“I'll wring your neck, you bantam!” he bawled; and he came down on Parker with a rush.
On that slippery surface the odds were with the defensive. Moreover, Parker, having an athlete's confidence in his fists, suddenly responded to the instincts of primordial man. He leaped lightly to one side, caught the rushing giant's foot across his instep, and as Connick's moccasined feet went out from under him, the young engineer struck him behind the ear. He fell with a dismal thump of his head on the ice, and lay without motion.
But Parker's panting triumph was shortlived. As he stood over the giant, gallantly waiting for him to rise, he discovered that the rules of scientific combat were not observed in the woods. A half-dozen brawny woodsmen leaped upon him, seized him, threw him down, tied his arms and legs with as little ceremony as if he were a calf, and tossed him upon the ice-boat.
Connick had risen to a sitting posture, and viewed the struggle with mutterings of wrath while he rubbed his bumped head.
He scrambled up as if to interfere, but as his antagonist had by this time been disposed of, he roared a few sharp orders, and his willing crew set at work. Men with axes chopped holes a few feet apart in a circle about the engine. There were many choppers, and although the ice was three feet thick, the water soon came bubbling through. As soon as a hole was cut, other men stuck down their huge cross-cuts and began to saw the ice.
All too soon Parker, craning his neck where he lay on the ice-boat, heard an ominous buckling and crackling of ice, and saw his faithful Swogon disappear below the surface of the lake, her mighty splash sending the water gushing like a silvery geyser into the moonlight. The attached sleds, loaded with the rails and spikes and other material, followed like a line of huge, frightened beavers seeking their hole.
“There,” ejaculated Connick, wiping the sweat from his brow, “when that hole freezes up the Poquette Carry Railro'd will be canned for a time, anyway. Now three cheers for Colonel Gid Ward!”
The cheers were howled vociferously.
He pointed to the men of the settlement, who were now joined by their wives and children, and were watching operations from the bank.
“Three cheers for the brave men and the sweet ladies o' Sunkhaze!”