"He's a foxy old fellow. But I believe I have safeguarded myself. This trouble about something being buried on the island—Well! I don't know about that."
"I believe Jerry really has some idea now where his uncle put the box. Even if the old hunter was crazy, he might have had some valuables. And surely Jerry has a better right to the box than Blent," Ruth said, indignantly.
"I'll see about that. Just as soon as I have had breakfast, I'll take Preston and go over and interview this gang of Blent's henchmen. I am not at all sure that he has any right to hunt the boy down, warrant or no warrant!"
That was when he looked grim and his eyes flashed. Ruth felt that her friend's father was just the man to give Jerry Sheming a fair deal if he had the chance.
When the boys proposed getting out the two iceboats and giving the girls a sail (for the wind was fresh), Ruth was as eager as the others to join in the sport.
Not all the girls would trust themselves to the scooters, but there were enough who went down to the ice to make an exceedingly hilarious party.
Ralph Tingley and Tom Cameron were the best pilots. The small iceboats were built so that two passengers could ride beside the steersman and sheet tender. So the girls took turns in racing up and down the smooth ice on the south side of the island.
Ruth and Helen liked to go together with Tom, who had Busy Izzy to tend sheet. It was "no fair" if one party traveled farther than from the dock to the mouth of the creek and back again.
The four friends—Ruth and her chum, and Tom and Busy Izzy—were making their second trip over the smooth course. Bobbins, with his sister and The Fox, and Ralph Tingley, manned the other boat.
The two swift craft had a splendid race to the mouth of that brook which, because of its swiftness, still remained unshackled by the frost. The shallow stream of water poured down over the rocks into the lake, but there was only a small open place at the point where the brook emptied into its waters into the larger and more placid body.