the skunk ’t done that, I’ll try to see if they’s enough of the rope left to hang him with!” he exploded.

He turned slowly round, with blazing eyes, and looked over the sea of excited faces.

“Gents, is this hyer Yale? A man mean enough to be a hoss-thief wouldn’t do that on the ranges! All I asks is fer the scalawag that done it to step up to the counter and let me look at him oncet.”

There was no forward movement, and every one seemed to glance at his neighbor. Bludsoe sneered.

“I don’t reckon that any of yer friends did that to keep ye from bein’ beat?”

Higgins turned on him with those blazing eyes. He saw that, in spite of the sneer, Bludsoe had no knowledge of the author of the outrage, and his hot heart relented. He remembered that Bludsoe was a brother roper of the plains, and that plainsmen in a strange land ought to be friends and not enemies.

“I won’t hold that again’ ye, pardner. If you beat me, I’ll know that you wouldn’t do it by a trick like that. Some skunk that never set eyes on the peraries done that!”

Merriwell knew that another riata could not be had in New Haven, and he was about to suggest that something be substituted for the roping-performance, but Higgins asked if a common rope could be had.

“But a common rope won’t give you much show!” Frank insisted. “I’d like to have you win in this thing if you go on with it.”

“I’m goin’ to win, b’jing!” Higgins vowed. “I’ll win now if it kills me! Send fer a rope!”

Then he gave more explicit directions; and while some one hurried away for the rope, Starbright came upon the scene, and was asked to amuse the crowd by trying to beat the gymnasium freshman record for hammer-throwing and putting the shot, which he did.

When the hemp rope ordered by Higgins came he amused the students by showing them how to make a riata from an ordinary hemp rope. To make the “loop” he spliced an end back on the rope, wrapping it with shoemaker’s wax, also securing the ends from fraying by wrapping them tightly with this wax. Not a knot was used.

“The thing ought to be soaked in water fer two or three hours,” he explained, “and then stretched with weights, but it’ll haf to do as it is.”

“If you can 

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