“The colonel’s holding the watch,” laughed Merry, “so he must have it pretty nearly right.”
“We ought to have a full sixty-minute session out of this. Why the deuce did Handy stipulate that only two quarters were to be played?”
“His head was level. A little of this sort of thing is a great plenty—with the real game some three weeks off.”
Parkman moved over toward Lenning, who was walking from the field. The two sat down to rest on a heap of bowlders close to the edge of the mesa.
The colonel, his face beaming, made directly for Merriwell and Clancy.
“It’s as even a thing, Merriwell,” he exclaimed, “as you’d find anywhere! You’ve done wonders with this Ophir eleven. If I wasn’t so old and warped with rheumatism I’d take a hand in it myself. Why don’t you get into it?”
The colonel did not wait for an answer, but saw Handy coming up and turned in his direction.
“I’d like an hour of this, Handy,” he cried. “Why don’t you let ’em box the compass for the limit?”
Handy looked at Merriwell, and what he saw in the latter’s face convinced him that his stipulations were fully approved.
“I don’t want to work our boys too hard, just at the present time, colonel,” said he. “The first quarter ended with the ball in the center of the field, and with everything pretty well balanced, so far as I could make out.”