The Boys of Columbia High on the Ice/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
BILL
"Three cheers for Columbia!"
"Oh! ain't they got the nerve, though!"
"The pitcher that goes to the well once too often gets busted at last! They've carried everything with a swoop so far this year; but the dark days have come! Oh! you Columbia! I'm sorry for you!"
"Tell 'em yes, Captain Hastings! Don't keep the gentlemen in such suspense!"
"Yes, they might get cold feet if you hesitate too long. We're hungry, and we must have a bone; a Columbia bone will answer all right!"
Frank and Lanky listened to these and various other cries with amusement. They knew that back of it all the boys of Clifford were quite a sportsmanlike set; and believed in fair treatment for an honorable foe.
True, they had allowed themselves to be beguiled into nibbling at a betrayal of the Columbia signals, and several of the football team had, after losing the game, declared that it served them right, as they had no business to allow themselves to descend to such a depth; but as a rule they had always stood out for clean sport.
"Glad to see the idea pleases you, fellows. If the Clifford athletic committee see fit to accept this challenge, we intend to try and give your champion team as good a fight as we know how," Frank called out. laughing at the same time.
"Bully boy!"
"Three cheers for Frank Allen, the best all-around athlete that Columbia has!"
But Frank instantly threw up his hand.
"I object seriously to that, fellows! I'm one of a lot. I try to do my duty as I see it; but so do all my comrades. Please include every lover of clean sport in Columbia High when you give those cheers. I'd be better satisfied," he said.
"That's right! Frank's modest, but we like him all the better for it. Three cheers, then, boys, for our next victims; including the generous Allen!"
Whereupon they were given with a hearty will, amid much merriment and good natured chaffing, such as all boys delight in.
"Wish you luck, Allen. You carried off the baseball laurels; then gobbled the prizes in the boating carnival; and only recently beat both Clifford and Bellport on the gridiron; but we think you're up against a snag when you try to snatch the hockey championship from the fellows who have held it five years!" remarked Hastings.
"When will you let us know, Hastings?" Frank asked. The other looked around.
"The sooner the better, I suppose. I believe the entire committee, with two exceptions, is present. Suppose I call a meeting right away. Could you hold up half an hour or so?" he asked.
"Afraid we'll back down? But perhaps our fellows are just as anxious to have the challenge accepted as you are. What say, Lanky; shall we hold over, so as to lay the acceptance before our committee to-night?"
"Why not? There's the moon to give us light when the sun fails. H the breeze doesn't die out completely we can get back by hook or crook. I say stay," declared the owner of the ice-boat, vehemently; for Lanky dearly loved a stubborn contest, and the idea of wresting the title of hockey champions from the boys of Clifford High School appealed strongly to his nature.
"All right. Will you come up to our rooms then? I'll get the committee together here on the ice, and we can go in a bunch. A few formalities have to be gone through with, you know," said Hastings.
"You go, Frank; I'll stay with the boat," suggested Lanky.
Although Hastings volunteered to get some fellow to guard the craft against any vandalism on the part of inquisitive youngsters of the town. Lanky was too fond of his recent triumph in the line of ice craft to desert it.
"I'll be chatting with some of the fellows. Go along, Frank, and settle matters. I'm not needed, anyhow. So-long, Hastings, and ditto Gentle, Coots and McQuirk," saying which Lanky dismissed them with a wave of the hand, and proceeded to bandy words with the remainder of the bunch.
Of course the boys of Clifford knew the tall Columbia student. They had seen him in action many a time, playing on the rival baseball team, holding down his place in the eight-oared shell that carried Frank's crowd to victory, and filling a difficult position on the victorious football eleven.
So they were glad to chat with him, and jolly him on the nerve his crowd had in sending a challenge to the undisputed champions of hockey along the Harrapin River.
Half an hour went by, and still no Frank.
"It's moonlight for us, I plainly see," remarked Lanky, as he cast a look up at the sky, where a pretty fair-sized queen of the night rode in all her splendor.
Most of the skaters had left the ice, in bunches of twos and threes. With the coming of night, a warm supper lured them home. Doubtless many would return again, for these Clifford young folks were almost as devoted to the sports of winter as the people of Holland, and pursued them with astonishing zeal.
Finally a hurrying figure came down the bank from the town where a myriad of lights now shone merrily.
"Hello! Lanky, still on deck, and not frozen? Sorry to keep you waiting so long, but they had a lot of formalities to go through with. And then the acceptance had to be written out, and a copy kept. Everything O. K. here?" asked Frank, as he joined his chum.
"Couldn't be better. Then you've got it along, Frank?" asked Lanky, who had immediately set to work hoisting the sail of the ice-boat, preparatory to starting on the return run down-river.
"Safe in my pocket; so that job's done," laughed the other.
"The worst is yet to come, mister!" remarked an urchin standing by, eager to see how the strange craft was manipulated.
"Well, now, you never spoke truer words, my boy, and we ought to know it. But nothing venture, nothing have; and we're bound to give Clifford a run for their money, wind and weather permitting. Ready here, Lanky!"
"All right. Good-night, fellows. When you see us again it will be with blood in our eyes. Be kind' to yourselves, and don't do too much shouting until after you've sent us home, like dogs with their tails between their legs," and Lanky gave a quick turn to the framework on steel runners that threw the sail into the breeze.
So they started on the return trip to Columbia, with the precious acceptance of their challenge safe and sound in Frank's inner pocket.
"Mighty little air stirring," remarked Frank, even while they began to slowly glide along over the smooth surface of the river, heading south.
"Yes. I'm some dubious myself whether we can make it; or if we'll have to kick our way over the last half. Still, it takes only a faint puff of air to keep an ice-boat moving, you know," remarked Lanky.
"Of course, because there's no resistance, as in the case of a boat in the water. This is good enough, if it only keeps up; we'll be home in short order," and as he spoke Frank gazed admiringly at the moonlit shores of the romantic stream, for the Harrapin was bordered in many places with the primeval woods, though in others farms ran down to the edge of the water.
After leaving Clifford they saw not a single skater. It seemed as though they owned the whole river, up and down. The musical murmur of the steel runners on the ice was the only sound to be heard.
"Say, a fellow could easily imagine that he was away off in some wilderness, if it wasn't for the lights along the shore in places," suggested the skipper of the little Humming Bird, as they moved majestically along.
"Or the rumble of that freight train pulling uphill over yonder," said Frank.
"Oh! that could be called the roar of distant surf on the beach. It sounds like it, all right," remarked his chum.
"That's a fact, it does. Makes me think of the last time I was spending a summer on the beach. Careful now, Lanky; there's Rattail Island ahead of us. Which channel are you going to take now?"
"Same as before. You wouldn't find a ripple of a zephyr on the east side, and we'd have to paddle past with our feet," answered the skipper, heading his gliding craft toward the point in question.
"I can see a light on the shore of the island. Yes, it's a fire, all right. That must be Bill cooking his iish supper," remarked Frank, as they swung around the point of the island, and began to move between it and the main shore.
"Bill—Bill what? Hang the luck if I ever had a thing worry me like that seems to do," grumbled Lanky.
"Hello! at it again, are you? I believe that nonsense is going to keep you from enjoying a decent sleep to-night. Better try and curb that weakness, old chap. It will get you into no end of trouble, mentally," warned his comrade; at the same time secretly chuckling, for he knew Lanky could not change his nature any more than the leopard might his spots.
"Yes, there he is, cooking over the blazing fire. Bill may have been a tramp, but it strikes me I could give him a few pointers how best to make a fire when there's any cooking to be done. Give me the red embers, and the steady fierce heat. Are you going to hail him, Frank?"
"He's shading his hand to look out this way, already. I reckon he hears the click of our steel on the ice, for you know how sound carries when the river is frozen," and then raising his voice, Frank called: "Hello! there, Bill; getting grub ready?"
The tramp laughed as he answered back:
"She's done to a turn, boys. Hey, Lanky, if you want me to give evidence, you'll find me right here for some days!"
"All right, Bill. Say, those fellows didn't tackle you for what you said, did they?" asked the ice-boat skipper, as they passed the tramp's camp and shack.
"Well, I guess not! They'd have had a sweet time of it if they tried to climb me, I tell you, Lanky," came the answer floating after them.
Then a wooded spur of land shut out the fire from view.
"Say, did you notice how glib he called my name? Just like Lanky was natural to him all his life. But Bill—that's such a common name, how can I ever pound my head enough to tell where I saw him before. Bill—Billy—I don't seem to make connections at all. It's a case of being stumped, sure," muttered the disconsolate one, as he continued to pay attention to the movements of the gliding boat.
The night breeze was not only faint but fickle. Sometimes it came directly out of the west, and then suddenly the sail would flap as though it had veered into the southwest, necessitating a change of course, diagonally across the river, in order to make progress.
"Slow work," grunted Lanky, presently.
"Yes, but sure. We're not much more than a mile out of town now. If the wind died altogether we could push her along easily to your boathouse," observed his companion, always optimistic in his outlook.
"Yes, but I'd give a cookey to remember where I ever miet that Bill. Oh! shucks! but ain't it just too mean for anything. There—I was just about to say the rest of it. Bill—Bill—when it slipped up on me—Smith, Jones, Brown, whatever can it be?"
Frank laughed derisively at the persistence of his friend.
"I see that nobody is going to have any peace till you bark up that name. Wish I could help you out; but as it happens I don't seem to feel the same way. If I ever met him before it was when he looked different from what he does now."
"There! perhaps that may be the key to unlock the closed door. You've given me an idea that may do the trick. There's that wind heading us off again, so that I've got to tack to get on. But it's jolly good fun, anyhow. Whoop! what's happened?"
Lanky let out a yell with these last words. Even the steady Frank experienced a sudden thrill; for the ice-boat was brought up with an abrupt shock, and her tall mast, sail and all went crashing down over the starboard side, narrowly missing striking the crouching skipper in its descent!