The regulars were just back from three weeks of hard practice in the camp at Tinaja Wells. This was the first game since their return to town, and the first of the preliminary matches which Merry had arranged previous to the big game with Ophir’s old and successful rival: Gold Hill.
Merriwell had been looking forward to a fortnight of fine sport, in which the regulars would distinguish themselves in battles with the scrubs and with a cowboy eleven from the Bar Z Ranch, gradually rounding themselves into a harmonious machine which Gold Hill would find invincible. Frank had fondly imagined that the team he had drilled so thoroughly and so conscientiously would go through the remaining two weeks’ of practice in a beautiful romp, piling point upon point in each preliminary skirmish, and going through its less experienced opponents with the ease and finish of veterans. But what he saw that afternoon, from the moment the ball had been put in play, had made him gasp and rub his eyes.
There was no doubt about it, that cherished team had bounced upon a reef. It had started in on the despised scrub with a sort of pitying contempt, evidently planning to exercise restraint and not make too many touchdowns or kick too many goals. And what had it found? Nothing less than a bunch of wild cats, playing to win in a perfect fury of determination, and shaking out the most unexpected tricks from a bag which no one dreamed they possessed.
Frank was more than pleased with the way the scrubs were distinguishing themselves, and more than amazed at the sorry exhibition the regulars were making. The scrubs, for the most part, had remained in town while the club team had been off in Mohave Cañon, training for battle every day and going through a course of sprouts calculated to make each and every member a finished performer.
And now, the result!
In less than five minutes from the kick-off the regulars had lost their contempt for the scrubs. They awoke to a realization that, in some mysterious fashion, the scrubs had been transformed into a little army of brawn and brain—foemen in every way worth of their mettle.
The regulars tried, in a spasm of pique after the Spartan nature of their fight dawned on their minds, to rush the scrubs off the field. But the scrubs wouldn’t be rushed. The regulars gritted their teeth and tried harder. Still nothing doing. A great disappointment took hold of Merry, and he turned to Ballard and put it in the fewest possible words.
Only Merriwell and Ballard were in the grand stand. Under the stand there were dressing rooms for visiting players, and into one of these rooms there had come by stealth a young man with sinister face and evil and greedy eyes. At a distance of ten or fifteen feet from the two lads in the stand, the interloper was peering out from between two board seats, watching the ragged performance of the regular Ophir team and listening to the gloomy remarks that passed between Merry and Ballard. A self-satisfied grin crossed the face of the keen-eyed, keen-eared youth.
That game—and Merriwell was glad in his heart that it was so—was strictly private. The general public was barred.
Had grand stand and bleachers been thrown open to spectators, emissaries from Gold Hill might have crept in to watch for vulnerable points in the work of the Ophir team. For years Gold Hill had been a winner in its games with Ophir, and was ever on the alert for advantages that would help to prevent a slip from its enviable record.