As soon as the boys reached Dolliver’s, they put Darrel to bed and sent in a telephone call for the doctor. Mr. Bradlaugh was back in town, and he brought the doctor out in his automobile. While an examination was being made to see whether Darrel’s arm had suffered any from the exciting events of the afternoon, Merriwell was out at the car, going over all the details of the affair for Mr. Bradlaugh’s benefit.
Merry began at the beginning, and that means, of course, that he had to start with the coyote dog and the dynamite cartridge. When he had finished, the president of the Ophir Athletic Club was breathing a little harder than usual.
“That’s a most remarkable story, Merriwell,” said he, “and the most remarkable part of it, to my mind, is the way Hawtrey let that pesky nephew of his make a fool of him. He’d call off the football game, would he, just because Jode Lenning happened to get into a scrap with you! Wonder if he thinks that’s good sportsmanship? I wish to thunder he’d got me on the phone and told me about this himself. Say, maybe I wouldn’t have read the riot act to him.”
“The colonel has woke up, Mr. Bradlaugh,” laughed Merry, “and I’ll bet Jode’s about at the end of his string.”
“Let me know what Hawtrey says to you when he calls at the Wells this evening,” said Mr. Bradlaugh. “I think he knows a whole lot more now than he did earlier in the afternoon, but he’s a queer proposition, and you never can tell what he’s going to do. If he’s still a bit offish, I’ll make it a point to see him myself.”
“What do you think about the way we mixed things with Lenning on account of the dog?”
“If you hadn’t mixed things with him,” laughed Mr. Bradlaugh, “you’d have had a chance to mix things with me. Plain brutality to a dumb brute,” he went on, straightening his face, “is more than I’ll take from any man.”
The doctor reported that Darrel’s arm had not been injured materially by the rough usage it had had during the afternoon, but the owner of the arm was warned to stay in bed for several days and not to try any horseback exercise until given permission to do so.
Darrel was in a more cheerful frame of mind, when Frank and his chums left, than he had been in for many a long day. He had accomplished something for himself, and he knew that he would accomplish more. Best of all, he had saved the colonel.
It was late when Merriwell, Clancy, and Ballard got back to Tinaja Wells. Handy and Brad were anxiously awaiting their arrival.