Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona
OR
CLEARING A RIVAL’S RECORD

CONTENTS

Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona
OR
CLEARING A RIVAL’S RECORD

By
BURT L. STANDISH

Author of the famous Merriwell Stories.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79–89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1912
By STREET & SMITH

Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

Printed in the U. S. A.

FRANK MERRIWELL, JUNIOR, IN ARIZONA.

CHAPTER I.
A SLAVE OF THE NEEDLE.

“Buck up, Shoup! What ails you, anyhow?”

“I’m all in, Len. I d-don’t believe I can take another step. You see, I—I——”

The words faded into a groan, and the tottering youth slumped to his knees, then pitched forward and sprawled out limply in the sandy trail.

There were two of them, and they had been tramping wearily through a defile known as Bitter-root Cañon. The stage trail leading from Ophir, Arizona, to Gold Hill, followed the cañon, and the two lads had been taking this trail.

The trail was white with dust, churned up by the wheels and hoofs that had passed over it. It wound interminably along the cañon’s bed, twisting back and forth through patches of greasewood and mesquite, now hugging one wall and now the other, and again skirting the edge of some brackish pool.

A stream flowed through the cañon, although no one not familiar with such mysterious streams would have guessed it. Like a good many Arizona rivers, the water flowed under the surface, appearing only here and there where bedrock forced it upward.

The lad who had yielded to exhaustion and had fallen must have been nineteen or twenty years of age. He was well dressed, although his clothes were dusty and in disorder. His hair was of a tow color, his eyes a washed-out blue, and his face was hueless—startlingly white and waxlike.

The other boy was a year or two younger than his companion, with a dark, sinister face and shifty eyes. They had walked southward from Gold Hill for many miles, and while the younger lad was an athlete and ordinarily in good physical condition, yet a few days of reckless living had sapped his endurance. He was almost as exhausted as his companion.

“Here’s a go!” muttered the younger lad, looking down grimly at the unconscious, deathlike face of his friend in the trail. “Shoup hasn’t the backbone of a jellyfish. I’ve got to do something for him, but what?”

The boy looked around him and discovered that Shoup had fallen only a few yards from the edge of a pool. The sight of water suggested the means for reviving the fainting lad, and, with considerable difficulty, the other dragged him to the pool’s edge. Wetting a handkerchief in the pool, he bathed the pallid face. In a few moments Shoup drew a deep breath and opened his eyes.

“You’re pretty near a wreck, Shoup,” said the boy called Len crossly. “How do you think we’re ever going to get to the gulch if you can’t walk four or five miles without crumpling up in the trail?”

“I was trying to save the dope,” was Shoup’s answer, in a weak voice. “I haven’t got much of it, and no money to buy any more.”

“Cut that out,” the other growled angrily. “The more of that stuff you use, the more you have to use. It’s making you ‘dippy’ as blazes; not only that, but it eats up your muscle and ruins your nerves. Why don’t you quit?”

“Can’t quit. My old man used it, and my grandfather used it. The hankering for the stuff was born in me. What’s bred in the bone, Lenning, is bound to come out in the flesh. No use fighting against the craving. Here, help me to sit up.”

Lenning put his hands under Shoup’s shoulders and lifted him to a sitting posture, twisting him about so he could lean his back against a bowlder. With fingers that trembled from weakness, Shoup pushed up his left sleeve.

The skin of his arm was white as marble, and dotted with little, black, specklike marks. Reaching into an inside pocket of his coat, Shoup drew out a small, worn morocco case.

“Bound to squirt a little more of that poison into your veins, eh?” asked Lenning disgustedly.

As he put the question, he produced a box of cigarettes, lighted one, tossed away the burned match and dropped the box into his pocket. A sneering smile crossed Shoup’s face.

“What’s the difference, Len,” he queried, “whether you inhale the poison or take it my way? It brings us both to the same place, in the end.”

“Splash! Cigarettes aren’t as bad as all that. Anyhow, when I’m in training I cut ’em out. You’re never in training and you never cut out that dope. If you can’t get it just when you want it, your strength is snuffed out like a fool candle. How long do you think you’ll last, going on as you are now, eh?”

“That’s the least of my worries,” was the placid retort.

With his shaking right hand, Shoup pressed the needle-like point of a small “hypoderm” into the flesh of his left arm. An instant his quivering finger toyed with the tiny piston, then drove it “home.” With a long sigh of relief, he sank back.

“I’ll feel like a king pretty soon,” said he, speaking with his eyes half closed. “You haven’t a notion how it gingers a fellow up. Say,” and the eyes opened wide, “why don’t you try it yourself?”

“Not on your life!” returned the other, in a sort of horror. “The sight of you, with one foot in the grave on account of that stuff, is enough for me.”

“Go on,” urged Shoup, his faded eyes brightening wonderfully. “Try for yourself and see how it puts fire into your veins, and peace and happiness into your heart. Jove! Already I’m beginning to feel as though I could run a hundred miles, and be as fresh at the end of the run as when I started.”

Lenning stared at Shoup curiously.

“That’s the way you feel, but your system is all shot to pieces and you’d drop before you’d gone half a mile,” commented Lenning.

“Don’t you want to forget your troubles, old man?” coaxed Shoup. “This is a sure cure for the blues.”

“No!” almost shouted Lenning, springing to his feet. “Try to push that thing into my face again and I’ll grab it and throw it into the water. You say you inherited an appetite for the stuff; well, I inherited a few things, myself, and I reckon they’re enough to stagger under without taking on any of your failings.”

“Maybe you’ll come to it, some time,” laughed Shoup.

He was, by now, an entirely different person from the Shoup of a few minutes before. His eyes gleamed, and while his face remained colorless and of a dead, waxen white, strength ran surging through him, and his nerves steadied. It was the influence of the drug, of course, and when that failed his condition would be more pitiful than ever. Lenning, shivering at the spectacle presented by his companion, turned moodily and looked down into the pool.

Shoup put away his morocco case. Getting up, he stepped to Lenning’s side and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m a horrible example, eh?” he breathed. “All right. You’re a good deal of an example, too. You’re a cast-off; a week ago your uncle gave you a thousand dollars and kicked you out of the house. Where’s the thousand now, Lenning? ‘Rooly’ and faro have swallowed it up.” He laughed jeeringly.

Lenning whirled on him, red with anger.

“And who helped me lose the thousand?” he cried. “It was you! You might have the grace, seems to me, to shut up about the loss of that money. We’ve neither of us got a sou; but, if we can get to the gulch beyond Dolliver’s, maybe I can borrow enough to get us out of this country for good.”

“Who’s at the gulch?”

“A few friends of mine—at least, they used to be friends. They’re members of the Gold Hill Athletic Club, and they’re camping there.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get money—not altogether,” said Shoup. “There’s something else on your mind, too. What is it, Len?”

“Tell you later,” muttered Lenning.

“Look here: The bunch of fellows at the camp in the gulch are having Merriwell over for a boating competition—canoe race, or something like that. You’ve got a grudge against Merriwell and you’d like to saw it off with him. Am I right?”

An astounded look crossed Lenning’s face. He turned his bewildered eyes on his friend.

“How the deuce did you guess that?” he inquired breathlessly.

“The dope clears the brain wonderfully, Len,” grinned Shoup. “It all came to me, just now. Sort of second sight, I reckon. Am I right?”

“Well, what if you are?”

“Nothing, but this: I’m with you. What reason have I to love Merriwell? No more than you. If we square the score, suppose we do it together.”

Lenning stared gloomily at Shoup, then turned on his heel and started off down the cañon. “Come on,” he called, “we’d better keep a-plugging.”

Shoup made after him, his step buoyant, his spirits as light as his step. He was paying for every hour of that stimulated, fictitious strength with a year of his life. But his thoughts did not—dared not—take account of the future. It was the immediate present that concerned him.

“You can’t get away from these family traits, Len,” said Shoup, as they made their way southward.

“There’s a mighty tough prospect ahead of me,” growled Lenning, “if that’s the case.”

“Well, it is the case.”

“I’m not taking your word for it. Nobody would take your word for anything, Billy. You’re a wreck of a man—just a burned-out hulk of what you ought to be. That’s the way with you slaves of the needle.”

“What are you, Jode?” gibed the other. “While you’re throwing it into me, you’d better think about yourself.”

“I’m no dope fiend,” snarled Jode Lenning. “I’ve got a will left, and when I get good and ready I can turn a leaf and be different.”

“I’ve got a picture of you ‘turning a leaf,’” laughed Shoup sarcastically. “You’ll have to show me. You’re not turning a leaf by going after Merriwell, are you?”

Lenning did not answer. Something, ahead of them in the trail, caught his attention, just then, and brought him to a dead stop.

“Thunder!” he exclaimed, “there’s a stage. Something’s gone wrong with it. Where’s the team and the driver? Wonder if they’ve had a break-down?”

CHAPTER II.
MAKING A “RAISE.”

The stage that carried passengers and luggage between the two towns of Ophir and Gold Hill was a mountain wagon with a canopy top. This wagon, minus the horses and driver, was at a rest in the trail.

A woman, dressed in black and with a gray shawl over her shoulders, was sitting on the seat immediately behind the one reserved for the driver. Back of her, in the rear of the wagon box, was a shabby little hide-covered trunk.

This woman, apparently, was the only passenger. The two lads stared in the woman’s direction and continued to wonder regarding what had happened to the stage.

“Some accident, sure,” said Shoup. “The driver must have taken the team and gone after help.”

“I reckon that’s the how of it,” returned Lenning.

“Now,” his companion went on, “if we had money, Len, we could ride in that rig as far as Ophir; and then, if we had some more money, we could hire horses in Ophir and get to the gulch in that way.”

“If we had money,” came grimly from Lenning, “we wouldn’t go to the gulch at all.”

“Wouldn’t we?” queried Shoup. “You say we’re going there to make a ‘touch,’ and won’t admit that your wish to play even with Merriwell has anything to do with it. But I know making a raise is only about half of our work at the gulch.”

“Well, let it go at that,” said the other, with a shade of annoyance. “No use standing here chinning when we ought to be moving on.”

They started forward again. As they drew nearer the stage they soon discovered what had happened.

One of the rear wheels was broken beyond repair. The wheel had struck a bowlder and had been dished. Rim and tire were lying on the ground, covered with half the spokes. The rest of the spokes were sticking in the hub.

The woman on the front seat watched the lads as they approached. They could see that she was little and old and wore spectacles. A lock of snow-white hair dropped below the brim of a hat, which was evidently homemade. Her dress was clearly her best black alpaca, and had probably been her best for many years. The old face slowly lighted up as the young men drew near.

Both boys lifted their hats when they had come close. “You’ve had an accident, ma’am?” asked Lenning.

“Well, goodness me, I should say so!” was the answer. “I’ve been sitting here for an hour, seems like, while the driver’s gone with the horses to get a new wheel, or something else to patch up the wagon, so we can get on to Ophir. Do you boys live hereabouts?”

“Gold Hill,” said Lenning briefly.

“It’s been pretty lonesome, sitting here all alone, and I don’t feel real spry, either. You see, I haven’t been long out of a hospital, and this is quite a trip for a woman, old as I am. But I like this country—always did. I’ll feel a heap better, I know, after I’ve been here a spell. Going far?”

“Ophir.”

“Dear me! Why don’t you ride when the weather’s so warm? I’ve come from up North,” she continued, without waiting for a reply, “and it’s real brisk November weather, up there. Here in southern Arizona, though, winter isn’t winter at all, is it? Years ago, when I lived in these parts, I’ve seen the thermometer at eighty, in the shade, on Christmas day. That wasn’t much like Christmas. Terrible dusty, don’t you think?”

She had an old-fashioned hand reticule on her lap, and just here she opened it to take out a handkerchief. As she drew out the little square of linen, a roll of bills, with a yellowback on the outside, came with it. She grabbed the money before it could fall, and pushed it back where it belonged. Then she dabbed at her face with the handkerchief.

Shoup drew a quick breath as he caught sight of the money. There was an evil, greedy gleam in his eyes as they continued to fix themselves on the hand reticule.

Lenning’s eyes also filled with longing at sight of the roll of bills. He compressed his lips tightly, however, and turned his head away.

“Sorry we can’t stay with you, ma’am,” said he, “and keep you company until the driver gets back, but we’re in a hurry. Good-by. Come on, Billy.”

Shoup smiled at the old lady and again lifted his hat as he followed Lenning along the trail. The old lady shook out her handkerchief at them and called a good-by in a thin, high voice.

“Confound the luck!” grumbled Lenning, after a bend in the trail had hidden the stage from sight, “I’m tired enough to drop. If we could only make a raise this side of the gulch, we could get to where we’re going a heap easier than hoofing it.”

“You’re right, we could!” agreed Shoup. “You’d go on to the camp in the gulch, would you,” he added mockingly, “if we had money?”

“Yes, I would,” was the almost savage response. “You’re fishing around to find out what I’m really up to, and now you’re getting it flat; I want to even up with Frank Merriwell. He’s raised Cain with me, and you know it. What business has he got, sticking his nose into my affairs? He’s due to get what a buttinsky ought to get—and I’m the one that is going to hand it to him. Watch my smoke!”

“Hooray!” chuckled Shoup softly.

“You can help, if you want to,” went on Lenning, fairly ablaze with his fancied wrongs now that Shoup had nagged him into starting on them, “but, by thunder, you’ve got to keep your head clear and not make a monkey out of yourself—or me.”

“I don’t think I’ll do that, Jode,” purred Shoup; “I guess you’ll be tickled to death to have some one helping you before you’re done with Merriwell. He’s a good way from being an easy proposition. Do you think you can bank on your friends in the gulch?”

“Why should they turn against me?”

“Pretty nearly all your friends have given you the cold shoulder, I notice, since your uncle pulled the pin on you.”

“I can’t believe that all of them will kick me when I’m down,” said Lenning gloomily. “I’ve done a heap for that Gold Hill crowd. I used to have plenty of money, and whenever they wanted any all they had to do was to ask me for it. A whole lot of them owe me what they’ve borrowed, too. It’s only right they should pay that back, anyhow.”

“My experience is,” said Shoup, “that a fellow will always have plenty of friends when he’s got the spondulix and can pass it out freely; but when the mazuma gives out, and the barrel can’t be tapped any more, then he can’t find a friend with a microscope.”

“Friends like that are no friends at all.”

“They’re all like that.”

“Merriwell’s friends are not, and I don’t see why I can’t have a few friends just as loyal as his.”

“Well, Len,” grinned Shoup, “you’re not Merriwell.”

“I’m as good as he is!” flared Lenning.

“Not at some things.”

“I didn’t have a dad who was the world’s champion all-round athlete, and that’s one place where he gets the best of me. It’s Merriwell’s father’s reputation that makes young Merriwell what he is. Take that from him and there’s nothing left.”

“Easy, easy! You’re shy a few chips, Jode. Young Merriwell stands on his own feet, and the biggest handicap he has is the way people expect big things of him because his father did big things. Although I hate Merriwell as much as you do, yet I’ve got a whole lot of respect for him. Now——”

Shoup came to a halt, one hand on the outside of his breast pocket. A blank look crossed his pallid face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Lenning, halting.

“My dope case is gone!” was the answer. “I must have dropped it along the trail somewhere.”

“Let it go, Billy! Now’s as good a time as ever to cut away from the dope. Buck up and use your will power. Try and be a——”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cut in the other angrily. “I’d die if I had to get along without that. Will you go back with me and help me find it?”

“I will—nit. I’m pretty nearly fagged. If you’re bound to have that stuff, go back and hunt it up yourself. I’ll wait for you here.”

A look as of satisfaction crossed Shoup’s face.

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said, and turned back and was soon out of sight behind the chaparral.

Moodily Jode Lenning found a place where he could be fairly comfortable, and sat down. Every muscle in his body was aching. A few weeks before he would not have minded a jaunt like the one he and Shoup was taking, but now it told on him fearfully.

He knew the reason. His wits were keen enough to assure him that reckless living for only a few days had sapped the strength and endurance which he had been garnering for months.

He had been foolish, worse than foolish. But that couldn’t be helped, and there was no use crying over spilt milk.

The one object he had in life, just then, was squaring accounts with Frank Merriwell. Merriwell was always in the pink of condition—he made it a point to keep himself so.

“I’m all shot to pieces,” growled Lenning, “and I’ve got to go up against this paragon who never side-steps his training and settle a big score with him. Will he be too much for me? He will, sure, unless I can get at him in some underhand way. That’s the idea!” he finished.

Then, for an hour, he tried to think of some “underhand way” in which he could make young Merriwell feel the full force of his vengeance. Lenning was unscrupulous, to a certain extent, and his association with Shoup was well calculated to make him more so; nevertheless, Lenning had some shreds of character and self-respect left, although they formed a very imperfect foundation on which to build for better things.

While Lenning was still busy with his thoughts, Billy Shoup came briskly back along the trail. Lenning started up as he drew close, and stared at the triumphant look on his waxlike face.

“I reckon you found what you were looking for,” said he.

“You can bet a blue stack I did,” was the answer. “It wasn’t the dope case, either, Len.”

“Not that?” queried the startled Len. “What was it, then?”

Shoup proudly drew from his pocket something which he held toward Lenning in the palm of his hand. It was a roll of bills with a “yellowback” on the outside.

“Made a raise,” he chuckled. “Transferred this from the old lady’s hand bag to my pocket. Ain’t I the cute boy, all right?”

CHAPTER III.
A DRUGGED CONSCIENCE.

With revulsion plainly marked in his face, Jode Lenning leaped back from the outstretched hand and the roll of bills as he would from a coiled rattlesnake.

“Squeamish, eh?” jeered Shoup, his eyes two points of light and boring into Lenning’s brain. “You’ve got a lot of cause, after the way you’ve acted, to get on your high horse with me.”

“You’re a plain thief!” gasped Lenning.

“Very plain,” sneered the other; “you’re worse, Lenning, only it’s not so plain.”

Lenning jumped at Shoup with clenched fists.

“What do you mean by that sort of talk?” he demanded chokingly.

“Don’t think you can scare me, Jode. You can’t. If you want a tussle, don’t think for a minute that you’d have the easy end of it. I know you better than anybody else does—better even than your fool of an uncle, who let you pull the wool over his eyes for so long. You’re a coward. When you saw the money in that old woman’s hand bag, you wanted it just as much as I did, only you didn’t have the nerve to take it. Well, I had the nerve; and I was so clever about it that she’ll never know it’s gone until she wants to pay a bill. Now get a grip on yourself and don’t act like a blooming idiot.”

Lenning shivered slightly. The gleaming eyes of his companion were still boring into his brain, and somehow they robbed him of all desire to resent with his fists the hard words Shoup had spoken.

“It seems to me as though, if you’re bound to steal, you could pick out some one else for a victim,” Lenning grumbled. “That poor old woman—I can see her face now, with that lock of gray hair falling down from under that rusty old hat and—and—oh, it makes me sick just to think of it!”

He turned away in gloomy protest. Shoup laughed.

“Fine!” said he. “I didn’t know, Jode, that there was so much maudlin sentiment wrapped up in you. How do you know the old lady is so poor, eh? You can’t always judge from appearances. The biggest miser I ever knew—an old curmudgeon that looked like a tramp, had more than a hundred thousand in the bank. There’s two hundred in this roll, and it will stake us until luck begins coming our way.”

The first shock of disgust had passed and Lenning began to take a little interest in his friend’s recent achievement.

“You didn’t lose that morocco case at all, eh?” he asked.

“Not at all; that was merely an excuse for me to go back to the stage and pull off my little play.”

“Suppose I had gone with you to help hunt for the case?”

“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t.”

“Well, how did you manage it?”

“Easy. The old lady was still on the front seat, and when she saw me coming she brightened up a lot. She wanted to know why I was coming back, and I told her that I had lost something in the trail and had come back to look for it. The hand bag lay on the seat beside her. I leaned over the side of the wagon, and began to talk. I called her attention to the wall of the cañon, pointing out a queer formation of the rocks, with my left hand, and, with my right, opening the bag and taking out the money. She never suspected a thing. It was about the easiest job I ever pulled off.”

The shameless steps which he had followed in committing the robbery were recited by Shoup without a shadow of feeling or regret; on the contrary, there was a boasting note in his voice, as though he had accomplished something of which he was proud.

“You’re—you’re a coyote!” muttered Lenning.

“I’m a fox, Jode,” laughed Shoup, “and a slick one, believe me. You couldn’t have turned a trick like that without bungling.”

“I’d as soon think of stealing pennies out of a blind man’s cup. That dope has killed your conscience. I don’t believe you have a heart in you—when you’re under the influence of that fiendish stuff.”

“Oh, cut that out!” grunted Shoup. “We’ve made a raise and we’re going to use the money. We need it—you know we need it. Come on. We’ll see how quick we can get into Ophir and out again. We’ll hire horses and ride to the gulch. It won’t do for us to stay long in the town.”

They started again, Lenning dragging along, moodily thoughtful. His thoughts, whatever they were, must have been far from pleasant. Shoup, abnormally keen while under the spell of the slow poison, seemed to know what his companion was thinking about.

“You’re asking yourself, Jode,” said he jestingly, “how you ever happened to fall so low as to be a friend of mine. You were pretty well down yourself before we got into each other’s company this last time. While you’re thinking what a conscienceless wretch I am, let your mind circle about yourself. What have you got to be proud of?”

“Nothing,” snarled Jode.

“That is correct. If we can pick our bone with Merriwell, we’ll both feel a whole lot better; when that’s finished, we’ll clear out of this country and make a long jump to Frisco. That’s the town! We can do big things there.”

“What sort of things?” queried Lenning suspiciously.

“Oh, something safe and profitable. I’m well acquainted, and the friends I have are the kind who’ll help a fellow when he’s down. They’ll take you in on my say-so, and, if you prove loyal to them, you’ll find that they will prove loyal to you, in fair weather or foul. We——”

Lenning cut into Shoup’s remarks with a sharp exclamation. “Duck!” he exclaimed; “get into the brush—quick!”

At this same moment, Lenning suited his action to the word and dove pell-mell into the chaparral beside the trail. Without understanding the reason for this sudden move, Shoup did likewise. The next moment, he heard a tramp of horses’ hoofs in the trail. Riders were coming, and Lenning had been crafty enough to understand that it was not well, after the robbery, for them to be seen in that part of the cañon.

Shoup chuckled. This meant, as he looked at it, that Lenning had accepted the situation and was eager to help his companion avoid the consequences.

Three horses came along at a gallop. Two of the horses had a wagon harness upon them. One of these animals was ridden by a flannel-shirted man, who was probably the stage driver. The third animal was a saddle horse, and was ridden by a young fellow with snapping black eyes and in cowboy rig. One horse in the stage team carried a wagon wheel lashed to its back.

The horses and their riders flashed by the thicket where Lenning and Shoup lay concealed, and were quickly out of sight and hearing. Lenning crawled slowly back into the trail.

“If we hadn’t been quick,” said he, as Shoup joined him, “they’d have seen us.”

“But they didn’t,” answered Shoup, “so it’s nothing to worry over. What’s the cowboy along for?”

“Give it up. The cowboy was Barzy Blunt, of the Bar Z Ranch. Ever heard of him?”

“No, but there are several cowboys I never heard of, Jode. How has this fellow Blunt ever distinguished himself?”

“Well, when Merriwell first came to Ophir, Blunt got a grouch at him. Blunt is a cowboy athlete, but never had any special training. He thought Merriwell was a conceited Easterner, and made up his mind he’d take a few falls out of him. He tried it.”

“And made a failure, eh?”

“How did you know Blunt failed?”

“Guessed it. It takes a pretty good athlete to beat Merriwell at any sort of sport. But go on.”

“As you say, Blunt failed. Time after time he tried to best Merriwell, but was always beaten out. At last they became friends. There’s an old professor with Merriwell and his pals. They found him holed away in the Picketpost Mountains, holding down a gold ‘prospect.’ Merriwell helped the professor save the ‘prospect,’ and by and by it turned out that the man who had taken Blunt to raise had a grubstake interest in the professor’s claim. The man was dead, but his widow came in for the good thing. The syndicate that has the big gold mine in Ophir, I understand, have paid, or are going to pay, fifty thousand for the mine. That will put Barzy Blunt on Easy Street, for everybody says half the purchase price will come to him when the widow is done with it.”

“Some fellows certainly have a habit of dropping into a good thing,” murmured Shoup.

“It wasn’t a habit with Blunt. He had about as hard a time getting along as any fellow you ever saw.”

“So he and Merriwell were enemies, and now they’re friends?”

“Yes.”

“Look out, Jode!” joked Shoup. “Maybe Merriwell will win you over before you have a chance to settle accounts with him.”

“No danger,” grunted Lenning. “Merriwell hasn’t any more use for me than I have for him. Merriwell wouldn’t wipe his feet on me, I reckon, and you can bet your last sou I wouldn’t give him a chance to try. He knows the sort of father I had, and that I’m headed wrong as a birthright, and will go wrong in spite of fate.”

“What a fellow inherits he can’t get away from,” declared Shoup. “Merriwell, it seems, understands that. When you know a thing’s true, what’s the use of trying to buck against it? We’re all born with a handicap of some sort in the race of life; we’ve got to win by doing the thing that comes easiest.”

This was the logic of a drugged conscience, of a fellow who was not himself at the very moment he brought up the argument. For a lad like Jode Lenning, already started on the downhill road, such a fellow was a dangerous companion.

“I don’t know whether you’ve got the right of that, or not,” said Lenning, “but I hope you haven’t. There are times when I want to turn over a leaf and be different—and never a time more than right now, since my uncle has kicked me out; but——” He hesitated.

“But you want to hand Merriwell a testimonial of your kind regards before the leaf is turned, eh?” grinned Shoup.

“I’ll show him,” snapped Lenning, “that he had no business butting into my affairs.”

“We’ll both show him, Len. I can be of more help to you than you think. We’ll get horses in Ophir and ride for the gulch. After we’re through with our work there, we’ll clear out of this part of the country and pull off some big things.”

“I wish to thunder,” said Lenning, “that I could look into the future and see just what is going to happen.”

Had he been able to do that, Jode Lenning would probably have received the surprise of his life.

CHAPTER IV.
BLUNT TAKES THE WARPATH.

Frank and his chums, Owen Clancy and Billy Ballard, sat on the front veranda of the Ophir House and saw a horseman come pounding along the road. The rider was a cowboy—that much could be seen at a glance. Cowboys were no novelty in the streets of Ophir, and this one secured attention mainly because he was pointing for the hotel.

Gracefully he dashed at the veranda steps, just as though he intended to gallop into the hotel; then, deftly whirling his horse, he came to a halt broadside on to the three lads who were watching him over the veranda rail. So suddenly did the cowboy stop, that his horse sat down and slid to a standstill in a flurry of dust.

“Whoop!” cried the admiring Clancy to the master horseman, “say, old man, you’re all to the mustard.”

“Shucks!” grinned the cowboy, “stoppin’ in a horse’s length from full gallop ain’t nothing to what old Hot Shot can do. This here little cayuse can ride up the side of a house, with me on his back, and then turn a summerset off’n the ridge pole. Fact. Which is the hombray that totes the label of Merriwell?”

“I’m the hombre,” laughed Merry.

The cowboy drew back in his saddle and peered at him through half-closed eyes.

“Is that all there is of ye?” he inquired. “From what I’ve heard, I reckoned ye was about ten feet high an’ went chuggin’ around like a steam engine. My notions was kinder hazy, more’n like. Since I was a kid, my favor-ite hero has allers been that dad o’ yourn. I allow, that pullin’ off athletic stunts comes mighty easy for you, arter the way you was brung up. Here’s a paper talk I was asked to kerry in an’ pass over to ye.”

The cowboy jerked a letter from the breast of his shirt, flipped it toward Merriwell, then rattled his spurs and bore on with a husky “Adios!” Frank had caught the missive deftly, and he now sat staring glumly after the disappearing rider.

“Come out of it, Chip,” said Ballard. “Just open that paper talk and let’s hear what it says.”

“That cowboy thinks athletics come easy for me because dad made such a record,” muttered Frank. “I wish to thunder people would understand that such things can’t be handed down in a fellow’s family, like silver spoons, and the grandfather’s clock, and the old homestead.”

“Don’t fret about anything that cowboy said,” returned Clancy. “He also had a notion that you were ten feet high, and went snorting around like a locomotive. His ideas don’t seem to be reliable, anyhow. What’s in the letter, Chip?”

Frank tore open the envelope and drew out the inclosed sheet. His face brightened as he read the letter.

“Here’s news, fellows,” said he; “listen.” And he read aloud:

“‘I’ll bet something handsome you’ll be surprised when you get this and find out some of us Gold Hill fellows are back at the old camp in the gulch. We’re here for a week, and we want you and Reddy, and Pink to come out and see us to-morrow. Hotch and I challenge you for a canoe race, or a swimming match, or any other old thing that’s in the line of sport and excitement. We hear that you’re soon to leave Arizona, and we can’t let you go without having a visit with you. Of course, we don’t expect to beat you at anything—you were born with the athletic virus in your veins and all sports are second nature to you—but give us a chance to do our best against you, anyway. Come on, and stay as long as you can.’

“And that,” Frank added, with the shadow of a frown crossing his face, “is signed by Bleeker, the Gold Hill chap we’re pretty well acquainted with.”

“It’s a bully letter!” Clancy declared. “What’s more, it hits me about where I live. Staying holed up in this hotel for the rest of the time we’re in Arizona doesn’t appeal to me a little bit. We’ll go, of course?”

“No studies for a couple of days, Chip!” put in Ballard, repressing his exultation. “Mrs. Boorland will reach Ophir to-day, and then she and the professor will be busy selling out their mine to the syndicate. The prof told us, you remember, that he regretted the break in our studies, but that he expected to make it up as soon as the mine is out of the way. Let’s pile in and enjoy ourselves. What?”

“Did you absorb what Bleek says about all sports being second nature to me?” fretted Merry, staring gloomily at that particular passage in the letter. “Say, I wonder if anybody gives me credit for doing anything in my own right? I’ve put in some pretty hard licks trying to make a sprinter, a pitcher, and a few other things out of myself, and yet there’s an impression around that dad’s responsible for it all. It’s a thundering big handicap, and I’m getting tired of it. I don’t care a picayune what a fellow inherits, he has to stand on his own feet, and it’s what he does himself that makes or breaks him.”

Merriwell was getting rather warm on the subject—too warm, he suddenly realized, and put the clamps on himself.

“Of course,” he went on, “I’m mighty lucky in having a father in the champion class. He has been mighty good to me, and his advice has been the biggest kind of a help, but he has only pointed the way, and it was left to me whether I made good or not. It’s the most foolish thing in the world, strikes me, to think a fellow is worthy or worthless simply because his father was one or the other. Now——”

Merriwell paused. The stage from Gold Hill, several hours late, was lumbering up the main street of Ophir. He had been watching it moodily while he talked; and then, abruptly, his moodiness vanished and he jumped to his feet.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, in pleased surprise. “As sure as shooting, fellows, there’s Barzy Blunt!”

There was no doubt about it. Barzy Blunt, on horseback, was riding along at the side of the stage; and, on a seat of the stage, was a little old lady with spectacles, and a shawl over her shoulders.

“Hello, Barzy!” Frank called, leaning out over the veranda railing and waving his hand. “Wasn’t expecting to see you. How are you, old man?”

“How’s the ranch, Barze?” shouted Clancy.

“Good old Barzy!” chirped Ballard. “You’re a wonder, all right. Whoever had a notion you’d be turning up in Ophir this afternoon?”

The stage had halted in front of the hotel, and Blunt had swung down from his saddle and rushed to the side of the vehicle. He waved a joyous greeting to the lads on the veranda, and then very carefully helped the old lady to alight. Pophagan, proprietor of the hotel, came briskly out, followed by the Chinaman who acted as porter.

“Glad to see ye, Blunt,” said Pophagan. “An’ this here is Mrs. Hilt Boorland, ain’t it? It’s been a heap o’ years since I’ve seen Mrs. Boorland. Howdy, mum? Feelin’ well, I hope? I been savin’ a good room for you. I’ll take the grip, and the chink, I reckon, can manage the trunk. Come right in whenever you’re ready. Have a break-down, Andy?” he called to the stage driver. “You’re a long time behind schedule.”

The roustabout shouldered the little, hide-bound trunk and trotted into the hotel with it. Pophagan, already up the steps, was swinging a scarred and battered satchel. Blunt, still very carefully, was helping the old lady mount to the veranda. Merry ran down and lent his assistance. Andy, settling back in his seat and picking up the reins, was sputtering about the broken wheel and the delay. He drove on, still sputtering, bound for the post office, where he was to leave the mail bags.

“Merriwell,” said Blunt, after his charge had safely reached the veranda, “this is Mrs. Boorland. Mam,” and he turned to the old lady, “this is Frank Merriwell, and Owen Clancy, and Billy Ballard. I reckon,” and he laughed softly, “that you’re not exactly strangers to each other.”

“Deary me!” exclaimed the little old lady, very much flustered. “Why, the letters Barzy wrote to me at the hospital were just full of things about you boys.” She got up and put her trembling arms about Merriwell. “You don’t mind an old woman showing her affection for you, do you? Seems like you were one of my boys, same as Barzy. You did a lot for Barzy, you and your friends, Frank Merriwell. I just wish I had the last letter he wrote me! If you could see the fine things he said about you, you’d know you’d never lack for a friend so long as Barzy’s alive.”

She turned from Frank to Owen.

“And here’s Mr. Clancy,” she went on, “and Mr. Ballard! Goodness sakes, I am just as pleased as I can be. We’d have got here a lot sooner if the wheel hadn’t broken, ’way off in the cañon. I had to wait in the stage while the driver came on to get another wheel. Well, it was lonesome, but I didn’t mind. Two young fellows came along on foot, and they kind of cheered me up, only they didn’t stay long. Now, Barzy,” and Mrs. Boorland turned supplicatingly to the cowboy, “don’t you go and think hard about those two young fellows. I don’t believe they had a thing to do with it, not a thing. I just pulled out my handkerchief, and the roll came with it—and that’s how it was lost.”

“Never mind, mam,” said Blunt, allowing a smile to chase away the hard look that had come over his face, “you’re not as strong as you might be, and I’m going to take you into the house and make you comfortable.”

“I hope I’ll see a lot of you boys while I’m here,” Mrs. Boorland said, clinging with both hands to Blunt’s arm. “I’ll be here for quite a little while, I reckon. Friends of Barzy’s are always friends of mine, and mighty good friends, too.”

She and the cowboy vanished inside the hotel.

“So that’s Mrs. Boorland!” murmured Ballard. “She’s a nice old lady and I’m glad she’s got a wad of money coming to her.”

“Same here,” spoke up Clancy. “It was a lucky thing for Blunt that, when he was a homeless kid, a woman like Mrs. Boorland took him in and made a home for him.”

“And Blunt, ever since Mr. Boorland died,” said Merry, “has been paying back the debt. While Mrs. Boorland was in the hospital, he sent about all his wages to her, and even sold his favorite riding horse to me so he could send more when he found his wages weren’t enough. Well, I don’t blame him at all. I’d do the same for an old lady like that.”

A few moments later Blunt came back to the veranda. There was an angry frown on his face as he dropped into a chair near Merriwell.

“What’s biting you, Barzy?” Frank inquired.

“A whole lot, pard,” Blunt answered. “I’ve danced the medicine and am going on the warpath. Do you know a fellow with a white face, washed-out eyes, and tow hair?”

“Well, slightly,” Merriwell answered, with a grim smile. “He was brought on from some place unknown by Jode Lenning to coach the Gold Hill football squad. But he and Jode have both got their walking papers, and where they are now is more than I know.”

“They were in the cañon this afternoon,” scowled Blunt. “Mrs. Boorland saw them there. They were on foot and walking this way, but they stopped to talk for a spell. After they left and went down the cañon, this white-faced skunk came back. He talked some more, and when he went away for good, Mrs. Boorland found that two hundred in bills was missing from her hand bag.”

“Great Scott!” muttered Clancy. “Billy Shoup is up to his old tricks.”

“He must have had his nerve with him to steal from an old woman!” exclaimed Ballard contemptuously.

“I’ll bet a row of ’dobies that Lenning was in on the deal as much as Shoup,” said Blunt darkly, “only he was too much of a coward to pull off the robbery. I’m going on the warpath and get that money back—and with interest. You hear me!”

CHAPTER V.
A SURPRISE AT THE GULCH.

“Don’t be in a rush with your suspicions, Barzy,” Merriwell advised. “Accusing a man of robbing an old lady like Mrs. Boorland is pretty serious business. From what I heard her say to you, she thinks she may have lost the money.”

“Not on your life, she doesn’t think that!” returned Blunt. “That’s her way—always trying to screen everybody. She didn’t lose the money. It was stolen from the hand bag, and Shoup and Lenning are the ones that did it. I’m going after them, and I’ll get the money and wring their necks into the bargain. I can’t remember when anything has happened that has worked me up like this.”

Blunt was a cowboy, and, as Frank knew very well, inclined to be rough and reckless whenever he thought he was dealing with guilt or injustice. If he found Shoup and Lenning and recovered the money, there was no doubt but that he would attempt to give them a lesson they’d long remember.

“When are you going to start on this warpath of yours, Blunt?” Merriwell asked.

“Right now, just as quick as I can do it. I’ve told mam that I had to go back to the ranch, but that was only to ease her mind. Instead of loping for the Bar Z I’m going to hunt the trail of Shoup and Lenning, and run it out. If I don’t they’ll be apt to have all that money spent. I know their caliber, all right. For the last week they’ve been gambling in Gold Hill, I’ve heard, getting rid of the thousand Colonel Hawtrey gave Lenning when he kicked the fellow out of his house.”

“I guess,” said Frank, “that I’ll go with you, Barzy.”

The sloe-black eyes of the cowboy softened a little, then flamed.

“No, you won’t, Chip!” he declared. “This is my business and you’ll keep out of it. I know what’s on your mind. You think there are two of them, and that they’ll be one too many for me.” He flung back his head and laughed derisively. “Why,” he finished, “they’re both cowards from the ground up. They’ll be scared to death just at the sight of me. I can handle ’em.”

“I’d like to go along, anyhow,” insisted Frank. “A little excitement wouldn’t come amiss, just now. We’re going to leave Arizona pretty soon, and we’d like to keep keyed up with something or other until we go.”

“That’s you!” grinned Blunt, “but you can’t drive such palaver down my throat. You’re afraid I’ll get into trouble, and you’re making excuses to go along, but this is a single-handed expedition, and I’m going to see it through all by my lonesome. Mam is feeling pretty chipper, and she won’t need me for a while. It isn’t that I wouldn’t be glad of your company, Chip, but I just want to nail these fellows myself, and do it good and proper. You’re a crack hand at everything—get it from your dad, of course—but Barzy Blunt is pretty good at a thing like this. Buenos!”

Merry had not another word to say. He watched Blunt run down the steps, pull the reins over his saddle-horn, and spring to the back of his horse. A moment later he had vanished in the direction of the cañon trail.

“That’s three times in one afternoon,” grumbled Merry. “And the last time it comes from Blunt, who ought to know better.”

“Chip’s hearing funny noises, Pink,” remarked Clancy to Ballard. “What do you suppose has got into him? He’s breaking out in an unexpected place.”

“Three times!” mused Ballard. “What has happened three times, Chip? Maybe I’m thick, but I can’t follow you.”

“Blunt said that I’m a crack hand at everything, which is coming it rather strong, and that I get it from my dad, of course. Everybody has suddenly begun throwing that handicap at me.”

“Not much of a handicap,” said the red-headed chap. “If my governor was the best all-round athlete in the country, I’d be tickled to death over it.”

“You’re not getting me right, Clan,” returned Merry earnestly. “I’m proud of dad, but the things he has done he did himself, and against a whole lot of discouraging circumstances at the outset. I want to make the same sort of a record, see? But how can I when everybody insists that what dad has done makes my imitation easy? If a fellow goes wrong because his father went wrong, he’s a pretty poor stick; and if he goes right just because his father went right, what credit is it to him? Anyhow, there’s nothing in that theory. If a fellow wins or loses, it’s his own doing—his own, mind you.”

Frank was nettled. It was unusual for him to show his feelings so plainly, but he was human, and there were a few things that struck pretty hard at his self-restraint.

“I’m glad you didn’t run off with Blunt,” said Ballard, after a moment, “for that would have knocked our trip to the gulch in the head. We’re going?”

“Yes,” Frank nodded. “Early in the morning we’ll ride for the gulch.”

“Hooray!” jubilated Clancy. “What you need, Chip, is a little outdoor exercise—a little of the summer ozone which we’re getting, in this part of the country, in the middle of November. Let’s make the most of it. When we leave southern Arizona, we’ll probably land somewhere in the ice and snow.”

The boys saw little of Mrs. Boorland until evening. At supper, she came down from her room and Frank introduced her to Professor Borrodaile, who was tutoring the three lads, getting his health back in the splendid climate, and incidentally waiting to claim the half of fifty thousand dollars, which he and Mrs. Boorland were to receive for the mining claim.

The more the lads saw of the little old lady the more they liked her. It was plain that she was all wrapped up in Barzy Blunt; and that, when she got through with her half of the fifty thousand, it would be passed on to Barzy. Nor would this be long, Merriwell thought, as he saw how frail and worn she was through years of misfortune.

Frank and his chums were in bed early, that night, and next morning they were up and on the road to the gulch before either Mrs. Boorland or the professor was stirring.

It was a crisp, bright morning. The air, pure and clean from the wide deserts, acted like a tonic. Ballard, in spite of himself, burst into song, and Clancy had a time of it smothering the ragtime airs that Ballard insisted on trying to sing.

The trail was wide and fine for the fifteen miles that lay between Ophir and Dolliver’s. Dolliver, the ranchman, was well known to the boys.

“What d’you reckon,” he asked of the boys, as they halted to water their mounts, “Lenning and that white-faced feller trailin’ along with him is doin’ in these parts?”

The boys were startled.

“Do you mean to say they’ve been around here, Dolliver?” Frank asked.

“That’s what,” was the reply. “They was here late yesterday arternoon, ridin’ a couple o’ hosses. The white-faced feller had a roll of bills enough to choke a dog. They’re up to somethin’ crooked, I’ll bet you.”

“Which way did they go when they left here?”

“Quién sabe?” answered Dolliver. “They jest went, an’ I didn’t see ’em when they shacked away.”

“You know Barzy Blunt?” went on Frank, casting a look at his chums that kept them silent.

“Well, I reckon. I’ve knowed Barzy ever since he was gopher-high.”

“Did you see him yesterday afternoon?”

“Nary I didn’t. He ain’t around in these parts. If he was, ye can gamble he wouldn’t pass without sayin’ how-de-do to Dolliver.”

At Dolliver’s, the boys turned from the wide trail and started into Mohave Cañon. Here the road narrowed, and angled back and forth until the mouth of the gulch was reached, and the riders turned to follow the dammed-up waters that sparkled in the late forenoon’s sun.

“I’ve a hunch,” Frank remarked, “that Blunt will get into trouble with Lenning and Shoup.”

“Chances are, Chip,” cried Clancy, “Blunt will never find them. They’re a foxy pair, and if they really stole that money, then they’ll be mighty careful to keep out of sight.”

“Maybe Shoup didn’t take the money, after all,” suggested Ballard.

“He’s a thief, Pink,” said Frank, “and I wouldn’t put it past him. The fellow’s not in his right mind for very much of the time.”

“That’s so. Do you think Lenning would stand for thieving of that sort on Shoup’s part?”

“Sure he would,” asserted Clancy. “That cub would stand for anything that didn’t call for any particular nerve on his part. He’s as crooked as Shoup; or, if he isn’t, he’ll be as crooked as Shoup before he’s been with him very long.”

“They say Lenning’s father was wild, and was killed in a brawl somewhere in Alaska,” remarked Ballard. “I suppose we couldn’t expect much better things of Lenning.”

“There you go, Pink!” exclaimed Merry. “What Lenning’s father did isn’t any excuse for Lenning.”

“Right!” laughed Ballard. “Lenning’s handicap is a bit different from yours, Chip, but I spoke before I thought.”

The walls of the gulch widened out, and as the boys rode along the border of the pent-up waters, they came presently into view of three white tents, pitched on a strip of clean, sandy beach.

Dinner was being made ready. A fire had been started, and the campers could be seen moving about, each doing his allotted part of the work.