The Speedwell Boys and Their Ice Racer: or, Lost in the Great Blizzard

CHAPTER III
MORE THAN ONE MYSTERY

The two reckless youths who had tried out the iceboat and lost her that morning did not appear at the academy during the forenoon session. Indeed, Barrington Spink was not an attendant at the Riverdale school.

He was a recent comer to the town and the boys knew very little about him, save in a general way. He was the son of a widowed lady who seemed to have a superabundance of cash and who was very proud and haughty.

Mrs. Spink had bought a large house on the outskirts of Riverdale, had furnished it gaudily, hired a host of servants, repainted and refurbished everything about the place, including the iron dog on the lawn, and had set up a carriage and pair as well as an automobile.

The Speedwells had often seen Barrington Spink around town before the occasion when Billy had hauled him out of the icy river, but had never spoken to him. Monroe Stevens belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Riverdale and naturally Spink had gravitated toward “Money,” as the other boys called Monroe.

After school was out and Dan and Billy were walking across the square towards Appleyard’s to get the truck (they had not gone home at noon) they came face to face with the newcomer to Riverdale.

He was with Wiley Moyle and Fisher Greene, both of the so-called “aristocracy” of Riverdale, but good fellows both of them and Billy’s particular friends.

“Say, Billy,” remarked Fisher, grinning, “Barry here has just been telling us how you pulled him out of the river this morning. The chill hasn’t got out of him yet, you see,” he added, with a meaning glance at young Spink, who had nodded very distantly in return for the Speedwells’ hearty greeting.

“He was just asking us about you,” drawled Wiley Moyle, “and we told him that Riverdale would have to go without lacteal fluid in its coffee if it wasn’t for you and Dan.”

“And our cows,” replied Billy, seriously. “They have something to do with the milk supply, I assure you.”

“And the barn pump – I know,” chuckled Wiley, grinning saucily.

“Oh – I – say,” stammered Spink, eyeing Billy rather askance. Dan and some of the older boys were discussing an important topic some distance away. “I didn’t suppose you fellows really made a chum of this – er – Speedwell boy.”

“Huh?” grunted Wiley. Wiley’s folks were rich enough, but his father made him earn most of his own spending money, and Wiley helped around Jim Blizzard’s newspaper office on Saturdays and after school. “I knew you were a chump, Barry; but this – ”

“Oh, I’m obliged enough to him, I’m sure,” said Spink, airily. “He certainly helped me out of the river.”

He had been fumbling in his pocket while he spoke and now brought out a little flat packet of folded bills. Selecting one, he approached Billy Speedwell, who, having first flushed at the fellow’s impudent tone, was now grinning as broadly as Wiley and Fisher.

“Re’lly,” said young Spink, “you did that very bravely, Speedwell. Here is a little – er – something to show my appreciation.”

Billy had accepted the dollar bill and at once fished up a handful of silver from the depths of his trousers’ pocket.

“Hold on! hold on, Mr. Spink!” he exclaimed. “If you mean to pay me with this for saving your life, there is no need of overpaying me. Here! there’s ninety-five cents change – count it. And I’m not sure that I’m not charging you too much as it is.”

Fisher and Wiley Moyle burst into a roar of laughter, and Barrington Spink turned several different colors, as he realized that Billy had made him look like a goose.

“Why – why – That fellow’s only a milkman,” sputtered Spink, as Billy drifted over to the bigger crowd of boys to hear what was afoot.

“You give me a pain in my solar plexus – you gump!” snapped Fisher Greene. “Why, Billy and Dan have got twenty thousand dollars or more in their own right. Didn’t you ever hear of the treasure of Rocky Cove? Well, those are the boys who got the emeralds – they, and the old Admiral and Mr. Asa Craig. You want to take a tumble to yourself, Barry Spink!” and he moved away from the new boy.

Barrington Spink’s eyes fairly bulged. “He – he’s kiddin’ me; isn’t he?” he demanded of the grinning Wiley.

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” returned Moyle.

“Not twenty thousand dollars?”

“Thereabout.”

“And they run a milk route?”

“That’s Mr. Speedwell’s business. And fellows around Riverdale have to work the same as their dads did when they were boys. There are not many drones in this town, let me tell you,” concluded Wiley.

He started over to the other boys, too, and left Spink alone. The new boy was “in bad,” and he began to realize that fact. Perhaps he couldn’t help being born a snob; having his standards set by a foolish and worldly mother had made Barrington Spink an insufferable sort of fellow.

“The peasantry of this country doesn’t know its place,” Mrs. Spink often observed. “That is why I so much prefer living in Yurrup.” That is the way she pronounced it. If the truth were known (but it wasn’t – Mrs. Spink saw to that) the lady’s father was once a laborer on a railroad; but the mantle of Mr. Spink’s family greatness had fallen upon her.

“If it wasn’t for Mr. Spink’s peculiar will,” she often sighed, “I should not venture to contaminate Barrington with the very common people one is forced to meet in this country. But Mr. Spink had peculiar ideas. He left Barrington’s guardians no choice. My poor boy must be educated in American schools, doncher know!”

And Barry was getting a fine education! He had shifted from place to place and from school to school, learning about as little as the law allowed, and doing about as he pleased. Now he was so far behind other boys of his age in his studies that he was ashamed to enter the Riverdale Academy until the tutor his mother had engaged whipped Barry’s jaded mind into some sort of alignment with those of the boys who would be his schoolmates.

The boys surrounding Dan Speedwell were enthusiastic and all tried to talk at once. A flock of crows on the edge of a cornfield could have been no more noisy.

“Greatest little old idea ever was sprung!” shouted one.

“Takes the Speedwells to hatch up this ‘new thought’ stuff,” whooped Jim Stetson. “What d’ye say, boys? Tell it!”

The yell from the crowd made everybody in the snowy square turn to look; but when they saw the crowd of boys from the academy the spectators merely smiled. Boyish enthusiasm in Riverdale frequently “spilled over,” and nobody but Josiah Somes, the constable, minded it – and he considered it better to give the matter none of his official attention.

“Meeting to-night, fellows, in the Boat Club house – don’t forget!” shouted one of the bigger boys. “We’ll give this iceboat scheme the once over.”

“It’s a great idea,” declared Wiley Moyle, enthusiastically. “And they tell me the river above Long Bridge is already solid as a brick pavement.”

“It isn’t so solid below the bridge – or it wasn’t this morning,” chuckled Billy Speedwell. “Mr. Spink can tell us all about that.”

But Barrington Spink was hurrying rapidly away.

“Why, if the Speedwells have all the money Wiley says they have, they’re worth cultivating,” he muttered to himself – which is one of the mysteries that bothered Dan and Billy during the next few days. They wondered much why Spink’s manner should so change toward them. The boy hung about them and tried to make friends with “the milkmen” in every possible way.

The other – and more important mystery – met Dan and Billy when they arrived home that very afternoon. The strange boy that Billy had knocked down the evening before, had disappeared.

“When we got up this morning, after you boys had gone,” explained their father, “that fellow had skedaddled. What do you think of that? And without a word!”

“Then Money Stevens may have seen him over by Island Number One!” cried Billy.

“It looks so,” admitted Dan. “I didn’t think there could be two chaps who couldn’t talk, in the neighborhood.”

“That’s not all, boys,” cried Carrie Speedwell. “Just see what little ’Dolph picked up.”

She presented a crumpled slip of paper for Dan and Billy to read.

“’Dolph found it right there beside the bed that strange boy slept on. He must have dropped it. See how it reads, Dan?”

Dan read the line scrawled on the paper, aloud:

“Buried on the island. Dummy will show you the spot.”

There was no signature, nor address – just the brief line. What it could refer to – what thing was buried, and on what island, was hard to understand. Only, it was quite certain that the “Dummy” referred to was the youthful stranger who could not talk English understandably.

“I am awful sorry he went away without his breakfast,” sighed Mrs. Speedwell. “And he didn’t look half fed, at best. It is too bad.”

“He’ll have a fine time living over on Island Number One at this season,” whispered Billy to Dan.

“Don’t let mother hear you,” replied the older boy, quickly. “She’d only worry.”

“Better let ‘Dummy’ do the worrying,” chuckled Billy.

“Well! it’s mighty odd,” said Dan, shaking his head. “And I really would like to know what’s buried on the island.”

“So would I,” said Billy. “Treasure – eh?”

“You’ve got treasure on the brain, boy,” grinned the older youth. “You’re getting mercenary. Haven’t you got wealth enough? We’re capitalists.”

“Yes – I know,” said Billy, nodding. “But I wonder if we’ve got money enough to get us the fastest iceboat that’s going to be raced on the Colasha this winter?”

“Ah! now you’ve said it,” agreed Dan. “But it isn’t going to be money that will get us that boat. We’ve got to learn something about iceboat building as well as iceboat sailing.”

“Huh! that blamed little wisp, Barry Spink,” grunted Billy.

“What about him now?” asked Dan, laughing.

“As inconsequential as he is, he’s got the whole town ‘bug’ on iceboating. He’ll be all swelled up like a toad.”

“We should worry!” returned Dan, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

CHAPTER IV
THE “FLY-UP-THE-CREEK”

Mildred Kent, the doctor’s daughter, and her closest friend, Lettie Parker, halted the Speedwells at the close of school the next day. Mildred was a very pretty girl and Dan thought she was just about right. As for the sharp-tongued Lettie, she and Billy appeared to be always quarreling – in a good-natured way.

“We want to know what’s in the wind, boys?” demanded Mildred, her pretty face framed by a tall sealskin collar and her hands in a big shawl muff.

“There’s snow in this wind,” replied Billy, chuckling, for a few sharp flakes were being driven past the quartette as they stood upon the corner.

“Aren’t you smart, Billy Speedwell!” scoffed the red-haired Lettie. “Doesn’t it pain you?”

“You bet it does!” agreed Billy, promptly. “But they tell me that you suffer a deal yourself, Miss Parker, from the same complaint.”

“Now, children! children!” admonished Mildred. “Can’t you be together at all without scrapping?”

“And what about the wind, Mildred?” asked Dan.

“You boys were all down to the Boat Club last night, I hear. What is doing?”

“Aw, don’t tell ’em, Dan!” urged Billy, as though he really meant it. “They’ll want to play the part of the Buttinsky Sisters– you know they will!”

“I like that!” gasped Lettie, clenching her little gloved fist. “Oh! I wish sometimes I was a boy, Billy Speedwell!”

“Gee, Lettie! Isn’t it lucky you’re not?” he gasped. “There’d be no living in the same town with you. I like you a whole lot better as you are – ”

Dan and Mildred laughed, but Lettie was very red in the face still, and not at all pacified, as she declared:

“I believe I’d die content if I could just trounce you once – as you should be trounced!”

“Help! help! Ath-thith-tance, pleath!” begged Billy, keeping just out of the red-haired girl’s reach. “If you ever undertook to thrash me, Lettie, I know I’d just be scared to death.”

“Come now,” urged Mildred. “You are both delaying the game. And it’s cold here on the street corner. I want to know.”

“And what do you want to know, Miss?” demanded Billy.

“Why, I can tell you what we did last evening, if that’s what you want to know, Mildred,” said Dan, easily. “There’s nothing secret about it.”

“You can’t be going to plan any boat races this time of year?” exclaimed Lettie. “The paper says we’re going to have a hard winter and the Colasha steamboat line has laid off all its hands and closed up for the season. They say the river is likely to be impassable until spring.”

“That’s all you know about it,” interposed Billy. “We just did agree to have boat races on the river last evening. Now, then! what do you think?”

“I think all the Riverdale boys are crazy,” returned Lettie, promptly.

“What does he mean, Dan?” asked Mildred.

“Poof! Boat racing! Likely story,” grumbled the red-haired girl.

“Now, isn’t that the truth, Dan?” demanded Billy, but careful to circle well around Miss Parker to put his brother and Mildred between himself and the county clerk’s daughter.

“As far as it goes,” admitted Dan, chuckling. “But he doesn’t go far enough. We did talk some about having boat races – iceboat races.”

“Oh, ho!” cried Lettie. Her eyes flashed and she began to smile again. “Iceboats, Dannie? Really?”

“But I thought they were so dangerous?” demurred Mildred, rather timidly. “Didn’t Monroe Stevens and somebody else almost get drowned yesterday morning trying out an iceboat?”

“’Deed they did,” admitted Billy. “But the river wasn’t fit.”

“And you boys got them out of the water, too!” exclaimed Lettie, suddenly. “I heard about it.”

“Somebody had to pull ’em out, so why not we?” returned Dan quickly, with perfect seriousness.

“And you boys are going to build another boat?” asked Mildred.

“A dozen, perhaps,” laughed Billy.

“We’ll build one if nothing happens to prevent – Billy and I,” said Dan. “And if the interest continues, and there are enough boats on the river to make it worth while, we’ll have a regatta bye and bye.”

“An iceboat regatta! Won’t that be novel?” cried Mildred.

But Lettie was interested in another phase of it. She demanded: “How big is your boat going to be, Billy?”

“Oh, a good big one,” he said, confidently. “Eh, Dan?”

“We haven’t decided on the dimensions. I want to make a plan of her first,” Dan said, seriously.

“Well, now! let me tell you one thing,” said the decisive Lettie. “You have got to build it big enough to carry four – hasn’t he, Mildred?”

“Four what?” demanded Billy.

“Four people, of course. You’re not going to be stingy, Billy Speedwell! You know our mothers wouldn’t hear of our sailing an iceboat; but if you boys take us – ”

“Ho!” cried Billy. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Let!”

“There isn’t any place you go, Billy Speedwell, that I can’t!” cried the red-haired one, who had always been something of a tomboy. “And I’m not afraid to do anything that you dare to do – so there!”

“Dear me, Lettie don’t get so excited,” advised Mildred. “Do you suppose girls could sail on your iceboat, Dan?”

“Why not? An iceboat is no more dangerous than a sailboat. And I intend to build our boat with a shallow box on the body so that at least two passengers can lie down in it comfortably.”

“Lie down in it?” queried Lettie, in a puzzled tone.

“Of course,” grunted Billy, “or the boom would knock their silly heads off when the boat comes about. Don’t you know?”

“To be sure! ‘Low bridge!’ I’ve sailed enough on a catboat to know when to ‘duck,’ I hope,” returned Lettie.

“And we can sail with you, Dan?” Mildred was saying. “Do – do you think it will be safe?”

“Perfectly,” replied the older Speedwell. “Not, of course, when we race. We’ll carry only ballast, then, and one of us will have to stand on the outrigger to keep the boat from turning turtle – ”

“Oh, that sounds dreadfully exciting!” gasped Lettie, her eyes shining.

“It sounds pretty dangerous,” observed Mildred. “You two boys are speed crazy, I believe! Burton Poole’s got a new car – have you seen it? He says it is a fast one.”

“Pooh!” returned Billy. “Burton’s got to get up awfully early in the morning to be in the same class with us.”

“Never mind the autos,” said Mildred, briskly. “We’ve got what we want, Lettie,” and she laughed. “Remember, boys! we’re to have first call on your iceboat when it is built.”

“Oh, yes! When it is built,” said her chum, laughing. “We’re all counting our chickens before they’re hatched.”

“You wait till a week from Saturday, Let,” said Billy, with confidence. “By that time we’ll have hatched a pretty good-sized chicken – eh, Dan?”

His brother would not promise; but that very night the boys drew plans for the ice racer they intended to build. Mr. Speedwell owned a valuable piece of timber, and the boys always had a few seasoned logs on hand. They selected the sticks they needed, sledded them to the mill, had them sawed right, and then set to work on the big barn floor and worked the sticks down with hand tools.

They even made their own boom, for Mr. Speedwell helped them, and he was a first-class carpenter. The iron work they had made at the local blacksmith shop. The canvas for the sails came from Philadelphia, from a mail order house. Before the middle of the next week the Speedwells carted the new boat down to old John Bromley’s dock in sections, put it together on the ice, and John helped them make the sails and bend them, he knowing just how this should be done.

They had a private trial of the boat one afternoon, towards dark, and she worked beautifully. Even Bromley, who had not seen many iceboats and was an old, deep-water sailor was enthusiastic when he saw the craft, with Dan at the helm, skim across the river, tack beautifully, and return on the wind.

They then started to give her a couple of coats of bright paint.

“What you goin’ to call her boys?” Bromley asked.

“Ought to be something with feathers – she’s a bird,” laughed Billy.

“And we’re going to ‘hatch’ her about as quick as you promised the girls,” his brother remarked.

“Barry Spink’s is the White Albatross – he’s going to name it after the boat he and Money wrecked.”

“Bird names seem popular,” said Dan. “Fisher Green has sent for a craft already built. He showed me the catalog. His will be called the Redbird.”

“Say!” shouted Billy, grinning. “I got it!”

“Let’s have it, then,” advised his brother.

“What’s the matter with the Fly-up-the-Creek? There’s nothing much quicker on the wing, is there?”

“Bully!” agreed Dan, with an answering smile. “And I bet nobody else on the river will think of that for a name. She’s christened! Fly-up-the-Creek she is. But I wonder what Milly and Lettie will say to that name?”

CHAPTER V
WINGED STEEL

There was a moon that week and the nights were glorious. While most of the Riverdale young folk were skating in the Boat Club Cove, the Speedwell brothers were trying out the iceboat each evening, and “learning the ropes.”

The proper handling of a craft the size of the one Dan and Billy had built is no small art. With the huge mainsail and jib they had rigged, she could gather terrific speed even when the wind was light. She might better have been called an “ice yacht.”

When the ringing steel was skimming the ice at express-train speed, the two boys had to have their wits about them every moment of the time. Dan handled the helm and the sheet, while Billy rode the crossbeam for balance, and to keep the outrigger runner on the ice.

For boys who had entered in semi-professional motorcycle races, and had handled a Breton-Melville racing car, the speed gathered under normal conditions by this sailing iceboat seemed merely ordinary. What she would do in a gale was another matter.

While they had been building the craft just enough rain fell to wash the snow from the roads; and as the frost came sharply immediately upon the clearance of the rainstorm, almost the entire river surface was like glass. The cold was intense, and the Colasha froze solid. The icemen were cutting eighteen inches at Karnac Lake, it was reported.

There were few airholes between the Long Bridge and the lake (Dan and Billy covered the entire length of the river between those two places) and almost no spots where the swiftness of the current made the ice weak. As for the tides – the ice was too firm now to be affected by ordinary tides above the Boat Club Cove.

As Bromley’s dock was above the Long Bridge, few of their mates saw the Speedwells’ craft at all. The Speedwell house was within a short distance of John Bromley’s and not many of the academy boys and girls lived at this end of Riverdale.

So what the Fly-up-the-Creek could do was known only to Dan and Billy. They sailed her one night away up the river, past Meadville, the mills, and the penitentiary, and so on to the entrance to Karnac Lake. It was certainly a great sail.

“Would you believe she’d slide along so rapidly with nothing but a puff of wind now and then?” gasped Billy, as they tacked and came about for the return run.

“That’s all right,” Dan returned. “But suppose we got off so far and the wind gave out on us altogether? Wouldn’t that be an awful mess?”

“Gee!” exclaimed Billy, laughing. “We ought to have an auxiliary engine on her – eh? How about it, boy?”

“Why, Billy!” exclaimed Dan, “that might not be such a bad idea.”

“Wouldn’t work; would it?” asked the younger boy, curiously. “I only said that for a joke.”

“Well – ”

“You’re not serious, Dan?” gasped Billy, seeing his brother’s thoughtful face.

“I – don’t – know – ”

“Whoo!” burst out Billy. “You’re off on a cloud again, Dan, old boy! Whoever heard of a motor iceboat? Zing!”

“Hits you hard; does it?” chuckled Dan.

“I – should – say! Wouldn’t it be ‘some pumpkins’ to own an engine-driven craft that would make Money, and Spink, and Burton Poole, and all the others that are going in for iceboating, look like thirty cents?”

“I admire your slang, boy,” said Dan, in a tone that meant he didn’t admire it.

“Well, but, Dan! you know that idea is preposterous.”

“You’re wrong. There are sleds, or boats, being used on the Antarctic ice right now, propelled by gasoline – an air propeller and a series of ‘claws’ that grip the ice underneath the body of the sledge.”

“Air propeller?” cried Billy. “Why, there isn’t resistance enough in the air to give her any speed.”

“Not like a propeller in the water, of course. Yet, how do aeroplanes fly?”

“Gee! that’s so.”

“But, suppose we had a small engine on here and a sprocket wheel attachment – something right under the main beam to grip the ice and force her ahead?”

“Great, Dannie!” exclaimed the younger boy, instantly converted.

“Well – it might not work, after all,” said Dan, slowly.

“Let’s try it!”

“We’ll see. Where we lose headway on this Fly-up-the-Creek is when we head her around, or the wind dies on us altogether. Then the auxiliary engine might help – eh?”

“Great!” announced Billy again. “We wouldn’t get becalmed out here on the river then, that’s sure.”

The boat was creeping down the river right then, failing a strong current of air to fill the canvas. The string of islands that broke the current of the Colasha below Meadville was on their left hand. The last island – or, the first as they sailed up the river – was the largest of all, and was called Island Number One.

As the iceboat rumbled down stream Billy asked, suddenly:

“What do you think about that dummy, Dan? Suppose he’s over yonder?”

“On the island?”

“Yep.”

Dan viewed the high “hogback” of the island curiously. It was well wooded, but the boys had often been ashore and had never seen a hut, nor other shelter, upon it. Dan shook his head.

“Where would the poor fellow stay? What did he do through that cold rainstorm – don’t see a sign of smoke. He can’t be there, Billy.”

“I know it doesn’t seem probable,” admitted the younger boy. “But remember that paper ’Dolph found. Something’s buried there, and Dummy was left to guard it.”

“How romantic!” chuckled Dan.

“Well! isn’t that so?” demanded the younger lad.

“We don’t know what that line of writing really means,” said Dan.

“Huh! It’s plain enough. Oh, Dan!”

The younger boy had turned again to look at the island as the iceboat slid out of its shadow.

“What’s the matter now?” demanded Dan.

“Look there! Up – up yonder! Isn’t that smoke?”

“Smoke from what?” demanded Dan, glancing over his shoulder quickly. He dared not neglect the course ahead for long, although the boat was not traveling fast.

“From fire, of course!” snapped Billy. “What does smoke usually come from?”

“Sometimes from a pipe,” chuckled Dan. “I don’t see anything – ”

“Above the tops of those trees – right in the middle of the island.”

“I – don’t – see – ”

“There! rising straight against the sky.”

“Why – it’s mist – frost – something,” growled Dan. “It can’t be smoke.”

“I tell you it is!” cried Billy. “What else could it be? There’s no mist in such frosty weather as this.”

“But – smoke?”

“Why not?” cried Billy. “I bet that Dummy is over there.”

“Then he must have his campfire in the tops of the trees,” chuckled Dan. “Now where’s your smoke, Billy?”

A puff of wind swooped down upon them. Dan had to attend to the management of the Fly-up-the-Creek. The puff of wind was followed by another. Soon the current of air became steady and the iceboat whisked down the river at a faster pace.

“Where’s your smoke now?” Dan repeated.

“Wind’s whipped it away, of course,” grinned his brother. “Gee! can’t this thing travel?”

The experience of skimming the crystal surface of the river was yet so new that Billy gave his whole mind to it, and forgot Dummy and the faint trace of smoke he had seen against the starlit sky, hovering over Island Number One.

This slant of wind that had suddenly swooped down the icy channel drove the craft on as though it really were a bird winging its way homeward. The steel rang again, and at every little ripple in the ice the outrigger leaped into the air.

As the speed increased, Billy crept out upon the crossbeam so as to ballast it. A little cloud of fine ice particles followed the boat and the wind whined in the taut rigging.

They had no means of telling how fast the boat flew, for it was impossible to properly time her by their watches and the landmarks along the river bank; but Dan and Billy were quite sure that they had never come down the stream any faster in their power boat than they did now.

There was a piece of “pebbly” ice inshore, not far below Island Number One, and Dan remembered its location. Therefore he changed the course of the iceboat and she shot over toward the far bank.

Billy shouted something to him, but he could not hear what it was. The younger boy pointed ahead, and Dan stooped to peer under the boom.

The moon had drawn a thin veil of cloud over her face and, for the moment, her light was almost withdrawn. A mist seemed rising from the ice itself; but Dan knew that was a mere illusion.

Suddenly the moon cast aside her veil and her full light scintillated across the river. Billy uttered a yell and waved a warning arm as he gazed ahead. Dan saw it, too.

It seemed as though a wide channel had suddenly opened right ahead of the rushing iceboat – they could see the moonlight glinting across the tiny waves of an open stretch of water.