Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona or Clearing a Rival’s Record
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Slave of the Needle 5
II. Making a “Raise” 12
III. A Drugged Conscience 19
IV. Blunt Takes the Warpath 26
V. A Surprise at the Gulch 33
VI. The Revolver Shot 40
VII. A Blind Chase 47
VIII. Blunt’s Warning 54
IX. Accident or Treachery? 61
X. Desperate Work 68
XI. The Saving Grace 75
XII. Blunt’s “Surprise” 80
XIII. The Race for Single Paddles 84
XIV. An Enemy’s Appeal 90
XV. Taking a Chance 96
XVI. The Yellow Streak 103
XVII. A Cry in the Night 110
XVIII. Tracking Trouble 117
XIX. Missing Bullion 124
XX. The Finger of Suspicion 131
XXI. Blind Luck 138
XXII. A Slight Mistake 145
XXIII. The Solution Tank 152
XXIV. Merriwell’s Faith 157
XXV. “Warming Up” 161
XXVI. A Challenge 168
XXVII. The Line-up 175
XXVIII. Lenning Yields To Persuasion 180
XXIX. Plain English 187
XXX. Getting the Nine in Shape 194
XXXI. Hatching a Plot 201
XXXII. The Day of the Game 208
XXXIII. Poor Support 215
XXXIV. Worse--and More of It 222
XXXV. Won in the Ninth 228
XXXVI. The Plot that Failed 233
XXXVII. Woo Sing and the Pig 236
XXXVIII. A Good Word for Lenning 243
XXXIX. Startling News 249
XL. Another Blow 256
XLI. A Dark Outlook for Lenning 263
XLII. The Mysterious Message 270
XLIII. Playing in Hard Luck 277
XLIV. A Fruitless Vigil 284
XLV. Rising Hopes 291
XLVI. The Runaway Ore Car 298
XLVII. The Yellow Streak Gone 305
XLVIII. Conclusion 310
Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona
OR
CLEARING A RIVAL’S RECORD
By
BURT L. STANDISH
Author of the famous Merriwell Stories.
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
Copyright, 1912
By STREET & SMITH
Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
Printed in the U. S. A.
FRANK MERRIWELL, JUNIOR, IN ARIZONA.
CHAPTER I.
A SLAVE OF THE NEEDLE.
“Buck up, Shoup! What ails you, anyhow?”
“I’m all in, Len. I d-don’t believe I can take another step. You see,
I--I----”
The words faded into a groan, and the tottering youth slumped to his
knees, then pitched forward and sprawled out limply in the sandy trail.
There were two of them, and they had been tramping wearily through a
defile known as Bitter-root Cañon. The stage trail leading from Ophir,
Arizona, to Gold Hill, followed the cañon, and the two lads had been
taking this trail.
The trail was white with dust, churned up by the wheels and hoofs that
had passed over it. It wound interminably along the cañon’s bed,
twisting back and forth through patches of greasewood and mesquite, now
hugging one wall and now the other, and again skirting the edge of some
brackish pool.
A stream flowed through the cañon, although no one not familiar with
such mysterious streams would have guessed it. Like a good many Arizona
rivers, the water flowed under the surface, appearing only here and
there where bedrock forced it upward.
The lad who had yielded to exhaustion and had fallen must have been
nineteen or twenty years of age. He was well dressed, although his
clothes were dusty and in disorder. His hair was of a tow color, his
eyes a washed-out blue, and his face was hueless--startlingly white and
waxlike.
The other boy was a year or two younger than his companion, with a dark,
sinister face and shifty eyes. They had walked southward from Gold Hill
for many miles, and while the younger lad was an athlete and ordinarily
in good physical condition, yet a few days of reckless living had sapped
his endurance. He was almost as exhausted as his companion.
“Here’s a go!” muttered the younger lad, looking down grimly at the
unconscious, deathlike face of his friend in the trail. “Shoup hasn’t
the backbone of a jellyfish. I’ve got to do something for him, but
what?”
The boy looked around him and discovered that Shoup had fallen only a
few yards from the edge of a pool. The sight of water suggested the
means for reviving the fainting lad, and, with considerable difficulty,
the other dragged him to the pool’s edge. Wetting a handkerchief in the
pool, he bathed the pallid face. In a few moments Shoup drew a deep
breath and opened his eyes.
“You’re pretty near a wreck, Shoup,” said the boy called Len crossly.
“How do you think we’re ever going to get to the gulch if you can’t walk
four or five miles without crumpling up in the trail?”
“I was trying to save the dope,” was Shoup’s answer, in a weak voice. “I
haven’t got much of it, and no money to buy any more.”
“Cut that out,” the other growled angrily. “The more of that stuff you
use, the more you have to use. It’s making you ‘dippy’ as blazes; not
only that, but it eats up your muscle and ruins your nerves. Why don’t
you quit?”
“Can’t quit. My old man used it, and my grandfather used it. The
hankering for the stuff was born in me. What’s bred in the bone,
Lenning, is bound to come out in the flesh. No use fighting against the
craving. Here, help me to sit up.”
Lenning put his hands under Shoup’s shoulders and lifted him to a
sitting posture, twisting him about so he could lean his back against a
bowlder. With fingers that trembled from weakness, Shoup pushed up his
left sleeve.
The skin of his arm was white as marble, and dotted with little, black,
specklike marks. Reaching into an inside pocket of his coat, Shoup drew
out a small, worn morocco case.
“Bound to squirt a little more of that poison into your veins, eh?”
asked Lenning disgustedly.
As he put the question, he produced a box of cigarettes, lighted one,
tossed away the burned match and dropped the box into his pocket. A
sneering smile crossed Shoup’s face.
“What’s the difference, Len,” he queried, “whether you inhale the poison
or take it my way? It brings us both to the same place, in the end.”
“Splash! Cigarettes aren’t as bad as all that. Anyhow, when I’m in
training I cut ’em out. You’re never in training and you never cut out
that dope. If you can’t get it just when you want it, your strength is
snuffed out like a fool candle. How long do you think you’ll last, going
on as you are now, eh?”
“That’s the least of my worries,” was the placid retort.
With his shaking right hand, Shoup pressed the needle-like point of a
small “hypoderm” into the flesh of his left arm. An instant his
quivering finger toyed with the tiny piston, then drove it “home.” With
a long sigh of relief, he sank back.
“I’ll feel like a king pretty soon,” said he, speaking with his eyes
half closed. “You haven’t a notion how it gingers a fellow up. Say,” and
the eyes opened wide, “why don’t you try it yourself?”
“Not on your life!” returned the other, in a sort of horror. “The sight
of you, with one foot in the grave on account of that stuff, is enough
for me.”
“Go on,” urged Shoup, his faded eyes brightening wonderfully. “Try for
yourself and see how it puts fire into your veins, and peace and
happiness into your heart. Jove! Already I’m beginning to feel as though
I could run a hundred miles, and be as fresh at the end of the run as
when I started.”
Lenning stared at Shoup curiously.
“That’s the way you _feel_, but your system is all shot to pieces and
you’d drop before you’d gone half a mile,” commented Lenning.
“Don’t you want to forget your troubles, old man?” coaxed Shoup. “This
is a sure cure for the blues.”
“No!” almost shouted Lenning, springing to his feet. “Try to push that
thing into my face again and I’ll grab it and throw it into the water.
You say you inherited an appetite for the stuff; well, I inherited a few
things, myself, and I reckon they’re enough to stagger under without
taking on any of _your_ failings.”
“Maybe you’ll come to it, some time,” laughed Shoup.
He was, by now, an entirely different person from the Shoup of a few
minutes before. His eyes gleamed, and while his face remained colorless
and of a dead, waxen white, strength ran surging through him, and his
nerves steadied. It was the influence of the drug, of course, and when
that failed his condition would be more pitiful than ever. Lenning,
shivering at the spectacle presented by his companion, turned moodily
and looked down into the pool.
Shoup put away his morocco case. Getting up, he stepped to Lenning’s
side and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m a horrible example, eh?” he breathed. “All right. You’re a good
deal of an example, too. You’re a cast-off; a week ago your uncle gave
you a thousand dollars and kicked you out of the house. Where’s the
thousand now, Lenning? ‘Rooly’ and faro have swallowed it up.” He
laughed jeeringly.
Lenning whirled on him, red with anger.
“And who helped me lose the thousand?” he cried. “It was you! You might
have the grace, seems to me, to shut up about the loss of that money.
We’ve neither of us got a sou; but, if we can get to the gulch beyond
Dolliver’s, maybe I can borrow enough to get us out of this country for
good.”
“Who’s at the gulch?”
“A few friends of mine--at least, they used to be friends. They’re
members of the Gold Hill Athletic Club, and they’re camping there.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get money--not altogether,” said Shoup.
“There’s something else on your mind, too. What is it, Len?”
“Tell you later,” muttered Lenning.
“Look here: The bunch of fellows at the camp in the gulch are having
Merriwell over for a boating competition--canoe race, or something like
that. You’ve got a grudge against Merriwell and you’d like to saw it off
with him. Am I right?”
An astounded look crossed Lenning’s face. He turned his bewildered eyes
on his friend.
“How the deuce did you guess that?” he inquired breathlessly.
“The dope clears the brain wonderfully, Len,” grinned Shoup. “It all
came to me, just now. Sort of second sight, I reckon. Am I right?”
“Well, what if you are?”
“Nothing, but this: I’m with you. What reason have I to love Merriwell?
No more than you. If we square the score, suppose we do it together.”
Lenning stared gloomily at Shoup, then turned on his heel and started
off down the cañon. “Come on,” he called, “we’d better keep a-plugging.”
Shoup made after him, his step buoyant, his spirits as light as his
step. He was paying for every hour of that stimulated, fictitious
strength with a year of his life. But his thoughts did not--dared
not--take account of the future. It was the immediate present that
concerned him.
“You can’t get away from these family traits, Len,” said Shoup, as they
made their way southward.
“There’s a mighty tough prospect ahead of me,” growled Lenning, “if
that’s the case.”
“Well, it is the case.”
“I’m not taking your word for it. Nobody would take your word for
anything, Billy. You’re a wreck of a man--just a burned-out hulk of what
you ought to be. That’s the way with you slaves of the needle.”
“What are you, Jode?” gibed the other. “While you’re throwing it into
me, you’d better think about yourself.”
“I’m no dope fiend,” snarled Jode Lenning. “I’ve got a will left, and
when I get good and ready I can turn a leaf and be different.”
“I’ve got a picture of you ‘turning a leaf,’” laughed Shoup
sarcastically. “You’ll have to show me. You’re not turning a leaf by
going after Merriwell, are you?”
Lenning did not answer. Something, ahead of them in the trail, caught
his attention, just then, and brought him to a dead stop.
“Thunder!” he exclaimed, “there’s a stage. Something’s gone wrong with
it. Where’s the team and the driver? Wonder if they’ve had a
break-down?”