UGLY SUSPICIONS.
Before Spink, on a battered old bugle, sounded reveille for the camp,
next morning, Merriwell and Clancy crawled out of their tent, took a
dip in the swimming pool, hurriedly dressed, and went down the cañon.
The object of their secret expedition was to recover the rope which had
given way under Darrel’s weight, the preceding afternoon. This rope,
it will be remembered, had been left tied to the stunted tree when
Merriwell descended to the cañon bed after lowering the unfortunate
Darrel.
Clancy, first to reach the trailing cable, examined the end of it and
then flung it from him disappointedly.
“Hang the luck!” he exclaimed; “this is the wrong end, Chip.”
Merriwell laughed.
“Of course, it’s the wrong end,” said he. “The end that was tied to the
paloverde is up close to the place where Darrel was hanging from the
bowlder. You see, Clan, when the rope dropped, the end that had not
been tied to the tree lay uppermost. One end was as good as another to
me, so I lashed that to my waist and carried it up to Darrel. That, of
course, was the end I made fast around Darrel’s body, and it came down
with him, leaving the end we want to examine pretty much aloft.”
“Another climb has to be made in order to get it?”
“Sure, old man, unless you can think of another way for getting it
down.”
This was more than Clancy had bargained for. He had thought that about
all he and Merry would have to do would be to walk down the cañon, cut
off the end of the rope they were interested in, then stroll back to
camp and examine the section of hemp at their leisure. But Merry, as
usual, had considered the matter more thoroughly.
“I nearly had heart failure,” said Clancy, “when you made the climb
yesterday. Pass it up, Chip. It’s just a spasm of curiosity on our
part, anyhow. It would be rank foolishness for you to risk your neck
because we’re curious as to how the rope happened to break.”
“I’ve a notion, Clan,” returned Merriwell soberly, “that this breaking
of the rope reaches deeper than we imagine.”
“How so?”
“There may be a plot back of it.”
“A plot?” The color faded from Clancy’s homely face and left the
freckles standing out in prominent blotches. “You don’t mean,” he
gasped, “that there was a plot to—to kill Darrel?”
“I haven’t said so, and just now I don’t want to go on record as
thinking of such a dastardly thing. All the same, though, I’ll have a
look at the other end of that rope if it takes a leg.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it,” said Clancy, “you can bet a ripe
persimmon I’m not going to let you hog all the dangerous work. Uncle
Clancy will do the climbing this morning, and work up an appetite for
breakfast.”
“Not much you don’t,” was Merriwell’s decided answer, as he flung off
his coat and laid hold of the rope. “Recovering the rope was my idea,
and I’m going up there, cut off what I need, and come back with it.”
“We’ll draw straws,” urged the red-headed fellow. “The fellow that gets
the short one goes up.”
“Just consider that I drew the short one,” chuckled Merry, and began to
climb.
Clancy growled as he watched his chum hand over hand his way up the
first twenty feet, then allow his legs to help his arms the rest of the
distance. It was all so easily and so cleverly done that Clancy lost
his apprehensions.
“You’re certainly all to the mustard, Chip,” he called. “Don’t linger
too long, though. I’m hungry to have a look at the upper end of that
rope myself.”
Frank, climbing to the bowlder which had caught Darrel in his fall,
wedged himself comfortably between the stunted tree and the face of the
cliff, swung his legs out over space and began an examination of the
cable.
There were two ends to it, for it had been looped around the paloverde
and had given away in the middle of the loop. What Frank discovered
he did not make known to his anxious chum at that moment. Severing a
four-foot section of the rope, he tied it about his waist, cautiously
arose to his feet on the bowlder and began climbing again.
“Where the mischief are you going now, Chip?” bellowed Clancy.
Frank was too busy to answer. Presently the lad below saw him hang to
the rocks and reach over the edge of the shelf. The next moment, the
lost football came bounding down into the cañon.
“Darn!” roared Clancy. “I should think that confounded ball has caused
trouble enough without making you take any more chances to get hold of
it. I guess it wouldn’t bankrupt the O. A. C to lose a five-dollar
pigskin.”
“We’ll need that in the game this afternoon, Clan,” shouted Merry.
Then he slid back to the bowlder, sat down on it, swung off on the
stunted tree, and came down the rope as easily as though it had been a
ladder.
“You wanted to show off,” jeered Clancy, “and I guess you made out to
do it. Now take that piece of rope from your waist and let’s look at
it.”
Silently Merriwell untied the section of rope and handed it to Clancy.
The latter took it in his hands, examined it, and looked up, startled.
“Well, what do you think?” Merriwell asked.
“It didn’t break, Chip.”
“No.”
“It was cut.”
“Yes,” nodded Merriwell. “The strands of hemp were severed with a sharp
instrument of some kind. It was a clean stroke that separated Darrel’s
lifeline from the paloverde, Clan.”
“What scoundrel——”
“Keep your shirt on, Red,” broke in Frank. “At this stage of the game
there’s no use guessing about who did it or why it was done. We can
suppose that somebody crept into the greasewood, watched Darrel as he
lowered himself, and then struck the rope with the edge of a knife,
or a hatchet. The rope would have cut easily. The loop was drawn taut
against the paloverde by Darrel’s weight, and——”
Horror had been slowly rising in Clancy’s eyes.
“What wretch,” he whispered, “what infernal villain, would have dared
to do a thing like that?”
“There you are again,” said Merriwell calmly, “trying to guess who it
was might attempt such a devilish piece of work. If you keep that up,
first thing you know you’ll be doing some one an injustice. After all,
you know, Darrel’s fall might really have been due to an accident.”
“Maybe I’m thick, but I’ll swear I can’t see how it could have been an
accident.”
“Suppose the reata, in kicking around the camp, had been accidentally
cut into near that particular end? Suppose Darrel, in tying the rope
about the paloverde, didn’t notice the weak spot?”
At first Clancy was impressed with this reasoning; then, when his wits
had a little time to work, he believed he saw the fallacy of it.
“If it had been like that, Chip,” said he, “a few strands would have
been left torn and ragged where they had broken. But that’s not the
case. Every strand shows a keen, clear cut. Your argument won’t hold
water.”
“Possibly not,” agreed Merriwell, his face hardening, “but I’d rather,
ten times over, think this was an accident rather than a deliberate
attempt on the part of some fiend to put Darrel out of the way. We may
have our suspicions, ugly suspicions, but let’s keep them to ourselves
until we get a little further light on this business. If no light ever
comes—well, we’ll throw the piece of rope away and try to forget all
about it. It’s an awful thing, Clancy, to think there was a deliberate
plan to throw Darrel down the face of that cliff. There goes the
bugle,” he added, getting into his coat. “Mum’s the word, Clan, when we
get back to camp.”
Coiling up the piece of rope, Merry thrust it under his coat, where it
could not be seen. Very thoughtfully the two lads returned to Tinaja
Wells.
Professor Phineas Borrodaile was in front of the tent, jointly occupied
by himself and Frank and his chums, carefully combing what little hair
nature had spared him. A three-cornered piece of looking-glass, hung
against the canvas-tent wall, aided him somewhat in making his toilet.
Fritz, moving toward the chuck tent with an armful of wood, sighted the
ball under Clancy’s arm. He gave a whoop of delight, and dropped the
wood.
“Py shinks,” he cried, “you got him! Vat a habbiness iss dot! Say,
Merrivell, now I can lick dot greaser feller, don’d it, mitoudt gedding
tocked der fife tollar?”
“Lay a hand on Silva,” answered Frank, glaring at Fritz and winking an
off eye at Clancy, “and you’ll lose the five, ball or no ball.”
Fritz looked grieved, and slowly picked up his wood and waddled away
with it. Clancy threw the ball into the tent and dropped down in the
shade beside Merriwell.
“Merriwell,” said the professor, a troubled look in his face, “ever
since I returned to camp yesterday afternoon I have found myself vastly
concerned over this accident to Darrel—vastly concerned. In fact, I
may say I have become obsessed with the idea that some one—I cannot
say who—may be entangled in the affair in a—er—guilty manner. Tell me,
if you please, do you consider that what happened to Darrel was an
accident?”
The professor doubled up his pocket comb like a jackknife and stowed
it away in his pocket. Then, adjusting his glasses, he peered over the
tops of them at Frank.
“How could it have been anything else, professor?”
“You are beating about the bush, Merriwell,” reproved the professor;
“you are not frank with me. Do you, sir, consider the breaking of that
rope an accident, or not?”
“Not,” spoke up Clancy.
“From the facts at hand,” replied Merriwell, “it is hard to say what
it was.”
“I speak in this manner,” went on Professor Borrodaile, “because,
shortly before the supposed accident happened, I was among the rocks to
the south of that particular part of the cañon. I heard high words from
beyond a bit of chaparral, as of two men quarreling. I had no interest
in the quarrel, if such it was, so I sought to avoid the men and
proceed with my examination of the rocks adjacent to the cañon’s brink.
And yet, I had a glimpse of the disputatious pair. One of them, I am
sure, was Jode Lenning; the other was the young man called Bleeker.”
Clancy cast a startled look at Merriwell.
“Later,” went on the professor, “much later, Lenning and Bleeker
appeared in this camp and spoke to Handy. Where were Lenning and
Bleeker during the interim? I confess, Merriwell, that the thought
annoys me. It certainly could not have taken the two Gold Hill young
men an hour or more to come from the place where I saw them to Tinaja
Wells. What do you think?”
Just then Fritz came forth and announced “grub pile” in his usual
hearty manner, and Merry did not find it necessary to tell Professor
Borrodaile what he thought.