When the four lads reached Dolliver’s, they found Darrel anxiously awaiting news from Tinaja Wells.
“Did you get that letter, pards?” were his first words, as the four from the camp trooped into the house.
“Yes,” said Frank. “Parkman had delivered the letter to Lenning, and Lenning was in a temper when he read it. He seemed on the point of tearing the note in pieces, then changed his mind and pushed it into the front of his jacket. Brad saw him.”
“How did you get it from Lenning?”
“During the football game. I got into the play and secured the note in a scrimmage.”
“Merriwell,” said Darrel, with deep feeling, “you’re a loyal friend, if a fellow ever had one.”
“It’s something I wouldn’t have done unless it seemed best,” answered Merriwell, “and I wouldn’t have done it, Darrel, if I had thought there was the slightest doubt that it’s not what Hotchkiss said.”
“Hasn’t it anything to do with me, or—or that trouble with the colonel?”
“I don’t know what the letter contains. I have brought it to you, Darrel, and you can read it. If it hasn’t any bearing on you, I’m going to take it back to Lenning and tell him how I got it.”
Clancy and Ballard were about to cry out against such a proceeding, but there was a look in their chum’s face which assured them that he had made up his mind as to the course he should follow, and would keep to it if the circumstances warranted.
“Let’s see the letter, Chip,” said Darrel huskily.
Merriwell removed the soiled and crumpled paper from his pocket and silently handed it to Darrel. The latter’s hand trembled as he took the folded scrap and slowly opened it. His eyes widened as he read the note’s contents; and then, when he had finished, his hand dropped nervelessly at his side and he stared at Merriwell with wide eyes.
“What is it?” asked Merry. “Has it anything to do with you?”
“Yes,” was the muffled response, “and with you, too. Read it. I think you have a perfect right to do so, Chip.”
Merry took the note and read as follows:
“Lenning: I know about your cutting the rope and dropping Darrel down the cliff. There are some things I won’t stand for, and that’s one of them. If you try any dirty work during the football game, I’ll blow the whole measly business to Merriwell.Bleeker.”
“Lenning: I know about your cutting the rope and dropping Darrel down the cliff. There are some things I won’t stand for, and that’s one of them. If you try any dirty work during the football game, I’ll blow the whole measly business to Merriwell.
Bleeker.”
Merriwell gasped. There was no further doubt about that supposed accident on the cliff. It was no accident at all, but the result of a fiendish design. It seemed hardly possible that Lenning, if in his right senses, could have attempted such a villainous deed.
Without a word, Frank handed the note to Clancy, and it went from one to the other until all had read it. No one spoke. The crumpled paper came back to Darrel again, and he held it thoughtfully in his trembling fingers.
Distant voices were heard outside the house. Through a window beside his bed Darrel could look into the mouth of the cañon.
Two horsemen had ridden out of the ragged entrance of the gulch and had halted, their mounts pulled close together. One of the riders was Colonel Hawtrey and the other was Lenning.
The colonel, it was evident, was on his way back to Gold Hill after visiting the camp of the Gold Hill Athletic Club. Lenning, it was equally evident, had ridden part way with him, and was now about to face the other way and return to the camp.
Through the window, all the boys in the ranch house looked at the horsemen. The colonel was smiling and happy. On his face could be seen a look of affection for the lad at his side. Taking Jode’s hand, he pressed it warmly, then used his spurs and rode off along the trail toward home.
Jode watched him for a few moments, shouted a last farewell, waved his hat, and then vanished at a gallop between the rugged cañon walls. A mist arose in the eyes of Ellis Darrel. He began tearing the paper to pieces, using his teeth and the one hand which was still serviceable.
“What are you doing that for, Darrel?” demanded Ballard.
“It would kill my uncle if he thought both his nephews were scoundrels,” Darrel answered. “I can’t have a hand in blackening Jode’s character like this. I’ve put up with a whole lot, and I can put up with a good deal more than I have, but this fight of mine is to prove that I didn’t sign the colonel’s name to a check. See what I mean? I—I can’t kill the colonel’s faith in Jode—not in this way. Don’t say a word about this, any of you. Promise me that you won’t.”
There was something fine and noble about Darrel’s act in destroying the evidence against Jode. It was not the evidence that Darrel wanted. The temptation to ruin his half brother was not so strong as his love for the misguided old colonel, or his desire to prove his own innocence.
Merriwell stepped to the bed and clasped Darrel’s hand.
“That’s right, old man,” said he, “exactly right. Say, Darrel,” and his voice quivered,“you’re a brick!”
“Great Scott, Chip! Say, I didn’t think there was a place like that in Arizona.”
Young Merriwell and his red-headed chum, Owen Clancy, stood on the crest of the long, sloping wall of a gulch and looked downward at a scene that filled them with wonder and admiration.
The gulch was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet deep, and a quarter of a mile from rim to rim. On either side the slopes fell away in a gentle descent, sparsely covered with pine trees, and with here and there a patch of flaming poppies touching the brown of the hillsides as with fire.
In the depths was a long, silvery vista of water, placid, and cool, and deep. At the foot of the slope on whose crest the two lads were standing, was a wide strip of clean yellow sand. Here there were half a dozen white canvas tents, pitched close to the water, with camping equipment scattered in all directions.
Four or five canoes were drawn up on the beach. On a float, a few yards from shore, several lads in “Nature’s raiment” were sitting and splashing their feet in the water; others were diving from the float, their white bodies flashing outward and downward like so many darts, disappearing under the smooth surface of the river and leaving a jet of spray and a quiver of silvery ripples; and still others were swimming, far up and down the stream. All were enjoying themselves to the utmost, if their laughter, echoing and reverberating between the slopes could be taken as an indication.
“This is certainly a peach of a place for a camp,” said young Merriwell. “In some ways it has our own camp at Tinaja Wells beaten a mile. The sight of those canoes down there makes me hungry for a paddle!”
“And to think,” went on Clancy, “that this is nearly the middle of November, and that back home the snow is beginning to fly, and overcoats are trumps, and folks are hunting up their galoshes! Wow! It hardly seems possible. Down here in southern Arizona a fellow can have his out-door sports all the year ’round. So that’s Camp Hawtrey, eh? Well, it’s a bully place, if you ask me.”
“The only thing these Gold Hill fellows haven’t got is a good athletic field. I hear they’ve cleaned up a patch of desert back of the gulch, and are using that for sports and practice. But that slice of raw ground isn’t in it with our mesa, Clan.”
“You’re right there, Chip. Our camp at Tinaja Wells has certainly got it over this one so far as a field is concerned, but I wish we had a nice stretch of river like that for canoeing. Where’s Lenning? Can you see him down there in that bunch of swimmers?”
The boys above studied carefully the ones below, but failed to discover Lenning.
“He’s not there, Clan,” said Merriwell, “and I can’t see Bleeker, Hotchkiss, and several more of the Gold Hill Athletic Club whom we know tolerably well.”
“Jode Lenning, I guess, is the main squeeze of that outfit, and he’s the one we’ll have to talk with.”
“I hate to have anything to do with him,” muttered Merry,“but he’s Colonel Hawtrey’s nephew, and the colonel is the backbone of the Gold Hill club, and if our fellows and the Gold Hillers have any more friendly competitions, we’ll have to arrange with Lenning.”
“Lenning’s a skunk,” growled Clancy. “If it hadn’t been for him we know mighty well that Ellis Darrel, his own half brother, wouldn’t be laid up at Dolliver’s with a broken arm. We know, I say, that Lenning cut the rope that dropped Darrel over the cliff, and——”
“Cut it, Clan!” interrupted Merriwell. “We promised Darrel we’d keep that to ourselves.”
“Well, I’m not blowing it around, am I? The way Hawtrey snuggles up to Lenning and hands Darrel, his other nephew, all the hard knocks makes me pretty darn tired.”
“Hawtrey will be all right when he finds out that Darrel didn’t forge his name to that check more than a year ago.”
“Yes,whenhe finds it out—and that’s never. Lenning, I’ll bet a peck of dollars, was at the bottom of that forgery, and you can’t bring forward any proof against Lenning that the colonel will consider. You know that as well as I do, Chip.”
“Something will turn up, Clan,” asserted Merriwell confidently. “When a fellow gets in wrong it’s bound to come out unless he changes his ways. And Jode Lenning isn’t changing—that is, not so you can notice it. Luck is going to turn Darrel’s way—I’ve got a pretty good hunch to that effect. The old colonel will find out for himself just which of his nephews is the more reliable. Wait, that’s all.”
“I can’t see anything rosy in Darrel’s future,” growled Clancy,“so long as Jode has his big stand-in with his Uncle Alvah. But there’s no use chinning about that now. We’re over here from our camp as a games committee to fix up a schedule of sports with Gold Hill, and we’re supposed to be loaded to the gunnels with peaceable sentiments and loving regards for Ophir’s athletic rivals. Oh, slush! I’m in such an amiable mood, right this minute, that I’d like to take a crack at Lenning with my bare knuckles.”
“Lenning’s only one of that Gold Hill crowd, old man,” said Chip soothingly. “Bradlaugh, president of the Ophir club, and Hawtrey, who backs the Gold Hillers, are both tired of having the rival organizations at loggerheads. They want peace and friendship between the two camps, and I don’t blame them. We’re going to do what we can to make the rivalry more sportsmanlike, and less bitter. ‘Fair play and no favor,’ that’s our motto. When we find Lenning, Clan, just hold yourself in and don’t bite.”
“All right,” assented Clancy, although with a show of some reluctance. “Let’s go down there, find Lenning, and get the business over with.”
Before they could start down the long slope that led to the bottom of the gulch, both lads were suddenly startled by the sudden note of a firearm. The report came from a considerable distance, evidently, yet was perfectly clear and distinct.
“What’s that?” demanded Clancy, wheeling about and staring at his chum.
“Sounded like a revolver,” was the reply. “Somebody trying a hand at target practice, more than likely.”
“The sound didn’t come from below—the shooting is going on up here, somewhere. Maybe Lenning is mixed up in it.”
“We’ll mosey around and find out,” said Merry.
Another report was heard, and the two chums, laying their course by the sound, started along the top of the gulch wall. A third shot was followed by a sharp yelp, as of some animal in pain.
“Was that a dog, Chip?” queried Clancy.
“Strikes me it was,” said Merry. “This way,” he added, turning from the gulch and moving off into some low, rocky hills.
As they advanced, the boys heard voices and laughter. One of the voices they recognized as Jode Lenning’s. Presently, from behind a bit of a ridge, they looked out and discovered what was going on.
Lenning and three more of the Gold Hill crowd—fellows of about his same stamp—had tied a dog to an ironwood tree. At a distance of about fifty feet they were taking turns shooting at the poor brute—evidently seeing how close they could come without making a hit.
The dog was about as homely an animal as Merry had ever seen. His tawny hide was scarred in a dozen different places, and one eye was gone and a front leg was crooked—apparently the leg had been broken and Nature had healed it alone. There was some object tied to the dog’s tail by a section of stout twine—the lads behind the ridge could not make out exactly what the object was.
Bang!went the revolver. A flurry of dust was kicked up under the wretched brute, which almost turned a somersault at the end of the rope. Lenning and his companions laughed at the dog’s antics.
Clancy’s face went black as a thundercloud. His fists clenched and, with a muttered imprecation, he started to hurl himself around the end of the ridge. Chip caught him and held him back.
“Are you going to stand for this, Chip?” asked the red-headed fellow in a savage whisper.
“No,” said Merriwell; “we’ll interfere at the right time. Wait a minute.”
Clancy restrained himself and once more sank downbehind the rocks. Parkman, one of Lenning’s companions, had begun to speak.
“I reckon we’d better stop shooting, Jode,” said he, “or the dog will hit the cap on the stones and set off the dynamite.”
“You’re right, Park,” answered Lenning. “We’ll pass up the shooting, touch off the fuse, and set the ki-yi adrift. When the cartridge goes off,” he chuckled, “I bet there won’t be enough of that tramp dog left to wad a gun. Lamson, you light the fuse. You can cut the rope, Park, when the fuse is going. Be quick about it or the whelp will take a piece out of you.”
Clancy’s eyes were fairly burning as he leaned toward Merry and gripped his arm.
“Do you know what those skunks are up to, Chip?” he whispered. “They’ve tied a dynamite cartridge to that brute’s tail, and they’re going to light the fuse and turn the dog loose!”
“No, they’re not,” said Merriwell decisively. “That’s what they’re aiming to do, Clan, but we’ll interfere with the game. They’re a fine crowd of cannibals, I must say,” he went on scathingly. “The colonel ought to be here and see that precious nephew of his in his real colors. Hang it, Clan, I’m so worked up I can’t see straight.”
Clancy gave vent to a gruesome laugh.
“Here we come from Tinaja Wells with an olive branch,” he chuckled, “and now we’re going out to lam Jode over the head with it. Come on. Lamson is getting ready to scratch a match and light the fuse.”
“Here we go,” answered Merriwell.
With a rush the two boys got out from behind the ridge. They were nearer the cowering dog than they were to Lenning, and, the first thing Lamson knew, Merriwell had tipped him over and knocked the blazing match from his fingers. Clancy, at the same time, had grabbed Parkman by the collar and pulled him back so quickly that the open jackknife fell out of his nerveless hand.
Jode Lenning, stunned into momentary inaction by the unexpected appearance of Merriwell and Clancy, suddenly recovered himself, gave an angry yell, and started toward the newcomers at a run.