as engineer, and rushed back from his lines when the fireman signalled with the whistle that they were ready for a return trip. It may readily be imagined that with duties pressing on him in that fashion Parker had little time in which to worry about the next move of Colonel Ward. And the men worked as zealously as tho they too had forgotten the menace that threatened in the north.

In three days fully half the weight of material had been safely landed across the lake.

But on the evening of the third day Parker was more seriously alarmed by the weather-frowns than he had been by the threats of Gideon Ward himself.

The postmaster presaged it, sniffing into the dusk with upturned nose and wagging his head ominously.

"I reckon old Gid has got one more privilege of these north woods into his clutch and is now handlin' the weather for the section," he said.

"For if we ain't goin' to have a spell of the soft and moist that will put you out of business for a while, then I miss my guess."

It began with a fog and ended in a driving rainstorm that converted the surface of the lake into an expanse of slush that there was no dealing with.

Parker's experience had been with climatic conditions in lower lat.i.tudes and in his alarm he believed that spring had come swooping in on him and that the storm meant the breaking up of the ice or at least would weaken it so that it would not bear his engine.

But the postmaster, who could be a comforter as well as a prophet of ill, took him into the little enclosure of his inner office and showed him a long list of records pencilled on the slide of his wicket.

"Ice was never known to break up in Spinnaker earlier than the first week in May," said Dodge, "and this rain-spitting won't open so much as a riffle. You just keep cool and wait."

At the end of the rain-storm the weather helped Parker to keep cool. He heard the wind roaring from the northwest in the night. The frame of the little tavern shuddered. Ice fragments, torn from eaves and gables, went spinning away into the darkness over the frozen crust with the sound of the bells of fairy sleighs.

When Parker, fully awakening in the early dawn, looked out upon the frosty air, his breath was as visibly voluminous as the puff from an escape-valve of the "Swogon." With his finger-nail he scratched the winter enameling from his window-pane, and through that peep-hole gazed out upon the lake. The frozen expanse stretched steel-white, glary and glistening, a solid sheet of ice.

"There's a surface," cried Parker, in joyous soliloquy, "that will enable the Swogon to haul as much as a P. K. & R. mogul! Jack Frost is certainly a great engineer."

He at once put a crew at work getting out more saplings for sleds. In two more trips, with his extra "cars" and with that gla.s.sy surface, he believed that every ounce of railroad material could be "yarded" at the Po-quette Carry. When the sun went down redly, spreading its broad bands of radiance across ice-sheeted Spinnaker, the Swogon stood bravely at the head of twenty heavily loaded sleds. The start for the Carry was scheduled to occur at daybreak.

The moon was round and full that evening, and Parker before turning in went out and remained at the edge of the lake a moment, looking across Spinnaker's vast expanse of silvery glory.

"You could take that train acrost the lake to-night, Mr. Parker,"

suggested the foreman, who had followed him from the post-office. "It's as light as day."

"Do you know," admitted the young man, "I just came out with the uneasy feeling, somehow, that I ought to fire up and start out. I suppose the old women would call it a presentiment. But the men have worked too hard to-day to be called out for a night job. With a freeze like that we haven't got to hurry on account of the weather."

The foreman patted his ears briskly, for the night wind was sweeping down the lake and squalling shrewishly about the corners of buildings in the little settlement. Suddenly the man shot out a mittened hand, and pointed up the lake.

"What's that?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Parker gazed. Far up Spinnaker a dim white bulk seemed to hover above the ice. It was almost wraith-like in the moonlight. It flitted on like a huge bird, and seemed to be rapidly advancing toward Sunkhaze.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A dim white hulk seemed to hover 117-140]

"If it were summer-time and this were Sandy Hook," said Parker, with a smile, "I should think that perhaps the cup-race might be on."

"I should say, rather, it is the ghost of Gid Ward's boom gunlow,"

returned the man, not to be outdone in jest. "He's got an old scow with a sail like that."

Both men surveyed the dim whiteness with increasing interest.

"Are there any ice-boats on the lake?" inquired the engineer.

"I never heard of any such thing hereabouts."

"Well, I have made that out to be an iceboat of some description. And with that spread of sail it is making great progress." Parker rolled up his coat collar and pulled down his fur cap. A feeling of disquiet p.r.i.c.ked him. "I think I'll stay here a little while and watch that fellow," he said.

"So will I," agreed his employe.

The approaching sail grew rapidly. Soon the craft was to be descried more in detail. Under the sail was a flat, black ma.s.s. And now on the breeze came swelling a chorus of rude songs, the melody of which was shot through with howls and bellows of uproarious men.

"Trouble's coming there, Mr. Parker!" gasped the foreman, apprehensively. "The wind behind 'em an' rum inside 'em."

"Ward's men, eh?" suggested the engineer.

"That they are! The Gideonites! They can't be anything else."

"Get our men together!" Parker cried, clapping his gloved hands. "Rout out every man in the settlement."

The foreman started away on the run, banging on house doors and bawling the cry:

"Whoo-ee! All up! Parker's crew turn out! All hands wanted at the lake!"

In the excitement of the moment Mank did not question the command nor pause to reflect that he might be calling his neighbors into trouble that they would not relish.

CHAPTER EIGHT--THE LOCOMOTIVE THAT WENT SWIMMING AND THE ENGINEER WHO WAS STOLEN

In a few moments the bell of the little chapel was sending its jangling alarm out over the village. Doors banged, men burst out of the houses and poured down to the lake sh.o.r.e, b.u.t.toning their jackets as they ran.

They required no explanation. Ever since the incident at Poquette some such irruption of Ward's reckless woods hordes had been antic.i.p.ated. But this tempestuous night arrival under sail, this sudden and terrifying descent appalled the newly awakened men.

The craft was now close to sh.o.r.e, and was making for the stolid Swogon and its waiting sleds. The stranger's method of construction could now be distinguished, A good half-score of tote-sleds had been lashed together into a sort of runnered raft The sail was the huge canvas used in summer on Ward's lake scow.

As the great boat swung into the wind, a jostling crowd of men poured out on the ice from under the flapping sail. Each man bore a tool of some sort, either ax, cant-dog, iron-shod peavey-stick, or cross-cut saw; and the moonshine flashed on the steel surfaces. It was plain that the party viewed its expedition as an opportunity for reckless roistering, and spirits had added a spur to the natural boisterous belligerency of the woodsmen.

Most of Parker's crew had brought axes, and now as he advanced across the ice toward the locomotive, his men followed with considerable display of valor.

'A giant whiskered woodsman led the onrush of the attacking force; and the gang interposed itself between the railroad property and its defenders.

"Hold up there, right where ye are, all of ye!" the giant shouted.

"What is your business here?" demanded the young man.

"Are you that little railro'd chap that thinks he's runnin' this end of the country on the kid-glove basis?" roared the big man. He swung his ax menacingly.

"My name is Parker," replied the engineer. "That is my property yonder.

You will have to let my men pa.s.s to it."

The giant looked squarely over the engineer's head into the crowd of Sunkhaze men.