A QUARREL ON THE ICE
It was a moment of extreme peril, and the heart of more than one
onlooker seemed to stop beating. The ice boat was a heavy affair, with
runners of steel, and a blow from that bow, coming at such a speed,
would be like a blow from a rushing locomotive. It looked as if Cora
Runnell was doomed.
But as all of the others stood helpless with surprise and consternation,
Joe Westmore dashed forward with a speed that astonished even himself.
He fairly flew over the ice, directly for Cora, and, reaching the fallen
girl, caught her by the left hand.
“Quick! we must get out of the way!” he cried, and without waiting to
raise her to her feet he dragged her over the smooth ice a distance of
four or five yards. Then the _Silver Queen_ whizzed past, sending a
little drift of snow whirling over them.
“Git out of the way!” came rather indistinctly from Dan Marcy. “Can’t
you see I’m trying to beat the record?” And then he passed out of
hearing.
“Are you hurt?” questioned Joe, as he assisted the bewildered girl to
her feet.
“I—I guess not, Joe,” she stammered. “But, oh! what a narrow escape!”
And Cora shuddered.
“Dan Marcy ought to be locked up for such reckless sailing.”
“I think so myself.” Cora paused for a moment. “It was awfully good of
you to help me as you did,” she went on, gratefully.
By this time the others were coming up, and the story of the peril and
escape had to be told many times. Among the first to arrive was Joel
Runnell, Cora’s father, who had shouted the warning from the shore. He
had been out hunting, and carried an old-fashioned shotgun and a game
bag full of birds.
“Not hurt, eh?” he said, anxiously. “Thank fortune for that! Who was
sailing that boat?” And when told, he said he would settle with Marcy
before the day was done. “Can’t none of ’em hurt my girl without hearing
from me,” he added.
The excitement soon died down, and the skaters scattered in various
directions. In the meantime, to avoid being questioned about the affair,
Dan Marcy, who was a burly fellow of twenty, and a good deal of a bully,
turned his ice boat about, and went sailing up the lake once more.
Some of the lads on the lake were out for a game of snap the whip, and
Joe, Harry and Fred readily joined in this sport. At the third snap,
Fred was placed on the end of the line.
“Oh, but we won’t do a thing to Fred,” whispered one of the boys, and
word was sent along to make this snap an extra sharp one.
“You can’t rattle me!” sang out Fred, as the skating became faster and
faster. “I’m here every time, I am. Let her go, everybody, whoop!” And
then he had to stop talking, for he could no longer keep up. The line
broke, and like a flash Fred spun around, lost his footing, and turned
over and over, to bring up in a big snowbank on the shore.
“Hello, Fred, where are you bound?” sang out Harry.
“Where—where am I bound?” spluttered the stout youth, as he emerged and
cleaned the snow from out of his collar and sleeves. “I don’t know.” He
paused to catch his breath. “Reckon I’m in training for a trip to the
North Pole.”
Half an hour later found the Westmore boys at home for dinner. There was
something of a family gathering this Christmas day, mostly elderly
people, so neither Joe nor Harry had a chance to speak to their father
about the hunting trip they had in mind. Everybody was in the best of
humor, and the table fairly bent beneath the load of good things placed
upon it—turkey with cranberry sauce, potatoes, onions, squash, celery,
and then followed pumpkin and mince pies, and nuts and raisins, until
neither of the boys could eat a mouthful more. Both voted that Christmas
dinner “just boss,” and the other folks agreed with them.
The middle of the afternoon found the lads at the lake again. It had
clouded over once more, and they were afraid that another fall of snow
might stop skating for several weeks, if not for the balance of the
season.
“We want to take the good of it while it lasts,” said Harry.
Dan Marcy was again out on his ice boat, and Joe and Harry, accompanied
by Fred, followed the craft to a cove on the west shore. There seemed to
be something the matter with the sail of the _Silver Queen_, and Marcy
ran the craft into a snowbank for repairs.
“Say, what do you want around here?” demanded Dan Marcy, as soon as he
caught sight of the Westmore boys. His face wore an ugly look, and his
tone of voice was far from pleasant.
“I don’t know as that is any of your business, Dan Marcy,” returned Joe.
“Ain’t it? We’ll see. I understand you’ve been telling folks that I
tried to run into you and that Runnell girl on purpose.”
“You didn’t take much care to keep your ice boat out of the way.”
“It was your business to keep out of the way. You knew I was trying to
beat the record?”
“Do you own the lake?” came from Harry.
“Maybe you’ve got a mortgage on the ice?” put in Fred.
Now the year before, Dan Marcy had been in the ice business, and had
made a failure of it, and this remark caused him to look more ugly than
ever.
“See here, for two pins I’d pitch into the lot of you, and give you a
sound thrashing!” he roared.
“Would you?” came sharply from Joe. “Sorry I haven’t the pins.”
“I’ll give you an order on our servant girl for two clothespins, if
they’ll do,” put in Fred.
“Then you want that thrashing, do you?” growled Dan Marcy; but as he
looked at the three sturdy lads he made no movement to begin the
encounter.
“If anybody needs a thrashing it is you, for trying to run down Cora
Runnell,” said Joe. “It was a mean piece of business, and you know it as
well as we do.”
“You shut up, Joe Westmore!” Marcy picked up a hammer with which he had
been driving one of the blocks of the sail. “Say another word, and I’ll
crack you with this!” He advanced so threateningly that Joe fell back a
few steps. As he did this, a form appeared on the lake shore, and an
instant later Dan Marcy felt himself caught by the collar and hurled
flat on his back.
“I reckon as how this is my quarrel,” came in the high-pitched voice of
Joel Runnell. “I’ve been looking for you for the past hour, Dan Marcy.
I’ll teach you to run down my girl. If it hadn’t a-been for Joe Westmore
she might have been killed.”
“Let go!” roared Marcy, and scrambled to his feet, red with rage. He
rushed at the old hunter with the hammer raised as if to strike, but
before he could land a blow, Joe caught hold of the tool and wrenched it
from his grasp.
“Give me that hammer! Do you hear? I want that hammer!” went on the
bully. Then he found himself on his back a second time, with his nose
bleeding profusely from a blow Joel Runnell had delivered.
“Have you had enough?” demanded the old hunter, wrathfully. “Have you?
If not, I’ll give you some more in double-quick order.”
“Don’t—don’t hit me again,” gasped Dan Marcy. All his courage seemed to
desert him. “It ain’t fair to fight four to one, nohow!”
“I can take care of you alone,” retorted Joel Runnell, quickly. “I asked
you if you had had enough. Come, what do you say?” And the old hunter
held up his clinched fists.
“I—I don’t want to fight.”
“That means that you back down. All right. After this you let my girl
alone—and let these lads alone, too. If you don’t, you’ll hear from me
in a way you won’t like.”
There was an awkward pause, and Dan Marcy wiped the blood from his face,
and shoved off on his ice boat.
“We’ll see about this some other time,” he called out when at a safe
distance. “I shan’t forget it, mind that!”
“He’s a bully if there ever was one,” observed Harry.
“And a coward into the bargain,” put in Joel Runnell. “Watch out for
him, or he may play you foul.”
“I certainly shall watch him after this,” said Joe.
“We’re glad you came along,” came from Fred. “We want to ask you
something about hunting. I’ve got a new double-barreled shotgun and so
has Joe, and we want to go out somewhere and try for big game.”
“And I’ve got a new camera, and I want to get some pictures of live
game,” added Harry.
“You can’t get any big game around Lakeport. If you want anything worth
while you’ll have to go out for several days or a week.”
“We’re willing to go out as long as our folks will let us,” explained
Harry. “We haven’t said much about it yet, for we wanted to see you.”
“We thought you might like to take us out, or rather go with us,” came
from Joe. “If you’d go with us we’d pay the expenses of the trip, and
give you your full share of whatever game we managed to bring down.”
At this Joel Runnell’s gray eyes twinkled. He loved boys, and knew the
lads before him very well. All the powder and shot he used came from Mr.
Rush’s hardware establishment, and his flour from the Westmore mill, and
he was always given his own time in which to pay for the articles.
Moreover, he was not the one to forget the service Joe had rendered his
daughter.
“I’ll go out with you willingly,” he said. “I’ll show you all the big
game I can, and what you bring down shall be yours.”
“Hurrah! It’s settled!” cried Fred, throwing up his cap. “We’ll have
just the best time that ever was!”
“Where do you want to go to?”
“I was thinking of camping out up on Pine Island,” answered Harry. “But
of course we have got to see my father about it first.”
“Pine Island is a nice place. There is an old lodge up there—put up five
years ago by some hunting men from Boston. It’s a little out of repair,
but we could fix it up, and then use that as a base of supplies.”
“Just the thing!” said Joe, enthusiastically. “If we liked it would you
stay out with us for two or three weeks?”
“To be sure. There is a little game on the island, and we could easily
skate to shore when we wished. When do you want to go?”
“As soon as we get permission,” said Harry. “We’ll find out about it
to-morrow.”
After that the boys could talk of nothing but the proposed outing and
what they hoped to bring down in the way of game. Harry wanted pictures
worse than he wanted to bring down game; nevertheless, he said he would
take along a gun and a pistol. “Then I can snapshot my bear first, and
shoot him afterward,” he said.
It was not until the day after Christmas that the Westmore lads got a
chance to speak to their parents about what was uppermost in their
minds. At first Mrs. Westmore was inclined to demur, but her husband
said the outing might do their sons some good.
“And they couldn’t go out with a better fellow than Joel Runnell,” added
Mr. Westmore. “They’ll be as safe with him as they would be with me.”
As soon as it was settled that they were really to go, Harry rushed over
to Fred’s house. Fred had already received permission to go, and now all
they had to settle on was the time for their departure and what was to
be taken along. Christmas had fallen on Thursday, and it was decided to
leave home on the following Monday morning, weather permitting. As to
the stores to be taken along, that was to be left largely to the
judgment of Joel Runnell and to Mr. Westmore, who also knew a good bit
about hunting and life in camp.