“That’s right,” was Browning’s confession. “And there was one strip of country where they didn’t seem to have anything to eat but corn beef and cabbage. I actually ate so much corn beef and cabbage that I was ashamed to look a cow in the face.”
“Well, we’ll soon be in San Francisco, the greatest city in all this Western land,” put in Frank. “There we can get almost any kind of feed we like. Why, I know a restaurant where we’ll be able to get ‘genuine Boston baked beans.’”
“You know a place?” questioned Diamond. “You know? Look here, Frank Merriwell, what is there you don’t know about? Have you been everywhere and seen everything?”
“Not by a long distance, but I have been in San Francisco.”
“Well, it seems to me that we never mention a place that you don’t know all about. You were perfectly familiar with Carson City.”
“Yes, I had been there before, and it is a place I shall not soon forget, for it was there I last saw my old chum of Fardale, Bart Hodge.”
“You have spoken of him often of late.”
“Yes; I have been thinking of him very much. It is natural, as I am near where I saw him last. Dear old fellow! How we fought in the old days when we first met! And, after that, what firm friends we became! Hodge had his failings, but he was white at heart. He would lay down his life for a friend. His parents were wealthy, and they had indulged him in everything he desired, till he was completely spoiled and they could do nothing with him. Fardale was noted as a place where just such fellows were taken and broken into the traces, and so his father sent him there. Hodge didn’t do a thing at first—oh, no! not a thing! He raised merry thunder, and he hated me with a virulent hatred. He tried to injure me in every way he could devise, but when I pulled him out of several bad scrapes, incidentally saving his life, he began to see that he was in the wrong. He had a fierce battle to overcome his natural inclination to do dirty things, but overcome it he did, and he became fairly popular in time, although no one knew him and understood him like myself. Between us there was a perfect understanding, and I could control him when he would not listen to reason from any other person.”
“I believe you were stuck on Hodge!” said Diamond, somewhat piqued.
“No more than I am on any of my true friends,” answered Frank.