CHAPTER XXXVII.A MATTER OF THIRTY DOLLARS.

“Pink, this is awful!”

Young Merriwell turned a gloomy face toward his chum, Billy Ballard, who sat beside him in the grand stand. Ballard fell back with a groan.

“Awful, but true, Chip,” he answered. “After all the grinding, gruelling work of the last few weeks, the regular eleven can’t any more than hold their own against the scrubs. What’s got into the bunch?”

The scene was that part of the Ophir Athletic Club field which lay directly in front of the grand stand and contained the gridiron. Two teams were sweating and struggling with the pigskin—regulars against the second-string men. The first half was drawing to a close. There had been no scoring. The scrubs, playing like fiends, were meeting the regulars at every point and holding them in a most humiliating way.

The regulars were just back from three weeks of hard practice in the camp at Tinaja Wells. This was the first game since their return to town, and the first of the preliminary matches which Merry had arranged previous to the big game with Ophir’s old and successful rival: Gold Hill.

Merriwell had been looking forward to a fortnight of fine sport, in which the regulars would distinguish themselves in battles with the scrubs and with a cowboy eleven from the Bar Z Ranch, gradually rounding themselves into a harmonious machine which Gold Hill would find invincible. Frank had fondly imagined that the team hehad drilled so thoroughly and so conscientiously would go through the remaining two weeks’ of practice in a beautiful romp, piling point upon point in each preliminary skirmish, and going through its less experienced opponents with the ease and finish of veterans. But what he saw that afternoon, from the moment the ball had been put in play, had made him gasp and rub his eyes.

There was no doubt about it, that cherished team had bounced upon a reef. It had started in on the despised scrub with a sort of pitying contempt, evidently planning to exercise restraint and not make too many touchdowns or kick too many goals. And what had it found? Nothing less than a bunch of wild cats, playing to win in a perfect fury of determination, and shaking out the most unexpected tricks from a bag which no one dreamed they possessed.

Frank was more than pleased with the way the scrubs were distinguishing themselves, and more than amazed at the sorry exhibition the regulars were making. The scrubs, for the most part, had remained in town while the club team had been off in Mohave Cañon, training for battle every day and going through a course of sprouts calculated to make each and every member a finished performer.

And now, the result!

In less than five minutes from the kick-off the regulars had lost their contempt for the scrubs. They awoke to a realization that, in some mysterious fashion, the scrubs had been transformed into a little army of brawn and brain—foemen in every way worth of their mettle.

The regulars tried, in a spasm of pique after the Spartan nature of their fight dawned on their minds, to rush the scrubs off the field. But the scrubs wouldn’t be rushed. The regulars gritted their teeth and triedharder. Still nothing doing. A great disappointment took hold of Merry, and he turned to Ballard and put it in the fewest possible words.

Only Merriwell and Ballard were in the grand stand. Under the stand there were dressing rooms for visiting players, and into one of these rooms there had come by stealth a young man with sinister face and evil and greedy eyes. At a distance of ten or fifteen feet from the two lads in the stand, the interloper was peering out from between two board seats, watching the ragged performance of the regular Ophir team and listening to the gloomy remarks that passed between Merry and Ballard. A self-satisfied grin crossed the face of the keen-eyed, keen-eared youth.

That game—and Merriwell was glad in his heart that it was so—was strictly private. The general public was barred.

Had grand stand and bleachers been thrown open to spectators, emissaries from Gold Hill might have crept in to watch for vulnerable points in the work of the Ophir team. For years Gold Hill had been a winner in its games with Ophir, and was ever on the alert for advantages that would help to prevent a slip from its enviable record.

This prowler under the benches, chuckling over the disappointment of the Ophir coach and the ragged work of the Ophir team, was not there for any good. But for his own daring and ingenuity and unscrupulousness, he would not have been there at all.

“Thunder!” muttered Merriwell. “Why, Pink, the team isn’t playing half so well as it did in that little practice game with Gold Hill, on the mesa at Tinaja Wells!”

“It doesn’t look like the same team, Chip,” repliedBallard. “What’s got into them? Mayburn’s a joke at center, Doolittle as right tackle is all that his name implies, and Spink, at quarter, is all balled up. By George! Say, I’ll bet a peck of prunes against a celluloid collar that the scrubs score in the next half.”

“No, they won’t,” gritted Merriwell. He was on his feet, taking personal odds and ends from his trouser’s pockets and stowing them in his coat. At last he threw off the coat and dropped it where he had been sitting. “Come on, Pink,” he added, leaping over the rail and into the field, “you and I have got to get into this.”

The first half was over. Clancy, who was acting as referee, was walking up and down the side lines, telling the sweating club eleven what he thought of them. Merriwell stopped him and did a little talking on his own account. Handy, the captain, seemed utterly demoralized and in a daze. Even the scrubs seemed a bit awed by what they had accomplished.

Merriwell’s temper was struggling to get the best of him. He had tried, to the best of his ability, to make a winning team of the club eleven. But all his work seemed to have gone for nothing. With a tremendous effort he kept his feelings in check. The look on his face, however, was enough for the regulars. They knew how intense was Merriwell’s disappointment, and they realized that they were the cause of it.

“You fellows have got to get together,” said Frank, his voice low and deliberate. “You play as though it was every fellow for himself, and seem to forget what I have been pounding into you about teamwork. Every man is a cog in the machine, and all the cogs have got to work together if you don’t want the machine to go wrong. There were times, Spink,” and he turned not unkindly to the quarter,“when it seemed to me as though you had paralysis of the intellect. It’s just possible that you got rattled because Handy interfered with you. I saw that.” He faced the captain. “I guess you got excited, Handy,” he continued, “when you tried to tease the scrubs and found them giving you a handful. You know better than to mix in with the work of the quarter back, so please restrain yourself during the next half, Mayburn,” and he turned to that husky player, “I’m surprised at you. For the rest of this game Ballard will play your position and I’ll try and fill Spink’s place. It would be fine to have the scrubs score against you, wouldn’t it? Get on your toes and work together during the next half, all of you. And,” he finished, with a grim smile at the scrubs, “I want you fellows to do your best and put it over the regulars—if you can. So far, you’ve played a great game. Keep it up.”

While this talk was going forward, a hand had crept out from between the seats in the grand stand and had groped for Merriwell’s coat. Finding the garment, the fingers of the hand closed on it and withdrew it from sight. At about the time the players took they field for the second half, the coat had been returned, and the greedy, evil eyes were again studying the football field.

There was a decided improvement in the work of the club team after Merriwell and Ballard had taken the places of Spink and Mayburn. But there was no scoring on the part of the regulars, for the scrubs continued to hold them and to fight like madmen for every yard in front of their goal posts. Most of the battling was in scrub territory.

Merriwell had not retired Spink temporarily and taken his place because the quarter back had become rattled. What Merry wanted was to get into the game and study at close and active quarters the unsuspected defects ofthe Ophir team. All the plays were carefully directed for this one purpose.

When the scoreless game was finished, the regulars started grimly for the gymnasium with the second eleven skylarking around them and joshing them at every step of the way. Frank jumped into the grand stand for his coat and Ballard’s, and then joined his chums on the way to the bathrooms.

“What do you think of the performance, Chip?” queried Clancy ruefully.

“I think,” was the reply, “that we’ll have to put in several days of mighty hard work. Not only that, but I’m going to make one or two changes in the line-up. I——”

He suddenly came to a dead stop. He had been groping in the pockets of his coat for the personal property he had left in them. A blank look overspread his face.

“What’s to pay, old man?” queried Ballard.

“I’ve lost what money I had, somewhere,” was the answer. “Probably it dropped out of my coat, back there in the grand stand.”

“How much?” asked Clancy.

“A matter of thirty dollars, Clan; twenty-five in bills and some change.”

Clancy whistled, and Ballard looked ominous.

“I don’t see how it could have dropped out,” said Ballard. “You’re not usually so careless as all that, Chip.”

“Itmusthave dropped out,” was the reply; “what else could have happened?”

“Let’s go back and see,” said Clancy.

The three lads returned to the grand stand and made a thorough search. The money was not in evidence.

“Maybe it fell through between the seats, Chip,” Ballard suggested. “Let’s go into the dressing rooms under the place where you left your coat.”

There were no locks on the dressing-room doors, and the lads made a thorough investigation but without finding any trace of the missing money. A look of suspicion crossed Clancy’s freckled face.

“A matter of thirty dollars,” said he, “can’t get up and walk off all by itself. While the game was on, Chip, somebody sneaked into the grand stand and went through your pockets.”

“Why didn’t the fellow go through mine as well as Chip’s?” queried Ballard. “I didn’t have any money in my pockets, but——”

“That’s the reason,” said Clancy.

“Keep it quiet,” frowned Merriwell. “I don’t want the Ophir fellows to think for a moment that we suspect any one. We’ll know some time, I guess, whether the money was lost or stolen, and just now we’ll think it’s lost, and keep mum. Come on to the gym.”

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