THE STRANGER
It was both a cold and windy day on which Dan and Billy finally got the
motor-iceboat down upon the ice. It was in Christmas week.
“I reckon that old blizzard you were telling about is pretty near due,
Dannie,” quoth the younger boy, blowing his fingers to get some
semblance of warmth into them, for the boys and old Bromley had to work
without gloves part of the time.
“There’s a storm brewin’,” declared the old boatman, cocking his eye
toward the streaky looking clouds that had been gathering ever since
daybreak. “You can lay to that! And it wouldn’t surprise me if it
brought a big snow, boys. Ye know we ain’t re’lly had our share of snow
this winter so fur. We’ve had ice enough, the goodness knows!”
“You bet,” agreed Billy, with a chuckle. “And ice gathers some fast,
too—if you take it from Money Stevens.”
“What’s happened to him now?” asked Dan.
“Why, Money went fishing up Karnac Lake way last Saturday—didn’t you
hear? Says he would have had great luck, if only he could have kept the
hole open through which he was fishing. He swears he hooked a pickerel
so big that he couldn’t get it through the hole he’d cut in the ice!”
“That sure must have been some pickerel,” chuckled Dan. “Now, John, what
do you think of this craft?”
“By gravy! I don’t know what _to_ think of it, boy,” grunted the old
boatman. “It ain’t like nothin’ in the heavens, or on the airth, nor
ag’in in the waters under the airth! If you say that dinky little ingine
is goin’ to make her go, why I reckon go she will! But seein’s
believin’.”
“Right-O!” agreed Dan, smiling. “And we will proceed to put the matter
to the test right now before we step the mast. Get aboard.”
But Old John wouldn’t do that. He preferred to watch the proceedings
from the dock—and he said so.
“I ain’t got so many more years ter live no way ye kin fix it,” he said,
grinning. “Lemme live ’em whole. I wouldn’t venter on one o’ them
sailin’ iceboats, let erlone this contraption.”
Dan and Billy pushed out from the shore and started the engine. Dan
could easily manipulate the power as well as steer the _Follow Me_.
Billy was passenger only on this trial trip.
There was a stiff breeze blowing and they headed directly into it. The
moment the wheel under the boat gripped the ice she began to drive
ahead. As Dan gradually increased its revolutions they moved faster and
faster, while the whine of the engine and the sharp strokes of the
wheel-points joined in an ever-increasing roar.
Behind them the ice showed a plain trail of punctures from the
wheel-points. The _Follow Me_ left a trail that might easily be followed
anywhere on the ice.
But its speed was not great at first. Dan increased it slowly and, when
she rounded to and headed back toward the landing, Billy was flatly
disappointed.
“Crickey! this isn’t going to do much, Dan. Why, the old boat can beat
her.”
“What did you expect?” asked his brother, smiling.
“But, old man! we’re going to race with this thing!”
“Of course.”
“And the _Fly-up-the-Creek_ can beat her out—easy.”
“Sure of that; are you?”
“What you got up your sleeve, Dannie?” the other demanded. “Did you get
all the speed out of her you could?”
“You saw that she was wide open,” chuckled Dan. “But you forget that we
had no sail set. Let’s get the mast up and the sail bent on. _Then_
we’ll give her a fair trial.”
Billy shook his head, however. He had believed that his brother’s
invention was going to prove as fast as a power-launch, without any
canvas.
The mast and sail were both ready. They had the new boat rigged in an
hour. There was still a full hour before sunset and again Dan took his
place in the stern while Billy raised the sail.
The canvas of the _Follow Me_ was not as heavy as that of the
Speedwells’ first iceboat. They had made some short runs in the
_Fly-up-the-Creek_ that had equalled fifty miles an hour—and more.
Billy’s heart had fallen pretty nearly to his boots. He did not believe
the _Follow Me_ could do anything like that.
But Dan only grinned at him. The wind filled the sail almost immediately
and the motor-iceboat staggered away from Bromley’s dock. The old
boatman stood there and watched them with a grim face, for the new craft
started very slowly. She seemed really to hobble at first.
“Them boys air going to be disappointed—by jings!” muttered Bromley.
“And that’s too bad. But these yere new-fangled notions——”
“By gravey! what’s happened?”
Suddenly the “put, put, put!” of the engine reached his ears. And at the
same time the sail filled and bellied full. The motor-iceboat leaped
ahead, the exhaust became a rumble, and the _Follow Me_ shot up the
river faster—it seemed to Bromley—than he had ever seen any craft move
before.
She crossed the frozen stream diagonally and in two minutes was out of
sight behind the humpback of Island Number One! Her disappearance left
the old man breathless.
“Some boat—that,” said a voice behind him.
“Heh?” exclaimed John Bromley, turning to see a strange man standing
coolly on his private wharf.
“That’s a fine sailer,” said the stranger.
“Mebbe ’tis,” returned John, eyeing the man fixedly.
The latter was a keen-looking chap, lean and wiry, and dressed in a
long, loose, gray ulster, buckled about his waist with a belt. He
returned the old boatman’s look, after a moment, with interest.
“You know those chaps who are running that boat?” asked the stranger.
“I reckon I know the Speedwells pretty well,” grunted John.
“Speedwell—eh? Is that their name?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What business have they got over on that island?”
“What business have you got asking me?” returned the old man,
freezingly.
“I want to know.”
“Keep wanting. Everything comes ter them that waits, they tell me.”
“You are of a sour temper, I see,” observed the stranger, eyeing Bromley
quite calmly.
“Mebbe. But my temper is none of your business. Something else is.”
“What’s that, old timer?” asked the thin man, grinning slightly.
“You’re on a piece of the earth I own. Get off it,” said John Bromley,
advancing truculently. “This dock is mine—and I own to the road. You git
back to the road and stay there.”
The man eyed him for a few seconds, as though to see whether he really
meant the command, or not. It was quite plain that Bromley meant it. He
was beginning to roll up his sleeves, and old as he was he looked to be
a bad man to tackle.
“Oh! very well,” said the stranger, backing off. “No offense meant.”
“And that’s lucky, too,” growled John. “For if you was meanin’ offense I
might come out into the road to you, at that!”
The stranger said no more, but gradually “oozed off the scenery,” as
Bromley told the boys afterward. “But that feller’s got some reason for
nosin’ around here,” the old boatman added, as he helped fasten the
motor iceboat to the spiles of the dock. “I didn’t like his looks—not a
little bit.”
“Do you suppose it is somebody trying to see what kind of an invention
you have here, Dannie?” asked the awed Billy.
For the second trip of the motor iceboat had convinced the younger
Speedwell lad that his brother was a marvel. He wasn’t talking much
about that trip, but if John Bromley had considered the speed of the
_Follow Me_ quite surprising, how much more impressed was Billy—and even
Dan himself.
It was true they had had a favoring breeze—and a stiff breeze, too. The
wind would have driven the boat at high speed, alone. But with the
auxiliary motor at work the _Follow Me_ had traveled at a breath-taking
pace. She had gone the length of Island Number One, and the island
beyond it, rounded the farther end of that second island, and come
rushing back down the river to John Bromley’s dock in an almost
unbelievably short time.
“It doesn’t matter who the fellow was,” said Dan, finally; “you know we
don’t want anybody examining this boat. John understands that; don’t
you, John?”
“I’ll keep me eye on her,” growled the boatman. “They’ve got to be wide
awake to beat old John. You leave it to me.”
But both boys felt some worriment of mind as they scurried around that
evening in the motor truck, picking up the cans of milk from the
dairies.
If it had begun to snow they might have felt better about it. With a
storm under way it would not be likely that anybody would seek out the
_Follow Me_ at John Bromley’s lonely dock, for any purpose.
The Speedwell boys got back to the house, however, finished the chores
for that night, and went in to supper before a single flake of the
promised storm had fallen.
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