DARREL’S RESOLVE.
On the afternoon which witnessed Merriwell’s and Clancy’s disastrous
experiences near Camp Hawtrey, Ellis Darrel had been laid up nearly
a week with his broken arm. He had been taken to Dolliver’s because
the Ophir lads knew that the ranch offered more comforts than could
possibly be had in the camp at Tinaja Wells. Dolliver, too, had
telephone connection with Ophir, and but little time had been lost in
getting a doctor.
Darrel was young and, at the time of his injury, in perfect physical
health. A year of roughing it in the West, all the way from British
Columbia to Mexico, had put a keen edge on his powers of endurance. For
him, therefore, a broken arm did not cause the mischief which would
have been the case in one less hardened and robust.
In three or four days he was out of bed, and sitting around Dolliver’s
with his arm in a sling. Enforced idleness worried and fretted him. On
the very day Frank and Owen had saved the coyote dog, Darrel had begun
contemplating a return to Tinaja Wells.
The one thing in all the world which Darrel desired with a full heart
was to prove his innocence in the forgery matter. He felt that he could
not rest easy a moment until he had probed that forgery to the bottom
and had unmasked the person who had written the name of Alvah Hawtrey
on the five-hundred-dollar check.
The colonel, after considering the circumstantial evidence, had
reached the conclusion that Darrel was the forger. He had therefore
turned the boy from his door and would have nothing more to do with
him. To wipe that blot from his name was Darrel’s one purpose in life.
Merriwell had promised his help, but Darrel believed that it was his
duty to do most of the work for himself.
After supper, in the evening of the day so many important events had
happened at Camp Hawtrey, Darrel was sitting with the rancher in front
of the house.
The cloudless Arizona sky was never more beautiful. When the sun sets
in the Southwest, it drops out of sight suddenly, and night falls as
swiftly as a drop curtain. One moment it is day; then, almost the next
moment, the clear-cut stars are glittering overhead.
The entrance to Mohave Cañon was but a little distance away and facing
the front of Dolliver’s house. The opening yawned like a huge black
cavity on the sky line, stretching into the far distance amid ominous
shadows.
With dreamy eyes young Darrel stared across the trail and into the
gloomy gulch. Somehow the last year of his life resembled that cañon as
he saw it then. That forgery had flung him into a black and forbidding
path, through which he had wandered—and was still wandering—aimlessly.
Would he never be able to fight his way out of the gloom and the
dishonor and regain his rightful place in his uncle’s esteem, and in
the eyes of honest men?
While Dolliver, a man of few words, like all who live much by
themselves, sat silently and smoked his short black pipe, and while
Darrel still gazed reflectively into the black mouth of the cañon, two
figures slowly disentangled themselves from the shadows and bore down
on the ranch.
“Some ’un from up the gulch,” Dolliver roused to remark, “mebbyso from
Tinaja Wells.”
But they were not from the Wells. As the riders came close and halted,
Darrel discovered that they were two whom he knew—Bleeker and Hotchkiss.
“Great jumpin’ sandhills!” exclaimed the voice of Hotchkiss. “That you,
Darrel?”
“Sure,” laughed Darrel. “Why not?”
“We reckoned you would still be in bed, El,” spoke up Bleeker. “Must be
pulling along in fine shape, eh?”
“How long do you think a busted arm ought to keep a fellow down,
anyhow?”
“Depends a heap on the fellow, El. Between you, and me, and the
gatepost, I don’t believe anything’ll keep you down very long.”
“Can’t you get off and stop a while?” Darrel asked.
“No. We’re bound for Gold Hill. Been kicked out of Camp Hawtrey.”
“Kicked out? Great Scott! What do you mean by that, Bleek?”
“Down at the bottom of it, we’re friends of yours, and Jode don’t want
us around. Something happened up at the camp, this afternoon, that
brought matters to a show-down.”
“What was that?”
Bleeker crooked one knee around the saddle horn and rested easily while
he told about the trouble over the coyote dog.
“That’s what happened,” said he, when the recital was finished, “and
I’ll bet a pound of prunes against a toothpick that Jode’s laying to
unload a little of the trouble onto you.”
“How could he do that?” queried Darrel.
“Why, by making his uncle believe that your unholy influence sent
Merriwell and Clancy to our camp to kick up a row. Parkham has already
been sent to the Hill after the colonel. He’ll be out here, bright and
early, to-morrow morning; then Jode will sing his little song and make
the colonel believe just what he wants him to. The friendly relations
of the two clubs have had a knock-out blow. There’ll be nothing doing,
in an athletic way, for some time to come. Pretty tough on Merriwell.
But he’ll come out all right, for that’s a way he has. Get well as
quick as you can, pard, and then come on to Gold Hill. There are a lot
of us there that are ready to fight for you. _Buenas noches!_”
Bleeker straightened around in his saddle and rattled his spurs.
Presently he and Hotchkiss were clattering away along the main trail in
the direction of home.
These revelations came to Darrel like a blow. He felt, and perhaps he
was right, that Merriwell’s friendship for him had made an enemy of
Jode.
“What do you think of that, Dolliver?” asked Darrel, appealing to the
rancher.
“Why,” was the answer, “I opine that half brother o’ yourn is about as
onnery as they make ’em.”
“I’m the one who is at the bottom of Merriwell’s trouble with Jode.”
“You can’t help it if ye are. Better hit the hay, son. I reckon you’ve
been up a heap too long as it is.”
Darrel went to bed that night pondering the subject of Merriwell’s
failure to inspire a friendly spirit in the dealings between the two
athletic clubs.
“He could have succeeded,” was Darrel’s bitter conclusion, “if it
hadn’t been for his friendship for me. What will Jode be trying next,
I wonder? Where is that fiendish temper of his going to land him, if
something isn’t done to curb it?”
Long into the night Darrel canvassed the unpleasant problem in his
mind. As a consequence, he went to sleep about midnight and woke up
with the sun at least two hours’ high.
“Has my uncle passed on his way to Camp Hawtrey, Dolliver?” were his
first words when he found the rancher.
“All of an hour ago,” was the reply.
“I wanted to talk with him,” muttered Darrel.
“A heap o’ palverin’ you’d ‘a’ done with _him_,” grunted Dolliver. “The
kunnel ain’t eager for no conversation with you, son.”
Darrel realized that, but it did not alter his determination to see
if he could not talk with his uncle and try to make things easier for
Merriwell.
The morning passed slowly, Darrel deciding one moment that duty called
him to Tinaja Wells and Merriwell, and again that his proper course was
to ride to Camp Hawtrey and interview the colonel.
Noon came, and Darrel ate little of the food Dolliver had set out on
the kitchen table.
“If ye don’t eat,” grumbled Dolliver, “ye can’t expect to git around
very soon.”
Darrel’s mind was on something else besides his dinner.
“I wish you’d saddle up a horse for me, Dolliver,” he said. “I’m going
to take a ride.”
“More’n likely ye’ll fall off before ye’ve gone fur. Where ye goin’ to
ride?”
“Camp Hawtrey.”
“Take a fool’s advice, son, and don’t.”
“I’m going to talk with the colonel. If you won’t put the gear on a
horse for me, I reckon I can manage it myself.”
“Oh, I’ll do it, if ye’re bound ter ride. But wait a couple o’ hours.
It’s plumb in the heat o’ the day, and ridin’ ’ll come a heap harder
for you now than it will later.”
An hour or two would make little difference, and Darrel laid down on
his bed for a short rest before taking the ride. He fell asleep almost
immediately, and was awakened by a familiar voice trying to get some
one over the telephone. It was his uncle, there in the room with him,
asking for Bradlaugh’s office. Bradlaugh was not in, evidently.
“Tell him,” said Colonel Hawtrey, “that I’ll talk with him from here
late this afternoon. This is mighty important—don’t neglect to tell him
that.”
Colonel Hawtrey had just ridden down the cañon after his talk with
Merriwell. He was still red and wrathful. As he whirled from the
telephone, he was confronted by Darrel.
The boy’s face was as white as the bandage that swathed his arm, but he
stood resolutely between his uncle and the open outside door.
“Colonel,” he began, “I want you to listen to me. I’m not talking for
myself, but for Merriwell. Don’t think that I——”
“Not a word,” snapped the colonel. “You haven’t anything to say that I
care to hear.”
He strode around Darrel. The boy stepped forward to lay a detaining
hand on his arm. Roughly the colonel shook him off, hurried from the
house, vaulted into the saddle of his waiting horse, and spurred for
the cañon. He did not so much as look back.
“Nice way for an uncle to treat his nephew!” exclaimed Dolliver, from a
place outside the house near the door. “But I told ye how it ’u’d be,”
he added.
“He can’t shake me like that!” cried Darrel. “I’m going to do what I
can to straighten out this trouble of Merriwell’s. Get the horse for
me, Dolliver, and I’ll hike right after him.”
“Ye’ve got plenty o’ nerve, son, but blame’ poor jedgment,” growled the
rancher.
“Why didn’t you call me,” demanded Darrel, “when you saw him coming?”
“Didn’t see him comin’. Didn’t have a notion anybody had dropped in
till I saw the strange hoss at the hitchin’ pole.”
“Will you get the horse for me, Mr. Dolliver?”
The “mister” was pretty formal. The fact that Darrel used it proved
that he was on edge and would not take “no” for an answer.
Dolliver got the horse and helped Darrel into the saddle. He wished him
luck, too, although in the same breath he declared that the boy was
running a big risk and would have his trouble for nothing.
Darrel’s pale face was set resolutely as he urged the horse into a
gallop and disappeared through the mouth of the cañon.