The Crimson Sweater/Chapter 16

HERE was a stiff, biting wind blowing straight down the river, nipping the fingers and toes of the crowd about the landing and whirling away the smoke from the chimney of the boat-house. Overhead the winter sky was leaden and sullen clouds were driving southward. Underfoot the ice rang hard as steel, and, save for a space in mid-river, was as smooth as a mirror. It was well on toward four o'clock and already the shadows along the banks hinted of coming night. Hammond and Ferry Hill were hobnobbing about the boat-house stove or out on the ice in front of the landing. The terms of the race had been arranged and the big, yellow-haired Schonberg was idly cutting figures in and out of the group to keep himself warm. The race was to be a half-mile long, starting here at the Ferry Hill landing, crossing straight as a strip of weak ice would permit to a point on the Hammond side of the river and returning again to the landing, finishing at a mark indicated by an empty nail keg and a broken soap box set some twenty yards from shore. All that remained of the preliminaries was for Ferry Hill to produce her entry. Mr. Cobb, who was to act as starter, timer, judge and everything else of an official sort, looked at his watch and announced that it was time to start. Schonberg stopped his capers, removed his sweater and skated to the mark, looking about with pardonable curiosity for a sight of his adversary. Horace and Harry emerged from the throng and joined him.

"This is Mr. Schonberg, Harry," said Horace. "Schonberg, my cousin, Miss Emery."

Harry bowed gravely in her best society manner and Schonberg made a futile grab at his knit cap.

"Happy to meet you," he muttered. Then, possibly for want of something better to say, he turned to Horace and asked:

"When are you chaps going to be ready?"

"We're ready now," answered Horace soberly. Schonberg looked about him. The crowd had surrounded the mark by this time and Mr. Cobb had his watch in hand.

"Where's your man, Burlen?" asked Custis, Hammond's senior class president.

"Right here," answered Horace, indicating Harry. "Miss Emery is our man."

Hammond howled with laughter. Harry's cheeks reddened and her eyes flashed.

"You're joking, aren't you?" asked Custis.

"Not at all," replied Horace impatiently.

"But, I say, Burlen, that's poppycock, you know! We didn't challenge a girl's school!"

"That's all right," said Burlen. "We said we'd race you, and we will. Miss Emery is Doctor Emery's daughter and she belongs to the school just as much as any of us. If you're afraid to race her—"

"Don't be a fool! Of course we're not afraid, but—but it's such nonsense!"

"Course it is," broke in Schonberg. "I didn't come over here to race a girl!"

"Then you shouldn't have agreed to our terms," answered Jack, joining the discussion. "We told you plainly in our letter that we would race you if you'd allow us to name our entry any time before the race. We've decided and there she is. If you have any idea, Schonberg, that you've got an easy thing—well, just try it. Miss Emery's our best skater, and she's so good that we're not ashamed to acknowledge it. And as we knew that Schonberg was an A-1 skater we thought our best wouldn't be any too good."

"Oh, all right," said Custis, with a shrug of his shoulders, "if you insist I guess we're willing."

"I'm not," said Schonberg. "I won't race a girl."

And Schonberg held out for many minutes and had to be argued with, and coaxed by, half the Hammond contingent. But finally he yielded, though with ill grace, and took his place at the mark.

"All right," he said. "I'm ready."

Harry took her place a yard away, the throng pushed back and Mr. Cobb drew out his starting pistol. Those of the boys who were on skates, and most of them were, prepared to follow the contestants.

Harry wore a brown sweater and a short gray skirt. Her skating boots were securely fastened to a pair of long-bladed racing skates. Her head was bare and the wind blew her red tresses about her face as she awaited the signal. There was a little spot of intense color in each cheek and her blue eyes flashed venomously when Schonberg turned to glance at her half contemptuously. If she had needed any incentive to do her level best within the next few minutes Schonberg's pronunciation of the word "girl" had supplied it. Harry was insulted and indignant, and Roy, watching her from a little distance, guessed something of her feelings and took hope. No one really expected Harry to win. That a fourteen-year-old girl should beat a seventeen-year-old boy was out of the question. Schonberg, too, was known to be as good a skater as Hammond had had for many years. But every fellow had implicit faith in Harry and knew that she would give the Hammond skater as hard a race as he had ever had. Mr. Cobb raised his pistol.

"On your mark! Get ready! Set!"

Then the pistol spoke sharply on the winter air and the two contestants, the brown sweater and the red jersey, shot ahead in a mad scramble. The throng followed and for a moment the ring of steel on the hard ice was the only sound. Then the racers, having found their paces, settled down to work. They were side by side, a bare three yards dividing them. Just behind them skated the foremost of the spectators, Roy and Warren and Jack leading. If Schonberg had entertained any idea of having the race to himself he was disillusioned during the first fifty yards. Once he threw a glance at the girl. After that he settled down to work and wasted no time. He skated wonderfully well and even the throng of Ferry Hill boys behind could not but envy him his speed and grace. Body well over, legs gliding back and forth from the hips, head up and arms kept rather close in, Schonberg fairly flew over the ice.

And beside him sped Harry.

Harry was not the accomplished skater that her rival was. She was graceful and she had speed, but she showed far more effort than did the Hammond boy, her strides being shorter and her little brown-clad arms swinging back and forth like bits of machinery. Half way across it became necessary to hold well to the right to avoid the patch of weak ice, but Harry was the last to leave the straight course and Schonberg had to either spurt ahead of her and bear up-river or fall behind. He chose the latter alternative, eased his pace a moment, shot behind her and made for the lowest point of safe ice. For a moment longer Harry clung to her straight course. Then she swung up-stream a trifle and followed him a yard behind, seemingly paying but little heed to the streaks of snow-ice ahead.

Schonberg rounded the danger point and made straight for the farther bank where the limb of a black birch had been placed a few yards from shore to serve as a turning mark. Harry had lost ground during the last few moments, in spite of the fact that she had held closer to the direct course between shore and shore, and was now fully twenty feet behind. Few of the audience went beyond mid-stream, but stopped there and watched the racers reach the farther mark, swing around inside of it and turn back across the river. From where Roy and Jack stood it looked as though Harry had made up a little of her lost ground, but it was hard to tell at that distance.

"He will simply skate away from her coming back," said Jack.

"She's making a dandy race, though," Roy responded. "I didn't think she'd do as well as she has, did you?"

"Yes, but I've seen Harry skate before this. Gee! Just look at the way that Dutchman is coming!"

Already Schonberg was half way across to them, heading for where they stood at the up-stream end of the snow-ice. Behind him, how far behind it was difficult to determine, came Harry, a brown and gray spot in the deepening twilight. Jack and Roy turned and followed the others slowly back toward the finish. When next they looked around Schonberg was almost up to them and Harry—

"Where the dickens is she?" cried Roy.

"There," answered Jack, pointing. "What's she up to? She can't be going to try that weak ice!"

But plainly she was. Not one foot from the direct line between turning point and finish did Harry swerve. Schonberg was well up-stream from her, but no nearer the finish, for he had gone out of his way to avoid the weak ice. Roy shouted a warning and Jack waved wildly, but Harry, if she saw, paid no heed. Straight onward she came, her skates fairly twinkling over the ice, her little body swaying from side to side. Then, before any of the watchers could even turn back to head her off, she was skimming over the white streaks of soft snow-ice.

Roy and Jack and one or two others sped downstream toward her. Roy strove to remember what it was best to do when folks went through the ice and wondered where there was a rope or a plank. Once his heart stood still for an instant, for Harry had stumbled and nearly fallen. But she found her pace again almost instantly and came on, skirting a black pool of open water. She was gaining on Schonberg at every ring of her skates, and that youth, who had now discovered her tactics, was making for the finish with all his might. Before Roy or Jack had reached the margin of the dangerous stretch Harry had left it behind her and was once more on hard ice. As she swept past at a little distance she glanced up and smiled triumphantly.

"Go on, Harry!" they cried in unison, and turned and sped after her.

She had gained many yards over Schonberg and as their converging paths brought them nearer and nearer together this gain became apparent. Roy and Jack skated as hard as they could go, and, being untired, were close up behind Harry when the finish line was a bare fifty feet away. Almost beside them came Schonberg, his head down and every muscle tense with his efforts to reach the line ahead of his adversary. But he was a good six yards to the bad. Hammond and Ferry Hill filled the twilight with their clamor and the wooded bank threw back the frantic cries of "Come on, Schon!" "Go it, Harry!" "Skate! Skate!"

And skate they did, the cherry-red jersey and the brown sweater. Schonberg made a last despairing effort when twenty feet from the line and fairly ate up the ice, but even as he did so Harry brought her feet together, pulled herself erect and slid over the finish three yards ahead, beating her adversary, as Chub said, "in a walk!"

The throngs surrounded the racers, and Harry, flushed of face, panting and laughing, was applauded and congratulated until the din was deafening. Then Schonberg pushed his way through the ranks of her admirers, his red face smiling stiffly. He held out his hand to Harry and removed his red cap.

"You're a bully skater, Miss Emery," he said. "But I guess you wouldn't have won if you hadn't taken a short cut."

"No, I wouldn't," answered Harry with the magnanimity of the conqueror. "You'd have beaten me easily."

Schonberg's smile became more amiable.

"Anyway, I can beat any of the fellows here," he said, recovering some degree of self-sufficiency. And no one contradicted him. "You took big risks when you came across that rotten ice," he went on. "I wouldn't have tried that for a thousand dollars!"

"You wouldn't?" asked Harry, opening her blue eyes very wide. "Why, I'd do it any day—and just for the School!"