“Merriwell,” said Carson, “it strikes me that you have your baseball-team.”
“Right!” exclaimed Hodge. “Now we’ll take some of the conceit out of the Denver Reds.”
“I have not played the game since I left you last year,” said Swiftwing. “I shall be entirely out of practise.”
“We have time to get into practise some,” Merry explained. “We’ll try to do so without delay. Where is the White Dove, Swiftwing?”
“She became tired of our life, far from the friends she had known,” explained the young Indian. “It is not strange, for she has the blood of the white man in her veins. I saw she was getting restless and unhappy. At first she would not tell me why, but I discovered her secret. Then I sent her back to Badger’s ranch, where she shall stay till she wants to come to me again.”
“And you,” said Frank, smiling a little, “despite your resolve to become a hermit and mingle no more with men, I rather fancy you fell to longing for the excitement of the diamond and the tumult of the gridiron. Is it not true, John?”
“Sometimes I think of it,” the young Indian confessed. “It is like nothing else, and once a man has played the games and loved them, he may never quite forget.”
“That’s the truth,” nodded Carson.
They took the elevator and went up to Merry’s room, Frank insisting that Crowfoot should come along. Old Joe would not have accompanied them, however, had not Dick urged him to do so.
“Smoke?” questioned the wrinkled Indian, as soon as he was inside Merriwell’s handsomely furnished suite, which was one of the best in the hotel.