The Boys of Columbia High on the Ice/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE CLIFFORD SEVEN GET A CHALLENGE
Crash!
Frank had acted on the spur of the moment, and torn the halliards loose from the cleat that held them, so that the sail of the ice-boat dropped just at the very second she plunged into the side of the other craft.
Instantly there was a great confusion, mingled with the sound of breaking planks and loud, angry cries. Strange to say Lanky's boat came through the smash with hardly any damage, while the offending craft was reduced to almost a jumble of mast, sails and thin splintered boards, in the midst of which the two reckless boys found themselves huddled.
Immediately all of them commenced crawling out of the mess. Lef was holding his hand to his face, endeavoring to quench the flow of blood from his bruised nose; while Bill Klemm's usually sarcastic countenance looked doubly grim as he grunted, and rubbed his leg where it had been rudely jolted in the collision.
"Now see what you've done, Lanky Wallace! You'll have to pay me for that damage as sure as you live!" roared Lef, dancing around in his impotent anger, and shedding gore copiously.
"Will I, nit," mocked the other, as he anxiously turned his gaze upon the bow of his own craft, to ascertain the exent of the damage. "It was all your fault, and you know it. Why, you deliberately turned square across our course! You just wanted this to happen, because it was settled that the old Flier had to take a back seat. You got all you deserved, and I don't feel sorry a bit."
"Here, take my handkerchief, Lef, and try and stop that bleeding. Work your jaws hard, and throw your head back, breathing through your nose," and Frank as he spoke stepped forward with the honest intention of rendering such aid to the injured as lay in his power.
"Mind your own business, Frank Allen!" spluttered the wounded boy, furiously, as he reached for his own handkerchief, and glared at the pair before him, with a malicious look in his eyes. "If it wasn't that I'm knocked out by your nasty work I'd feel like pitching in and giving you what you deserve, Lanky Wallace!"
"Oh! is that so!" jerred the party threatened, cheerfully; "well, make your mind easy about that, for I'm to be found any old day, and I know the boss place to adjourn for a fight. Frank, shall we go on our way? That errand of yours in Clifford is important, and we've got no more time to waste with these duffers."
"Huh! talk's cheap, with some fellers," shouted Lef, angrily. "Make up your mind you've just got to pay me the full value of that boat. I'll go and see your father about it. My word against yours, and Bill here will back me up against Frank. You did it on purpose! You hated my boat because it beat you every time last winter, that's what."
"You wouldn't dare," replied Lanky; for like every one connected with a lawyer's household, going to law was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Won't, hey? You just wait and see," declared Lef, bitterly. "My word's as good as yours, and there ain't no witness, you know!"
"Oh, yes there is," said a voice just then; and the boys turned to survey with some surprise a figure that stood close by, near the shore of the island.
He was apparently a tramp, though his bearded face just then bore a smile, and did not look unprepossessing at all.
"I happened to be fishin' right here, through a hole in the ice," this party continued, as he advanced, "and I saw all the racket. That feller Lef deliberately swung his boat across the bow of the other. He done it on purpose. He saw he was gettin' beat, and wanted to bust everything up higher than a kite. I'm right glad he was the only one to get it in the neck."
Lef scowled at the speaker as though he felt he would like to spring upon him, and do some hammering with his fists. But the fisherman seemed to be quite a husky chap, although privation had stamped a look of hunger on his bronzed face.
Lanky stared at him, too, a puzzled expression coming over his countenance, as though he could not for the life of him tell where he had seen this stranger before.
"And who are you?" demanded Lef, still glaring at the other as if he considered him an interloper. "I don't ever remember meeting you before. Guess you must belong in Clifford. Better keep there, and not come nosing around Columbia where you ain't wanted."
"Where can I find you, in case you're needed as a witness?" asked Lanky, exhibiting a bit of the shrewdness that had made his father the best-known lawyer in the county.
"Well, you see, just at present I'm fishing right here. That's my shack over yonder on the island. 'Taint much of a place, but then beggars oughtn't be choosers, they say, and it keeps me from freezing to death. Reckon I'll hang out nigh here a little spell, always waitin' and hopin' for somethin' to turn up."
Frank could detect a trace of bitterness in the voice of the tramp. Somehow it aroused his curiosity very much. There was certainly something bordering on the pathetic in the spasm of pain that flashed across his thin face as he said these last few words, "waitin' and hopin' for somethin* to turn up!"
Lanky kept staring at him, and shaking his head. He had not uttered a single word since the tramp fisherman appeared on the scene; so that it was Frank who presently took him by the arm and led him to the side of the ice-boat, saying:
"I don't think she's been hurt any. Lanky; suppose we make a fresh start. It's to be hoped we won't meet with any more adventures on the way, because that challenge has just got to be delivered to-day, sure!"
"Challenge! What's that?" exclaimed Lef, shooting a quick look in the direction of his crony, Bill Klemm, who was still grunting, and rubbing his left leg, with a sour expression on his face.
Without paying more attention to the disgruntled skipper of the broken ice-boat, both Lanky and his chum climbed aboard the Humming Bird, the sail was pulled aloft, and with a quick movement Frank tied another length of cord to that which he had broken in his frantic efforts to prevent a collision.
All this while his mate was turning his head again and again to glance toward the man; who did not seem to particularly fancy such scrutiny, for he kept his back toward them under the pretense of watching the other boys.
"My name's Frank Allen, and his is Lanky Wallace. We belong in Columbia. Perhaps if you get hard pushed we might be able to do something for you. If you happened to ask for me how'd I know it was you?"
Of course in calling out in this manner, Frank was only trying to get a line on the name of the lone fisherman who was seeking the bass and pickerel known to frequent the deep waters near Rattail Island.
"Call me Bill," muttered the man, after a brief hesitation; and Frank somehow concluded that this could hardly be his real name.
"No doubt he's ashamed of his own, or else don't want his folks to know he ever sank so low as this," was what Frank said to his chum, after they had once more started along the up-river course.
"Oh! shucks! what ails me? One second I think I've got it, and when I start to say it, blessed if the pesky thing don't seem to just slip away from me. I never had anything happen to me so dopey," muttered Lanky, fiercely.
"What's that?" demanded Frank, his curiosity excited, of course.
"Why, that fellow, you know—seems like I've seen him somewhere or other, at some time, and yet for the life of me I can't just clinch it. Every time I think I've got hold of it the thing slips away like an eel. I tell you I'll never be happy till I've remembered where I saw him," went on Lanky, who was a most determined fellow, obstinate he had often been called.
"Oh! I wouldn't bother my head about that. What does it matter, when the chances are you'll never set eyes on him again? These hoboes are here to-day and gone to-morrow. And I guess he is a tramp, all right, eh. Lanky?" went on Frank, as he turned one last look at the group alongside the island.
"Sure," replied the other, cheerfully. "But somehow I seemed to get a notion he was a little above the general run of hoboes. Mebbe it was his voice when he said he was waiting for something to turn up. What d'ye suppose he's expecting to come along? Do hoboes dream of millionaires dying and leaving them cash?"
"Perhaps they do. I hope Lef and Bill don't make up their minds to jump on him and try to get rid of some of their bile that way," ventured Frank, as a spur of land, jutting out from the shore, shut off a view of the channel that ran to the westward of Rattail Island.
At that Lanky laughed mockingly.
"Let 'em try it, that's all! Why, that hobo could just wipe up the ice with the pair of them, and then not half try. Oh! no, don't you forget it, Frank, Lef Seller's too cunning a fellow to take chances. He can talk pretty loud, but when it comes to fight, he generally squirms out of the rumpus."
"Still, it took considerable grit to deliberately throw his boat across our bows. Somebody might have been badly hurt in the smash-up," remarked Frank.
"Yep. But that came to him like a flash," his chum said, as he changed their course. "He never had time to think twice, or my word for it, he wouldn't have done the job. That was impulse. Even a coward will sometimes have a flash of what looks like courage; but it's only desperation. You know how a cornered rat will show its teeth, and fight."
"Perhaps you're right. Lanky. I'm glad for your sake the boat wasn't hurt much. She seems to scoot along just as well as ever."
"But what we did to the poor old Harrapin Flier wouldn't do to tell. It's to the scrap heap for her after that beat. But I wish I could remember where I saw that Bill," went on Lanky with another shake of his head, and a sigh.
Frank laughed aloud.
"Well, you're a queer duck, Lanky, I must say. As long as that thing is bothering you, I suppose you'll lose your appetite, and not take any interest in other happenings. What does it amount to, anyhow? Forget it, and try to imagine what a roar will go up from the Clifford fellows when they hear that Columbia challenges their hockey team the second day after Christmas, wind and weather permitting, for the championship of the famous old Harrapin."
"Well, we're almost there now," observed Lanky, "and soon we'll find out for ourselves what these gay chaps of Clifford have to say about it. Look there, and you'll see the ice fairly covered with skaters. They do run things up here different from the way we do, and Fve heard outsiders say the best skaters in the State can be found right here in little old Clifford. It's a craze with them."
Loud shouts ahead attested to the fact that the skaters had discovered the advancing ice-boat, and hailed its coming with delight. Presently, as Lanky described a graceful curve, and brought the fleet craft to a standstill, with her nose heading toward the west where the breeze hailed from, scores of boys and girls gathered around.
"Where's Hastings?" asked Frank, as he stepped onto the ice.
"Here! who wants me?" called a voice, and the captain of the Clifford High School football eleven, as well as leader in all athletic sports Clifford boasted, came skating up, carrying a fine hockey stick made of selected Canadian rock elm.
"Why, hello, Allen!" he went on, holding out a hand to each; "and you, too, Wallace. This is mighty nice in you coming up to call on us. If you'd only been a little earlier you might have seen a rattling game between the regulars and a picked seven. It was fast playing all the way through, and if we did win we had little to crow over. Still, two of our best players were away, and it always makes a hole in a team to put on substitutes not accustomed to the play."
"I've got something that I was commissioned to give you, Hastings," and Frank as he spoke drew out an envelope, while the skaters gathered near, despite the suspicious crackling of the strong ice.
Hastings tore off the end of the envelope. As soon as he had read the contents of the enclosure a grin of pleasure spread all over his face. Turning, he looked to the right and to the left at the hockey players and others who had gathered around the ice-boat from below.
"Listen, fellows," he observed. "What d'ye think? We're challenged to a match by the Columbia High Hockey Team the second day beyond Christmas, or as soon after that as the weather permits. Shall we accept? All in favor say aye!"
And immediately there burst forth a shout that made the echoes ring from both sides of the Harrapin. Frank looked at his companion.
"Say, Lanky," he observed, when the tumult had in a measure subsided, "it looks like we would have our work cut out for us to beat this fast seven, eh?"
"But don't forget, Frank, that this is still Columbia's year," said Lanky, sturdily.