CHAPTER XI.
FRANK PREVENTS TROUBLE.
Badger's belief that Hodge had juggled the shell which exploded in the gun was not very strong when he left the grounds of the gun club, but his hatred of Hodge was not in any degree lessened thereby. Only by a supreme exercise of will-power had he been able to keep himself from rushing upon Bart when the latter made his bitter comments to Merry.
"Merriwell is all right, but Hodge isn't even a piece of a man!" he growled, as he made his way home, his thoughts in a chaotic state. "I shall have to punch his head for him. Merry wouldn't have beat me shooting if I had taken my own gun along! I reckon I was a fool for going into the thing. Hodge isn't any too good to slip that shell in on Merry! And if he didn't do it, who did? And I'd like to know what was in it? That's whatever!"
Bart's feelings against the Westerner were quite as bitter. He almost hated the ground on which Badger's shadow fell. It seemed unlikely that Frank could ever reconcile these two antagonistic characters.
Bart was sore also about the way Frank's friends were treating him. Nor was the feeling lessened by his own inner conviction that he had dealt rather shabbily with one who had been as true a friend to him as Merry had been, and that the other members of the "flock" had good grounds for looking on him with disfavor.
"I shall never crawl on my knees for the friendship and good-will of any of them!" was his thought, as he turned a corner on his way to the lighted campus, on the evening of the second day after the shooting. "And as for Badger——"
He ran violently against a man and was hurled backward. The man was Badger.
"What do you mean by that?" the Westerner demanded, for he, also, had been almost knocked from his feet, and he, too, had been feeding his hot anger with inflammatory thoughts against Bart. "You did that on purpose!"
Hodge lunged at the Kansan's face. But the blow did not fall. The fist was knocked down, and a strong grasp on his shoulder turned him half-round.