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. If 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 fish 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 met 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!