REVIVING HOPES.
Guffey left the dining room before Frank and his chums had finished
their breakfast. When they finally came out they found Handy, captain
of the Ophir eleven, waiting for them. Handy showed traces of
excitement.
“What was Guffey, the Gold Hill coach, doing over here, Chip?” he
demanded.
“Nothing more than eating his breakfast, Handy, so far as I know. Are
you acquainted with him?”
“I’ve heard him described, and I thought I had him spotted as he passed
through the office. To settle any doubts, I looked at the register.
There was his name, plain enough: ‘Simeon Guffey, Gold Hill.’ I don’t
like the idea of his sneaking around Ophir like this.”
“Don’t be in a taking about it, old man,” said Frank soothingly. “Where
did he go?”
“There was a horse out in front, and he got into the saddle and pointed
for the cañon trail. On his way back to Gold Hill, I reckon.”
“Come on up to my room,” said Merry. “Clan, you and Pink had better
come, too.”
When they had the captain behind the closed door, Frank told him
about the squabble in the back yard, and how, in a most surprising
way, Guffey had been discovered under the empty packing case. Frank
propounded his theory as to why Guffey was in that peculiar place, and
produced the “hypoderm” in evidence.
Handy was experiencing an attack of nerves and was ready to see the
hidden hand of the Gold Hill club in anything and everything that
looked a little off color.
“There’s something back of his being here,” he declared, “and it’s a
heap more than you imagine, Merriwell. Guffey didn’t blow into town for
any good. He may use the dope, but you can gamble that he’s not using
it to an extent that queers him in his work as coach.”
It was several minutes before Frank and his chums could calm Handy
sufficiently for a talk about football. At last, however, they began a
study of the club eleven with the view of shifting the players around
and getting better results.
“I wouldn’t drop any of the boys from the regular team, Chip,” said the
captain earnestly.
“It would be a bad move at this late day,” Frank answered, “to put in
some new men from the scrub team. If we had two weeks left I don’t
know but I’d try it, but with only four days for good, hard practice,
dropping anybody from the eleven would be a mistake. Win or lose,
Handy, we’ll use the material we have. We can do a little shifting,
though.”
“I made a monkey of myself yesterday,” declared Handy, with a firm
determination to shoulder all the consequences of his own mistakes,
“and that’s what played the dickens with the quarter. But I was
nervous, and the way the scrubs lit into us had me rattled. I’ve
a notion all the boys felt the same way. We went into that game
overconfident and careless; then, when we began getting the worst of
it, we slopped over in the other direction and took our backsets too
much to heart. We’ll do better to-morrow.”
“You’ve got to, that’s all,” said Merriwell grimly. “What will happen
if Gold Hill gets the best of it in next Saturday’s game?”
“It would make the third time, hand-running, that we’ve gone down to
defeat at the hands of that other crowd. If that happens, everybody in
Ophir will be disgusted, and this athletic club of ours will go to the
dogs.”
“Is it as bad as that?”
“It’s worse!” declared Handy. “If you had lived in this town for a year
or two, you’d know more about the feeling that prevails regarding these
football games.”
“Then, if that’s the way you hook up, we’ve got to win.”
“We have, if it takes a leg.”
After two hours of thoughtful discussion, during which each individual
player on the regular team was thoroughly studied, two or three shifts
made in the line-up, and a little talk indulged in that renewed the
captain’s ardor and determination, the meeting broke up.
For most of the regulars and second-string men, however, it was a blue
Monday when they assembled in the gym for the afternoon’s work. Their
faces were long and gloomy as they squatted around on the floor in
their football togs and listened to a little sharp grilling from the
captain.
Merriwell followed Handy. The faults and mistakes of the preceding
Saturday afternoon he flashed before the player’s eyes in detail. There
was terror in the souls of the regular eleven; but fears were relieved
somewhat when not one of the team was publicly disgraced by being
dropped to the scrub. At last, tingling in every nerve, the men were
sent to the field for another contest with the second eleven.
And, this time, the regulars did their work admirably. The practice
was secret, and no evil, greedy eyes were staring out from between the
benches of the grand stand. The club eleven lit into the scrubs with a
savage fury that swept all before them. Never once, in all the fierce
battling of the game, was the regular’s goal in danger. This was a
romp to victory, but with none of the gala features of a romp about
it. Intensity of purpose marked every play. And the final score was so
many to nothing that the dusty, sweating, worn-out scrubs were awed and
chastened.
Tuesday afternoon the work was even harder. The scrub team was
strengthened by the addition of Ballard and Clancy, and while it was
being hurriedly organized, farther down the oval of the field, the
regulars were being run through the signals. Up and down the field they
rushed in rehearsal of all the complicated attacks. The numbers, flung
out by Merry, cracked like a blacksnake whip; and, with every crack,
the players leaped to their work. Again and again the coach charged the
team, now against one goal and now against the other.
After a brief rest the strengthened scrub teams appears. Against them
the regulars are pitted for a whirlwind fight of half an hour, cut in
two by an interval of two minutes.
The hardiest of the players flop over on the warm sand, utterly
exhausted, when the whistle stops the playing. Merriwell is boring down
into their endurance as no coach has ever done before. But they do not
complain. They know he is doing it for the glory of Ophir.
That Tuesday-afternoon match was rendered brilliant by the playing of
Owen Clancy at quarter. He and Ballard, encouraging the second eleven,
gave the regulars a grapple that they will long remember.
Wednesday is a repetition of Tuesday, only worse in its grinding,
gruelling labor, if that were possible. Like tigers, with sinews of
steel and a suddenness of lightning, the regulars spring at the throats
of the scrubs. Every man on the second eleven is putting up the fight
of his life. He knows that the harder he can make it for the regulars,
the more it will be for the glory of Ophir. Brilliantly supported by
Clancy and Ballard and, along toward the end, by Merry at half, they
bring out the very last ounce of power and ability which the club team
has in store.
The regulars have possession of the ball. They smash into the scrubs
like a living catapult, hunting from end to end of the scrub line
for the one weak point. After thirty minutes of heartbreaking play,
a whistle sounds a truce. The teams are rushed to the gym, quickly
sponged, fresh recruits jump into the ranks of the scrubs, and once
more the regulars are put to the relentless test.
“If we can live through this,” gasps one of the regulars as, the
playing over for the day, he totters in the direction of the showers,
“if we can live through this we’ll eat up any eleven on earth.”
“Are you satisfied, Chip?” queried the weary, exultant Handy as he
came, clothed for the street, out of the dressing rooms after the
Wednesday game.
“Yes,” Merry answered, “we’ve got a bunch of winners. All aboard for
Dolliver’s to-morrow afternoon.”
“The word has been passed around, Chip, and we’ll all be ready.”
Thursday afternoon Bradlaugh’s big car, and two other machines pressed
into service, carried the Ophir eleven, three or four substitutes, and
Chip Merriwell and his chums out along the old trail to Tinaja Wells.
A disappointment awaited Frank at Dolliver’s. He had counted upon
meeting Darrel at the ranch, but Darrel, he found, had gone into Gold
Hill that very morning.
Why was Darrel in Gold Hill? Certainly his uncle had not sent for him.
The colonel was still clinging to Jode Lenning, and, so long as he did
that, he could have no possible use for Darrel.
Merry, however, had too much on his mind to worry over the mysterious
actions of Darrel. Curly was improving right along, and that was the
main thing. He would undoubtedly be at the Ophir-Gold Hill game, and
Merry could see him there.
Thursday there was nothing at all to do, with the exception of a little
signal practice along toward sun-down. Nor was there any line-up or
hard work on Friday—nothing but a five-mile cross-country trot in the
forenoon, and in the afternoon nothing at all. It was the day before
the game—a day to which the population of Ophir and Gold Hill had been
looking forward for months.
The game was to be played on the Ophir field. The games of the two
previous years had been won by Gold Hill on her own field, and it was
deemed no more than fair that Ophir should have the third game on her
grounds.
The fellows were to remain at Dolliver’s until one o’clock Saturday
afternoon. At that hour the machines were to arrive for them and whisk
them away to the field for the fight with their rivals.
There was not much hilarity among the lads. They were impressed—and a
little oppressed—with the prospect of the work required of them on the
next afternoon. They collected in groups, and, in low voices, talked of
everything they could think of except football. And yet, the biggest
and most constant thing in every fellow’s mind was the coming game.
Merry and Handy, along about eight in the evening, were a little apart
from the players. They were considering Simeon Guffey for about the
dozenth time.
“You’re fretting too much about the Gold Hill coach, old man,” said
Frank.
“I’ve got a hunch that there’s something about the fellow we don’t
understand,” answered the captain.
“If you’re going to worry about all the things you can’t understand,”
Merry laughed, “you’re going to have your hands full.”
Just at that moment Clancy came around a corner of the house.
“Guess who’s here, Chip!” said he.
“I’m in no mood to wrestle with conundrums, Clan,” was the answer.
“All right, then. It’s Colonel Hawtrey. He just rode up. His horse is
at the hitching pole and he wants to see you at once—and privately.”
“Hawtrey—to see me!” Frank muttered, as he hurried around the house and
toward the trail in front.