CHAPTER II A GAME OF SNAP-THE-WHIP
The race was on in earnest and the skates flashed brightly in the raysof 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 thefront. In the meantime Andy Snow also kept coming up, until he and Dalewere tied for second place.
"Whoop, Pepper has won!" cried Stuffer Singleton, who was bringing upthe rear. "Where are you, Andy?"
"Here I am!" answered the acrobatic pupil, and just then struck a crackin the ice, went down, and turned a handspring, coming to his feet againlike a flash.
"Would yez look at that now!" burst out Joseph Hogan, as he stoppedracing to look at Andy. "Sure an' it's in a circus you ought to be," hecontinued.
"Andy's doing stunts!" cried Jack.
"Say, Stuffer, why didn't you try to win?" asked Andy, as he circled upto the stout youth. "Did you eat too much for dinner?"
"Eat too much!" snorted Stuffer. "With old Crabtree watching me? Notmuch! When I asked for more meat he wouldn't let me have it. And I thinkI got the smallest dish of dessert, too!" grumbled the youth who wasfond 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 theImp. "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 atall, 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 Irishlad, and hauled forth a piece of brown paper containing a small cut ofmince pie.
"Hullo, where did you get that?" asked several of the others, inastonishment.
"Got it from the kitchen, when nobody was looking," answered Hogan. "Itwas on the table--set out, I think, for Snuggers' dinner. I didn't wantto see him after gittin' indigestion, so I--well, I made anappropriation, as the politicians say."
"Phew! I'll wager poor Peleg was mad!" was Pepper's comment. He referredto 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 thatyou all have a bite with me."
"We will!" was the shout, and a minute later each lad present waschewing on his mouthful of the dainty.
After that, the boys skated around for a little while longer. There wereothers 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 toPepper, presently.
"Yes, and he has a new camera, too," answered Pepper. "By the way, I'dlike to have a camera myself. I think I'll write home for one beforelong. 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 thethree moved along one of the shores, where grew some evergreens, nowloaded 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 byspoiling my picture!"
All three of the boys looked around and saw that Dan Baxter had set uphis tripod on the ice. On the tripod rested his camera, the lens pointedat the evergreens on the shore. The three boys had swept along betweenthe camera and the object Baxter wished to photograph just as thepicture 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 toget 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 noreason why you and Pep Ditmore and Andy Snow should act so clownish."
"Thank you, Baxter, but I didn't act clownish," cried Pepper, circlingup on his skates.
"I say you did."
"We didn't see the camera at all," put in Andy Snow. "So please don'tget so hot about it."
"Oh, I know you fellows!" stormed Dan Baxter, working himself up into arage, as was often his habit. "You think you can ride over me. But youcan'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 themajor this term you can't boss me."
"I am not trying to boss you, as you call it, Baxter. Come, why can'tyou 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, whohad been helping his crony carry the photographing outfit.
"That's the talk," added Nick Paxton, who was likewise present. "Weprefer 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 benicer the other way."
"I wouldn't trust you, Ruddy, or trust your friends either," remarkedDan Baxter, bitterly. "You'd pretend to be friends and then get us intoa hole the first chance you got. I know you!"
"You evidently judge us by yourself," said Pepper, hotly. "We are not somean."
"Don't waste any words on them," said Andy. "Come on and let them taketheir 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. "Heprefers 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 souproarious that the bully and his associates were forgotten for the timebeing.
"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 thetime. "I--I--can't keep up, you--know!" And then down he went on thesmooth ice and rolled over and over. Several other skaters went downlikewise, and a general laugh arose. Then up the cadets leaped, to forma new "whip."
"Only five minutes more!" said Dale, consulting a watch he carried. "Wewon't dare to be late to-day."
"Not much, with old Crabtree on guard," answered Pepper. "If we arehe'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 hecan't skate."
"Mr. Strong is a beautiful skater," said Pepper. "I saw him out daybefore yesterday. He cut some very fancy figures."
"What a difference between those two men," said Andy. "Just as muchdifference as between Baxter and--and Joe Nelson," he added, naming aquiet and steady pupil, well liked by all of the cadets.
"Now, boys, for the last swing!" cried Jack. "Pepper, your turn on theend 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.
Hewanted to square up with somebody for a tumble he had taken.
Away went the boys, in a long line, across the lake. All were shoutingand cheering, the hills beyond the lake echoing with their glee. Theydid 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 lakeshore, at a spot where there was a point upon which grew a number of lowbushes, all thickly covered with snow.
"Pepper is going into the snow this trip!" cried Dale, as the linebroke, and Pepper was hurled forward, flat on the smooth ice. But he wasmistaken. The boy turned over and over, and then disappeared around thepoint like a flash. The next instant there came a strange crash, anexclamation of alarm, and then a babel of voices raised in anger.