GERMANY VERSUS MEXICO.
“I say, Chip! For the love of Mike come up on the mesa! There’s
something going on up there that would give a cast-iron cat a
conniption fit.”
It was afternoon in the camp at Tinaja Wells. All the Ophir squad
of football players had been taken up Mohave Cañon by Handy, the
captain, on a hike. Only a camp guard consisting of Merriwell, Ballard,
Clancy, and their new chum, Ellis Darrel, had been left behind. Fritz
Gesundheit, the fat German cook, and Silva, the Mexican packer and camp
roustabout, had not gone up the cañon, having nothing to do with the
Ophir eleven, but they had vanished from the flat soon after a dozen
lads, in running togs, had trotted out of sight. Professor Phineas
Borrodaile, whose duties as tutor for Merry and his chums were over
for the day, had gone off somewhere on a geological excursion. Clancy
also had strolled off, but suddenly he reappeared in camp, his freckled
face red with suppressed mirth. He was scarcely able to talk, but as he
reeled around and gasped for breath he managed to make his request for
the others to go back with him to the mesa.
Merriwell, Ballard, and Darrel jumped up from the shade of the
cottonwood where they had been sitting and stared at the red-headed
chap in amazement. Clancy, unable to control himself, leaned weakly
against the trunk of the cottonwood and laughed until he choked.
“What the mischief ails you, Clan?” demanded Merry.
“Where’d you get the funny powder, anyhow?” inquired Ballard.
“Pass the joke around, pard,” urged Darrel.
With a violent effort Clancy managed to smother his hilarity.
“Carrots and Hot Tamale have got the athletic bug,” explained Clancy,
“and the stunts they’re doing on the mesa would bring tears to a pair
of glass eyes. One is trying to make a better showing than the other,
and, if I’m any prophet, they’ll get to slugging before they’re many
minutes older.”
The campers had not only given Fritz the nickname of “Carrots” but they
had also dubbed Silva the “Hot Tamale.”
“We don’t want those two fellows to get to hammering each other,”
Merriwell remarked. “Ever since Carrots took the Mexican’s place as
cook there’s been bad blood between those two.”
“What would we do for our meals,” asked Ballard anxiously, “if Hot
Tamale put Carrots in the hospital?”
“You’re always thinking of the eats,” grinned Clancy. “But never mind
that, Pink. Come on up, all of you, and see the circus. We’ll hide and
watch ’em, and if they get to using their fists, we can interfere.”
The lads started forthwith for the low bank of the mesa, just back of
the camp, hurrying along after the excited Clancy.
“Fat Fritz must have another delusion,” observed Ballard. “Yesterday
it was buried treasure, and to-day it’s athletics. But who’d ever have
thought that Silva could catch the athletic fever?”
“I thought he was too much of a mañana boy to catch anything but the
measles,” laughed Darrel. “I’ll bet a bunch of mazuma Hot Tamale is
going in for athletics just because he wants to beat out Carrots at the
same game.”
“That’s the only reason,” Merriwell answered. “One of them can’t bear
to see the other try anything without trying it himself.”
Carefully the lads crept up the slope of the mesa and, from behind a
screen of rocks, looked out on the athletic field. They took one long
look and then doubled down behind the bowlders to laugh.
Fritz and Silva had raided the camp equipment for a couple of gymnasium
suits. Probably they had not been able to choose their costumes with
discrimination, but had been obliged to annex the first outfits that
came to hand. Yet, be that as it might, each presented a picture that,
to use Ballard’s words, would have made “a horse laugh.”
The Dutch boy was too big around for his clothes and too short the
other way, while in Silva’s case the matter was exactly the reverse:
the running pants flapped distressingly about his bony shanks, while
the sleeveless shirt failed to connect with the pants by a good six
inches.
Fritz was sweating and grunting and trying to do a pole vault. The bar
was about four feet from the ground, and, from the looks of things,
seemed some three feet too high.
Silva was doing a Nautch dance in a seven-foot ring and trying to throw
a hammer. He would whirl around a dozen times or so, and then, when he
tried to let the hammer fly, was so dizzy he fell on it.
With dismal regularity Fritz would knock his shins against the bar, and
Silva would stagger and fall. Sometimes the vaulting pole would come
down and crack the Dutch boy on the head; and, as a general thing, the
Mexican would forget to let go of the hammer, and the wire would wrap
around his body and the weight would hit him in the small of the back.
These accidents, naturally, were hardly warranted to sweeten the temper
of the would-be athletes. Fritz was exploding choppy remarks, and Silva
was hissing maledictions in liquid Spanish. Finally, the inevitable
happened, and during a period of rest the two began saying things about
each other.
Fritz, sitting on the ground and more or less tangled up with the pole
and the bar, looked over at Silva. The latter had just thrown himself
to his knees, and the weight had drummed into his back with a thump
that had drawn Fritz’ attention.
“Vat you try to do mit yourselluf, you greaser lopster?” shouted the
scornful Fritz. “Dot veight iss for drowing, und not for pounding
yourselluf your ribs on. You will not make an athletic feller in a
t’ousant years.”
“_Ay de mi!_” flung back Silva, through his teeth. “You make big talk,
but you not so much. I t’row de weight before you jump de bar, dat is
cinch. _Caramba!_ You one tub, one gringo rhi-rhi-no-cer-oos! _Si_,
dat is all—rhi-rhi-no-cer-oos!” Silva pushed out a hand and pointed
an insulting finger at Fritz. “Rhi-rhi-no-cer-oos!” he repeated, in a
burst of fury and contempt.
“By shiminy grickeds,” fumed Fritz, “no greaser feller iss going to
call me someding like dot! I take it your hide oudt, py shinks!”
He floundered about on the ground until he had succeeded in getting to
his feet. Silva, scenting a resort to fisticuffs in the Dutch boy’s
move, likewise arose. The two, separated by perhaps a dozen feet, stood
glaring at each other.
“Lopster!” taunted Fritz, “greaser lopster!”
“_Gringo chingado!_” screeched Silva. “Rhi-rhi-no-cer-oos!”
Fritz picked up the bar and started toward the Mexican. Somehow, the
bar got between his fat legs and he tripped himself and again went
down. Silva, still holding the hammer, made a defensive movement with
it, and the weight swung back against one of his knees. With a howl of
pain he dropped the hammer and fell to rubbing his kneecap.
“I tell you vat I do, py shiminy Grismus!” wheezed Fritz, once more
getting erect and kicking the bar angrily to one side. “I kick you mit
der footpall. Der vone vat kicks der pall farder as der oder feller iss
der pest man, hey?”
“I keek, or I fight, or I t’row de weight, or I jump,” yelled Silva.
“What I care, huh? I beat you at ever’t’ing.”
“Talk,” returned Fritz, “iss der cheapest ding vat iss. Ve kick each
odder mit der footpall, und I send him sky-high und make you feel like
t’irty cents. Fairst I kick, den you. I peen der pest kicker vat efer
habbened. Vatch a leetle.”
Merry and his friends, behind the pile of rocks at the edge of the
mesa, had been enjoying themselves hugely. They had thought, for a few
moments, that the time had come for them to interfere and stop a fight,
and it was with a good deal of satisfaction that they saw a personal
encounter give way to a kicking match.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Merriwell, watching while Fritz stepped to
one side and picked up a football, “they’ve got our best five-dollar
pigskin. Those fellows must be given to understand that they can’t
tamper with our football equipment.”
“See this out first, Chip,” pleaded Ballard. “Don’t interfere until
the kicking match is over with. Look at Fritz, will you. From the
preparations he’s making you’d think he was going to kick the ball
clear into the middle of next week.”
Very carefully Fritz was heaping up a little pile of sand; then, still
with the same elaborate care, he stood the ball on this mound, drew
back, and swung his foot. Once, twice, the foot went back and forth;
the third time, Fritz nerved himself for a supreme attempt. One would
have thought he was making ready to kick in the side of a house.
Forward flew the foot, missed the ball altogether, and the kicker came
down on his back.
A cackle of insulting laughter came from the Mexican.
“Rhi-rhi-no-cer-oos!” he taunted. “Dat is not de way I make de keek.
Watch, and you see.”
With that Silva ran at the ball and lifted it high and far. No doubt it
was an accident, but it made Fritz green with envy.
“I can do petter as dot!” he shouted. “Vait, now, vile I haf some
shances mit it!”
Silva, however, wouldn’t wait. Fired with his initial success, he ran
after the ball and lifted it again before Fritz could come near enough
to kick. The ardor of the Mexican took him and the ball off the mesa
and southward along the high, steep wall of the cañon, below Tinaja
Wells. Fritz was in hot pursuit, and Frank and his chums came out from
behind the bowlders and hurried along after the Dutch boy in order to
see the outcome of the one-sided “match.”
Silva, the bounding ball, and Fritz were lost in the rough country
adjacent to the cañon’s brink; and when the trailers had come up with
the Dutchman and the Mexican they found the two locked in a deadly
struggle.
Silva, it seems, had kicked the ball into the cañon, and while he was
peering over the rim looking for it, fat Fritz had overhauled him and,
in his wrath, had gone for him hammer and tongs.
While Merriwell, Ballard, and Darrel were separating the combatants,
Clancy was kneeling on the rim rock and peering downward in an attempt
to locate the ball. Suddenly he got up and whirled around.
“Here’s a go!” he exclaimed. “A five-dollar ball has gone to blazes,
Chip. It’s about thirty feet down a sheer wall, on a bit of a shelf.
We’ll have to sprout wings before we ever get hold of that ball again.
You’ll have to dock Carrots’ and Hot Tamale’s wages for the price of
it.”
A howl of protest went up from Fritz and Silva.