No sooner was the game over, than they put their heads together in order to concoct a plan which would assist them both in humiliating the Merriwells and in winning a few side bets upon the Franklin game. Colonel Carson was fond of gambling, but he usually liked to know beforehand which way the game was going to come out.
As a result of their conference, the astute colonel hurriedly caught the late afternoon train for Fardale, determined to gain revenge on Chip and his father, and recoup his losses at the same time.
He needed only a lever in order to get his machinations into working order, and this lever he found in the person of Bob Randall. Having discovered that his nephew was not cut on his own pattern and merely disliked Chip Merriwell with an open and manly fervor, he had changed his tactics. Obtaining the information he was after, he caught the late train back to Carsonville, passing that which bore Frank Merriwell, senior, on the way. Things were shaping themselves very nicely, indeed, he reflected.
Meantime, Bully Carson had been busy trying to obtain his own revenge. During the evening his team met at the town pool room, which they frequented the greater part of the time, and Bully set to work.
Squint Fletcher, his catcher, could barely walk. Bully passed him up with a scowl, and turned to the rest of the assembled Clippers.
“We hadn’t ought to let them fellers get away with it,” he declared cunningly. “They put the spurs to us right, then they beat up Squint here.”
“If you hadn’t blown up they wouldn’t have beaten us,” growled Ironton, the Clippers’ shortstop.
This criticism was quite true. But Bully Carson was loath to admit it, so he merely frowned the more.
“If we’d had a little decent support from you guys,” he snapped, “I wouldn’t have gone up. How can a pitcher do anything when he don’t get any support?”
“How can he get support when his balls get knocked a mile outside the grounds?” snapped back Ironton.
A general grin went up at Carson’s expense. It was quite true that when he had started to lose his head, Chip’s men had fallen on him and pounded the ball unmercifully, and Bully knew it.
“Well,” he insisted surlily, “we oughtn’t to let ’em get away with it, just the same. They’d ought to go back home so’s they’d know what they’d been up against.”