The call was so peremptory that Glutts felt bound to obey. He swerved to his side of the road, and with not a second to spare, for almost instantly the _Blue Moon_ shot past and continued down the slope toward the lake.
"But the _Yellow Streak_ is just behind us!" cried Spouter, looking back. "Here they come!"
"Yes, and on our side of the road, too!" cried Fred, in alarm. He turned his head still further around. "Glutts, get to your own side!"
"Aw, dry up!" cried the other cadet, in disgust. "You don't have to act as if you owned the whole road."
"You know the rules of the race," flung back Fred.
Crossing the highway which skirted the lake was not so easy, and beyond this the snow was rather deep, and consequently the speed of the _Blue Moon_ was slackened. The _Yellow Streak_ came dangerously close, and then Bill Glutts seemed to lose his head completely. He slued around to his own side of the road, but made such a short turn that in a twinkling the long bobsled was upset and the occupants hurled in all directions.
"There they go! They are upset!" yelled Fred. And then he lost sight of those left behind as the _Blue Moon_ shot out on the surface of the lake and beyond the mark set for the end of the race.
"We win! we win!" cried Andy, leaping from the bobsled, and in the exuberance of his spirits he turned a handspring in the snow.
"What happened to the other sled?" asked Jack, who had been so busy steering the _Blue Moon_ he had paid little attention to what had been going on behind.
"They had a spill," answered Fred. "But before they took it they came pretty close to running into us."
"It was up to them to keep to their side of the road," said Gif Garrison. "Why, we might have had a terrible accident if they had run into us!"
There were about a dozen boys on the lake who had witnessed the finish of the race, and these, along with those who had come down on the _Blue Moon_, now turned back to see what had happened to the Glutts party. They found the cadets who had been spilled picking themselves up and brushing the snow from their garments. One was nursing a bruised ankle, and another a bruised elbow, while Bill Glutts was wiping some blood from a scratch on his chin.
"Well, we won the race," said Jack briefly. He had no desire to crow over his opponents.