Each ski runner held a pole, with a spike in one end, and this was an aid to balancing, as well as of additional use if one tumbled down. It was no easy task, the girls found, to get up when they had been thrown into a drift.
“My!” commented Bobby Hargrew, “if you cross your feet going down hill on these things, you’re likely to dislocate every joint in your body.”
“Be sure you do not cross your feet, then,” advised Mrs. Case, grimly. “I have shown you all the correct position to stand upon these skis. The professional ski runner does not even use a pole. He will take the steep sides of mountains at a two-mile a minute rate. I have seen them do so in Switzerland and in Sweden and Norway. And they will jump into the air from the verge of high banks, and land on the drift at the bottom with perfect balance.”
“This is going to be no cinch to learn,” pronounced Bobby. “I know it’s going to be some time before I am good enough at it to jump off the top of Boulder Head on Cavern Island—now you see!”
“You would better take a much less difficult jump first,” advised Mrs. Case, smiling. “It will be enough fun for us to learn to travel on the skis without any frills. In Europe—especially on the road between St. Moritz and Celerina—I have often seen ski riders with horses. A horse trots ahead, drawing several riders on skis, who cling together by the aid of a rope fastened to the horse’s collar. Sometimes each rider has a horse, and they race horses just as though they were riding in sleighs.
“It is great sport, but like every other healthful form of athletics, it is often made dangerous and objectionable by those who are reckless, or rough. We will learn to balance ourselves, and to coast down a gentle descent.”
So, the next Saturday, the teacher and more than a dozen girls of Central High piled into a big, straw-filled sleigh, and were whisked out into the hills south of the city. The inn at Robinson’s Woods—a popular picnicking ground in summer—was made their headquarters, and there they left the sleigh and took to the difficult skis.
The climb to the top of the bluff overlooking the speedway, on which everybody—almost—who owned a sleigh was driving that afternoon, was not an easy one for the girls. Mrs. Case, holding her body erect, yet easily, shuffled up the incline with such little apparent effort that some of her pupils were in despair.
“We’ll never be able to run as you do, Mrs. Case!” cried Dora Lockwood. “Never! Why—ouch! There, I came near tumbling down that time.”
“Keep your balance. Use the pole if you have to,” advised the instructor. “It is not a running motion—it is more like a slide.”