“Stand back, son!” orders Mr. Turner, and stands up suddenly. The incline starts him moving and off he goes—before he’s ready.
“Dad!” yells Ronnie, but there’s none of us near enough to catch him.
Mr. Turner gives one anxious glance behind him, and almost falls over backwards as he swoops downward. What’s worse—he hasn’t had a chance to steer himself and he shoots off the straight-away at once, going more and more to the left.
“He’s heading for the creek!” we all cry. “Sit down, Mr. Turner! Sit down!”
When you sit down it helps slow you up and you can usually manage to stop although you may roll over a few times. But it’s better than running into something by a whole lot.
“Maybe he’ll jump the creek!” speculates Mack. “It’s only about fifteen feet across!”
“I don’t think my Dad was ever on skis before!” says Ronnie, worriedly. “He thinks anything a boy does is easy.”
We groan at this, though I’m willing to believe that Mr. Turner has had some experience with skis which he hasn’t thought worth mentioning until this moment. It’s even steeper down the left side of the hill than it is down the center where we’ve made our course, and Mr. Turner is going like the wind when he gets to the bottom. We can tell that he sees the creek and is trying to figure out how he can avoid it. He tries to move his skis to the side and make a turn but nearly upsets. Thirty feet from the creek he lifts one ski off the snow and desperately attempts to swing sidewise. Instead he criss-crosses his skis, tangles up his legs, sits down with a smack, and goes sliding right on, clawing and scraping until he clears the bank of the creek and sails out over the water to land ker-splash in the middle.
“Oh, boy—and is that water cold!” shivers Mack.
“He sure showed us something!” murmurs Tommy.