Читать книгу The Putnam Hall Rivals - Stratemeyer Edward - Страница 3

The race was on in earnest and the skates flashed brightly in the rays of the declining sun.

Pepper was in advance. Dale was slowly but surely crawling up to him.

“Go it, Imp! go it!” shrieked Jack, when he saw that he could not win.

Pepper did “go it,” and despite Dale’s effort to get ahead kept to the front. In the meantime Andy Snow also kept coming up, until he and Dale were tied for second place.

“Whoop, Pepper has won!” cried Stuffer Singleton, who was bringing up the rear. “Where are you, Andy?”

“Here I am!” answered the acrobatic pupil, and just then struck a crack in the ice, went down, and turned a handspring, coming to his feet again like a flash.

“Would yez look at that now!” burst out Joseph Hogan, as he stopped racing to look at Andy. “Sure an’ it’s in a circus you ought to be,” he continued.

“Andy’s doing stunts!” cried Jack.

“Say, Stuffer, why didn’t you try to win?” asked Andy, as he circled up to the stout youth. “Did you eat too much for dinner?”

“Eat too much!” snorted Stuffer. “With old Crabtree watching me? Not much! When I asked for more meat he wouldn’t let me have it. And I think I got the smallest dish of dessert, too!” grumbled the youth who was fond of good living.

“Pepper, you are all right,” said Jack, slapping his chum on the back. “That was well won!”

“And do I get the pie?” asked Pepper, with a smile.

“Certainly you do!” came from several of the others, who all loved the Imp. “But you have got to wait till we go to Cedarville.”

“Sure, an’ if he’ll be satisfied wid wan piece he’ll not have to wait at all, at all!” came from Hogan, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Why, what have you got up your sleeve, Emerald?” asked Jack.

“’Tis not up me sleeve at all, but in me pocket,” answered the Irish lad, and hauled forth a piece of brown paper containing a small cut of mince pie.

“Hullo, where did you get that?” asked several of the others, in astonishment.

“Got it from the kitchen, when nobody was looking,” answered Hogan. “It was on the table – set out, I think, for Snuggers’ dinner. I didn’t want to see him after gittin’ indigestion, so I – well, I made an appropriation, as the politicians say.”

“Phew! I’ll wager poor Peleg was mad!” was Pepper’s comment. He referred to Peleg Snuggers, the general-utility man around Putnam Hall.

“So here you are, Imp,” went on Hogan, and held out the pie.

“That’s the reason you proposed pie as a prize, eh?” cried Dale. “Supposing you had won?”

“Sure, I should have eaten the piece myself,” answered Emerald.

“I’ll accept the pie on one condition,” came from Pepper. “That is that you all have a bite with me.”

“We will!” was the shout, and a minute later each lad present was chewing on his mouthful of the dainty.

After that, the boys skated around for a little while longer. There were others on the lake, but they, for the most part, kept by themselves.

“I see Dan Baxter is out, with a new pair of skates,” said Jack to Pepper, presently.

“Yes, and he has a new camera, too,” answered Pepper. “By the way, I’d like to have a camera myself. I think I’ll write home for one before long. It will be lots of sport to take some winter pictures.”

Jack and Pepper, with Andy, had skated a little to one side, and now the three moved along one of the shores, where grew some evergreens, now loaded down with snow. The sun was going down and it was growing dark.

“Hi, you!” came suddenly from one side of them. “What do you mean by spoiling my picture!”

All three of the boys looked around and saw that Dan Baxter had set up his tripod on the ice. On the tripod rested his camera, the lens pointed at the evergreens on the shore. The three boys had swept along between the camera and the object Baxter wished to photograph just as the picture was being taken.

“I didn’t know you were trying to get a picture, Dan,” said Jack.

“Didn’t know it?” roared the bully of Putnam Hall. “Are you blind?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what did you rush in between for, tell me that? I was trying to get a nice time picture, and you have spoilt the plate.”

“I am very sorry. Haven’t you got another plate?”

“Of course I have. Do you think I carry only one plate? But that’s no reason why you and Pep Ditmore and Andy Snow should act so clownish.”

“Thank you, Baxter, but I didn’t act clownish,” cried Pepper, circling up on his skates.

“I say you did.”

“We didn’t see the camera at all,” put in Andy Snow. “So please don’t get so hot about it.”

“Oh, I know you fellows!” stormed Dan Baxter, working himself up into a rage, as was often his habit. “You think you can ride over me. But you can’t do it.”

“If you are going to take a picture you had better do it,” said Jack, quietly. “It will be too dark in another ten minutes.”

“Oh, don’t give me any advice, Jack Ruddy. Just because you are the major this term you can’t boss me.”

“I am not trying to boss you, as you call it, Baxter. Come, why can’t you drop the past and be friends?”

“I don’t want to be friends with you.”

“We’d rather have you for enemies any time,” came from Gus Coulter, who had been helping his crony carry the photographing outfit.

“That’s the talk,” added Nick Paxton, who was likewise present. “We prefer to choose our own friends; eh, fellows?”

“And we don’t choose the Ruddy crowd,” said Coulter.

“Very well, have your own way,” answered Jack, coldly. “But it would be nicer the other way.”

“I wouldn’t trust you, Ruddy, or trust your friends either,” remarked Dan Baxter, bitterly. “You’d pretend to be friends and then get us into a hole the first chance you got. I know you!”

“You evidently judge us by yourself,” said Pepper, hotly. “We are not so mean.”

“Don’t waste any words on them,” said Andy. “Come on and let them take their pictures,” and he skated away, and Jack and Pepper followed.

“What a fellow Dan Baxter is!” sighed the youthful major of the cadets. “No matter how nice a fellow tries to be to him he seems to resent it.”

“It’s because he doesn’t want us for friends,” answered Pepper. “He prefers fellows like Coulter and Paxton, and that sneak, Mumps.”

Just then a merry crowd of skaters swept along, playing snap-the-whip. Our friends were invited to join in, and the sport soon became so uproarious that the bully and his associates were forgotten for the time being.

“Here is where I live!” ejaculated Pepper, as he skated along. “Come on, fellows, and snap for keeps this time.”

“Not too fast!” cried out Stuffer, who chanced to be on the end at the time. “I – I – can’t keep up, you – know!” And then down he went on the smooth ice and rolled over and over. Several other skaters went down likewise, and a general laugh arose. Then up the cadets leaped, to form a new “whip.”

“Only five minutes more!” said Dale, consulting a watch he carried. “We won’t dare to be late to-day.”

“Not much, with old Crabtree on guard,” answered Pepper. “If we are he’ll be certain to keep us in to-morrow for it.”

“How I wish I had him out here on the ice,” was Dale’s comment.

“Sure an’ we’d be after teachin’ him some foin points,” said Hogan. “We’d make him spread th’ eagle on his head, so we would!”

“Crabtree knows enough to keep off the ice,” said Jack. “Perhaps he can’t skate.”

“Mr. Strong is a beautiful skater,” said Pepper. “I saw him out day before yesterday. He cut some very fancy figures.”

“What a difference between those two men,” said Andy. “Just as much difference as between Baxter and – and Joe Nelson,” he added, naming a quiet and steady pupil, well liked by all of the cadets.

“Now, boys, for the last swing!” cried Jack. “Pepper, your turn on the end this time.”

“All right, but please don’t snap me into the middle of next week,” answered the fun-loving youth.

“We’ll snap you into the middle of next year!” cried Andy, gleefully. He wanted to square up with somebody for a tumble he had taken.

Away went the boys, in a long line, across the lake. All were shouting and cheering, the hills beyond the lake echoing with their glee. They did not attempt to make a sweep until all had gained good headway.

“Now then, all together!” came from Dale. “Let her go!”

“Whoop!” shrieked Andy. “Good-bye, Pepper!”

The long line began to sweep around. It was fairly close to the lake shore, at a spot where there was a point upon which grew a number of low bushes, all thickly covered with snow.

“Pepper is going into the snow this trip!” cried Dale, as the line broke, and Pepper was hurled forward, flat on the smooth ice. But he was mistaken. The boy turned over and over, and then disappeared around the point like a flash. The next instant there came a strange crash, an exclamation of alarm, and then a babel of voices raised in anger.