“ho, hum!” yawned owen clancy, stirring drowsily in his chair on the veranda of the ophir house, “this is certainly the easy life. trouble is, fellows, it’s too darned easy. about all the exercise we get is when we mosey out to the athletic club and boot the pigskin around. i’m getting sluggish.”
“come over and slug me,” billy ballard invited, from the other end of the veranda. “feeling kind of sluggish myself, red, and if you’re pining for exercise, here’s your chance.”
“tush, tush!” scoffed the red-headed chap. “taking a fall out of you, pink, wouldn’t be exercise, but a walk-away. everything’s too deuced humdrum around here to suit me. say, chip, can’t you mix us up something with real snap and ginger in it? nothing has happened for a week—not since ballard and i got back the bullion that had been stolen from the ophir mine. that livened up things a whole lot.”
young merriwell looked up from the paper he was reading.
“ten yards in four downs,” he remarked absently. “the new football rules this year will bring a revival of the old smashing line drives of the past. i wish we’d got this news before ophir played the gold hillers.”
merry showed a disposition to become absorbed once more in the article he was reading. clancy headed him off.
“bother the new rules! i asked you if you couldn’t
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fix up a little excitement for us, chip. life in southern arizona is becoming flat, stale, and unprofitable. every morning the prof makes us grind to the limit; every afternoon we loaf around until four, and then go out to the club field and punt, tackle the dummy, or fall on the ball. it’s getting mo-no-to-nious.”
“i guess the climate is playing hob with you, clan,” grinned merry, throwing aside the paper. “early december, and here we are in our shirt sleeves, loafing in the shade and trying to be comfortable. but buck up. it won’t last forever. it won’t be long now before we’ll be pulling up stakes and hiking toward the ice and snow.”
“what’re we waiting for?”
“the prof’s mining deal is hanging fire. almost any mail from the east may bring the letter that winds it up.”
“then i wish things would warm up while the deal is being wound up.”
“that’s always the trouble with a chap that’s got brick-red hair,” complained ballard. “he’s a volcano, and can’t be happy unless he has a violent eruption every fifteen minutes.”
“i’ve got a notion,” scowled clancy, “to imitate an earthquake and shake you off the porch.”
“go on and shake,” urged ballard, chuckling. “i’d like to get a strangle hold on an earthquake just once and make it behave.”
with a whoop the red-headed chap projected himself out of his chair and in the direction of his chum. but he never reached ballard’s end of the porch. merry put out a foot and neatly tripped him.
“here, now!” protested clancy, slamming into a porch post and grabbing it in his arms to keep from going down. “who invited you to take a hand in this, chip?
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maybe you want me to roll you off the porch before i do business with pink?”
“spell ‘able,’” said merry, squaring around in his chair.
“too hot,” answered clancy, after a moment’s reflection.
“oh, slush!” muttered ballard disgustedly. “it’s too hot now, but a moment ago he was anxious to have things warm up. he’s bluffing, that’s all.”
clancy took no notice of the good-natured gibe, but crossed the veranda to a thermometer that hung beside the hotel door.
“only seventy-five,” he announced, then reached for the newspaper merry had dropped and tore off a piece of it. “it ought to be more than that,” he added.
taking a match from his pocket he fired the scrap of paper and held it close to the bulb of the thermometer.
“what’s that for?” demanded ballard.
“warming things up,” answered clancy. “beginning with the thermometer. gee, look at the mercury climb! eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five——”
“here!” interposed merry. “don’t you know that’s the town’s official thermometer? you might as well tinker with the weather bureau, clan. everybody in ophir swears by that instrument.”
“i’ll have ’em swearing at it before long,” was clancy’s calm rejoinder. “a hundred and fifteen,” he added, as he dropped the charred paper. “that’s going some.”
just as he was backing away from the thermometer, woo sing, the chinese roustabout, came blandly out on the veranda. he looked cool and comfortable in his roomy silk kimono.
“velly fine day, missul melly,” he grinned.
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“pretty hot, sing,” answered merry, pretending to mop his face with a handkerchief.
“you callee hot?” demurred woo sing. “goodness glacious! me allee samee cool as cucumber.”
he took a slant in the direction of the thermometer, gave it a casual glance, then jumped and brought his eyes closer to the top of the column of mercury.
“gee klismus!” he gasped, and the sweat began to start out on his parchmentlike face. “him plenty hot—hot as blazes. my gettee fan befo’ my gettee sunstluck!”
with that he slumped weakly back into the hotel, peeling off his kimono as he went.
“that proves,” said merry, joining in with the laughter of his chums, “that this climate business is about two-thirds imagination.”
“sh-h!” whispered clancy, “here comes the prof. he looks about as warm as a hundred and fifty pounds of ice. let’s see what effect the thermometer has on him.”
merry pulled his shirt open at the throat, fell back in his chair, and began mopping his face. ballard leaned over the veranda rail and gasped like a spent fish. clancy was also panting, seemingly in the last stages of exhaustion.
professor phineas borrodaile had a book in his hand, one finger between the leaves to mark his place. he was bareheaded, and was evidently coming out to sit in the shade and read comfortably.
“well, well, young gentlemen,” he murmured, coming to a startled halt as his eyes rested on the boys, “you act as though you were overcome with the heat. why, i had not noticed that the weather was at all uncomfortable. it seems to me very pleasant, ve-ry pleasant.”
“look—at the thermometer!” gasped merry huskily, smothering his face in his handkerchief.
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the professor walked over to the instrument and studied it. another moment and he was tremendously excited.
“what is this?” he cried. “a—a hundred and ten degrees fahrenheit? mirabile dictu! there must be something wrong with the thermometer.”
in spite of the professor’s guess that there was something wrong, the perspiration began to bead his brow. taking his book under one arm, he allowed a hand to grope for a handkerchief in the tail pocket of his long black coat.
“who says there’s anything wrong with that there thermometer?” growled a voice. “why, the hull town gits its temperature from that machine! whenever it says the weather’s so and so, you can gamble your spurs that’s what it is.”
pophagan, proprietor of the hotel, shoved out upon the veranda.
“but look, mr. pophagan,” quavered the professor, dabbing at his bald head with his handkerchief and beginning to loosen his collar. “it’s one hundred and ten—in the shade!”
“that’s right,” whispered pophagan faintly, staring at the instrument. “sufferin’ sinners, but it’s hot. hadn’t noticed it before. hottest early december i ever seen in ophir.”
“there are some new spots on the sun,” remarked the professor, unbuttoning his vest and fanning himself with his book, “and they always have the effect of disarranging the seasons. mercy! i feel as though i was suffocating.”
pophagan threw off his hat and jerked off his coat.
“it come on sudden,” he panted. “i’m allers subject
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to heat spells like this. purty nigh got done up oncet with a sunstroke in the harqua halas.”
“merriwell,” queried the professor, in alarm, “you are not light-headed, are you? you don’t feel as though you were going to succumb to this excess of solar caloric?”
merry, handkerchief over his face, was squirming in his chair.
“i’m all right, professor,” he answered, in a smothered voice.
clancy stood at the end of the porch, leaning against the wall of the hotel with his back to the professor and pophagan. his shoulders were heaving convulsively.
ballard continued to lean over the rail, keeping his face averted and doing his best to stifle his laughter.
“better go into the hotel, young gentlemen,” suggested the professor, “and get some fans. i’m going. i feel as though i was being incinerated.”
“me, too,” chimed in pophagan. “if this gits much worse, we’ll all be burnin’ up. can’t remember a time like this since the summer o’ ninety-six. you could fry eggs in the sun that year. rattlesnakes an’ coyotes got grilled in the desert afore they could hunt their holes. there was a drummer stoppin’ with me then, an’ he wore a celluloid collar. he went out to sell a bill o’ goods an’ the collar exploded. pair o’ rubber boots i had melted into a chunk. whoosh!”
pophagan, closely followed by the professor, melted into the hotel. the youngsters on the porch pulled themselves together, exchanged glances, and went into another spasm of laughter.
“got to keep this going,” sputtered clancy, lighting another piece of paper and fanning it back and forth around the bulb of the thermometer. “this is the most
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fun i’ve had since pop and woo sing went hunting cats.”
“we’ll have the whole town fried to a frazzle,” hiccuped ballard. “i never thought a thermometer made the weather before, but this seems to prove it.”
“you don’t have to do that, boys, to get things warmed up,” remarked some one, with a laugh, from the foot of the veranda steps. “i’m bringing you a proposition that will do more to warm things up than all the overheated thermometers in arizona.”
all the lads whirled to give their attention to the man who had just spoken.
“colonel hawtrey!” exclaimed merriwell.
