Ballard and Clancy were eager to go with Merriwell and have a talk with Darrel. In a few minutes all three of the chums were mounted and galloping toward Dolliver’s.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
DARREL’S RESOLVE.
On the afternoon which witnessed Merriwell’s and Clancy’s disastrous experiences near Camp Hawtrey, Ellis Darrel had been laid up nearly a week with his broken arm. He had been taken to Dolliver’s because the Ophir lads knew that the ranch offered more comforts than could possibly be had in the camp at Tinaja Wells. Dolliver, too, had telephone connection with Ophir, and but little time had been lost in getting a doctor.
Darrel was young and, at the time of his injury, in perfect physical health. A year of roughing it in the West, all the way from British Columbia to Mexico, had put a keen edge on his powers of endurance. For him, therefore, a broken arm did not cause the mischief which would have been the case in one less hardened and robust.
In three or four days he was out of bed, and sitting around Dolliver’s with his arm in a sling. Enforced idleness worried and fretted him. On the very day Frank and Owen had saved the coyote dog, Darrel had begun contemplating a return to Tinaja Wells.
The one thing in all the world which Darrel desired with a full heart was to prove his innocence in the forgery matter. He felt that he could not rest easy a moment until he had probed that forgery to the bottom and had unmasked the person who had written the name of Alvah Hawtrey on the five-hundred-dollar check.
The colonel, after considering the circumstantial evidence, had reached the conclusion that Darrel was the forger. He had therefore turned the boy from his door and would have nothing more to do with him. To wipe that blot from his name was Darrel’s one purpose in life. Merriwell had promised his help, but Darrel believed that it was his duty to do most of the work for himself.
After supper, in the evening of the day so many important events had happened at Camp Hawtrey, Darrel was sitting with the rancher in front of the house.
The cloudless Arizona sky was never more beautiful. When the sun sets in the Southwest, it drops out of sight suddenly, and night falls as swiftly as a drop curtain. One moment it is day; then, almost the next moment, the clear-cut stars are glittering overhead.