“Skip!” repeated the slim man. “I mean what I say. The next time I catch you around here I’ll shoot first and you can explain afterward--if you’re able.”
Without further delay, the men turned and hurried toward the trail. The unknown watched them until they were out of sight, and then he wheeled quickly around.
“I seem to have an unexpected influx of callers to-day,” he remarked. “Might I ask your business?”
His tone was cool and self-possessed, but he shoved the revolver back into his pocket as he spoke.
“You are Mr. Randolph,” Dick inquired--“Mr. Scott Randolph?”
The stranger nodded and his eyes narrowed.
The Yale man took a card from his pocket and handed it to the other.
“My name is Merriwell,” he said, quietly. “My brother asked me to give you this.”
As his eyes fell on Frank Merriwell’s card with the brief written words, “Introducing my brother Dick,” the cold, questioning, almost skeptical expression, instantly left Scott Randolph’s face, and his keen, gray eyes softened with a look of friendliness, mingled with regret.
“I’m awfully glad to meet Frank’s brother,” he said warmly, as he extended his hand. “The more so since you came just in time to help me out of a tight place. I hope you don’t think I’m ungrateful because I didn’t enthuse at first. The truth is, I’ve got so I look at every one with more or less suspicion, and, even though you did knock those ruffians around some, I couldn’t understand what you were doing here.”
“Don’t mention it,” he smiled. “I think I understand a little of what you mean. It was rather startling to have four masked men pile onto you and then be assisted by two others who were total strangers. This is my friend Brad Buckhart, Mr. Randolph.”
Randolph gripped the Texan’s hand warmly and then looked at Dick again.
“How is Frank?” he asked quickly. “Though I don’t deserve to know, after the beastly way I’ve neglected him lately. He was my friend at Yale--almost the only fellow I could really call a friend; but so much has happened in the past few years----”
He broke off abruptly and his face sobered.
“Perhaps some day you’ll understand,” he finished slowly. “Tell me about Frank.”
“He’s well and happy, and absorbed in his work,” Dick returned. “He wanted me to look you up and see what you were doing and why you hadn’t written.”