CHAPTER XXXI.

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.