“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “The Yale catcher, or I’ll eat my hat! I don’t know your name, but I never forget a face.”
“Buckhart,” Dick put in, as the Texan shook the older man’s hand. “Bradley Buckhart from Texas.”
“Glad to meet you—very glad,” the mine owner said in his sharp, incisive manner. “Have you brought any more of your team with you, Merriwell? I foresee that my boys will have to stir themselves to lick you this afternoon.”
Dick smiled.
“Tommy Tucker, here, sometimes plays short,” he explained. “He’s going to hold down centre field to-day.”
There was a whimsical look of mock consternation on Orren Fairchilds’ face as he shook hands with Tucker and Bigelow.
“I wish you’d brought the other six along,” he said. “There’d be some honor in beating the Yale varsity.”
Without waiting for a reply, he ushered them into an adjoining room, which was fitted up with a number of lockers, and opening one of them he began to toss out a variety of garments.
“We’ll have to change here,” he explained. “There’d be very little left of your regular clothes if you went down in them.”
In the course of five minutes all five were arrayed in rough woolen trousers, flannel shirt, heavy shoes, and felt hats. The transformation was astonishing. But for the healthy tan on their faces, they might easily have been taken for a party of laborers, ready for their daily descent into the mine.