up. I——”

He suddenly came to a dead stop. He had been groping in the pockets of his coat for the personal property he had left in them. A blank look overspread his face.

“What’s to pay, old man?” queried Ballard.

“I’ve lost what money I had, somewhere,” was the answer. “Probably it dropped out of my coat, back there in the grand stand.”

“How much?” asked Clancy.

“A matter of thirty dollars, Clan; twenty-five in bills and some change.”

Clancy whistled, and Ballard looked ominous.

“I don’t see how it could have dropped out,” said Ballard. “You’re not usually so careless as all that, Chip.”

“It must have dropped out,” was the reply; “what else could have happened?”

“Let’s go back and see,” said Clancy.

The three lads returned to the grand stand and made a thorough search. The money was not in evidence.

“Maybe it fell through between the seats, Chip,” Ballard suggested. “Let’s go into the dressing rooms under the place where you left your coat.”

There were no locks on the dressing-room doors, and the lads made a thorough investigation but without finding any trace of the missing money. A look of suspicion crossed Clancy’s freckled face.

“A matter of thirty dollars,” said he, “can’t get up and walk off all by itself. While the game was on, Chip, somebody sneaked into the grand stand and went through your pockets.”

“Why didn’t the fellow go through mine as well as Chip’s?” queried Ballard. “I didn’t have any money in my pockets, but——”

“That’s the reason,” said Clancy.

“Keep it quiet,” frowned Merriwell. “I don’t want the Ophir fellows to think for a moment that we suspect any one. We’ll know some time, I guess, whether the money was lost or stolen, and just now we’ll think it’s lost, and keep mum. Come on to the gym.”

---

[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
MORE DISCOURAGEMENT.

It seemed as though everything was going wrong for Merriwell. As if the poor showing of the regular eleven, after weeks of practice, was not sufficiently discouraging, this loss of the thirty dollars had to happen by way of heaping up the measure.

While Frank was getting his shower and his rub-down, his thoughts were about equally divided between the ragged work of the players and the mysterious disappearance of the money.

So far as the football team was concerned, two weeks yet remained before the game with Gold Hill, and the young coach grimly resolved that at least ten days of the fourteen should see such driving practice as the squad had never known. He would change the line-up, pound the whole machine into form, and give Ophir a winning team in spite of fate!

Merry knew, from practical experience, just how much could be accomplished in two weeks—provided a fellow went at it hard enough. He would give the eleven a drilling which would make the time spent at Tinaja Wells look like a loafing bee.

Having made up his mind to this, the discouraging afternoon’s work on the grid lost much of its sting. What sting there was left, merely roweled the coach’s determination to give Ophir a winning eleven.

Merry was the son of the best all-round athlete and coach the country had ever known. That fact was universally admitted. The lad, his white skin glowing under the manipulations of the Mexican rubber, felt the old indomitable spirit tingling through his veins. He would show them, by Jove! He would prove that he was a chip off the old block! Down in that out-of-the-way corner of Arizona he would lick that pioneer team into shape—or he’d know the reason why.

Somehow or other, young Merriwell experienced a glow of satisfaction. There was a fascination in overcoming difficulties—in winning success in spite of them. Where’s the credit if a fellow romps to victory without any opposing hardships? It takes the hard knocks, the glowering possibilities of failure, to put us “on our toes” and make us buck the line of fate with a do-or-die determination to “get there.”

Merry had reached that point. Hovering disaster caused him to reach out and lay firm hold of the invincible spirit that every lad, if he is worth his salt, has always at the back of his nature. And this spirit is alive with electric force. Every fellow who falls back upon it feels a thrill in every nerve. This it was that brought Merry his glow of satisfaction.

Having conquered the disturbing features of the practice game, the lad’s thoughts turned to the loss of the money. There was not an avaricious hair in his head, and it was not the mere fact that he was minus thirty dollars that bothered him; it was the ugly suspicion that there might be a thief among some of those Ophir fellows. He hated to think it, and it was because of the fact that, even in thought, he did not want to do the Ophir club an injustice, that he had warned Clancy and Ballard to keep mum on the subject of the lost money.

Oddly enough, there was a pocket piece mixed up with the missing silver, and the most of Merry’s regret centered about that. It was a silver half dollar, neatly plugged, which had been “worked off” on Merry by some one in Sandstone, Cal. When he found that the fifty-cent piece was minted in the year of his birth, he immediately accepted it as a souvenir. With the lapse of time a sentimental interest had developed in the coin and Merriwell hated to lose it.

By the time the regulars and the scrubs got out of the gym, the hilarity of the second-string men had faded. They had played a good game and, with unexpected luck, had held the regulars. The joy aroused by this excellent showing had manifested itself directly after the game, but the scrubs had been doing a little reflecting while taking their showers and getting into their clothes.

Every member of the O.  A.  C. was fiercely eager to win the coming game with Gold Hill. If the club team, after weeks of coaching, could not take a game from a picked-up eleven, what chances would it have with Gold Hill? This thought pushed aside the joys of the afternoon, and filled scrubs, as well as regulars, with painful doubts.

Merry emerged smiling from the bathrooms. As he came out into the groups of players, lingering in front of the gym, many a glum face was turned wonderingly in his direction. What meant that sunny, confident smile on the face of the coach? Was it possible that he had seen anything hopeful in the afternoon’s miserable work?

Hannibal Bradlaugh, son of the president of the club, stepped up to Merry.

“I reckon, Chip,” said he, “that you think that this club team is a joke. Is that what amuses you?”

“It’s not a joke, Brad,” laughed Merry, “although it has tried to be one this afternoon. During the next two weeks I’m going to show you fellows what real work is, see? And, when we face Gold Hill you’re going to win. Regulars and scrubs will be here at two-thirty, Monday afternoon. To-morrow, Handy,” he added, to the captain of the club team, “you and I will have a little talking match at the Ophir House.”

Hope, like the measles, is “catching.” All the players, even to Spink, Mayburn and Doolittle, began to feel better.

As Merry walked through the clubhouse, on his way to the trail that led back to town, he was halted by Mr. Bradlaugh, the club’s president. Mr. Bradlaugh’s face was long and gloomy. There was a curious gleam in his eyes as they fixed themselves upon Merry’s smiling face.

“Gad,” murmured the president, “you don’t seem worried, Merriwell.”

“Where were you when the balloon went up, Mr. Bradlaugh?” Frank inquired.

“On the clubhouse balcony, watching the ascension. What’s got into the boys?”

“Just an off day with them, I think. That will happen to the best teams, you know.”

“I was badly disappointed. After three weeks at Tinaja Wells, the eleven seems to put up a poorer article of football than they did when they left here to go into camp. I’m afraid they’ve been having too good a time, up the cañon.”

“They worked hard and faithfully at the Wells, Mr. Bradlaugh,” declared Frank. “The change from the mesa to their home field may have had a bad effect on them. Come Monday afternoon and watch them, and I think you’ll see something worth while. We have two weeks before the big game, and, by then, the squad will be tinkered into winning form.”

“Not two weeks, Merriwell.”

Frank started and flung a quick look at Mr. Bradlaugh.

“Has there been a change in the date?” he asked.

“There has. Colonel Hawtrey and I had a talk about Thanksgiving Day, and made up our minds that it’s time we followed the practice that prevails in the East. We’ll not play any more on that particular day, and we decided that our respective clubs will come together on Saturday afternoon of next week.”

Frank’s smile faded. The time for whipping the team into shape had been cut down one-half. Seven days were left—six days, with Sunday out—and not all of those six days could be given to hard work. The practice should slow up for two days before the game.

“Holy smoke!” he muttered. “When did all this happen?”

“This morning,” Mr. Bradlaugh answered. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you before. Had I seen the work of our men previous to my conference with Colonel Hawtrey, you may be sure that I should have put off the big game as long as possible. Now it’s too late. A week from to-day we face Gold Hill. What can you do in that short time?”

“This is a crack right between the eyes,” murmured Frank, “and it knocks all my calculations galley west.”

“It’s certainly discouraging,” agreed Mr. Bradlaugh, “but there’s no help for it. I hear that the Gold Hillers are playing the game as they never played it before. They have a new coach who seems to have inaugurated some new plays and a whole lot of improvements.”

“A new coach?” echoed Frank. “What’s his name?”

“Guffey. I’ve heard that he’s a phenomenon, not only as a coach, but as a player.”

Merriwell’s face clouded. Here was more discouraging news, and he couldn’t help wondering where the lightning was going to strike next.

Mr. Bradlaugh was quick to note the change in Frank’s face and manner. He knew the young coach’s hopes had received a severe setback, and he tried to temper the blow.

“I don’t know who this Guffey is,” said he, “and I don’t care. You’re a heap better than he is, and I’ll bank on it.”

A ghost of a smile flickered about the boy’s lips.

“I’ve been coaching the Ophir team for a long time, Mr. Bradlaugh,” he remarked, “and you saw the afternoon’s performance. It wasn’t a credit to me any more than it was to the eleven.”

“That’s the wrong way to look at it,” was the warm response. “If you haven’t the material to work with, what can you do?”

“I’ve got the material,” insisted Frank. “Your son is a crack half back; Handy, at full, and Spink, at quarter, are class A, and I haven’t any fault to find with the rest of the men. There’ll be some shifting, though, and I may take a couple of players from the scrubs for the regulars.”

“Suppose this Guffey gets into the Gold Hill line-up? He’s an amateur, the colonel tells me, and, by our rules, is qualified to play. Will you jump into the fight if Guffey does?”

“I’m going to do all I can to make Ophir win,” Frank answered determinedly.

“You still have hopes, then?”

The young coach had again got himself well in hand. The obstacles were thickening, and, because of them, final victory over Gold Hill would be a prize worth while.

“Ophir is going to win!” he declared, and there was a look on his face and a gleam in his dark eyes that went far to dispel the president’s gloomy forebodings.

“You’re a brick!” said Mr. Bradlaugh, clapping Frank on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, my lad, that leads many a forlorn hope to victory. We’re going to win—I consider that settled. If you’re on your way back to town, jump into my car and I’ll take you. I was only waiting for a word with you before I started.”

The clubhouse and athletic field were a short mile out of Ophir. On the way back Merry communed with himself and took heart out of his very discouragements.

The poor showing of the club team, the short time in which to make a winner out of it, the good work of Gold Hill under Guffey—all these things Merry considered well; and, in the final summing up, they merely spurred him to fresh endeavors. He was out for Gold Hill’s scalp, and he was going to get it.

That night, in a most peculiar way, some more disturbing details were brought home to him. It was about one in the morning when he heard a pebble rattle against the window of his room. He got up, lifted the window cautiously, and looked out into the dark.

“It’s Bleeker,” came a low voice, “Bleeker, of Gold Hill. Don’t give me away, Merriwell, but come down. I’ve something I want to tell you.”

---

[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
GOOD INTENTIONS.

Clancy occupied the room with Merriwell. The latter, in order to make as little noise as possible, slipped on his shoes but made no attempt to get out of his pajamas and into his clothes. Softly opening the hall door, he stepped out into the dimly lit corridor, descended the stairs, and got clear of the hotel without arousing any one.

“This way, Merriwell,” said Bleeker, in a low tone, appearing suddenly out of the shadows and moving off toward the rear of the building.

Frank followed him, and they presently halted at a board fence.

“I reckon we can talk here,” observed Bleeker, “without any one getting next to what we say.”

“This is quite a surprise party, Bleeker,” said Frank. “I don’t often have a friend steal in on me like a thief in the night, just to make a sociable call.”

“You know what people might think, if I came over to this town in broad day, hunted you up, and had a talk with you? I’m from Gold Hill, and I used to be on the Gold Hill eleven until Jode Lenning gave me the sack. If I happened to be seen here, people would say I am sore, and that I’m trying to get even with Lenning by handing you a little information that will help when Ophir goes up against our crowd next Saturday. That’s what they’d say, Merriwell, and you know it,” Bleeker grunted. “I’m no traitor, and, while I may feel as though Jode has played it pretty low down on me, you can bet I’m not settling scores with him by doing our eleven any dirt. Understand that, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Frank answered.

“By sneaking over here, like this, and palavering with you, I’m trying to be white, that’s all. I’d like to do something to help Ellis Darrel.”

Frank’s interest went up several notches, at that.

“I know you’re a friend of Darrel’s,” said he, “and I know that you and Hotchkiss got Lenning down on you while the Gold Hill crowd was in camp a few miles from Tinaja Wells, at Camp Hawtrey. Are the Gold Hill fellows still in the gulch?”

“No, Lenning brought them back to town the next day after your crowd hiked for Ophir. Lenning kicked Hotch and me out of camp because we stood up for Darrel. Jode hasn’t any use for a fellow who tries to be a friend of his half brother’s.”

“Well, Bleek,” said Frank, “Darrel has acted like a brick all through this trouble of his; and, you take it from me, that blot on the shield is going to be rubbed out. One of these days Darrel will be able to take his uncle by the hand, and the consequences of that forgery are going to be dropped onto somebody else.”

“Now you are shouting, Merriwell!” exclaimed Bleeker eagerly. “I never thought Darrel had anything to do with that, and there are a few more, over in the Hill, who have been of the same opinion right along.”

“Who do you think did the job and arranged to involve Darrel?”

“First off, who’d be the gainer if Darrel lost his uncle’s good will? When you want to figure out a thing, the proper way is to find the chap with a motive. Now, you know Colonel Hawtrey is rich, and that the only relatives he has in the world are his two nephews, Jode Lenning and Ellis Darrel. Wouldn’t Lenning come in for all the old colonel’s property if Darrel was disgraced and run out? Sure he would. The fellow with the motive was Lenning. And that motive, by thunder, has been cropping out ever since Darrel came back.”

This subject was intensely interesting to Merriwell. He had thrown himself heart and soul into the task of redeeming the good name of his new chum, Ellis Darrel, and he believed that now events were forming which would bring about that result.

“Bleeker,” said Frank earnestly. “I’ve heard that about the time this forgery was committed you and Jode Lenning were pretty thick. If that’s so, then you ought to know something about the forgery.”

Bleeker was silent for a space. Leaning against the fence, he bent his head and pulled aimlessly at a sliver on one of the posts.

“You’ve hit it about right, Merriwell,” said he, at last. “Being friendly with Lenning was no credit to me, but he had money and I didn’t, and he had influence with the colonel and stood pretty high in the athletic club—and the colonel had founded the club. I knuckled under to Lenning—I reckon you’d call it toadying. If there were any favors to be passed around, Lenning saw to it that I got my share. I had a finger in every athletic pie the club cut open, and several plums came my way. This wouldn’t have happened, you see, if I hadn’t been training with Jode. I was wide of the right trail, Merriwell, but I got to know Jode as few know him. Ever since our outfit camped in the gulch I’ve done a lot of thinking about El Darrel and Jode Lenning, and I made up my mind that Jode and his influence wasn’t worth a single jab my conscience has been giving me for months. As soon as I woke up, and Jode found it out, he got mad and made me leave the camp.”

Bleeker had been talking in a shamed sort of way, with his head bowed. He now looked up, and the moonlight shone full in his face, bringing out the contrition that lurked there in strong lights and shadows.

“I’ve sneaked out of Gold Hill,” he went on, “and into Ophir, as you said a spell ago, ‘like a thief in the night,’ but I’ve done it because I’m trying to act white after acting the other way for longer than I care to think about. I want,” and the words rushed forth in a torrent of eagerness, “to help El Darrel wipe that blot from his shield. I can’t do much myself, Merriwell, but I reckon I can help you.”

A thrill ran through Merriwell. When a fellow has been traveling the wrong path, and by and by turns of his own accord into the right one, there is a pleasure in meeting him halfway and going on together. Frank grabbed the hand from the post and shook it cordially.

“Bleek,” said he, “you’re all right. You and Hotch began helping Darrel some time ago, and if we can work in double harness and show Hawtrey that he had nothing to do with that forgery, it will be one of the finest things that ever happened.”

That Bleeker was pleased by Merriwell’s attitude was plain. His form straightened, his shoulders went back, and he returned the other’s handclasp with a strong and determined grip.

“It will,” he said, “and I think you can bring it around. You will be making a star play, Merriwell, and I shall have the satisfaction of feeling that I helped. Now, about Jode. I am telling you what everybody knows when I say that his reckless, hot-headed actions come to him as a birthright. His father was a desperate character, in some ways, and was killed in a brawl up in Alaska. Colonel Hawtrey never had anything to do with Lenning’s father, and it was only when the elder Lenning died, and Mrs. Lenning married Darrel, that the colonel and his sister became reconciled. If you’re next to this, maybe you won’t blame Jode quite so much for the way he’s been acting. What a fellow inherits must have something to do with his conduct.”

“A little, Bleek,” said Frank, “but not a whole lot. My father has told me that a fellow must build his own character, and not try to blame his folks when he goes wrong. But, look here. After the way Lenning showed himself up to the colonel, at the time Darrel saved him from the blast, I suppose there’s a coolness between the two? Certainly Lenning isn’t still on the Gold Hill eleven?”

“The colonel’s a queer stick,” was the answer. “There’s been no flare-up between the two, and Jode is still king bee at the Gold Hill Athletic Club. What do you make out of that?”

Merriwell was astounded. How was it possible for the stern old colonel, after having Jode’s “yellow streak” show itself so clearly under his very eyes, still to keep on friendly terms with the fellow? Merriwell was not only amazed, but a bit indignant.

---

[CHAPTER XL.]
THE MYSTERIOUS BILLY SHOUP.

“That gets my goat, and no mistake!” said Merriwell disgustedly. “For doing nothing at all, Colonel Hawtrey drives Darrel out of his house, but when Lenning shows himself a cur, the colonel hasn’t a thing to say. It makes me sick!”

“It’s certainly a brain twister, the way Hawtrey acts,” muttered Bleeker. “All Gold Hill is sitting up nights, trying to figure it out. Somehow, you know, it doesn’t seem like the old colonel at all. He’s sharp and savage when anything ruffles him, and people just about expected he’d flay Lenning and nail his hide to the front door. All he did, though, was to pat Lenning on the shoulder and congratulate him on the way he got clear of the coyote dog.”

Merriwell acted as though he was stunned. His feelings, at that moment, were too deep for words.

“Lenning,” Bleeker went on, “had already asked the colonel to send for this chap Guffey to coach the eleven. Lenning, as captain of the Gold Hill eleven, was scared by the way the Ophir boys held his squad in that practice game you had at Tinaja Wells. He wanted a bang-up coach, and asked the colonel for Guffey. Nobody had ever heard of Guffey—that is, nobody except Lenning—and the colonel sort of held off about getting him. It wasn’t until after Jode showed his yellow streak that the colonel had Guffey come on. They say he’s a whirlwind.”

“How old is he?” Merry inquired, his interest taking a new tack.

“Twenty, maybe—not over that.”

“Where did he come from?”

“No sabe.”

“What does he look like?”

“Hair black as ink, eyes a washed-out blue——”

“Queer combination!”

“And you’d swear, to give him a keen sizing, that he was an athlete and had gone wrong with some kind of dope. His skin’s a dead white, and there are puffs under his eyes. He soft foots it around like a wild cat, and acts so nervous you think he’s getting ready to spring. But he can deliver the goods. They say he has done wonders with the Gold Hill eleven.”

“If he’s a professional athlete——”

“He’s not. Everybody has the colonel’s word for that. But Guffey, you take it from me, is as crooked as a dog’s hind foot.”

“If he’s a dope fiend,” said Frank, “he’s pretty apt to be crooked. Fellows of that sort may be brilliant, at times, but it’s only a flash while they’re in the power of the drug. Take the drug away from them and they’re human jellyfish. None of them last long.”

“That may be, but your crowd will have to go some if you make a clean-up next Saturday.”

Merry received this remark in thoughtful silence. He was wondering about this Guffey person, and where and how he had made himself such a phenomenal coach.

“Well, Bleek,” said he presently, “let’s drop Guffey and get back to Curly Darrel. I want to do what I can to help him, and you haven’t dipped very deep into anything as yet.”

“I’m coming to that right now.” Bleeker straightened and peered cautiously around into the wavering shadows. “We’re all by ourselves here, aren’t we?” he asked.

“The only people who are anywhere near us are in the hotel, and they’re all asleep,” said Frank reassuringly.

“What I tell you is in strict confidence.”

“Sure. You can trust me, can’t you? Fire away.”

“Has Darrel ever told you how he happened to get mixed up in that forgery affair?”

“He has said mighty little about it. I don’t think he knows very much himself. He told me that he made a wrong move—a move he always regretted. Lenning was drinking and gambling on the q.  t., and managing to keep it away from the colonel, so Darrel side-stepped and went into it himself. One night he gambled and grew sort of hazy; couldn’t remember what happened; and when he had his wits, next day, the forged check for five hundred showed up, and the fellow who had it said Darrel had given it to him to square a gambling debt. But Darrel couldn’t remember a thing about it.”

“I was one of a party of four when that happened,” said Bleeker huskily, and fairly driving the words out.

“You were?” Frank returned excitedly.

“It hurts like the devil to say it, but I believe it’s a duty. Yes, I was there. Besides myself, there were Darrel, a fellow who lives in Gold Hill, and the mysterious Billy Shoup.”

“Lenning wasn’t around?”

“No. We had had one or two drinks—first and only time I ever touched the stuff, and I’ve registered a solemn vow that it will be the last—and I noticed that El was acting queerly. There was a far-away look in his eyes, and when you spoke to him it seemed like he had to come back from a thousand miles away before he could answer you. Shoup poured the stuff we drank, and I’ve thought since that he dropped something into El’s glass. I can’t be sure of that, but I know he had his hand over the glass before he set it down. The other chap and I got out of money, and when we left Darrel and Shoup were still at it. I tried to get El to go home, and nearly had a fight with Shoup because I did. El just sat in his chair and stared at me, never making a move to leave. Next day Shoup offered the forged check to the colonel. The colonel took five hundred from his safe, gave it to Shoup, and then very neatly kicked him down the front steps.”

“This has all the earmarks of a plot, and no mistake,” muttered Merry.

“It has,” agreed Bleeker. “I’ve been a year turning it over in my mind and coming to that conclusion.”

“Didn’t you go to Hawtrey and tell him about what happened?”

“No. Don’t blame me for that, Merriwell. I thought, at the time, that perhaps Darrel might have put the colonel’s name to the check. And then, consider my own situation. I didn’t want it known that I had been guzzling poison with a fellow like Shoup.”

“Shoup! You called him a moment ago ‘the mysterious Billy Shoup.’ Why did you do that?”

“Because he was a stranger in Gold Hill. No one knew where he came from, nor where he went. I saw him just twice—the night we gambled and the next afternoon. He and Lenning were in the cañon, palavering. They didn’t see me, and I didn’t care to see Shoup, so I hustled away. I told Lenning about it afterward, and he said he’d kill me if I ever mentioned having seen him with Shoup. He explained that he thought Shoup had done some crooked work, and he had been trying to pump him and do something for Darrel.”

“Fine!” exclaimed Merry scornfully. “A fat lot Lenning was doing for his half brother.”

“That night,” proceeded Bleeker, “Billy Shoup faded out of Gold Hill, and no one in town has heard anything about him since. That’s why I called him the mysterious Billy Shoup.”

“Regular gambler, wasn’t he?”

“He didn’t look it. Rather youngish, he was—nineteen or twenty—and he had a mop of hair about the color of tow. That’s all, Merriwell,” and Bleeker drew a long breath. “I’ve got it off my chest, at last. Jumping sandhills, what a fix a little gambling and drinking will get a fellow into! I had my lesson, and I’ll bet El had his. If Darrel hadn’t been a bit wild, he’d never have got mixed up in that forgery trouble.”

“And the night you were with Shoup, Jode Lenning was—where?”

“At home with the colonel, reading to him in his study. He was doing the dutiful, you see, and going to bed early.”

“Doing the dutiful for a purpose,” commented Merriwell scathingly.

“That’s what I think. He got Shoup to come on and throw the hooks into El—that’s the way I size it up.”

“How can it be proved?”

“Search me. That’s where your star play comes in, Merriwell. It’s up to you to find Billy Shoup and make him talk. I’ve given you all the facts I have, and you’re welcome to go ahead and use them.”

“It’s a pretty big proposition, Bleek,” said Merriwell disappointedly. “This confounded Shoup is so mysterious that we haven’t the first thing in the way of a clew. Perhaps the whole affair could be got out of Lenning?”

“You don’t know Lenning! He’s a fox.”

Merriwell leaned over the fence and looked up at the moon and stars, riding in all the calm serenity of an Arizona night. Bleeker had offered him something to work on in helping Darrel, but it was something which broke in his hands like a rope of sand. Where was Billy Shoup? A year had passed since his mysterious visit to Gold Hill, and a great many things may happen in a year to a fellow of Shoup’s probable stamp. Was the fellow still alive? If so, would he be East or West? He had a wide country for his roaming, and hunting for a needle in a haystack was easy work compared with the task of locating him. If found, would it be possible to make him talk? Hardly. If he admitted forging the check himself, he merely cleared his own path to the penitentiary. If he confessed that Lenning had furnished the check, then it was a matter of his unsupported word against that of the favorite nephew. There was no doubt as to which of the pair the colonel would believe.

“I’ve put it up to you, Merriwell,” said Bleeker, at last, “and now I reckon I’ll point for Gold Hill. I have a horse, out in the brush, and the animal is probably getting tired waiting for me.”

“You’ve shed a little light, Bleeker,” said Frank, dropping his troubled eyes from the sky and resting them on the face of the lad from Gold Hill, “but I’ll be darned if I know what I can do. Isn’t there any way we can pick up a clew as to the whereabouts of Shoup?”

“Not that I know of. Lenning could probably give a clew, but he wouldn’t. He knows what it would mean to him.”

“Any objection to my repeating what you have said to Darrel? He’ll be in Ophir some time during the week—Dolliver’s ranch can’t hold him very long.”

“He knows most of what I’ve told you,” answered Bleeker, “but you can tell him as much as you please. If I hear of anything that will help, I’ll get the information to you, somehow. I’ve a hunch that Darrel’s going to come out of this all right. But I reckon you don’t believe in hunches, eh? Well, anyhow, I’ve done what I could. So long, Merriwell, and good luck.”

The Gold Hill lad who had tried to be “white” shook Merry’s hand and moved swiftly and noiselessly off into the gloom. Merry stood and watched him until he had disappeared, then slowly and carefully made his way back into the hotel.

“I’d give a hundred dollars,” he said to himself, “if I knew where to find this mysterious Billy Shoup.”

---

[CHAPTER XLI.]
THE MAN THE BOX.

“Where’s the water?”

Merriwell stirred and opened his eyes. He was usually an early riser, but an hour or two had been chopped out of his sleeping schedule during the night by Bleeker. For this reason he wasn’t so prompt in beating Clancy out of bed that morning, as was generally the case.

Clancy had just husked himself out of his pajamas and was standing wrathfully over a washtub—an empty washtub.

“Who’s trying to hold the morning dip out on me?” demanded Clancy, throwing a look of suspicion at Merry.

“How do I know?” asked Merry. “Don’t be so darned ambitious on a Sunday morning. Bottle up and let a fellow sleep.”

With that he knocked the red-headed chap off his balance with a pillow. There was a great racket as Clancy sat down hard in the empty tub.

“No one can do that to me and live,” hissed Clancy, wriggling out of the tub and rushing at his chum.

It was the duty of Woo Sing, Chinese roustabout in the hotel, to fill the tub with cold water. The first lad out of bed took his plunge, and the second one up had to empty and fill the tub for himself. Now Woo Sing, who was allowed an honorarium for his work, had failed in his duty.

While Merry and Clancy were laughing and pounding each other with pillows, a screech from the back yard claimed their attention. The screech was followed by a wild assortment of words in three separate and distinct voices.

“China boy fillee tub, by Klismas!”

“Py shinks, I fill dot tub myselluf, und dot’s all aboudt it.”

“Me, I fill de tub.”

Merry and Clancy stepped away from each other, listened, and then moved toward a window. A look into the back yard at once disclosed the reason why the bath water had not been provided.

The Chinaman evidently had started for the second floor of the hotel with a filled pail, but before he could get into the building he had been waylaid by Fritz Gesundheit and the Mexican, Silva. The Dutchman and the Mexican had each laid hold of the pail, and all three were glaring at each other over the top of it.

Fritz, otherwise Carrots, was out of a job now that the Ophir fellows had come in from Tinaja Wells, and the same was equally true of Silva. Carrying water for the bath had looked like easy money to the Dutchman and the Mexican, and each of them had made up his mind to kick Chinese labor off the job and monopolize the work and the honorarium. Woo Sing, however, was registering objections.

“Lettee go pail!” cried the Chinaman. “No lettee go, my bleakee head! By jim klickets, Melican sons guns no makee fool business allee same China boy!”

“Caramba!” breathed Silva darkly. “De water ees mine for carry. I make insist. Hands off de pail, muy pronto!”

“By Shiminy,” wheezed fat Fritz, “I vas gedding my mad oop like I can’t tell! I take der pail myselluf.”

Then began a savage tussle with the pail of water as the bone of contention. It proved a mighty unsatisfactory bone to fight over, for as it heaved and jumped under the straining hands and arms, a quart went into the Dutchman’s face and a cupful found its way down the Mexican’s back. This caused little damage, apart from putting a keener edge on the tempers of Fritz and Silva. Ceasing the struggle for the pail, they began giving their attention to each other.

There was a close and animated tangle of heads, arms, and legs—the pail somewhere in the midst. As the massed combatants surged back and forth, they left a trail of water; and their cries, which were wild and continuous, were all awash and filled with strangles and bad words—words on which they choked.

Merriwell and Clancy, at the second-story window, were enjoying the spectacle hugely. It seemed to be reaching a serious phase, however, and they were just thinking of putting a stop to it when the Chinaman’s heels went into the air and the Dutchman and the Mexican fell away from him.

Woo Sing, by some weird mischance, had taken a header. The pail happened to be placed so as to receive him. For half a minute he was emerged to the shoulders in the pail, his sandaled heels kicking the air. It was a mirthful exhibition, and Fritz and Silva enjoyed it.

“Haw, haw, haw!” the Dutchman wheezed. “Vat a funny Chinaman I don’d know! See, vonce, how he kicks his heels mit der air, und keeps his headt der pail in! Iss der vater py der pail? Yah, so hellup me! Vill der Chinaman be trowned? Dere iss not so mooch goot luck!”

“Madre mia!” tittered the Mexican, holding up against the pump while he gasped and chuckled and roared. “Dat ees no Chinaman, dat ees one frog! De frog he take one dive in de pail, and he make t’ink de pail ees a pond—har, har, har!”

Woo Sing, about as mad a Chinaman as one could find, succeeded at last in getting his feet on the ground. Half strangled, he lifted himself erect. Now that he was right side up, of course the pail was upside down. A flood of water was released and rolled over the Chinaman like a tidal wave. His kimono and baggy breeches were soaked. With a sputtering whoop, he tore the pail from his head and hurled it at Fritz.

The pail caught the Dutchman in the pit of the stomach, doubling him up with something besides laughter. Having attended to Fritz, the water-soaked Celestial rushed at Silva.

The Mexican, in jumping away from the pump, hit the handle with his knee. It flew up and struck him a terrific blow under the chin. While Silva was thus more or less demoralized, the Chinaman fell on him and bore him down.

Fritz, who had by a valiant effort succeeded in getting his breath back, was “seeing red.” Reckless of consequences, he picked up a club and started to even up matters with Woo Sing. The mêlée was becoming too serious to be tolerated any further. Up to that point Merry and Clancy had enjoyed the performance in the back yard immensely.

Clancy leaned out of the window to shout a yell of warning. Merry, however, pulled him back, a mirthful glimmer in his dark eyes.

“I’ll stop it, Clan,” he whispered. “Watch.”

Merriwell was past master in the art of “throwing his voice.” Ventriloquism had afforded him a good deal of fun, and had occasionally been of decided benefit to him and his affairs.

Near the kitchen woodpile was a large box. It was empty and Pophagan, proprietor of the hotel, had thrown it into the backyard to be broken to pieces and used for kindling. The box was still intact, however.

“Stop that!” boomed a deep voice, apparently coming from inside the box. “No more of that rough-house or I’ll put you all in jail. D’you hear?”

The voice was heard, plainly enough. The effect was startling.

“Ach, du lieber!” sputtered Fritz, all his anger fading from him in a flash. “Who iss dot? Iss it some boliceman?”

“Plaps him p’leeceman,” whimpered Woo Sing, dashing the water out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “My no likee go to jail! Whoosh!”

“Dat ees muy malo!” chattered Silva, holding his chin and showing the whites of his eyes. “How you s’pose man get in de box, huh?”

“Dot iss a plame’ funny blace for a man, py shinks!” commented the wondering Fritz.

“Get me out of here quick,” came the voice from the box, “or I’ll nab the lot of you!”

“Caramba!” gulped the Mexican. “Me, I no like to fool wit’ de box.”

“Mebbyso Melican man gettee stuck in box,” suggested Woo Sing. “Him wantee out. My no likee one piecee pidgin, too. We helpee him, huh?”

The object for which Merriwell had been striving had been accomplished. Peace reigned among the three in the back yard. It was a sloppy sort of peace, for all of them were more or less drenched, but still it was peace for all that.

A community of interest had drawn the three together. Just now, to their disordered fancies, the possibility of a term in jail loomed very large.

“I t’ink ve pedder hellup der feller oudt oof der pox,” said Fritz, after a period of harrowing reflection. “Silfa, you go fairst and I vill precede mit der chink.”

“You yourself go first to de box!” implored Woo Sing.

“Please, fat Melican man!” implored Woo Sing.

“Help, help!” came the voice, in a roar. “I’m listening to what you fellows say out there. When I get out, you can bet I’ll take care of the ones who don’t come to my rescue.”

As soon as this statement had had time to sink in, all three of those who were standing at a distance from the box rushed as one man to get near it and to release the supposed person inside.

Clancy was red in the face with suppressed mirth. Merry, leaning against the window casing, was enjoying the situation to the utmost.

“Now for some fun,” murmured Clancy, “when they turn the box over and find there’s no one inside.”

“This is pretty rich, and no mistake,” chuckled Merry. “They’re all going to lay hold of the box and lift it. They——”

The words died on his lips. Just then something happened which caused a chilly feeling to race along his spine, and Clancy’s rapture vanished on the instant.

Before a hand could be laid on the box, it began to lift—apparently of its own accord. Fritz, Silva, and Woo Sing stepped back. They, of course, were in no wise startled for they were expecting to find some one under the big packing case. But Merry and Clancy could only gasp and stare downward with wide eyes.

The box, by a force exerted from within, was tilted backward. A young fellow showed himself, unkempt and his clothes in disorder from several hours in such cramped quarters.

He was not a tramp, that was evident. His clothing was of excellent quality and fitted him well. Surprise followed surprise for Merry, for he presently noticed that the youth’s hair was as black as a raven’s wing, his eyes a faded blue, and his skin a waxlike and unhealthy white!

Merriwell, astounded beyond words, leaned against the side of the window and continued to peer blankly outward and downward at the odd group in the rear of the hotel.

The man who had been under the box had his coat over his arm and his sleeves rolled to the elbow. With a snarling, angry cry he leaped past the Mexican, the Dutchman and the Chinaman, and sprinted at a tremendous clip to get out of the way.

“Catch that fellow!” cried Merriwell, finally waking up. “Come on, Clan!”

The red-headed chap came out of his daze in time to plunge for a dressing gown and a pair of slippers, and then to dart into the hall and away after his chum.

---

[CHAPTER XLII.]
GUFFEY’S QUEER ACTIONS.

Merriwell was in his pajamas, and as it was getting a time of day when people began to stir around, the scope of his efforts in overhauling the fellow who had been under the box was naturally limited. He had hoped that Fritz, Silva and Woo Sing might take up the pursuit, but in this he was disappointed.

“Where is the fellow?” Merry demanded, showing himself at a rear door and confronting the Dutchman, the Chinaman, and the Mexican.

“He vent avay like some shtreaks,” Fritz answered.

“Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

“He iss a boliceman, dot’s der reason.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Merry, “he’s no more a policeman than you are.”

“Ven he iss under der pox he say——”

“I know what he said, Carrots. Look here! What do you, and Silva, and Woo Sing mean by making such a disturbance on Sunday morning?”

“Dot vas a mishap, Merrivell, und nodding more.”

“Well, don’t let it happen again. Sing, bring up the water. What’s that you just picked up, Silva?”

The Mexican, standing near the uptilted box, had bent down and picked up some object off the ground.

“No sabe, señor,” said he, coming toward Merry and handing over his “find.”

Frank examined it carefully and discovered that it was a small, needle-pointed syringe, a “hypoderm,” such as is used by drug fiends to puncture the arm and inject their slow-working poison into the veins.

“The fellow under the box must have dropped that,” remarked Clancy.

“It’s a cinch that he did,” answered Merry.

“Now I know what that pasty face of his means. He’s a slave of the needle, Chip.”

“Yes,” nodded Frank. “Let’s go back upstairs, Clan,” he added, starting through the hotel and toward the stairs.

In the hallway on the second floor they met Ballard. He was fully dressed and was hurrying down to find out what was going on.

“I saw that squabble in the back yard,” he remarked, “and I thought Chip was back of that voice under the box. When the black-haired chap showed himself, it almost took me off my feet.”

“Same here,” chuckled Clancy. “Chip did throw his voice so that it seemed to come from the box.”

“Then he knew there was some one there?”

“Not so you could notice it, Pink,” Merry returned, with a puzzled laugh. “I hadn’t an idea there was a fellow under the box when I threw my voice in that direction and tried to stop the row. You could have knocked me down with a feather when that box began to lift.”

“Funny stunt,” put in Clancy, “and don’t you forget it. What do you suppose the fellow was doing there?”

“You’re liable to find a dope fiend almost any place. They’re half crazy all the time. But I happen to know who this particular fellow is.”

“You do?” cried Clancy and Ballard, together. “Who is he?”

“Come in and shut the door,” Frank answered.

After the tub had been twice filled by Woo Sing and Merry and Clancy had had their plunge, while they were dressing Merry told his chums about the new coach that had been doing such wonders with the Gold Hill football team. In his talk he did not mention Bleeker in any way, but referred principally to his conversation with Mr. Bradlaugh the preceding afternoon.

“This Guffey,” Frank proceeded, “seems to be a stranger to nearly every one but Jode Lenning. Jode, it seems, got scared at the brand of football we put up during the game at Tinaja Wells, and he begged the colonel to send for Guffey. After that incident in the gulch, when the blast came so near going off and killing Hawtrey, Guffey was sent for. They say he has done marvels with that Gold Hill squad.”

“Let me get this business straight in my mind, Chip,” said Ballard. “You’ve opened up a few leads that I can’t understand. Is Jode Lenning still hand-and-glove with the colonel?”

“Seems to be.”

Clancy and Ballard turned startled, uncomprehending looks at Merry.

“Thunder!” exclaimed the red-headed chap. “I can’t understand that, at all.”

“Nor I, Clan,” said Frank. “The colonel’s a queer one, and that’s the least you can say. Jode wanted Guffey. Guffey proves to be a dope fiend, but a brilliant coach. He’s a young fellow, too, and a horrible example for any other young fellow who feels like tagging him over such a course. From what I know of Colonel Hawtrey I can’t begin to understand why he will have anything to do with such a man as Guffey. Hawtrey is a stickler for clean living and sportsmanlike conduct, and this Guffey isn’t the sort to appeal to him a little bit.”

“The clouds continue to gather on Ophir’s football horizon,” observed Ballard, with an effort. “If that game is lost next Saturday——” He finished with a look that expressed his meaning better than words.

“We’re not going to lose it,” declared Merry.

“That’s the spirit, old man!” approved Clancy. “Still,” he added doubtfully, “you’ve got a man’s job on your hands if you succeed in pounding the club team into winning form. Since we came in from Tinaja Wells the eleven appears to have gone all to pieces.”

“They’re not reliable, those fellows,” growled Ballard. “Remember how they made a farce of their practice work along at the first when they were out to show Chip what they could do?”

It wasn’t likely the three lads would ever forget that. The team had made a poor showing at the start; and now, after weeks of careful coaching, the showing was but little better.

After all, Merriwell was asking himself, did the fault really lie in the material? He could not bring himself to think this. The Saturday’s game had merely been called on an “off” day for the regulars. He had faith to believe that the game Monday afternoon would turn out differently.

“We’re getting away from the point I’m trying to get at,” said Merriwell suddenly. “What I’d like to know is, why is Guffey in Ophir? What business has he here when his work is all in Gold Hill?”

“Think he was spying upon this hotel?” queried Ballard.

Merriwell started. Instinctively his thoughts recurred to Bleeker and the conference he and Bleeker had had the night before.

Was Guffey under the box at the time? Had he trailed Bleeker to the hotel and then hidden himself away so as to listen to what passed between Bleeker and Merry?

A moment’s reflections all but convinced Frank that this could not have been the case. If Guffey had sneaked to the hotel on Bleeker’s trail, then when Bleeker left Guffey would also have gone away. There was no possible explanation of the Gold Hill coach’s presence under the box except the one that had to do with his hypoderm and his morphine. Feeling the need of the drug, Guffey had crawled off into the most convenient quarters he could find; from that moment until the antics of Fritz, Silva, and Woo Sing had aroused him he had been in the grip of the drug demons.

This, at least, seemed to Merriwell the most plausible explanation. As evidence that his theory was correct, he had that little “hypoderm” which had been found near the box by Silva.

“No, Pink,” said Merry, “I don’t think Guffey was spying upon this hotel. What good would a move of that sort do him? If he wanted to find out anything regarding our club eleven he’d be hiding somewhere near the grid.” A grim smile crossed Merry’s face. “Guffey would have enjoyed the performance if he had been out there yesterday afternoon.”

“He’d have carried a lot of good cheer back to Gold Hill,” grinned Ballard. “Oh, well, hang them and their dopey coach. I guess Ophir will wiggle out of the set-to in pretty fair shape.”

“What did you want to capture Guffey for, Chip?” queried Clancy. “What was the idea?”

“I suggested that on the spur of the moment,” Frank answered. “It was like a blow in the face when I recognized the fellow, from the description I had had of him. What I wanted was to learn what he was here for. Now I’ve pretty well decided that he wasn’t in his right mind when he crawled into the box. He was crazy for some of that drug. Strikes me, fellows, that’s about all there is to his being there.”

Just at that moment the breakfast gong sounded.

“There goes the chuck signal,” chirped Ballard. “Come on, you two.”

They piled downstairs, hung their hats on the rack by the dining-room door, and went in to their accustomed seats at the table. Here a fresh surprise awaited them.

The fellow who had been on the subject of their recent debate upstairs was in the dining room calmly eating his breakfast. He did not sit at the same table where Frank and his chums had their places, but at another farther toward the center of the room.

All three of the boys stopped, hands on the backs of their chairs. Clancy nudged Merriwell with his elbow.

Guffey’s appearance had undergone a very decided change for the better. His clothes had been smoothed out and brushed, his black hair neatly combed, and he looked quite as respectable as any coach ought to look. He was completely master of himself, too, and he met the gaze of the three chums leveled at him with perfect self-control. He smiled pleasantly, got up from his chair, and stepped toward Merriwell.

“Frank Merriwell, isn’t it?” he asked, in a voice low and well modulated. “I thought so,” he went on, as Frank nodded. “My name is Guffey, and I’m the new coach over at Gold Hill. We are coaching rival teams, Merriwell, but we’re true sportsmen, eh? We can be on friendly terms for all that?”

“Of course,” Frank answered, a little dazedly. “Glad to meet you, Guffey. My friends, Owen Clancy and Billy Ballard.”

Guffey transferred his right to Clancy and Ballard, smiled again, murmured his acknowledgments, and then returned to his waiting chair. It was all very nicely done, and it was plain that Guffey, the coach, knew how to be a gentleman.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” muttered Clancy. “Say, Chip, is that really the dope fiend we saw coming out from under the box?”

“No doubt of it,” Frank answered.

“He acts and looks like a different fellow—still, that pasty face, that black hair, and those washed-out blue eyes are the same. Why is he here? Is it a case of nerve on his part?”

“You’ll have to ask me something easier than that,” Merry answered, dismissing Guffey from his mind and giving his whole attention to his meal.

---

[CHAPTER XLIII.]
REVIVING HOPES.

Guffey left the dining room before Frank and his chums had finished their breakfast. When they finally came out they found Handy, captain of the Ophir eleven, waiting for them. Handy showed traces of excitement.

“What was Guffey, the Gold Hill coach, doing over here, Chip?” he demanded.

“Nothing more than eating his breakfast, Handy, so far as I know. Are you acquainted with him?”

“I’ve heard him described, and I thought I had him spotted as he passed through the office. To settle any doubts, I looked at the register. There was his name, plain enough: ‘Simeon Guffey, Gold Hill.’ I don’t like the idea of his sneaking around Ophir like this.”

“Don’t be in a taking about it, old man,” said Frank soothingly. “Where did he go?”

“There was a horse out in front, and he got into the saddle and pointed for the cañon trail. On his way back to Gold Hill, I reckon.”

“Come on up to my room,” said Merry. “Clan, you and Pink had better come, too.”

When they had the captain behind the closed door, Frank told him about the squabble in the back yard, and how, in a most surprising way, Guffey had been discovered under the empty packing case. Frank propounded his theory as to why Guffey was in that peculiar place, and produced the “hypoderm” in evidence.

Handy was experiencing an attack of nerves and was ready to see the hidden hand of the Gold Hill club in anything and everything that looked a little off color.

“There’s something back of his being here,” he declared, “and it’s a heap more than you imagine, Merriwell. Guffey didn’t blow into town for any good. He may use the dope, but you can gamble that he’s not using it to an extent that queers him in his work as coach.”

It was several minutes before Frank and his chums could calm Handy sufficiently for a talk about football. At last, however, they began a study of the club eleven with the view of shifting the players around and getting better results.

“I wouldn’t drop any of the boys from the regular team, Chip,” said the captain earnestly.

“It would be a bad move at this late day,” Frank answered, “to put in some new men from the scrub team. If we had two weeks left I don’t know but I’d try it, but with only four days for good, hard practice, dropping anybody from the eleven would be a mistake. Win or lose, Handy, we’ll use the material we have. We can do a little shifting, though.”

“I made a monkey of myself yesterday,” declared Handy, with a firm determination to shoulder all the consequences of his own mistakes, “and that’s what played the dickens with the quarter. But I was nervous, and the way the scrubs lit into us had me rattled. I’ve a notion all the boys felt the same way. We went into that game overconfident and careless; then, when we began getting the worst of it, we slopped over in the other direction and took our backsets too much to heart. We’ll do better to-morrow.”

“You’ve got to, that’s all,” said Merriwell grimly. “What will happen if Gold Hill gets the best of it in next Saturday’s game?”

“It would make the third time, hand-running, that we’ve gone down to defeat at the hands of that other crowd. If that happens, everybody in Ophir will be disgusted, and this athletic club of ours will go to the dogs.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

“It’s worse!” declared Handy. “If you had lived in this town for a year or two, you’d know more about the feeling that prevails regarding these football games.”

“Then, if that’s the way you hook up, we’ve got to win.”

“We have, if it takes a leg.”

After two hours of thoughtful discussion, during which each individual player on the regular team was thoroughly studied, two or three shifts made in the line-up, and a little talk indulged in that renewed the captain’s ardor and determination, the meeting broke up.

For most of the regulars and second-string men, however, it was a blue Monday when they assembled in the gym for the afternoon’s work. Their faces were long and gloomy as they squatted around on the floor in their football togs and listened to a little sharp grilling from the captain.

Merriwell followed Handy. The faults and mistakes of the preceding Saturday afternoon he flashed before the player’s eyes in detail. There was terror in the souls of the regular eleven; but fears were relieved somewhat when not one of the team was publicly disgraced by being dropped to the scrub. At last, tingling in every nerve, the men were sent to the field for another contest with the second eleven.

And, this time, the regulars did their work admirably. The practice was secret, and no evil, greedy eyes were staring out from between the benches of the grand stand. The club eleven lit into the scrubs with a savage fury that swept all before them. Never once, in all the fierce battling of the game, was the regular’s goal in danger. This was a romp to victory, but with none of the gala features of a romp about it. Intensity of purpose marked every play. And the final score was so many to nothing that the dusty, sweating, worn-out scrubs were awed and chastened.

Tuesday afternoon the work was even harder. The scrub team was strengthened by the addition of Ballard and Clancy, and while it was being hurriedly organized, farther down the oval of the field, the regulars were being run through the signals. Up and down the field they rushed in rehearsal of all the complicated attacks. The numbers, flung out by Merry, cracked like a blacksnake whip; and, with every crack, the players leaped to their work. Again and again the coach charged the team, now against one goal and now against the other.

After a brief rest the strengthened scrub teams appears. Against them the regulars are pitted for a whirlwind fight of half an hour, cut in two by an interval of two minutes.

The hardiest of the players flop over on the warm sand, utterly exhausted, when the whistle stops the playing. Merriwell is boring down into their endurance as no coach has ever done before. But they do not complain. They know he is doing it for the glory of Ophir.

That Tuesday-afternoon match was rendered brilliant by the playing of Owen Clancy at quarter. He and Ballard, encouraging the second eleven, gave the regulars a grapple that they will long remember.

Wednesday is a repetition of Tuesday, only worse in its grinding, gruelling labor, if that were possible. Like tigers, with sinews of steel and a suddenness of lightning, the regulars spring at the throats of the scrubs. Every man on the second eleven is putting up the fight of his life. He knows that the harder he can make it for the regulars, the more it will be for the glory of Ophir. Brilliantly supported by Clancy and Ballard and, along toward the end, by Merry at half, they bring out the very last ounce of power and ability which the club team has in store.

The regulars have possession of the ball. They smash into the scrubs like a living catapult, hunting from end to end of the scrub line for the one weak point. After thirty minutes of heartbreaking play, a whistle sounds a truce. The teams are rushed to the gym, quickly sponged, fresh recruits jump into the ranks of the scrubs, and once more the regulars are put to the relentless test.

“If we can live through this,” gasps one of the regulars as, the playing over for the day, he totters in the direction of the showers, “if we can live through this we’ll eat up any eleven on earth.”

“Are you satisfied, Chip?” queried the weary, exultant Handy as he came, clothed for the street, out of the dressing rooms after the Wednesday game.

“Yes,” Merry answered, “we’ve got a bunch of winners. All aboard for Dolliver’s to-morrow afternoon.”

“The word has been passed around, Chip, and we’ll all be ready.”

Thursday afternoon Bradlaugh’s big car, and two other machines pressed into service, carried the Ophir eleven, three or four substitutes, and Chip Merriwell and his chums out along the old trail to Tinaja Wells.

A disappointment awaited Frank at Dolliver’s. He had counted upon meeting Darrel at the ranch, but Darrel, he found, had gone into Gold Hill that very morning.

Why was Darrel in Gold Hill? Certainly his uncle had not sent for him. The colonel was still clinging to Jode Lenning, and, so long as he did that, he could have no possible use for Darrel.

Merry, however, had too much on his mind to worry over the mysterious actions of Darrel. Curly was improving right along, and that was the main thing. He would undoubtedly be at the Ophir-Gold Hill game, and Merry could see him there.

Thursday there was nothing at all to do, with the exception of a little signal practice along toward sun-down. Nor was there any line-up or hard work on Friday—nothing but a five-mile cross-country trot in the forenoon, and in the afternoon nothing at all. It was the day before the game—a day to which the population of Ophir and Gold Hill had been looking forward for months.

The game was to be played on the Ophir field. The games of the two previous years had been won by Gold Hill on her own field, and it was deemed no more than fair that Ophir should have the third game on her grounds.

The fellows were to remain at Dolliver’s until one o’clock Saturday afternoon. At that hour the machines were to arrive for them and whisk them away to the field for the fight with their rivals.

There was not much hilarity among the lads. They were impressed—and a little oppressed—with the prospect of the work required of them on the next afternoon. They collected in groups, and, in low voices, talked of everything they could think of except football. And yet, the biggest and most constant thing in every fellow’s mind was the coming game.

Merry and Handy, along about eight in the evening, were a little apart from the players. They were considering Simeon Guffey for about the dozenth time.

“You’re fretting too much about the Gold Hill coach, old man,” said Frank.

“I’ve got a hunch that there’s something about the fellow we don’t understand,” answered the captain.

“If you’re going to worry about all the things you can’t understand,” Merry laughed, “you’re going to have your hands full.”

Just at that moment Clancy came around a corner of the house.

“Guess who’s here, Chip!” said he.

“I’m in no mood to wrestle with conundrums, Clan,” was the answer.

“All right, then. It’s Colonel Hawtrey. He just rode up. His horse is at the hitching pole and he wants to see you at once—and privately.”

“Hawtrey—to see me!” Frank muttered, as he hurried around the house and toward the trail in front.

---

[CHAPTER XLIV.]
THE COLONEL’S TIP.

The colonel, erect and soldierly, was pacing slowly back and forth at the trailside. It was a fair inference, from the way he bore himself, that there was something on his mind.

Since Frank had heard of the way the old colonel had been treating Jode Lenning, following Jode’s wretched conduct in the gulch, his estimate of the colonel had gone down several degrees. A man might be eccentric, Frank reasoned, without displaying such glaring partiality or such weak-kneed injustice.

“Good evening, colonel,” said Frank, coming to a halt near the trail.

The other, busy with his reflections, had not noticed the lad’s approach. “That you, Merriwell?” he asked, turning.

“Yes, sir. I was told that you want to talk with me.”

“So I do; I have come out here for that especial purpose. Suppose we walk a little way along the trail?”

Frank fell in at the colonel’s side and walked with him a stone’s throw up the road. When they halted, the colonel sat down on a bowlder and lighted a cigar. The flare of the match, falling over his rugged face, revealed a sternness and a settled purpose that rather startled the youngster at his side. Colonel Hawtrey, in spite of the way he was treating Jode, was no weakling.

“To-morrow, Merriwell,” went on Hawtrey, “is the day of the big game. Several hundred from Gold Hill will move on Ophir to root for the home team. I hope everybody keeps his temper and that there will be no disgraceful clashes. To-morrow afternoon, I sincerely trust, we are going to bury our animosities in friendly rivalry. The old feud between the two athletic organizations, let us hope, is going to be wiped out forever.”

“You will find, colonel,” said Frank, “that Ophir will do her full part.”

“Glad to hear that. I will personally stand sponsor for Gold Hill. The news comes to us that your team is in a bad way, and that last week Saturday the first game after your return to town from camp was a big disappointment to you. Handy, your captain, got rattled and began interfering with the quarter back, and Mayburn, your center, put up a miserable article of play. Is that right?”

The hot blood rushed into Merry’s face and he shot an indignant glance at the colonel. What was the use of the Gold Hill nabob coming out to Dolliver’s to talk such stuff to the Ophir coach?

“How did you get any information about that game, colonel?” he demanded. “No one was allowed on the grounds except our men. I can’t believe that our fellows would talk about what happened last Saturday afternoon.”

“Ordinary loyalty would keep them from doing that, eh?”

“Sure it would. Who told you all that, sir?”

“That’s immaterial, just now. I am not here to twit you about your team’s shortcomings, Merriwell. I have simply recited what came to me as facts, and I want you to say whether or not the facts are true. A good deal hangs upon that point—more than you even dream of.”

There was a depth of earnestness in the colonel’s voice which filled Frank with wonder. What in blazes was he trying to get at, anyhow?

“Why, yes,” said Frank, “Harry did interfere a little with the quarter, and Mayburn was off in his work.”

“Doolittle wasn’t very good, either, was he?”

“Not very.”

The colonel drew a long breath and puffed silently at his cigar for a few moments.

“Then what I heard was true,” he muttered finally. “This makes it certain, my lad, that Gold Hill had a spy at your secret game. How could anything be known about the game if that had not been the case? Such work is reprehensible. I am as indignant over the matter as you could possibly be. There is nothing sportsmanlike about it. I can congratulate myself on the fact, however, that the spy was not a Gold Hill man but a stranger—or almost a stranger. I am positive that it was Guffey, the coach.”

“You think, then, that Guffey was sneaking around when we played that game, last week?” the boy demanded.

“I’m sure of it. Guffey left Gold Hill in the forenoon of Saturday, and he did not return until Sunday forenoon. He was in Ophir—he must have been.”

“I knew he was in Ophir Saturday night,” said Frank, and told of what happened in the rear of the hotel on Sunday morning.

The colonel muttered angrily to himself.

“That’s the sort of gentleman we have for a coach,” he growled, “a fellow who uses a ‘hypoderm’ and who sleeps in a box in a back yard. He’s a hobo, and a pretty poor stick of a hobo at that. This thing is working out just as I thought it would. Good may come of it, however.”

“Where does this man Guffey hail from, colonel?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know the first thing about him. Jode knows him, and he’s the one who sent for him. Guffey’s a good coach, and our eleven is in better shape than it has ever been before. I’m sorry that Guffey’s a scoundrel, but it is going to be the happiest day of my life if he pans out the way I hope and believe.”

Once more the colonel had Frank wondering. How was he expecting Guffey to “pan out?” In one breath the colonel was sorry Guffey was a scoundrel, and in the next he was going to be happy if the scoundrel panned out to be as bad as he hoped and believed. Frank was all twisted to account for the colonel’s motives and feelings.

“Now that you know Guffey’s a scoundrel,” Frank remarked, “are you going to let him come to Ophir with the Gold Hill fellows?”

“I am,” was the reply, “and while he’s in your bailiwick, Merriwell, I want you to do one thing.”

“What is that?”

“Watch the fellow. You’re a friend of my nephew, Ellis, aren’t you?”

“Right from the top of the hat,” said Frank, with spirit.

“Well, keep a keen eye on Guffey. By doing that, you may help Darrel more than you can realize now. You’re very much concerned, I suppose, because I have treated Jode, since that affair in the gulch, with the same consideration that I did before. You don’t understand why I have left him on the football team, or why I have anything further to do with him. Is that correct?”

“Well, yes,” admitted Frank.

“And neither can you understand why I tolerate such a scoundrel as Guffey.”

“No, colonel, I can’t.”

“I am manipulating things, Merriwell. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so. If you will coöperate with me, I’m pretty sure this whole affair is going to come around in fine shape.”

“Just what do you expect me to do?” Frank queried. “How will keeping an eye on Guffey enable me to coöperate with you?”

“Why, as to that, everything depends on your shrewdness. Take up a position close to Guffey from the time he arrives on the field; then watch him like a hawk. If anything develops that excites your suspicion, follow it up with vigor.”

“What do you think will develop?”

“I haven’t the least notion what form developments will take, but I am sure something will come. I have done my part by tolerating Jode and helping to get Guffey here. Now the rest of it is up to you—and you are a good friend of Darrel’s.”

Frank was nonplused. It had been made clear to him, however, that the colonel had let Jode off easy, after that affair in the gulch, for a purpose; and, for the same purpose, he had allowed Jode to have his way about Guffey. Here the wily old colonel was playing a deep game. And at the back of his head was the desire that Darrel might profit by it. While this much was clear; to Merry, all the rest was steeped in the deepest kind of mystery.

“Are you going to take my tip, Merriwell, and act upon it?” asked the colonel.

“Bank on that, sir!” was the prompt response.

“Good!” said the colonel, in a tone of deep satisfaction. “If I’ve got hold of the right end of this, I can trust you to work out the rest of the problem.”

“Will Guffey get actively into the game?” inquired Frank.

“No,” was the decided answer. “It’s bad enough to have such a fellow coach our boys without coming actually into contact with them on the field. As soon as this game is over, I can promise you that Gold Hill will see the last of him. Darrel, I hear, is not at Dolliver’s?” the colonel went on, shifting the subject.

“No,” said Frank.

“Is he in Ophir?”

“Dolliver tells me that he went to Gold Hill Thursday morning.”

“Jove! I haven’t seen him in Gold Hill, and I haven’t heard of his being there. You are sure Dolliver——”

“Darrel won’t go looking for you, colonel,” said Frank, with a touch of pride, “until he’s able to give you his hand. I believe he went to the Hill to try and clear up that forgery matter.”

“Ah!” There was a certain grimness in the colonel’s voice which did not escape Frank. “I don’t believe he can do that, Merriwell. He hadn’t ought to be roaming around, anyhow, until that broken arm of his is entirely well. He’ll be at Ophir for the game?”

“He said he would, at the time we broke camp and pulled out for home.”

The colonel got up and stepped closer to Frank. His voice sank low and throbbed with feeling as he laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder and went on:

“If you see him, Merriwell, tell him not to draw any wrong conclusions from the way I am conducting myself. Tell him that, when he knows all, he will see that I am acting for the best interests of all concerned. You’ll do that?”

“Certainly.”

“I’ve been an old fool in a good many ways, and when an old fool sees the light he ought to be wise in getting to the bottom of things and in passing justice around. I’m trying to show a little wisdom, Merriwell. Until you know all, you can at least give me credit for that.”

“I do, colonel,” Frank answered.

The colonel reached for his hand, shook it warmly, and then, without speaking further, turned and retraced his way to his horse. Frank, standing to one side, watched while he swung into the saddle.

“Good-by, my lad, and good luck,” called the colonel.

“Good-by, sir,” Frank answered.

The next moment Colonel Hawtrey had galloped off along the trail and was lost in the wavering shadows. He left behind him, perhaps as puzzled a boy as there was in all Arizona.

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” Merriwell muttered, as he turned back toward the house. “The colonel’s all right, but I wish to thunder that I knew what he’s trying to get at. Going it blind never made much of a hit with me.”

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