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 extent 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!" jeered 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 I've 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.