“You’ve always been at the top of the heap, Merriwell, so it’s easy for you to give advice. Try to be the under dog once, and maybe you’ll change your mind about what a fellow can or can’t do.”
Without another word, Lenning turned the horse’s head up the slope. Hatless as he was, and with his wet clothing clinging to his limbs, he was a melancholy figure as he rode to the top of the bank and then vanished from the gaze of the lads below.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” exclaimed Bleeker. “I’m struck all of a heap, no two ways about that. To think that Jode Lenning should make a play of that kind! He hasn’t a sou in his jeans, and yet he took that roll from Shoup and was doing what he could to get it back into the hands of Blunt. Well, well!”
“It only goes to prove,” chuckled Merriwell, “that lawlessness wasn’t born in Lenning, and that he can make a pretty decent sort of a fellow out of himself if he tries.”
“I reckon,” said Bleeker thoughtfully, “that all of us are handicapped in one way or another.”
“We are,” agreed Frank, “but it’s our own doing.”
“That so, Chip?” put in Clancy.
Merriwell stared at him for an instant, then caught his drift and nodded emphatically.
“Yes, that’s so, Clan, and I’m not backing away from that statement because I’ve got a little handicap of my own. Who won that race, anyhow, Bleeker?” he finished, with a grin.
“You and Clancy did,” was the prompt reply.