The Speedwell Boys and Their Ice Racer: or, Lost in the Great Blizzard

CHAPTER XI
A HAIR’S BREADTH FROM DEATH

The horses faced the wind as they struck into the Long Bridge road, and shook their heads impatiently till the bells on the harness rang again. Billy crouched a little behind Dan’s bulkier shoulder, for Dan was driving.

“Whew! some breeze this,” said the younger boy, who could not keep silent for long.

“At our backs, if we coast down Shooter’s,” said Dan.

“That’s so. But we’ll have to face it going up – and dragging the girls, too.”

“Good thing we haven’t any girls to-night, then, Billy,” said his brother.

“Huh!” grunted Billy, who was not yet in a forgiving spirit. “I hope that Barry Spink makes Lettie walk up hill every time. He looks like that sort of a fellow to me.”

“If they have iced the course,” Dan was saying, reflectively, “and with the wind blowing right down the hill, there will be some great sledding this night. Why! if we lay down a couple of lengths of the roadside fence at the bottom of the hill, we ought to be able to cross the flat and slide right out on the river!”

“Some slide!” exclaimed Billy, with enthusiasm.

“The river’s two and a half miles broad there,” said Dan, still speaking thoughtfully.

“And Shooter’s Hill is another two miles from foot to summit – that’s sure,” added Billy. “Some slide!” he added, repeating his exclamatory comment with gusto. “But do you think there’d be momentum enough to carry a sled across the river to this side?”

“No; I don’t,” admitted Dan. “But – ”

“But what, old boy? What’s working on you?” demanded Billy, eagerly, beginning to see that Dan’s remarks pointed to some tangible idea.

“Let’s drive around by the house first,” said Dan, quickly, turning Bob and Betty into a side road.

The horses accelerated their pace at once, for they thought their stalls were just ahead of them.

Dan tossed the reins to Billy when they drove into the yard, and bolted into the house at once without saying another word. He was gone some few minutes, and Billy saw a lamp shining through a garret window before his brother appeared again.

When Dan did come out he bore an object that filled Billy first with amazement and then with delight.

“For goodness’ sake! what’s that for?” the younger boy demanded. “That old kite? Sure! you can put it up all right in a wind like this. But who wants to fly a kite on a moonlight night, when there’s bobsledding in prospect – ”

“Great Peter, Dan! I get you! I see! Say, boy! you’ve got the greatest head ever,” declared the slangy and enthusiastic Billy. “Lay it down in back there so the wind won’t get it. And plenty of cord?”

“Here’s line that would hold a whale,” chuckled Dan, climbing back to the seat. “What do you think? Will we show those fellows something?”

“We’ll show Let Parker that she made a mistake,” growled Billy, going suddenly back to his bone of contention with the town clerk’s lively daughter.

The horses were off again in a moment, and it was not long before they came in sight of the Long Bridge and the glistening, snow-covered slope rising from the far bank of the river, and just beyond the bridge.

Dan and Billy could see their school friends and companions scattered over the coasting course on their bobsleds. There were smaller sleds, too; but several big “double-runners” carried parties of shouting young folk down the two-mile slope and almost to the entrance to the bridge.

They did not mind the sharp wind – excepting while dragging the sleds to the top of the hill. But even that task was accomplished amid laughter and merriment.

The Speedwell boys drove across the bridge and put their horses under the shed of a farmer who lived on the bank of the river. They lifted out the huge kite carefully and with it, and their bob, hurried to join the crowd just then starting up the hill for another trip.

“What under the sun you got there, Dan?” demanded Money Stevens. He couldn’t approach to examine the kite, for he was dragging one of the sleds himself and there were already three girls upon it.

“Oh! we’re going to show you fellows a new trick,” said Billy, proudly. “You wait and see.”

Billy was looking for Lettie Parker, and he saw her now on a brand-new bobsled which was being drawn by Barry Spink and the biggest Greene boy. Mildred was with her.

“Hullo, Billy Speedwell!” shouted Miss Parker. “I didn’t know you boys were coming over here.”

“Well, I hope you see us, Let,” said Billy, with an air of carelessness. “We’re right here – and we’ll come pretty near leaving that bob you’re on ’way behind.”

“Just about the way your old Fly-up-the-Creek leaves my iceboat behind,” scoffed Barry Spink. “I believe you milkmen are a couple of blow-hards!”

But Billy only laughed and he and Dan hastened their steps along the snowy road. Where the hill dipped to the level of the flats the Speedwells stopped and threw down two lengths of the fence. This opened a course to, and down, the easily sloping bank of the river.

“Aw, say!” cried Biff Hardy, who was with another bob; “that won’t make you anything. We can’t get momentum enough to clear that little rise between here and the river.”

“Hold your horses, Biff!” advised Dan. “Let’s see what we can do.”

“And with a kite!” scoffed one of the other fellows. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

But Dan would not be led into any discussion, while Billy was not just sure what his brother was intending. Once on the top of the hill Dan showed Billy what to do, in a hurry. They waited for the other sleds to go, so as to have a clear field. Then Billy raised the kite, Dan holding the stout line attached to it.

The stiff wind blowing from behind them, seized the big kite almost at once. She rose with a bound, Dan letting the line whistle through his gloved hands. She made one swoop when a flaw struck her, and then mounted again and the wind caught her full and square.

There she soared, steady and true, and the Speedwells hastily boarded their heavy sled. Dan fastened the line to a ring in front of the tiller with which he steered the sled. Billy, hanging on behind, started the sled over the brow of the hill by striking his heel sharply into the hard-packed snow.

The runners squeaked a little, and then the sled plunged downward. Had the wind been lighter, the momentum the sled gathered on the first half-mile of the hill would have forced the coasting Speedwells ahead of the kite.

But the gale was strong and steady. Away the great kite flew, with the line taut most of the way to the bottom of the hill.

“She ain’t helping us a bit,” objected Billy, shouting into Dan’s ear. “Those other sleds went just as fast.”

“Wait,” commanded Dan, untroubled as yet.

The sled whizzed down to the bottom of the hill and then Dan steered out of the beaten track. The crowd watched the Speedwells in wonder. The sled went slower and slower, passing through the break in the roadside fence and over the drifts toward the river.

But the great kite was tugging now. It drew the sled on, over the short rise, and then they pitched down the bank and out upon the river! They gained speed again and quickly left the cheering crowd behind, never stopping until they reached the other bank of the river.

“What do you know about this?” yelled the delighted Billy. “We got ’em going this time, I guess.”

The kite fluttered over the trees on the bank and the boys were able to bring it to earth quickly, and without damaging the kite. It was covered with strong, oiled paper, and was not easily torn.

But it was a job to drag the sled all the way back again, and the kite, too. The other young folk had made a couple of trips on the shorter route before the Speedwells returned to the top of Shooter’s Hill.

Nevertheless, Lettie Parker and Mildred Kent were waiting for them. Lettie had insisted upon leaving Messrs. Spink and Greene in the lurch. She was determined to “go sailing” with the Speedwell boys.

“Do you think it is dangerous, Dan?” asked Mildred.

“Of course it isn’t,” declared Lettie, before Dan could answer. “I’m not afraid to do anything that Billy Speedwell does.”

“If you really want to try it, Milly,” Dan said, “we’ll take you girls for one trip.”

“You’ll break all your necks fooling with that kite,” growled Barry Spink.

He and his partner took some other girls on their bob and started at once for the bottom of the hill. They switched out of the beaten track and went through the break in the fence; but the momentum gathered by the bob would not take it over the little hill.

The Speedwells did not notice that Barry left the rest of the party there and went over the hill himself. He was back in a moment, and just then Billy got the kite into the air, and it began to tug at the Speedwells’ bobsled.

“All aboard!” yelled Billy, and ran to take his place behind the girls.

Down the track they rushed and out across the flat. The kite tugged bravely and carried them over the rise. And just as they went over this little hill Dan uttered a cry of alarm. Right across their track, on the steep bank of the river, lay a great tree-branch that had not been there when the boys made their first trip behind the kite!

CHAPTER XII
THE “FOLLOW ME”

The danger of a smash and overturn was imminent. The heavy bobsled was plunging toward the obstruction, and there was neither time nor space to steer clear of the branch.

The girls, breathless from the swift ride, could scarcely scream; and Billy was himself speechless. But Dan did not lose his head.

In a trice he whipped out his claspknife, sprung open the blade, and just before the collision occurred he cut the kite-string.

The huge kite turned a somersault in the air, and then plunged to the ice. But the boys and girls on the bobsled did not notice that.

The sled smashed into the tree-branch – and stuck. Dan went over on his head, but arose unhurt. The others had managed to cling to the sled.

“I know who did this!” yelled Billy, when he got his breath. “It was that Spink fellow.”

“Oh! he wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mildred, timidly. “It – it must have fallen here.”

“Not much,” declared Billy.

When they dragged the bobsled back to the rest of the crowd, Spink had already gone home. As Dan said, smiling, there was no chance for a row then; and before Billy met Barry Spink again, he had got quieted down and, on Dan’s advice, did not accuse the fellow of the mean trick.

The kite was smashed all to pieces. Dan decided that that method of coasting was perilous, after all.

Besides, there was other work and other plans to take up the Speedwell boys’ attention; already Dan and Billy were giving their minds to the new iceboat, which they believed would prove a very swift craft indeed.

The regatta committee, headed by Mr. Darringford and made up of influential sportsmen of Riverdale and vicinity, had set the date for the iceboat races in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when business is slack. It was holiday week at the academy, too, and the Darringford Machine Shop hands had a few days off.

Seldom had any public sports “taken hold” on the people of Riverdale like this iceboat sailing.

“It’s the greatest stunt ever,” Biff Hardy declared, “and if the cold weather keeps up all the grandfathers and grandmothers in town – as well as the rest of us – will be out cavorting on the ice.”

There were some spills and a few minor accidents. But with the ice in the condition it was, there was little peril of accidents on the Colasha save through absolute carelessness.

Dan and Billy were busy these days racing in the Fly-up-the-Creek. Nobody but the family knew it; but most of the parts of the wonderful new boat Dan had invented, were finished. The engine had been set up and tried on the barn floor. Then the boys went over to Compton and got the parts Mr. Troutman had made for them, and with the parts Mr. Speedwell had helped them build, and certain others from the Darringford shops, the brothers secretly removed them all to John Bromley’s dock, and assembled them in an old fish-cleaning shed.

The boys were very secret about it. Ever since the first plans Dan had drawn disappeared so mysteriously at Island Number One, the brothers had been worried for fear somebody had found and would make use of them.

The principle upon which the motor-auxiliary worked was novel and Dan was confident that by the aid of the rapidly-driven wheel that would grip the ice under the boat amidships, and her spread of canvas, the new craft would beat anything in the line of an iceboat ever seen on the Colasha.

Mr. Darringford joked with the boys a good deal about the invention. He had examined the parts they had had built at the shops with much curiosity, and threatened to steal their ideas. But Dan and Billy knew they could trust him to the limit. It had been through Mr. Darringford that the Speedwell boys had obtained their real start in the racing game with their Flying Feathers– the motorcycles which were the particular output of the machine shops.

Nobody, Dan was sure, would guess the combination he had invented without seeing all the parts assembled. Only their father was in their confidence in the building of the boat.

Therefore, if any craft appeared like theirs at the regatta they could be sure that the lost plans had been made use of.

“And if anybody’s guilty,” declared Billy Speedwell, “it’s Barry Spink. He is crowing to the other fellows that he’s got us beaten already, and he won’t let anybody look into that shed behind his mother’s barn where the boat is being built.”

“If he’s doing it all himself, I’m not afraid,” chuckled Dan. “Not if he had our plans fifty times over.”

“But he isn’t. There is a foreigner working there – I’ve seen him. He is a mechanic Mrs. Spink hired in the city, Wiley Moyle says, and they’re paying him eight dollars a day.”

“Ow! that hurts!”

“I believe it’s true, just the same,” said Billy. “Spink has got his heart set on beating us.”

“If that’s the price he’s paying for it, he really ought to win,” returned the older lad. “Eight dollars a day – gee!”

The Speedwell family – down to little Adolph – were vastly interested in the new boat. Finally, when it came time to put it together, the question of naming the craft came to the fore.

Naming the Fly-up-the-Creek had been something of an inspiration; but now they all wanted a hand in the christening of Dan’s new invention. The matter was so hotly discussed that Mrs. Speedwell suggested finally drawing lots for the name.

One evening as they sat around the reading lamp each member of the family wrote his or her choice on a slip of paper (’Dolph printed his in big, up-and-down letters) and then the papers were shaken up in a bowl.

’Dolph was blindfolded and with great gravity drew a slip. It was Carrie’s choice, and the paper read “Follow Me” – and thus the motor-iceboat was christened.

CHAPTER XIII
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.