subject of getting the better of you in some feat of strength and skill.
Can't he ever be satisfied?"

"Seems not," Frank answered. "Sometimes I have a hunch that I ought to
hang back and let Blunt make a winning. If that's what he wants, why not
humor him?"

"Not on your life!" protested Clancy promptly. "You've got to meet Blunt
at every point, and trim him well. I think he's 'yellow,' anyhow."

"You and I will never agree on that," said Merry. "There's good stuff in
Barzy Blunt, and some day he's going to see the error of his way, and
reform. When that happens, you'll find he has the making of an all-round
star athlete."

Clancy muttered something under his breath. Whatever it was it certainty
was not creditable to the Cowboy Wonder.

"We're getting into the hills," observed Clancy, shifting the subject,
"and now, if we don't get lost, it will be because your bump of location
is a lot better than mine."

Merry had the habit, at all times, of keen and careful observation, he
had made but one trip to the old camp of Happenchance, but
circumstances, at that time, had conspired to fix the route to it firmly
in his mind. He had gone to the lost town of the Picket Posts in the
Bradlaugh car, guided by Nick Porter, but he had ridden back to
McGurvin's on a horse, accompanying the runners in the first lap of the
relay race. So he had been able to use his faculty of observation to
some purpose.

Could he follow the course by night, with the mountains a constant guide
by day, all but blotted out in the starlight? He believed he could; and
now the test of his confidence was at hand.

His keen eyes watched the ground as it ruffled into low foothills.
Although he laid a zigzag course as his searchlight brought cactus
clumps and thorn bushes into view, in the main he succeeded in dodging
obstacles, and yet held to a fairly direct route. A mound of rocks,
stark and almost shapeless in the gloom, guided him like a fingerboard;
or a flat-topped hill, or a peculiar-shaped valley between two uplifts,
set him on the right track. Mile by mile the black mountains came
closer, and then Clancy himself began to pick up a landmark or two which
he recognized.

"Chip," he cried, "you're a wonder! Unless I'm badly mistaken, we just
passed the valley where we left the car when Porter led you, and
Ballard, and I into the gap that cuts through the mountain wall to
Happenchance."

"That was the valley, Clan," replied Merriwell, "and th