Page:Boys of Columbia High on the Ice.djvu/146



" a bucket? I want a bucket! Somebody get me one quick!" shouted Lanky, as the three boys dashed up to the burning farmhouse.

"Try the barn!" answered Frank, who had found one for himself.

"Where'll we get water?" whooped Ralph, eager to take a hand in the game.

Frank pounced on an ax that lay on a chopping block close by.

"Follow me with that bucket, Ralph. Here, you, Mister, find anything you can that will hold water! It's the only chance!"

He ran to the pond close by, and selecting a spot where he believed the ice was thin, having been broken before for watering the stock, he set that ax to work. In a dozen seconds he had smashed a "hole through the ice.

"Fill up, and get a line busy, handing the buckets along!" he exclaimed, as he dipped the one he had brought, and then started on a run for the house.