“You can’t get even with me and help Darrel by any such talk,” sneered Lenning.
“I’ll finish what I want to say to you,” continued Merriwell sharply, “and then Clancy and I will be going. If you try any more desperate games, Lenning, you’ll be caught at it, sure as fate. If anything happens, we know where to look for the cause of it, and you can’t bank on Colonel Hawtrey doing anything to save your neck. That’s about all.”
He turned away. Lenning, scowling and muttering, hurried to join his friends, who had kept at a safe distance, and the four vanished on their way down into the gulch.
“Ain’t that about the worst ever?” murmured Hotchkiss. “Jode’s pretty near right when he says he don’t care what he does. He counts on his uncle’s faith in him to pull him out o’ any trouble he gets into.”
“I wish to thunder the colonel wasn’t such a fool,” blurted out Bleeker. “Why can’t he get next to the coyote?”
“He will, some time,” declared Frank. “Where did that dynamite come from, Bleeker? Do you know?”
“Yes, I know, although pretty nearly our whole camp is in the dark about it. When Hawtrey was out here, the last time, he and Jode took a walk along the south wall of the gulch. Now, the colonel’s got a scent for mineral-bearing ground same as a hound dog has for a rabbit. He found a place where he reckoned there might be gold, and on the q. t. he sent out some hand drills, a sledge, some fuse, and a little dynamite, and told Jode to put down a hole. Jode’s been working with the drill and sledge, now and then, as he could steal away and find the time. The colonel told him to put the fuse and dynamite where it would be safe, and to leave ’em there until he—the colonel—came out with a box of caps and asked for the rest of the blasting material. Hawtrey intends to load and fire the hole himself, I reckon. It’s dangerous business, and he doesn’t want Jode, or any of the other fellows, mixed up in it. Jode got a cap somewhere, and fixed up that cartridge for the coyote dog.”
“I see,” Frank nodded.
“Jode has made a misplay,” said Hotchkiss. “If that coyote dog had been killed, I reckon he’d have been all right; but Merriwell stripped off the bomb the cur was trailin’ and I up and cut the rope. Gee, man, how that animile skedaddled!”
“How did Jode make a misplay, Hotch?” asked the puzzled Merriwell.