CHAPTER XXVII

ELSIE’S STRANGE FLIGHT.

Buck Badger and his wife, former Winnie Lee, were in New Haven, having come on to visit Winnie’s relatives during the holidays. Coming up the stairs in Vanderbilt Hall, they saw through the open doorway Frank and Inza talking by the window. At that moment, Frank turned, saw them, uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, and sprang forward with outstretched hands.

“Buck!” he cried. “Is it possible? And Winnie! Excuse me—Mrs. Badger.”

“But Winnie still, Frank,” laughed the handsome young wife, her face suffused with color.

Frank had Badger by the hand, while Winnie and Inza rushed into each other’s arms.

“Well, if this isn’t great!” cried Merriwell.

“That’s whatever!” came from the lips of Badger, who quivered through all his sturdy frame.

“Talk about surprises! I’m overjoyed to see you!”

“And I,” said the young rancher, “am just roaring glad to grip the hand of the best friend I ever had in all my life! I can’t say more, Merriwell; but I mean that—I mean it! You were my best friend. I’ve had time to think the old days here at Yale all over and over a hundred times, and I allow I’ve come to see things in their right light. I was an onery coyote, but you were my friend, and you kept me from going to the dogs. You gave me Winnie,” he whispered, “the best and truest little wife a man ever had! I can never repay you for that, Frank!”

“Don’t talk about paying for anything,” said Merriwell. “I am paid a thousand times for anything I did for you by seeing your happiness, old man. But I think you’re giving me credit for doing altogether too much. I don’t know that I ever did much of anything for you.”

“Yes, you did!” insisted the Kansan, with intense earnestness. “Nobody ever did so much for me besides you. You made a man of me! You might have kicked me into the gutter and turned me into a dog, but you held out your hand and pulled me up to the top of the heap, even after I’d done you more than one onery, mean turn. That’s whatever! Nobody but a white man all the way through would have done as you did, partner. You might have had me expelled from Yale in disgrace, and that would have turned my old man against me; but, instead of that, forgetting all the bad things I’d tried to do to you, you helped me get started on the right trail. I was pretty weak in those times, Merriwell; I know it now. I thought I was strong, but I was right ready to go wrong. A little push from you would have sent me wrong. And you helped me win Winnie! That was the greatest thing you ever did for anybody, partner!”

In that moment Frank Merriwell was rewarded for all he had endured at the hands of this repentant young man, who had once been his enemy, and his heart was filled with thankfulness because he had never permitted his resentment and desire for revenge to get the best of him and induce him to push Badger down.

With this thought came another. He had been lenient toward Dade Morgan just when he might have destroyed the fellow at a single stroke. It had seemed like weakness, after all Morgan had tried to do to him; but now Merry was happy in the knowledge that he had given Morgan another opportunity and had not thrust him down.

“I’ve learned one thing,” said Badger, who seemed determined to reveal to Frank all that his heart had taught him since the happy day of his union with Winnie. “It’s the coward who tries to kill his enemies; the brave, strong man turns his enemies into friends. That’s whatever!”

In the meantime, in ways peculiar to budding young womanhood, Inza and Winnie were expressing their delight over the meeting.

“I didn’t know we should find you here, but we were speaking of you,” said Winnie. “You are handsomer than ever, Inza.”

“And you, Winnie,” said the dark-haired girl, gazing at her friend with love and admiration, “why, you’re simply wonderful.”

“Oh, it’s the West and the air out there!” laughed Buck’s wife, in blushing confusion.

“Well, I think I’ll have to try that air.”

“You don’t need it, Inza; you’re handsome anywhere, and you require no air tonic. But how does it happen you are here. Why, just before we reached the steps, Elsie said it would be just lovely to find you in New Haven.”

“Elsie?”

“Yes.”

“Why, is Elsie——? Where is she?”

“Yes,” cried Frank, who had noted Winnie’s word. “Where is Elsie?”

“She was with us,” explained Badger. “Winnie and I paused a moment on the steps to look around, while she ran up-stairs ahead.”

Frank and Inza looked at each other in amazement.

“She’s not here,” said Merry breathlessly.

“No,” said Winnie. “She came back quickly, meeting us just as we were entering. I don’t know what ailed her, but she was very pale and said she was ill.”

“Never saw such a change come over anybody in a minute,” declared Buck. “I don’t understand it now. Why, a little while before she was all life and happiness, and her cheeks were like two sun-kissed peaches, and she——”

“That will do, sir!” cried Winnie, frowning. “You may talk like that about me, but not about other young ladies. Don’t forget that you are a married man.”

Then Buck and Winnie laughed, but neither Frank nor Inza joined them.

“It’s very strange,” said Frank slowly.

“She seemed trembling, too,” explained Winnie. “I asked her what was the matter, and she said she was ill.”

“Quickest fit of sickness I ever saw strike anybody,” muttered Badger.

“I urged her to come up to your rooms,” Winnie went on; “but she said she couldn’t climb the stairs.”

“I’d brought her right up in my arms, if it hadn’t been for the looks of the thing,” asserted Buck.

“She said she must have some air,” Winnie continued. “We wanted to stay with her, but she wouldn’t hear to it. Said it would attract attention. Said she’d walk about down there.”

Again Frank and Inza glanced at each other, and then both of them glanced toward the door, which remained open. From the point where they had stood by the window the head of the stairway could be seen. The same thought came to each of them.

“Frank,” said the dark-eyed girl, “go right down and find Elsie. Bring her up here at once.”

“I’ll do it!” he exclaimed, springing through the doorway, without pausing to take a hat.

Down the stairs he bounded, out into the court he rushed; and there, bareheaded and eager, he looked around for Elsie.

She was not to be seen. From the court he rushed out through the gate to the campus, where the light fall of snow had been trodden by hundreds of feet.

A little group of fellows lingered by the fence, some with the collars of their coats turned up, some with their hands thrust deep into their pockets, some with overcoats buttoned about them. Their heads were close together, and they were talking earnestly about some topic of deep interest. A few students were hurrying across the campus, their appearance seeming to indicate that they were making haste to reach their rooms and pack up that they might get away for the holidays. But nowhere could Merry see a thing of Elsie.

“Where the dickens could she have gone?” he muttered. “I wonder if she saw us from the stairs!”

He was seized by a feeling of guilt and a sensation of wrong-doing. Something told him the time had come when he must choose between Inza and Elsie, and that he could not longer entertain more than friendly relations with both of the girls. The thought that Elsie had seen him with Inza by the window, and had fled, her heart throbbing with pain, made him desperate and wretched.

“I must find her!” he muttered hoarsely. “Not even for the memory of old times should I have permitted what happened to-day! Elsie! Elsie!”

He seized by the arm a hurrying student and asked if he had seen anything of a young lady without escort. No such person had been seen by the one questioned. Then Merry went straight to the group by the fence. Yes, one of them had seen Badger and the two girls go over to Vanderbilt, and then, a few moments later, had seen one of the girls hurry away alone.

“Which way did she go?” asked Frank, repressing his eagerness so that he attracted no particular attention by his manner. Being told, he hurried over to the street. A few cabs and trucks were there. In a moment Merry had learned that such a girl as he described was seen taking a cab a few minutes before.

“She’s gone!” he huskily muttered, as he turned back. “I must find out where she is stopping, and I’ll call on her without delay. The time has come for me to choose and make my choice known. I’ll do it!”

When he again entered his rooms, he found Inza had taken Buck and Winnie into the study, where all were chatting with Frank’s friends who had gathered there.

Merry lost little time in drawing Buck aside and asking where Elsie was stopping, explaining that he had not found her.

Buck did not know, nor did Winnie, who told how she had corresponded with Elsie, who had been in New York, thus informing her when she would arrive in New Haven. Elsie had called soon after their arrival, and the trio had set out for a visit to Merry.

“But she is coming to my house to dinner this evening,” Winnie explained. “You may see her then, for I want you to be there, Frank. You’ll come?”

Of course Merry accepted the invitation. Winnie added that it was to be a little party of college friends, and that Inza would likewise be present.

Frank glanced toward the dark-haired girl, discovering that she was engaged in earnest conversation with Starbright, the big fellow standing in an attitude of absorbed attention, while his blue eyes devoured her with an expression of intense admiration in their honest depths. Winnie noted Frank’s look, and she pinched his arm, whispering:

“That looks very, very bad—for you. She told me he is your friend, and I invited him to dinner to-night. If you’re still sweet on Inza you want to be careful that your friend Richard Starbright doesn’t cut in and take her away from you. He is just the sort of fellow a dark-eyed girl like Inza is liable to get struck on.”

Again that strange pang of jealousy smote through Frank Merriwell’s heart, but he calmly said:

“I do not believe Inza could find a finer fellow in the whole wide world.”