“Thanks, old man,” laughed Merry. “It would be hard for me to do any worrying while you’re around.”
“Everything’s going swimmingly, Chip,” remarked Ballard, “and there hasn’t been a hitch since—since Wednesday afternoon.”
“That’s the trouble,” Frank answered. “I’m afraid, Pink, that the luck is too good to last.”
This remark of Merriwell’s proved to be prophetic. A blow between the eyes was dealt Merry less than an hour after supper. It wasn’t a knock-out, but it came close to being one.
The blow arrived by messenger from the Ophir Mine, and was neatly wrapped up in a note written by Burke, the superintendent. Merriwell was alone on the veranda at the time the message came to hand, and he drew up close to a lighted window so that he could see to read it.
At first he was dazed, and could hardly believe that he read aright. After rubbing his eyes, he perused the note a second time. Then it was that the dread news burst upon his realization like a thunderclap.
“Blazes!” he gasped, crushing the note in his hand and looking around despairingly. “What the mischief are we going to do now? On the last day, and in the afternoon, too! Why in the deuce couldn’t——” He bit his words short and tossed his hands deprecatingly. “But it couldn’t be helped, it couldn’t be helped!” he muttered.
Gloomily enough, he walked to a chair at the far end of the veranda and slumped down into it. Who’d have thought that such a thing could happen? The Ophir club, it seemed absolutely certain, was going to meet its Waterloo! There did not appear to be a possible way out of that tangle of hard luck.
While Frank was sitting there among the deep shadows of the veranda and floundering helplessly in a mire of reflections, a horseman galloped up to the hitching pole in front of the hotel, swung to the ground, buckled his reins around the pole, and then bounded lightly up the veranda steps.
The light from a window, shining over him, showed that he was a mere lad. His face was open and frank, and a mat of thick, curly hair fringed the bottom of his cap.