CHAPTER VIII
THE VILLAGE ON THE ICE
The wild plunge of the scooter across the lake carried it, before awind-squall, far out of hearing of Ruth Kenway's voice. Yet sheshouted long and loud after her sister. Luke pulled her back into herseat when she would have stood up to watch the careening scooter.
"They are in no danger," he urged. "Take it easy, Ruth."
"Why, they must be in peril! Did you see her--Agnes--up in the air?"
"Well, she's down again all right now, Ruthie," said Cecile Shepardsoothingly.
"Oh, if I had only known!"
"Known what?" asked Luke, inclined to grin if the truth was told.
"That the small boat would sail like that. Why, it is worse than aracing automobile!"
"Faster, I guess. Almost as fast as a motorcycle," Luke agreed. "ButNeale's managed one of those things before. He told me all about it."
"But why didn't somebody tell me about it?" demanded Ruth ratherstormily.
"Tell you about what?" asked Cecile.
"About how fast that reckless thing would sail? Why! I'd never haveallowed Aggie to ride on it in this world."
In the other big ice-boat there was much anxiety as well. Mr.Howbridge and Mrs. MacCall would have stopped the reckless ones couldthey have done so, and Tom Jonah was barking his head off. He, too,had recognized Agnes and Neale and believed that all was not rightwith them.
The scooter, however, was clear across the lake again; they saw ittack once more, and this time, because of the favoring breeze, Nealeheaded her directly up the lake. Every minute he and Agnes on theirracer were leaving the rest of the party behind.
These scooters cannot be sailed at a slow pace. The skeleton craft isso light, and the sail so big, that the least puff of breeze drives itahead at railroad speed.
Now with a pretty steady breeze behind them, the scooter was bound to"show off." Nor did the young people realize just how fast theysailed, or how perilous their course looked to their friends.
"We're running away from them!" Agnes managed to throw back over hershoulder at Neale.
"Can't help it!" he cried in return. "This old scooter has taken thebit in its teeth."
Agnes had begun to enjoy the speed to the full now. Why! this wasbetter than motoring over the finest kind of oiled road. And the younggirl did like to travel fast.
She began to see that the farther they went up Long Lake the wilderthe shores appeared to be and the fewer houses there were visible.Here and there was a little village, with a white-steepled churchpointing heavenward among the almost black spruce and pine. Again, acleared farm showed forth, its fields sheeted with snow.
The lake was quite ten miles broad in most places, and occasionally itspread to a width of more than twice that number of miles. Then theycould barely see the hazy shoreline at all.
"We could not be lonesomer," thought Agnes, "if we were sailing on theocean!"
The sails behind them had all disappeared. Once a squad of timberbarges with square sails was passed. The barges were going up empty tothe head of the lake there to be loaded and await a favoring breeze tobring them back to Culberton again. It was much cheaper for the lumberconcerns to sail the logs down the lake if they could, than to loadthem on the narrow gauge railroad and pay freight to Culberton. Thesticks had to be handled at the foot of the lake, anyway.
The scooter went past these slowly sailing barges almost as rapidly asthey had passed the two boats in which sailed the remainder of theCorner House party. The stays creaked and the steel whined on the ice,while the wind boomed in the big sail like a muffled drum.
The sun, hazy and red like the face of a haymaker in harvest time, wasgoing westward and would soon disappear behind the mountain ridgewhich followed the shoreline of the lake, but at a distance. It was upin the foothills of those mountains that Red Deer Lodge was located.
After passing the empty barges the boy and girl on the scooter saw noother sail nor anything which excited their attention until Agnessuddenly beheld a group of objects on the ice near the western shoreof the lake, not many miles ahead.
She began almost immediately to wonder what these things could be, butshe could not make Neale O'Neil understand the question she shouted tohim. By and by, however, she saw for herself that the objects were anumber of little huts, and that they really were built upon the frozensurface of the lake.
Agnes was naturally very much interested in this strange sight. Avillage on the ice was something quite novel to her mind. She desiredvery much to ask questions of Neale, but the wind was too great andthey were sailing too fast for her to make her desire known to her boyfriend.
So she just used her eyes (when they did not water too much) andstared at the strange collection of huts and its vicinity with all hermight. Why! from lengths of stove pipe through some of the slantingroofs, smoke was climbing into the hazy atmosphere.
Back of the ice-village, on the steep western shore of the lake, wasbuilt a regular town of slab shanties, with a slab church, stores, andthe like. Quite a village, this, and when Agnes looked back at Nealequestioningly and pointed to them, he shouted: "Coxford." So she knewit was their destination.
Mr. Howbridge had said they would disembark from the ice-boats atCoxford, and there would take sledges into the woods. It was fastgrowing toward evening, however, and Agnes knew it would be too latewhen they landed to continue the journey to Red Deer Lodge before thenext morning.
The ice-village was about two miles out from the shore. There werehalf a hundred huts, some a dozen feet square. But for the most partthey were much smaller. They had doors, but no windows, and, as thescooter drew swiftly nearer, Agnes could see that the structures werelittle more than wind-breaks.
There were a number of people moving about the settlement of huts,however, and not a few children among them, as well as dogs. As thescooter drew near she saw, too, a team of horses drawing a sledge.This sledge was being loaded with boxes, or crates; and what thoseboxes could contain began to puzzle Agnes as much as anything else shesaw about the queer village.
Neale steered outside the line of the ice settlement; but once beyondit he brought the scooter up into the wind and yelled at Agnes to letgo the sheet and falls. She loosened the lines from the pegs andallowed them to slip. Down came the shaking canvas, the wooden hoopsclattering together as they slid down the greased mast. In a momentthe speed of the scooter was lost and they were all but smothered inthe fallen canvas.
"Get out from under!" Neale's voice shouted.
He dropped off at the stern and ran to the girl's aid. He unbuckledthe belt that had secured Agnes to her seat on the outrigger all thiswhile, and fairly dragged her from under the flapping sail.
"Fine work!" Neale shouted, his voice full of laughter. "We maderecord time. But I'll let somebody else furl that sail."
"Oh, Neale!" gasped the girl, hobbling like a cripple. "I ca--can'twalk. I'm frozen stiff!"
"Come on to the shanties. We'll get warm. Take hold here, Aggie.You'll be all right in a few minutes."
"Oh, dear!" she said. "I did not know I was so cold. But what a raceit was, Neale! Ruth will give us fits."
"Won't she?" chuckled Neale.
"But what is this place, Neale?" Agnes went on. "What are these peopledoing here?"
"Fishing. Those are frozen fish they are loading on that sledge. Oh!There it goes! We can't get ashore on that, after all."
"'Fishing'?" repeated the amazed girl. "How do they fish through theice? I don't see any holes."
"He fairly dragged her from under the flapping sail."]
"No. The holes wouldn't stay open long, as cold as it is out here.It's about twenty below zero right now, my lady, and I'm keeping asharp eye on your nose."
"Oh! Oh!" gasped Agnes, putting her mittened hand tentatively to hernose. "Is that why you told me to keep my collar up over my mouth andnose?"
"It is!" declared the boy, rubbing his own face vigorously. "If yousee any white spot on anybody's face up here in this
weather, grab ahandful of snow and begin rubbing the spot."
"Mercy!" Agnes murmured, with a gay little laugh. "Lucky Trix Severndoesn't come up here. She uses rice powder dreadfully, and folks wouldthink she was being frost-bitten."
"Uh-huh!" agreed Neale.
"But you haven't told me how they fish," said the girl, as theyapproached nearer to the huts and she was able to walk better.
"Through the ice of course," he laughed. "Only you don't see theholes. They are inside the huts."
"You don't mean it, Neale?"
"To be sure I mean it! Some of those big shanties house wholefamilies. You see there are children and dogs. They have pot stoveswhich warm the huts to a certain degree, and on which they cook. Andthey have bunks built against the walls, with plenty of bedding."
"Why, I should think they would get their death of cold!" gasped thegirl.
"That's just what they don't get," Neale rejoined. "You can bet thereare no 'white plague' patients here. This atmosphere will killtubercular germs like a hammer kills a flea."
"Goodness, Neale!" giggled Agnes. "Did you ever kill a flea with ahammer?"
"Yep. Sand-flea," he assured her, grinning. "Oh! I'm one quick lad,Aggie."
She really thought he was joking, however, until she had looked intotwo or three of the huts. People really did live in them, as she saw.In the middle of the plank floors was a well, with open water keptclear of frost. The set-lines were fastened to pegs in the planks andthe "flags" announced when a fish was on the hook.
A smiling woman, done up like an Eskimo, invited them into one shack.She had evidently not seen the scooter arrive from down the lake andthought the boy and girl had walked out from Coxford.
"Hello!" she said. "Goin' to try your hands at fishin'? You're townfolks, ain't you?"
"Yes," said Agnes, politely. "We come from Milton."
"Lawsy! That's a fur ways," said the woman. She was peeling potatoes,and a kettle was boiling on the stove at one side. The visitors knewby the odor that there was corned beef in the pot. "You goin' to tryyour hands?" the woman repeated.
"No," said Neale. "We are with a party that is going up to Red DeerLodge."
"Oh! That's the Birdsall place. You can't git up there tonight. It'stoo fur."
"I guess we shall stay in Coxford," admitted Neale.
"Didn't know but you an' your sister wanted to fish. Old Manny Cox gotketched with rheumatics so that he had to give up fishin' this season.I can hire you his shanty."
"No, thank you!" murmured Agnes, her eyes round with interest.
"I let it for a week or more to two gals," said the womancomplacently. "Got five dollars out of 'em for Manny. He'll be needin'the money. Better stay awhile and try the fishin'."
"Goodness! Two girls alone?" asked Agnes.
"Yes. Younger'n you are, too. But they knowed their way around, Iguess," said the woman. "Good lookin' gals. Nice clo'es. Town folks, Iguess. Mebbe they wasn't older'n my Bob, and he's just turned twelve."
"Twelve years old! And two girls alone?" murmured Agnes.
"Oh, there ain't nobody to hurt you here. We don't never need noconstable out here on the ice. There's plenty of women folks--Miz'Ashtable, and Hank Crummet's wife, and Mary Boley and her boys. Oh,lots o' women here. We can help make money in the winter.
"There! See that set-line bob?"
She dropped the potato she was paring and crossed to the well. One ofthe flags had dipped. With a strong hand she reeled in the wet line.At its end was a big pickerel--the biggest pickerel the visitors hadever seen.
"There!" exclaimed the woman. "Sorry I didn't git that before JoeJagson went with his load of fish. That's four pound if it weighs anounce."
She shook the flopping fish off the hook into a basket and then hungthe basket outside the door. In the frosty air the fish did not needto be packed in ice. It would literally be ice within a very fewminutes.
"Got to hang 'em up to keep the dogs from gettin' them," said thewoman, rebaiting the hook and then returning to her potato paring."Can't leave 'em in a creel in the water, neither; pike would comealong an' eat 'em clean to the bone."
"Oh!" gasped Agnes.
"Yes. Regular cannibals, them pike," said the woman. "But all big fishwill eat little ones."
"What kind of fish do you catch?" Neale asked.
"Pickerel and pike, whitebait (we calls 'em that), perch, some lakebass and once in a while a lake trout. Trout's out o' season. We don'tdurst sell 'em. But we eat 'em. They ain't no 'season,' I tell 'em,for a boy's appetite; and I got three boys and my man to feed."
At that moment there was a great shouting and barking of dogs outside,and Neale and Agnes went out of the hut to learn what it meant. TheCorner House girl whispered to the boy:
"What do you think about those two twelve year old girls coming hereto stay and fish through the ice?"
"Great little sports," commented Neale.
"Well," exclaimed Agnes, "that's being too much of a sport, if you askme!"