CHAPTER VIII
THE PLANS
“Lemme get out and find a club, Dan!” begged Billy, as the gray car continued to approach the red one at a swift pace.
“What could you do with a club?” demanded the older lad.
“I’d bust it over that beast’s head!” declared his brother, excitedly. “Stop the car!”
The occupants of the red car had all crouched down in the bottom, hoping the bull would not see them. They might have been ostriches hiding their heads from pursuit in the desert sand.
The beast charged again, and this time he smashed the windshield and got his forehoofs into the front of the car. Barry Spink vaulted over the back of the seat and left Lettie Parker (who had sat with him) to her fate.
“We’re coming, Let!” roared Billy, standing up and fairly dancing in the onrushing gray racer.
The next instant the bull backed away and got right into the path of the Speedwells’ car. Dan had intended to run her alongside of the red automobile and give the frightened passengers a chance to escape.
But the bull got in the way. There was a heavy thud, and Mr. Bull flopped over on his side, bellowing in pain and surprise, while the gray car rebounded from his carcass as though it were made of India rubber.
“Goody-good!” shrieked Lettie Parker. “Bump the mean old thing again, Dan! Bump it!”
But Dan shut off the power quickly. He was afraid the collision had done the racer no good, as it was.
However, he had no intention of seeing the bull do any further harm to the crowd in Burton Poole’s car. With Billy, he ran at the beast, that had now staggered to his feet. Dan had seized a long-handled wrench from the tool box, and before the bull could lower his head to charge, he hit the tender nose a hard clip.
How the creature roared! He hated to give up the fight and it was not until Dan had struck another blow that the bull backed into the ditch and cleared the road for the passage of the two cars.
“For pity’s sake get under the wheel yourself, Burton!” exclaimed Dan. “Get those girls out of here.”
“I’m going to get into your car, Billy,” declared Lettie Parker.
“And I, too!” gasped Mildred.
“Why, it wasn’t my fault the old bull charged us,” whined Barrington Spink.
“You give me a pain!” growled Burton, who was a big, rather slow-witted fellow, but sound of heart. “You jumped over the seat and left Let to be gored to death by that beast—as far as you cared!”
“I—I thought she was coming, too,” gasped Spink.
“See if you can get any action in your engine, Burton,” advised Dan. “If that other fellow had had any sense at all he wouldn’t have rushed right down upon the bull in the way he did.”
“I—I didn’t suppose it would dare face the car,” continued the explanatory Spink.
“Rats!” snapped Billy, in disgust. “The car’s red enough to give anything the blind staggers! No wonder that old bull went for it.”
Burton tried to turn his engine; but he couldn’t get a bit of action out of it. Fortunately the bull was whipped, and the Speedwells turned their own machine about, hitched on to the red car, and towed it back to Riverdale, unmolested.
Later in the week, after the boys had tried the racer out to their complete satisfaction, Dan remained up one evening long after his brother had gone to bed. Billy fell asleep seeing Dan bent over certain drawings he had made, and it must have been midnight when the younger boy was startled out of his sound sleep by a sudden sound.
There was Dan hopping about the room in a grotesque, stocking-footed dance.
“What under the sun’s the matter with you, Dan?” gasped the younger boy.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” ejaculated his brother, snapping his fingers and continuing the dance.
“Stop it! stop it, I say!” commanded Billy. “You’ll have mother in here. My goodness! can’t you break out with the measles—or whatever you’ve got—at a decent hour?”
“It’s something bigger than the measles, Billy,” chuckled Dan, falling into his chair before the table again. “Look here.”
“Those old plans——” began Billy, sleepily.
“These new plans, you mean,” responded his brother, vigorously. “I tell you I’ve struck pay dirt.”
The words stung Billy into a keener appreciation of his brother’s excitement. Awakened from a sound sleep, he had been rather dazed at first. Now he knew what Dan meant.
“You—got—it?” he gasped, stifling a mighty yawn. “Figured it all out?”
“I’m going to rig a motor-driven sprocket wheel arrangement that will push a car over the ice at good speed—yes, sir!”
“Going to hitch it to the Fly-up-the-Creek?” demanded Billy, eagerly, bending over the papers Dan had prepared.
“No. That’s where I was wrong. We’ll build an entirely new iceboat. See here?” and he at once began explaining to his brother the idea that developed—as it seemed—almost of itself since Billy had gone to sleep three hours before.
“It sure looks good!” exclaimed the younger boy, admiringly, when Dan had concluded. “You have got it, Dan! And the boys will be crazy over it.”
“We’ll just keep it to ourselves, you know,” warned Dan. “Mr. Robert Darringford is going to offer a handsome prize for the fastest iceboat at the regatta we’re going to hold. Don’t you know that?”
“Well—er—yes.”
“Then we’ll just keep still about this scheme. Some of the parts will have to be made in the machine shops, you know. And some parts we’ll get old Troutman, at Compton, to make. You remember him?”
“Sure! the pattern maker who worked for Mr. Asa Craig when Mr. Craig was building his submarine.”
“The same. We won’t let anybody but father see the plans as completed. No use in letting ’em in on the scheme.”
“Crickey, Dan!” exclaimed Billy. “If we build a racer that wipes up the whole river, Barry Spink will turn green with envy. I heard him blowing the other day that he was going to have some kind of a mechanical contrivance built for his White Albatross that would make her the fastest thing on the ice.”
“That’s all right. Maybe he’s got something good up his sleeve,” laughed Dan. “But I believe that we have something just a little better here,” and he tapped the plans on the table.