“Not here--not now,” he muttered. “But I’ll teach you a lesson some day that you won’t forget in a hurry, curse you! I’ll get even with you yet.”
With a shrug of his shoulder, Dick walked over to the car.
“You’ll have to be quick about it,” he said, as he took his seat at the wheel. “I don’t propose spending much more time in this town of yours.”
He started to let in the clutch, and then suddenly half turned in his seat, looking Morrison straight in the eyes.
“One thing more,” he said in a low, cold tone, which held a decidedly threatening undercurrent. “If I catch you annoying that girl again, or any other woman, I’ll take great pleasure handing you another bunch of fives. Understand?”
Morrison watched the car disappear down the street, and clenching his fist, shook it fiercely in the air.
“I’ll get even with you yet, you meddling fool!” he rasped.
He took out his handkerchief and pressed it to his bleeding chin. It was not a bad cut, but the humiliation, of being knocked down in a public thoroughfare by almost the first blow struck, ate into his very soul and made him grind his teeth in a blind, bitter rage.
To have suffered at the hands of Dick Merriwell added fuel to the blaze of his resentment. The happenings of that afternoon had made him hate the Yale man almost as much as he did Gardiner, whom he had always disliked, but he had come out of that affair with flying colors. He had crippled the Forest Hills team so that they would stand no show whatever against the mine boys; likely they would have to forfeit the game for it would be impossible for them to find both pitcher and catcher at so short a notice and his heart rejoiced at having evened up his score with Gardiner at last.
But on the heels of that triumph came this new disgrace, the very thought of which made him clench his teeth and long fiercely to have that Yale upstart at his mercy, somewhere, somehow, so that he could pound the fellow until his arms were tired.
He had no desire to stand up against Merriwell in a fair fight. Wild with rage as he had been, Morrison realized that the Yale man had enough science to handle him with one hand. But he would give almost everything he possessed to get even with Merriwell in some perfectly safe way, which carried no risk with it. Of that sort of stuff was the former pitcher of the Forest Hills team.