CHAPTER VII
OUT ON THE ROAD
The humming runners of the Fly-up-the-Creek quickly drowned their voices. The wind was light, and it was not fair for the boats running up stream; yet handled right, the ice craft made good speed in that direction.
Billy, by Dan’s order, shook out the jib, and with all canvas drawing they made a long leg to the farther shore of the Colasha, so that when they tacked they were ahead of both the Redbird and Barry Spink’s craft.
The three iceboats, however, were not far apart at any time as they tacked up the river. Money Stevens did not handle the Redbird as smoothly or as neatly as did Barry Spink and his mate; therefore the White Albatross was the nearer to the Speedwells’ craft.
Once the Spink boat crossed the bows of the Fly-up-the-Creek, and the excited Lettie cried:
“Oh, dear! that boy is beating us. Can’t you go faster, Dan? I thought you always were speedy?”
“No. Only Speedwell,” returned Dan, gravely.
“I think we’re going quite fast enough,” remarked Mildred, who was clinging tightly to the hempen loop that Dan had put into her hand when they started.
“It does not follow that we’re being left behind because the Albatross crossed in front of us,” Dan reassured Lettie.
The girl raised up her head to look, and Billy yelled at her:
“Low bridge! Down, I say! Do you want your head knocked off?”
For at that moment Dan had brought the helm about. The boom swept across the body of the iceboat. Billy himself dropped to a horizontal posture.
With creaking and groaning the huge sail bellied out at just the right angle and the slant of the wind flung the iceboat forward on the new tack. She fairly leaped from the ice under the momentum of that sudden gust, and both girls screamed.
Billy laughed happily, for nobody was hurt, and the Fly-up-the-Creek was almost at once on even keel again. But the two girls could only cling tight for the next few minutes and gasp their fear into each other’s ears.
“Look behind!” commanded Dan, after a minute.
Mildred and Lettie did so. To their amazement both the White Albatross and the Redbird were far astern. At least a mile separated them from the Speedwells’ craft.
“How—how did you do it, Dannie?” asked Mildred, wonderingly.
“Oh! whatever you did, don’t do it again,” gasped Lettie.
“We went fast enough to suit you that time; did we, Let?” chortled Billy.
“I merely took advantage of a flaw in the wind,” declared Dan. “You see, the wind is not steady this afternoon, and really, bye and bye, I expect it will get around into a new quarter and stick there. I was looking for that puff, and Spink wasn’t. He tacked too soon and thought he had beaten us. But now——”
“He won’t catch us in a week of Sundays!” finished Billy, in delight.
The wind became so uncertain, however, within the next few minutes, that Dan decided it was inexpedient to continue farther than Island Number One. There were clouds in the northeast, too, and a storm might be on the way.
Therefore the boat was headed about and the canvas filled again as the steel runners squealed around the head of the island.
“Don’t see our friend the dummy anywhere, Dan!” yelled Billy.
“Pshaw! there isn’t anybody on this island,” returned his brother.
This attracted the girls’ attention and Lettie asked, curiously: “Who is ‘the dummy,’ Billy? Anybody I know?”
“Give it up! he may be one of your particular friends for all I know,” returned the younger boy. “But he doesn’t speak English—not so’s you know what he says; and I never heard, Let, that you were very proficient in French or German. How about it?”
“What does he mean, Dan?” asked Lettie, turning her back upon the other boy. “Who is this dummy?”
Dan was pretty busy with the steering of the boat, but he managed to tell the girls—briefly—of his short association with the strange boy whom Billy had almost run over in the snowstorm.
“Isn’t that strange!” exclaimed Mildred. “And do you suppose the poor dumb boy is still somewhere about here?”
“Billy says he’s camping on the island yonder,” chuckled Dan.
“Of course, that’s just like Billy,” scoffed Lettie Parker. “Chock full of romance.”
“All right, all right,” grumbled the younger boy. “You folks wait. Dummy’ll turn up again when you least expect him.”
And oddly enough Billy proved to be a prophet in this event; but the others did not believe it at the time.
The uncertainty of the wind shortened the stay of the Speedwell iceboat on the river that day. The boys took the girls back to the landing and then were quite two hours in getting the Fly-up-the-Creek to John Bromley’s.
There was some snow that night; but not enough to clog the roads, and it all blew off the ice. The intense cold continued and most of the Riverdale Academy pupils spent their spare time on the ice the following week. But Dan and Billy Speedwell had work in another direction.
Their racing car was now four years old, for they had bought it second hand. For short distances there were probably a dozen cars right in Riverdale that could best the boys’ racer.
But when it came to the longer runs, Dan and Billy were well aware that skillful handling counted really more than the machine itself. There were frequent amateur road races and the Speedwells never refused a challenge.
Now they intended to put their old car into tip-top order, and most of the boys’ spare time that week was devoted to this object.
They got her out on the road Monday afternoon and despite the cold worked for three hours between their house and the Meadville turnpike. Dan drove her and the speedometer registered what they would have considered very good time indeed for an ordinary run. But they didn’t make racing time——“Not by a jugful!” as Billy grumbled.
“There’s something wrong,” admitted his brother, seriously.
“S’pose she needs a regular overhauling? Have we got to knock her down and overhaul her from the chassis up?”
“I don’t know. It’s not so long ago that we had her in on the machine shop floor, you know, Billy, and Mr. Hardy, Biff’s father, went all over her himself. She’s getting old, of course, and we’ve used her a lot.”
“I—should—say—yes,” drawled the younger boy. “Nobody’s got more out of a motor car around Riverdale than we have out of this one.”
“But I believe she’s good for many a race,” asserted Dan. “You see, it may be some little thing. There might be a leak——”
“Leak? pshaw! you know the gas runs as clean as a whistle. And what would that have to do with her losing time?” demanded Billy.
“Wait. I mean a leak in the ignition wiring.”
“Wow!”
“Never thought of that—eh?” demanded Dan.
“No. And I’m not thinking much of it now, Dannie—you old fuss.”
“Don’t you be too fresh calling me names, sonny,” advised the older youth. “You want to remember that the wiring of this car is old. A tiny break in the insulation would be enough to spell ‘trouble.’ Get me, Billy?”
“Uh-huh! But I don’t see——”
“Let’s try it. That’s the only thing to do to make sure.”
“How are you going to do it?” demanded Billy, anxiously.
“Watch me,” returned his brother, with assurance, and he immediately went to work to test the insulation.
Billy was sure he was “some punkins” (as he often remarked) when it came to mechanics; but he knew Dan had him “beaten to a mile” when once the elder boy put his mind to a mechanical problem. So he watched Dan narrowly.
To find a leak in the ignition wiring of a machine is no joke; the break may be of the tiniest and in a remote location, too. But Dan had a practical idea about it and he started right.
First he disconnected the conductors, one at a time, replacing them with temporary connections made with an ample length of free wire, laid outside the motor parts.
It did not take long to do this, and this method of “bridging” the conductors without dismantling the connections brought about just what Dan wished. There were two tiny leaks and in an hour Dan had corrected the faults and put everything in shape again.
“Now, we’ll give her another spin,” he grunted. “If I’m not mistaken, Billy, she will act like a different car.”
“Come on. You’ve got to show me,” returned the other. “Doesn’t seem as though those two little cracks in the insulation could put her in so bad.”
They got the car out on the hard road. There was still an hour before sunset and they could go far in an hour.
And how the old car spun along! Billy was delighted and Dan grinned happily. “You sure hit the trouble, old boy!” declared the younger brother. “You are one smart kid——”
Dan punched him good-naturedly in the ribs, and said:
“Be respectful—be respectful, sonny. Remember I’m older than you.”
“That doesn’t worry me much,” returned Billy. And then suddenly he jumped up, demanding: “D’ye see that, Dan? Look!”
They had been going pretty fast, but Dan shut off the power at once. Far ahead of them on the road a red touring car was approaching—a brilliant patch of color against the background of saffron sky.
If the color scheme had caught their eye, so much more did it catch the eye of Farmer Bulger’s black bull, that had just broken out of bounds and entered the highway from the barnyard lane.
Instantly the beast saw the red car coming and it bellowed a challenge, pawing the frozen ground and shaking his horns threateningly. His back was to the Speedwells’ gray car, and he paid that no attention; the boys saw that the brilliantly painted touring car was filled with girls.
“It’s Burton Poole’s new car!” gasped Billy.
“And Mildred and Lettie are in it!” added Dan, quite as excited as his brother.
“Crickey! why doesn’t that Poole know enough to back out. That bull is an ugly fellow.”
“It isn’t Burton at the wheel,” growled Dan, suddenly. “It’s Barry Spink——By George!”
There were other girls in the car besides the doctor’s daughter and Lettie. They were all screaming as the red car dashed toward the great beast that barred the way. At last Spink stopped; but then it was too late to turn the car and escape.
With a vicious bellow the bull charged and struck the radiator of the car a solid blow, breaking it. He bounded back from the collision and shook his head from side to side; but he showed every intention of making a second charge and this time he might clamber into the car itself!