“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 ............