What pleased Joe most of all was the new watch he received. It was decidedly better than the first watch had been, and so was the chain better than the other.
“Just what I wanted!” he declared. “It tops all the presents – not but what I like them, too,” he added, hastily.
Harry had slipped off without the others noticing. Now he came back, his face aglow with enthusiasm.
“Oh, Joe, what do you think?” he cried. “The wind has swept Pine Lake as clean as a whistle.”
“If that’s the case, Harry, we can go skating this morning instead of waiting until after dinner. But how do you know the ice on the lake is clear?”
“Didn’t I just come from there?” Harry held up a shining pair of nickel-plated skates. “Couldn’t resist trying ’em, you know. Say, it was just all right of Uncle Maurice to give each of us a pair, wasn’t it?”
“It certainly was,” returned Joe. “But I rather think I love that double-barreled shotgun a little better. I am fairly aching to give it a trial on a bird or a rabbit, or something larger.”
“Well, as for that, I don’t go back on the camera Aunt Laura sent up from New York. Fred Rush was telling me it was a very good one, and he ought to know, for he has had four.”
“What did Fred get for Christmas’?”
“A shotgun something like yours, a big bobsled, some books, and a whole lot of other things. One book is on camping out, and he is just crazy to go. He says a fellow could camp out up at Pine Island, and have a bang-up time.”
“To be sure!” ejaculated Joe, enthusiastically. “Just the thing! If he goes I’m going, too!”
“You don’t know yet if father will let you go. He says no boy should go hunting without some old hunter with him.”
“I’m seventeen,” answered Joe, drawing himself up to his full height; he was rather tall for his age. “And Fred is almost as old. I reckon we could take care of ourselves.”
“If I went I’d like to take my camera,” said Harry. “I was reading an article in the paper the other day about how to hunt game with a snap-shot machine. That would just suit me. Think of what a famous collection of pictures I might get – wild turkeys, deer and maybe a bear – ”
“If you met a bear I don’t think you’d stand to take his photograph. I’ll wager you’d leg it for all you were worth – or else shoot at him. But come on. If skating is so good there is no use of our wasting time here talking,” concluded Joe, as he moved off.
CHAPTER IV
SKATING
Lakeport was a thriving town with a large number of inhabitants. Early as it was many people were out, and nearly every passer-by was greeted with a liberal dose of snowballs, for the lads of this down-East town were as fun-loving as are boys anywhere, and to leave a “good mark” slip past unnoticed was considered nothing short of a crime.
When Joe and Harry reached the lake front they found a crowd of fully fifty men and boys, with a fair sprinkling of girls, engaged in skating and in ice-boating. The majority of the people were in the vicinity of the steamboat dock, for this was at the end of the main street, and a great “hanging-out” spot during the summer. But others were skating up the lake shore, and a few were following Dan Marcy’s new ice yacht, Silver Queen, as she tacked along on her way to the west shore, where an arm of the lake encircled the lower end of Pine Island.
“Marcy’s going to try to beat the lake record,” Joe heard one boy call to another. “He says his new boat has got to knock the spots out of anything that ever sailed on the lake, or he’ll chop her up for firewood.”
“Well, she’ll have to hum along if she beats the time made by the old Whizzer last winter,” came from the other boy. “She sailed from the big pine to Hallett’s Point in exactly four minutes and ten seconds. My, but didn’t she scoot along!”
It took but a few minutes for Joe and Harry to don their skates. As they left the shore they ran into Fred Rush, who was swinging along as if his very life depended upon it.
“Hello, so you fellows have come down at last!” sang out Fred, who was short and stout, and as full of fun as a lad can be. “Thought you had made up your mind to go to bed again, or stay home and look for more Christmas presents. Been having dead loads of fun – had a race and come in second best, got knocked down twice, slipped on the ice over yonder, and got a wet foot in a hole some fellow cut, and Jerry Little hit me in the shin with his hockey stick. Say, but you fellows are positively missing the time of your lives.”
“I want to miss it, if I’m going to have all those things happen to me,” returned Joe, dryly. Then he added: “Harry tells me you got a double-barreled shotgun almost like mine. How do you like it?”
“Like it? Say, that gun is the greatest thing that ever happened. I tried it just before I came down to skate – fired both barrels at once, because I didn’t have time to fire ’em separately. It knocked me flat, and a snowbank was all that saved my life. But she’s a dandy. I’m going to bring down a bear with that gun before the winter is over, you see if I don’t.”
“How are you going to do it?” put in Harry. “Offer to let the animal shoot off the gun, and kill him that way?”
“Don’t you make fun of me, Harry. You’ll see the bear sooner or later, mark the remark.”
The three boys skated off, hand in hand, with Fred in the center. The fun-loving youth was the only son of the town hardware dealer, and he and the Westmore lads had grown up together from childhood. At school Fred had proved himself far from being a dunce, but by some manner of means he was almost constantly in “hot water;” why, nobody could explain.
“Let Fred Rush pick up a poker, and he’ll get the hot end in his hand,” said one of the girls one day, and this remark came close to hitting the nail squarely on the head. Yet with all his trials and tribulations Fred rarely lost his temper, and he was always ready to promise better things for the future.
The boys skated a good half mile up the lake shore. At this point they met several girls, and one of them, Cora Runnell, asked Joe if he would fix her skate for her.
“Certainly I will,” replied the youth, and on the instant he was kneeling on the ice and adjusting a clamp that had become wedged fast to the shoe plate of the skate. Cora was the daughter of an old hunter and trapper of that vicinity, and as he worked Joe asked her what her father was doing.
“He isn’t doing anything just now,” was the girl’s answer. “He was out acting as a guide for a party of New York sportsmen, but they went back to the city last week.”
“Did you hear him say anything about game?”
“Yes, he said the season was a very good one. The party got six deer over at Rawson Hill and a moose at Bender’s, and any quantity of small game. I think pa’s going out alone in a day or two – just to see what he can bring down for the market at Brookside.”
“I wish he’d take me along. I’ve got a new double-barreled shotgun that I want to try the worst way.”
“And I’ve got one, too,” broke in Fred. “I’m sure we could bring down lots of game between us.”
Cora Runnell looked at the stout youth, and began to giggle. “Oh, dear, if you went along I guess pa’d have to hide behind a tree when you took your turn at shooting.”
“Whoop, you’re discovered, Fred!” burst out Harry. “Cora must have heard how you shot off both barrels at once, and – ”
“Oh, I can shoot straight enough,” came doggedly from Fred. “Just you give me the chance and see.”
“Well, you’ll have to see pa about going out with him,” answered Cora, and then started to skate