Lenning whirled on Bleeker like a fury.
“Get away from here!” he flashed. “You’re a cheap skate, anyhow, and I reckon you know pretty well what I think of you!”
“I reckon I do,” returned Bleeker slowly. “We’ve hardly been on speaking terms for a week.”
“You attend to your own business,” snapped Lenning, “and I’ll take care of mine.”
“There’ll be no more fighting with Merriwell and Clancy,” asserted Bleeker firmly. “There are four of you and two of them, and if you try any more of this rough-house business, Hotch and I will jump into it ourselves and show you where you get off. You’re about as near a yellow pup, Lenning, as I know how to describe.”
This did not, in the least, tend to placate Lenning’s ugly mood.
“Why don’t you move over and join that Ophir crowd?” he taunted. “You’re stuck on El Darrel, and think he’s the whole thing. Why don’t you and Hotchkiss take your truck and emigrate to Tinaja Wells, so you can be with Darrel’s friends?”
“We’ll emigrate,” answered Hotchkiss darkly, “but it won’t be to the Wells. When we hike, by thunder, it’ll be for home. Eh, Bleek?”
“Surest thing you know,” Bleeker replied. “And when I see the colonel,” he added significantly, “I’ll have something to tell him.”
Lenning was a little startled at that; but his dismay was only temporary. He was too much enraged to consider the consequences of his own acts, or of anything else.