BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN

MERRIWELL SERIES

Stories of Frank and Dick Merriwell

PRICE FIFTEEN CENTS

Fascinating Stories of Athletics

A half million enthusiastic followers of the Merriwell brothers will attest the unfailing interest and wholesomeness of these adventures of two lads of high ideals, who play fair with themselves, as well as with the rest of the world.

These stories are rich in fun and thrills in all branches of sports and athletics. They are extremely high in moral tone, and cannot fail to be of immense benefit to every boy who reads them.

They have the splendid quality of firing a boy’s ambition to become a good athlete, in order that he may develop into a strong, vigorous right-thinking man.

ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT

1—Frank Merriwell’s School Days By Burt L. Standish

2—Frank Merriwell’s Chums By Burt L. Standish

3—Frank Merriwell’s Foes By Burt L. Standish

4—Frank Merriwell’s Trip West By Burt L. Standish

5—Frank Merriwell Down South By Burt L. Standish

6—Frank Merriwell’s Bravery By Burt L. Standish

7—Frank Merriwell’s Hunting Tour By Burt L. Standish

8—Frank Merriwell in Europe By Burt L. Standish

9—Frank Merriwell at Yale By Burt L. Standish

10—Frank Merriwell’s Sports Afield By Burt L. Standish

11—Frank Merriwell’s Races By Burt L. Standish

12—Frank Merriwell’s Party By Burt L. Standish

13—Frank Merriwell’s Bicycle Tour By Burt L. Standish

14—Frank Merriwell’s Courage By Burt L. Standish

15—Frank Merriwell’s Daring By Burt L. Standish

16—Frank Merriwell’s Alarm By Burt L. Standish

17—Frank Merriwell’s Athletes By Burt L. Standish

18—Frank Merriwell’s Skill By Burt L. Standish

19—Frank Merriwell’s Champions By Burt L. Standish

20—Frank Merriwell’s Return to Yale By Burt L. Standish

21—Frank Merriwell’s Secret By Burt L. Standish

22—Frank Merriwell’s Danger By Burt L. Standish

23—Frank Merriwell’s Loyalty By Burt L. Standish

24—Frank Merriwell in Camp By Burt L. Standish

25—Frank Merriwell’s Vacation By Burt L. Standish

26—Frank Merriwell’s Cruise By Burt L. Standish

27—Frank Merriwell’s Chase By Burt L. Standish

28—Frank Merriwell in Maine By Burt L. Standish

29—Frank Merriwell’s Struggle By Burt L. Standish

30—Frank Merriwell’s First Job By Burt L. Standish

31—Frank Merriwell’s Opportunity By Burt L. Standish

32—Frank Merriwell’s Hard Luck By Burt L. Standish

33—Frank Merriwell’s Protégé By Burt L. Standish

34—Frank Merriwell on the Road By Burt L. Standish

35—Frank Merriwell’s Own Company By Burt L. Standish

36—Frank Merriwell’s Fame By Burt L. Standish

37—Frank Merriwell’s College Chums By Burt L. Standish

38—Frank Merriwell’s Problem By Burt L. Standish

39—Frank Merriwell’s Fortune By Burt L. Standish

40—Frank Merriwell’s New Comedian By Burt L. Standish

41—Frank Merriwell’s Prosperity By Burt L. Standish

42—Frank Merriwell’s Stage Hit By Burt L. Standish

43—Frank Merriwell’s Great Scheme By Burt L. Standish

44—Frank Merriwell in England By Burt L. Standish

45—Frank Merriwell on the Boulevards By Burt L. Standish

46—Frank Merriwell’s Duel By Burt L. Standish

47—Frank Merriwell’s Double Shot By Burt L. Standish

48—Frank Merriwell’s Baseball Victories By Burt L. Standish

49—Frank Merriwell’s Confidence By Burt L. Standish

50—Frank Merriwell’s Auto By Burt L. Standish

51—Frank Merriwell’s Fun By Burt L. Standish

52—Frank Merriwell’s Generosity By Burt L. Standish

In order that there may be no confusion, we desire to say that the books listed below will be issued during the respective months in New York City and vicinity. They may not reach the readers at a distance promptly, on account of delays in transportation.

To Be Published in January, 1923.

53—Frank Merriwell’s Tricks By Burt L. Standish

54—Frank Merriwell’s Temptation By Burt L. Standish

To Be Published in February, 1923.

55—Frank Merriwell on Top By Burt L. Standish

56—Frank Merriwell’s Luck By Burt L. Standish

To Be Published in March, 1923.

57—Frank Merriwell’s Mascot By Burt L. Standish

58—Frank Merriwell’s Reward By Burt L. Standish

Frank Merriwell’s Setback;

OR,

TRUE PLUCK WELCOMES DEFEAT

BY

BURT L. STANDISH

Author of the famous Merriwell Stories.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

PUBLISHERS

79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1900-1901

By STREET & SMITH

————

Frank Merriwell’s Setback

(Printed in the United States of America)

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign

languages, including the Scandinavian.

FRANK MERRIWELL’S SETBACK.

CHAPTER I.
THE GIANT OF THE WHEEL.

In its various forms it was an old trick, and it ought not to have worked on Starbright, who had come from the famous preparatory college at Andover. But by some chance, Dick had never heard of it, and the sophomores, discovering this, prepared to “work” him with it.

It was a principle with the lordly sophomores to annoy freshmen, and the towering young giant, who had already made himself so famous at Yale, suffered as much at their hands as less noted mortals.

There is a streak in human nature which causes those who have been “through the mill” to want to put others through. This spirit accounts for “hazing,” in all its forms.

Jack Ready started it by offering to bet Dick Starbright ten dollars that he could not ride a bicycle from New Haven to Guilford and back, a round-trip of thirty-two miles, in three hours. Starbright snapped him up quicker than a wink, for though there were many things he could do better than bicycling, Dick knew that he could do this, and the trip to Guilford, along the pleasant shores for a great part of the way, was an attractive one.

The bet was made one Wednesday evening, and Dick was to do the riding the next Saturday afternoon. Starbright told his friend Dashleigh about it.

“Of course you can do it!” Bert declared.

“Dead easy! Why, I could do that trip in two hours, even if the roads are sandy. But three! I don’t know what Ready is thinking about. He must fancy that I can’t ride a wheel. Perhaps it is because I started in to take part in the relay race and Merriwell pulled me out of it and put me at other work. But that was only because you are a faster rider than I am, and my size and strength made me a promising candidate for the shot-putting and hammer-throwing.”

“And you did your part well, old man. You covered yourself with glory!”

“And I’ll show these duffers that I can ride a wheel. I’ll see how quickly I can do the trip, and I’ll make their eyes bulge out when they see me back.”

Dick did not get an opportunity to see Merriwell, but he told Browning; and Browning, who had been “let in on the ground floor,” assured Dick that he could make it “dead easy,” and that Jack Ready was a fool for offering such a bet.

“It will be a good way to open up Merriwell’s entertainments,” said Ralph Bingham, when Starbright chanced to speak to him about it. “I’d do it, if I were you.”

Bingham was a sophomore, but Dick did not think of that.

Carker, alone of the sophomores, objected, urging that he disliked to see so good a fellow as Starbright toyed with in that way.

“Well, you aren’t going to chip into the thing and spoil the fun, just because it doesn’t suit you, are you?” demanded Bingham. “We sophomores must hang together. Ready is an especial friend of yours, and he is managing the thing. Don’t you think it would be rather a scaly trick to give the snap away?”

“If Merriwell should hear of it?”

“He’ll not hear of it. He has his hands full of other matters just now. And he wouldn’t interfere, anyway, for he’s no milk-and-water kid. He had to go through the mill when he was a freshman, just as we did, and it did him good. I like Starbright. He’s a fine fellow. But he’s a freshman, and he’s in great danger of coming to think that he is ‘it’! He has boomed right up, and he’ll be wearing frills of great importance round the gray matter of his thinking machine the very first thing we know. Already he believes that he’s better than any sophomore that ever trod the campus or sat on the fence. This thing won’t hurt him. It will do him good, and tend to make a man of him.”

This sort of logic, directed to a fellow classman, was irresistible.

Ready was not at all sure that Merriwell would interfere; but, fearing that he might, for Dick was recognized as his protégé, he contrived to keep the two apart most of the time, managing to be with one or the other whenever they met, and to so skilfully direct the conversation that no opportunity presented for a discussion of Dick’s proposed ride. As for the other students of all classes, they shut up mum on the subject whenever Frank came to their midst.

There was a lowering gray sky and a hint of a change in the weather on that Saturday afternoon when Dick wheeled up in front of the New Haven House for his start. He rode a very high frame to accommodate his great height. It was a heavy roadster, not adapted to racing, but Dick had been able to crack it up for good speed on more than one occasion.

As for his attire, Dick was comfortably clothed in a woolen bicycle-suit somewhat the worse for wear, and wore a visored cap. Like most Yale men, the cut and quality of his clothing were of secondary consideration, his only demand being that it would suit his needs and be comfortable.

Jack Ready was there, to lead the cheer with which Dick’s departure was greeted, swinging his cap and yelling, after a preliminary offer to double his bet, which offer Dick would not accept. He was sure he would win Ready’s money, and for that reason he did not want the bet raised.

Dashleigh was there, too, and other freshmen. There were some juniors and seniors, also. But the larger number gathered in front of the hotel were sophomores.

Starbright liked a bicycle, though he was too large and heavy to become a crack rider. He was a good wheelman, though, and he swung away with cheerfulness through the level streets of the college city and out toward the road that leads close along the shore of the Sound, following as closely as he could the railway line.

He found the wind heavy as he began to wheel over the Sound route. The breeze was off the water and he was forced to bore into it quarteringly, which, with the character of the road, made the wheeling rather too heavy for pure pleasure.

Nevertheless, Starbright “hit it up” at a good gait, bending forward over the handle-bars and thrusting his visored cap into the wind like the sharp prow of a racing yacht.

Now and then a farmer stared curiously at him as he slipped by. This grew so frequent as he neared the first of the half-abandoned summer resorts of that part of the Sound that he dismounted from his wheel, feeling that something in his personal appearance caused these men of the hoe to inspect him in that way.

Having looked his wheel over and found it all right, Dick took off his coat and inspected that. There was no legend pinned or chalked on its back, and nothing about him which could draw so much attention.

“The fellows act as if they had never seen a bicycle!” he grumbled, as he replaced his coat and remounted for the continuance of his journey. Yet that this could not be so seemed to be proved by the proximity of the summer-resort hotels, which poured out scores of wheelmen for these roads every season, to make no mention of the bicyclists of New Haven.

On reaching the first of the summer resorts, Dick was surprised still further to find a number of men and women, chiefly composed of the class who get their living in the winter from the waters of the Sound or by taking care of the abandoned caravansaries, standing grouped on a corner as if awaiting his coming, and staring at him with undisguised curiosity as he wheeled by.

“Don’t think much o’ yer wheel!” one of them shouted. Then added: “No; I don’t think I’ll buy one of ’em next summer!”

Stopping by a spring for a drink, he leaned the wheel against a fence, and a country youth came forward to look it over. Dick would have thought nothing of this if the young fellow had not asked him if he thought he received enough pay for that kind of work.

“Not doing it for pay,” said Dick.

“Y’ain’t racin’ ag’in time, then?” was the bland question.

“Not exactly.”

“Can’t say that I want to buy the wheel!”

“I haven’t any notion of selling it.”

Then the countryman stared at him.

“You ain’t Jimmy Michael?”

“Jimmy Michael, the famous bicyclist? No. What made you think so?”

“And ain’t you advertisin’ a new kind of wheel that’s a world corker?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

The country lad flushed and moved away with explanation.

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” Starbright thought. “Jimmy Michael? Nobody could mistake me for Jimmy Michael!”

Still the farmers stared at him as he wheeled by. Sometimes, when they beheld him coming, they came close down to the road, often the whole family, and stared after him as he passed on.

Once a young woman waved a handkerchief roguishly at him from a kitchen window. Dick began to feel red and uncomfortable; and then, at the next village, he was asked by a member of the mob that was apparently gathered to see him, what the make of his wheel was, and if it was to be sold cheaper than other makes of good wheels, he inquired why the question was asked.

For answer the man pointed to a large placard on a wall:

“Richard Starbright, the world-famous giant of the wheel, will this afternoon make a race against time from New Haven to Guilford and return for the purpose of advertising our new make of record-beater roadsters. Starbright has beaten the record of Jimmy Michael, and our wheels beat the world. He has circled the globe in the interest of our wheels. Wait for him! You cannot afford to miss seeing him!”

“You look a good deal like a Yale guy, but yer size made us think mebbe you was the man,” the citizen explained.

“Yes, I am the man!” said Dick hotly flushing. “I’m a guy all right, too!”

“What’s the make o’ the wheel?” another queried, walking round as if to inspect its fine points. “Looks like you’ve rid it a lot. I should think they’d have sent you out on a shinin’ new one?”

“What countries have you ridden through?” queried a vinegary woman in spectacles. “I do hope you’ve been through Tibet. But if you have, the natives did’t treat ye as bad as they do some folks. I’ve got some real good buttermilk, and if you’d like to drop into my house a minute to rest and tell me about Tibet I’d take it kindly. I’m so interested readin’ ’bout Tibet that I can’t hardly sleep o’ night sometimes. It’s the first house on the corner as you go down—a little white house with green winder-blinds.”

Starbright was in a profuse perspiration.

“Thank you!” he said. “You’re very kind. But I must really hurry on. I’ve stopped too long now.”

Then, feeling that the only way to get away from these people was to mount his wheel, he hopped on it and fled through the village, giving a glance at the little white house with the green blinds as he swept by, and thinking that perhaps the proper thing would have been to stop there and talk Tibet to the inquisitive, spectacled lady and sip her buttermilk while he thought out some plan for outwitting his tormentors.

“This is Ready’s work!” he panted, as he wheeled down the road. “I’ll have to murder that fellow! I see there is no help for it! I shall have to take him between my two thumbs and squash his life out as I would any common bug!”

He tried to smile when the village was behind him.

“It’s a good joke, anyway, and it’s on your Uncle Richard! Of course, the whole college knows of it now, and New Haven will know it before night. Heavens! If it should get into the newspapers!”

Dick wheeled on so fast, hardly knowing now that he was speeding, that he found himself approaching the next little village almost before he thought it possible. He saw the inevitable crowd gathered on the principal corner of the street, through which he must pass unless he elected to make a wide détour and avoid the village altogether. Some boys raised a cheer as he drew near, swinging their hats with an urchin’s delight.

“I’ll not stop!” Dick grunted, shrinking from the thought of again encountering some one who would ask him about his world-wide travels. “They’ll want to know if I’ve been in China, likely, and if I’ve fought the Boxers, and how many I’ve killed!”

So he put on extra speed, lowered his visored cap, bent over the handle-bars, and went through the street like a streak of lightning. The boys yelled and whooped, and he could not help hearing one citizen remark that “Jimmy Michael ain’t in it with that feller!”

“Here comes the bikeist!” a boy was shouting to another group at the lower corner. “Come quick, Sammy, ’er ye’ll be too late!”

“Geewhiskers! ain’t he a snorter?” another boy yelled.

The group broke into a wild cheer as Dick swept past, pedaling as if he were racing for life. When he had escaped from these innocent tormentors, he began to think over the situation and to ask himself if he should go on to Guilford or stop where he was and retrace his way to New Haven by another route. To do that would be to lose his bet. Not that he cared so much for the money or for the mere winning, but that would give Ready and the sophomores a perhaps coveted opportunity to guy him for cowardice.

No, he was in it, and there seemed to be no way out but to make the ride according to plans and schedule and win out, so far as that part was concerned. So he rode on, wondering if there were no means by which he could yet defeat the sophomores.

“Yes, this is the beginning of Frank Merriwell’s entertainments!” he rather grimly thought. “I didn’t know that I would be chosen to open the show in this way, though! Merry doesn’t know anything about it, I’m sure.”

Merriwell was planning some festivities of an athletic character with which he and his friends and other students were to celebrate the many victories won by Yale that season. The college had been wonderfully fortunate and triumphant on the gridiron, not having lost a single game during the entire season. Never had a Yale team equaled the performance of the football eleven of that year under the leadership of the redoubtable senior. And not only in football, but in many other ways had Yale won honor with the victorious teams Merriwell had trained and led.

There was a grim humor in Starbright which made him appreciate the situation in which he found himself, even though he was the victim. At first he had paid no heed to anything placarded on the walls, but now, looking out for those glaring signs, he soon found one stuck against the side of a barn. It was on the side of the barn that was invisible to him as he came toward it.

So this had been Ready’s plan! These glittering advertisements of the performance of the “Giant of the Wheel,” produced, no doubt, by some New Haven printing press, had been skilfully plastered up along the roadside and in the villages in such a way that the wheelman approaching them could not see them. And the chances were small that he would look back and discover them after he had whirled by. This accounted for the fact that Dick had not for a time observed the notices which drew out the curious villagers and farmers.

In the next village, which was also of the summer-hotel variety, though there was a substantial element of people who resided there the year round, a larger crowd than ever stood in the street to await his coming.

The crowd broke into a cheer as he came in sight and wheeled up to the corner. He had resolved to ask some questions.

“When were these placards stuck up?” he inquired.

“Yisterday. Say, mister, when’s yer book comin’ out?”

“What book?”

“Why, the feller that come along yisterday stickin’ up the bills said that you was about to put out a book tellin’ about yer wonderful adventures with the Toltecs while you was coastin’ down one of them old Peruvian roads in South Ameriky.”

“What sort of looking fellow was he?”

“Well, about so high and so wide. He was a sort of stocky chap with bright eyes and red cheeks. Come to think of it, when he got off his wheel to stick up the sign, I noticed that he toed in with one foot.”

“That was Jack Ready.”

“Was it? I didn’t know! I believe he did say somethin’ ’bout bein’ always Ready.”

“Aw! that feller’s a Yale man!” a boy was heard to sneer. “He ain’t never been in South Ameriky ner nothin’. I know them fellers soon’s I see ’em.”

“Be you a Yale man?” an old man growled, not relishing the idea of being drawn out and fooled in that way by a mere college student. He had walked nearly a mile to see the “Giant of the Wheel” go by, and he wanted his money’s worth.

Dick was saved from answering this disconcerting question by a young man with a pale face and large nose, who crowded forward to inspect the wheel, saying that he intended to purchase a bicycle the coming season.

“I thought, mebbe, when I heard that feller talkin’ yesterday, that it was one of them headless wheels made in Indianapolis. D’y’ever see one of ’em? You sort of set in the handle-bars as if they was the arms of a rockin’chair. I didn’t know but I’d like to have one of ’em. I’m sure the feller said somethin’ ’bout headless!”

Dick thought it quite likely that the irrepressible Ready had referred to the rider of the wheel as “headless,” or something of like character, indicating that he was “easy.”

“Well, perhaps I am easy,” he thought, as he wheeled on, glad to be past another inquisitive village.

Branford Point, a favorite watering-place, turned out a good-sized crowd to see the “Giant of the Wheel,” but Dick concluded that he did not care to ask further questions or make the acquaintance of the curious people, so he flew through the place as rapidly as he could pedal.

He was making good time, even though the road was not of the best, in spots, and the wind blew cold from the leaden clouds in the northeast. He was warm enough, in spite of the wind, and sometimes, when he reflected too strongly on the condition in which he found himself, and of the laughing sophomores in the campus, he grew altogether too warm.

There were other groups to meet and pass, other farmers who hurried down to the road to look and wonder, other boys who whooped and yelled and told each other to “git onto de legs of de Giant,” and other things equally uncomplimentary to the bicyclist.

But Dick, having resolved to take the whole thing good-naturedly and philosophically, smiled back at them; and, whenever he dismounted, he answered the rain of questions as best he could, without revealing that he was the victim of a sophomore joke.

But when he reached Guilford, the end of his route—Guilford, celebrated as the birthplace of the poet, Fitz Greene Halleck—he met a surprise that took away his breath. In front of a conspicuous hotel was a brass band, surrounded by Yale sophomores, with Jack Ready prominent in their midst. They were waiting to give the “Giant of the Wheel” a right royal reception; and, as Dick wheeled up, almost too disconcerted to know what to do or say, the band struck into “See the Conquering Hero Comes!” and the sophomores gave a yell that shook the building and almost rattled the curbstones.

But Dick Starbright was quick-witted, and he pulled himself together, so that he was able to dismount with a smile and a bow.

“What sort of fool circus are you idiots trying to make of yourselves?” he blandly demanded, walking forward, pushing his wheel.

Ready wiggled his fingers characteristically.

“An immense one, old man, and you have been the clown of the show. We’ll take supper at your expense to-night. In the meantime, you will find refreshments in the house of this publican.”

He gave his fingers another wiggle and jerked them toward the hotel proprietor, who stood by with red face expanded in a grin.

“It’s one on me!” Starbright admitted smilingly. “But the end hasn’t come. Before Frank Merriwell’s entertainments are over you Smart Aleck sophomores will acknowledge that the freshmen know a thing or two, and are more than your masters. And we’ll not resort to deceit to win our victories or to give us a chance to ‘holler’.”

CHAPTER II
TO THE AID OF DADE MORGAN.

Jack Ready and the sophomores had rushed to Guilford by train with their band, after Starbright’s departure from New Haven, and had easily beaten him there, with plenty of time to spare. They returned by train, feeling supremely joyous over their success.

Dick, however, in accordance with the terms of the wager, was forced to wheel back to New Haven over the route he had come, again stared at and questioned by the curious people along the road.

The leaden clouds thickened and darkened, portending a northeaster; but, with the wind for a large part of the trip at his back, Dick sped swiftly along, approaching New Haven well ahead of time.

On the outskirts of the city he came upon a sight that stirred his blood. Dade Morgan, who had been out on a wheel accompanying Rosalind Thornton, found himself confronted by a rough-looking man whose brutal face was somewhat familiar to him, and who planted himself in the center of the street as if to intercept him.

Dade was not particularly afraid of the man, but rather scorned him.

“Out of the way!” Dade roughly commanded.

He rang his bell furiously. Rosalind paled.

Seeing that the man did not mean to step aside, and having no desire for an altercation with him in Rosalind’s presence, Dade veered his wheel to pass. The man leaped at him, thrust a foot out in front of the wheel, stopping it, and Dade was thrown heavily over the handle-bars.

Rosalind, who was close at his side, was also thrown to the ground, though she saved herself from injury and skilfully alighted on her feet.

When Starbright saw this he set his pedals in still swifter motion, all his chivalrous instincts aroused.

Dade scrambled up; but the man struck him a heavy blow which knocked him backward.

“Dis is me time I git even wid you fer dat insult. See!” the ruffian growled. “Ye insulted me t’other night, when ye hadn’t no call. Now I pays ye back!”

Rosalind gave a scream of fright. Starbright, swinging forward like a whirlwind, saw Dade dodge the next blow and grapple with the ruffian and saw them begin a furious fight.

Dade, who was a good, hard fighter, had been weakened by his fall, so that it was evident at a glance that he was no match for his burly adversary. He struck savagely, however, and managed to release himself from the man’s grip.

The tough now struck at him, using a big doorkey as brass knuckles, with the amiable intention of cutting open the face of the “college dude.” Morgan evaded this and landed a blow, but the fellow tripped him and kicked him heavily as he fell.

Rosalind, screaming for help, ran to one side of the road. Dade jumped to his feet again, and, managing to fasten on the tough, the two went down together.

Then the whirring wheel stopped beside the struggling couple; and, as the rough pulled loose and tried to strike Dade in the face with the heavy brass key, a blow from Starbright’s big fist sent him reeling.

“Anodder college dude!” growled the ruffian, wheeling about. “Ye’ll wish’t ye’d kep’ out o’ this!”

His hand went to his hip-pocket, but he found no weapon. Then he gathered himself and made a spring at the newcomer. As a result, he ran his face into the big fist on the end of a long, straight, stiffened left arm. At the other end of the arm were something like two hundred pounds of hard-trained muscle and over six feet of young manhood.

A feeling of jarring surprise penetrated to the evil brain. It was not often that he ran against anything quite like that. He paused a moment to stare his surprise; and Dick saw that he was a big, brawny fellow, with heavy jaw, small head and piggish, wicked eyes, the type so often found in the lowest slums of great cities, but seldom seen in New Haven.

The effect of that blow rendered the man cautious.

“Dis ain’t your cut in, young feller!” he snarled.

Then, thinking to take Dick by surprise, he struck out suddenly, with the force of a piledriver. But his maul-like fist did not connect with Dick’s face, and the force of the blow almost threw him to the ground.

Crack! Dick’s hard right fist sounded like the smack of a board striking a house. The fellow reeled, but recovered. His head was like iron.

“W’en I gits me fingers onto ye, ye’ll wilt! See!”

He dodged Dick’s next blow and rushed in with the ferocity of a bulldog. Dick stepped lightly aside; and the hard, white fist pounding the ruffian on the jaw threw him senseless to the ground.

Dade Morgan, having regained his strength somewhat, was on the point of coming to Dick’s assistance, but drew back when he saw the man senseless on the ground.

“That was handsome of you, Starbright!” he acknowledged. “I’ll try not to forget it.”

Rosalind tried to stammer her thanks, but the presence of the ruffian, even though he was insensible for the moment, made her wildly anxious to escape from the vicinity. Some people were approaching, those in the lead seeming to be of the same type as the fellow knocked out.

Before their arrival the man was stirring into consciousness, making Rosalind more than ever wildly anxious to proceed. So she and Dade remounted and wheeled away.

“Perhaps the fellow is your friend,” said Starbright, speaking to the man who arrived first. “If he is, look after him. He interfered with that young lady and her escort, and got what he deserved!”

Then he, too, rode on into the city.

Having reported his return, Dick put away his wheel, and, feeling tremendously hungry, went to a restaurant and had something to eat. It was not until long after nightfall that he went to his rooms. The sophomores had returned to New Haven by rail long before.

“Gone out nagging signs!” was the scrawl left for him on the table by Dashleigh.

Dashleigh had not heard of what had befallen his chum on the trip to Guilford, for the joke had been kept from the freshmen. The sophomores had feared Starbright would learn of it through his freshmen friends; and, besides the sophomores had other plans in store for making it interesting for the men of the lower class.

After changing his clothing, Dick went out to give instructions for the “dinner” he meant to give to Ready and other sophomores that night. When he returned he encountered Dashleigh as the latter was about to ascend to their apartments.

“What have you got tucked under your coat?” Dick asked.

“Sh!” Bert warned. “It’s a sign.”

“Nagging,” or stealing, signboards is, for some inexplicable reason, one of the standard forms of amusement for freshmen. No one can tell just where the fun comes in, unless it is found in imagining the stormy anger of the storekeepers and others when they find their signs gone.

“Had a great time!” Dashleigh panted, as he and his chum hurried up-stairs. “Never had more fun in my life. Ready was with us. Say, that fellow is a corker!”

“What time did he get back?”

“Back where?”

“New Haven.”

“I didn’t know he was out of town. Anyway, he didn’t say anything about it. We nagged a lot of signs this evening. Ready went along to put us onto the thing right, you see. I hardly thought he’d favor freshmen that way, but he was just as jolly about it; said he’d been a freshman not long ago himself, and that he hadn’t forgot it.”

“What kind of a sign did you get?” Dick asked dryly.

He had cause to fear the “friendliness” of Jack Ready for unsuspecting freshmen.

“The dandiest in the lot. It’s a new blacksmith’s sign, or a blacksmith’s new sign, and it has a picture of a horse on it that is a real work of art.”

They had arrived at their rooms, and Dashleigh carefully unbuttoned his overcoat and took from under it the sign. He stared at himself and the sign in comical amazement.

The sign had been freshly painted, and his clothing was coated with the paint. In addition, he had slapped the picture of the horse up against his dark new coat as he tucked the outer coat over it, and the impression of the horse had been transferred to the coat. Starbright could not help laughing.

“Seems to me it is literally a horse on you! That is more of Ready’s work.”

“Why——”

Dashleigh looked from the paint to the red face of his friend.

“Jack Ready?” he gasped. “Say, did Jack put up a job on me?”

“He certainly did, and he put up another on me this afternoon.”

Dashleigh daintily put down the sign, stripped off his overcoat, and sat flat down in a chair.

“Well, say, when I meet that fellow I’ll kill him! Don’t you suppose there was a mistake?”

“Biggest kind of one!”

“What?”

“When we let ourselves forget that Jack Ready is a sophomore and we are only freshmen.”

Dashleigh looked ruefully at his clothing and at the fresh red paint of the sign. Then the humor of the situation came to him, and he smiled, though the smile was somewhat ghastly.

“I’m an idiot!”

“Of course you are. We’re a pair of idiots!”

“What did he do to you?”

“Tell me about the sign first.”

“Well, you see, I’ve been wanting to go out nagging for several nights. Jack heard of it, and he told me that he could give me some pointers. So I spoke to some other fellows.”

“All freshmen?”

“Yep.”

“So I thought.”

“And Ready piloted us to-night. He showed me this beautiful sign in front of the blacksmith’s, and told me that it had been up there only a short time, and it would be a lovely one to nag.”

“It had been up there only a short time!”

“Confound him! I see it had. I thought it felt damp as I pulled it off the hooks, but we had a few drops of rain this evening, and I supposed that was the reason. Then I clapped the thing under my coat and fled hitherward. And there the thing is. And my beautifulest suit is ruined. Well, when I meet him I’ll kill him!”

“It will give a good job to some coat-cleaner. Better tackle the thing yourself, while the paint is fresh. There is some benzine over on the shelf.”

Then, while Bert Dashleigh tried to remove the paint from his clothing, Starbright told of his race to Guilford and of the advertisements and greeting given to the “Giant of the Wheel.”

“Say, we’ll have to murder that villain!” Dashleigh whispered. “I feel to-night fit for treason, stratagem, and spoil.”

Nevertheless, after laboring with the suit and benzine for an hour, he hung the sign against the wall, went out again, and, meeting Ready, greeted him with great cheerfulness.

“Thanks for the sign!” he murmured. “I’ve hung it on our wall, and intend to have it framed as a memento of our adventure.”

Ready grinned.

“That blacksmith will be tearing mad in the morning. His sign hadn’t been hanging there long.”

“Confound you! Don’t I know it hadn’t? That blacksmith never saw that sign in his life, and he never will!”

“It had a beautiful steed on it!” Ready purred.

“A sort of transfer picture! I transferred it to my coat!”

Then they adjourned to Traeger’s and buried the hatchet, after which Ready betook himself to the dinner which Starbright was giving to the sophomores.

CHAPTER III
SPORT WITH THE LASSOS.

The first of the “entertainments” was given that night in the gymnasium. It was a roping-contest between Bill Higgins, of Badger’s ranch, and Tom Bludsoe, a cowboy from the neighborhood of El Paso, who had been traveling with a “Wild West” exhibition and had somehow become stranded in New Haven. Drink may have had something to do with Bludsoe’s loss of position and his consequent poverty; but he was a fine roper, nevertheless, and in arranging to put Higgins against him for the amusement of the students, Merriwell was not at all sure that his friend from Kansas would be able to win out and cover himself with glory.

Perhaps because Merriwell had seemed in some of the class contests to side with the freshmen, Tom Bludsoe was enthusiastically backed by the sophomores, while the freshmen took Higgins for their champion.

“It chills the corpuscles of my sporting-blood to have to turn your picture to the wall to-night, Higgins,” said Ready, ambling into the gymnasium, after his “feed” at the expense of Dick Starbright; “but the sophomores have taken up Bludsoe, and I’m a soph.”

“Oh, that there is all right!” Higgins grinned, as he strung his riata across the gymnasium floor, to make sure it was in good condition. “This hyer ain’t fer blood, ye know! Jist a little fun, to please Merry and t’other fellers! I hear tell there’s another feller that’s got a picture he’d like to turn to the wall.”

“Dashleigh?”

“Picture of a hoss!” grunted Higgins, critically examining his rope and working at it with his fingers to take out an incipient kink which he fancied he had found. “I’m going to hold that agin’ you!”

“He held it against himself!”

“Yes, so I heerd. But I’m a lover of hosses, and I don’t like to have even a picture of one fooled with. That makes me willin’ to champion these pore freshmen fellers to-night, and I’ll string ropes fer ’em fer all I’m wu’th.”

Indeed, Higgins was going into the contest with “blood in his eye.” He believed that he was a better roper than the man from El Paso, even if Bludsoe had been engaged in giving public exhibitions of his roping proficiency, and he was glad of this chance. Higgins delighted in keeping himself in the public eye. Though he was a noble fellow in many respects, he was as vain as a peacock, and he “felt his oats considerably” that night, as he stretched his riata across the floor and walked round in his new cowboy clothing, with his great spurs musically clinking and jingling on his heels.

Bludsoe was a lithe, wiry man, younger than Higgins and smaller. He wore a smooth face, which was as bronzed as a copper mask. It was a sharp, hatchety face, keen and shrewd—the typical face of the cowboy of the plains, whose intense activity, combined with the dry, sap-extracting climate, tends to keep down all superfluity of flesh.

The opening feature of the contest was an attempt to pull down a tin cup hung by its handle on a nail against a post. A large roping-space had been cleared in the gymnasium by removing some muscle-strengthening machines and horizontal bars.

The room was filled to overflowing, the pushing, laughing crowd seemingly the more jolly because the night without was windy and inclement.

“Makes me think of the plains,” chirped Higgins, as, in a lull of the noise, he heard the singing of the wind round the building. “A feller that’s lived with the wind as I have sort o’ likes to hear its mournful whistle. I’ve heerd it sing that way, wrapped in my blanket, with the stars shinin’ brighter’n diamonds; and oncet I remember it had thet wail when me and some other fellers was lying in a sod house, with the Pawnees creepin’ onto us through the grass.”

It was amusing to notice how the Chickering set and all the enemies of Merriwell invariably became champions of whoever they thought was opposed to him and his friends.

When Bludsoe pulled the tin cup from the post in two throws and Higgins took three throws for the same feat, the Chickering crowd clapped their hands and stamped the floor in their glee.

“Say, I will have to go over to the freshmen side if this keeps up!” Ready moaned in Merriwell’s ear. “It plants an ache in my heart and a desire in my foot to kick somebody. Yet I seem doomed by fate to howl with the Chickering set. Don’t jot it down against me in your book of remembrance!”

The next attempt of the ropers was to catch and hold the corner of a swinging trapeze-bar, and as Higgins turned to get his rope, which he had dropped on a seat while talking with some friends, he roared with rage.

His new rope, in which he took such pride, had been split and ripped and cut in a dozen places by a keen knife. Higgins reddened under his tan as he surveyed the work of the unknown hand.

“If I kin lay my paws on the skunk ’t done that, I’ll try to see if they’s enough of the rope left to hang him with!” he exploded.

He turned slowly round, with blazing eyes, and looked over the sea of excited faces.

“Gents, is this hyer Yale? A man mean enough to be a hoss-thief wouldn’t do that on the ranges! All I asks is fer the scalawag that done it to step up to the counter and let me look at him oncet.”