Bart Hodge did not often get excited and express his feelings by ejaculations, but now he was the first speaker. Merriwell was the one who asked the question, and Bart thrust the paper he had been reading toward Frank as he said, “Look at this.”
“Where?” asked Merry.
“There!” said Bart, pointing his index-finger at the article that had excited his astonishment. “Just read that, will you!”
The matter under observation was headed, “Baseball Challenge,” and read as follows:
“It is reported that Frank Merriwell, late captain of the Yale baseball and football-team, is in the vicinity of Denver, having brought with him a picked ball-team, with which he proposes to wipe up the earth with anything and everything he can find west of the Mississippi. Such being the case, as manager of the Denver Reds, the champion independent baseball-team of the State of Colorado, I challenge Merriwell’s team to a game of ball, to be played in Denver any time within ten days, for a purse and the entire gate-receipts.
“I am confident that my team can show the collegians a few points in our great national game, and I believe that as a pitcher Merriwell has been greatly overrated. Everybody with sense knows that the story that he can throw a ball that will curve both in and out before reaching the batter is perfectly ridiculous, and, in case he has sufficient courage to accept this challenge, the Reds have the utmost confidence that they can bat him out of the box before the end of the third inning.
“It is admitted that last season he did manage an independent team that won a number of victories, defeating a Denver club, but I contend that the majority of the nines playing against him were made up of the rankest amateurs, and that not one team in the list was in the same class with the Reds. Not knowing Mr. Merriwell’s present address, I take this means of placing my challenge before him, but I sadly fear that he will not have sufficient courage to accept.
“David Morley, Mgr. Denver Reds.”
They were sitting in the lobby of the Metropole Hotel in the city of Denver, where they had met Browning, Rattleton, Gamp, and Carker that day by appointment.
The expedition that had set out to find Swiftwing had not been successful. They had found only his deserted shanty. The Indian and his wife were gone.