The little fellows turned on Skelding with flashing eyes.
“Oh, don’t fight!” Inza smilingly begged. “You’ll miss some interesting playing while you’re at it.”
“It’s a good thing you interfered,” said Bink, speaking to her a moment after. “We’d have eaten the fellow up.”
“I knew it, and so I interfered. I was like the little boy who ate up the piece of pie belonging to his little brother.”
Bink fell over gurgling in the snow, and Danny gave him a kick to “drive some sense into him,” as he said.
“And we came down from New York on purpose to see this great and glorious game!”
Bink would have tackled Danny, but the cheering of the spectators warned him that he was indeed losing some good playing.
Beckwith’s forwards had the puck and were forcing it toward Merriwell’s goal. Silver pushed it to Packard and Packard to Defarge, and the latter drove it toward Merriwell’s flags.
“Oh, he’s doing it!” shrieked Bink. “That’s right, Browning, old boy! Drive it back!”
Browning was a capital goal-keeper. He not only blocked Defarge’s play, but he sent the puck skipping back along the ice toward the goal of the opposing team.
There were yells of “off-side,” from the spectators as the members of the opposing teams came together, but the play went on.
Silver tried to carom the puck against a board at the side of the natural rink, and so shoot it toward Merriwell’s goal, Merriwell being in front of him; but Merriwell’s stick caught it, deviated it, and sent it between the goal-posts of his opponents.
The puck was again faced in the center of the field between the sticks of Morgan and Merriwell. Dade had secured it before, and he was alertly watchful for this advantage again.
Morgan was a handsome fellow, and as he and Frank stood in position for the beginning of the play their pose was worthy of the genius of a sculptor. There was a silence, broken by the “Play!” of the referee.
Morgan scooped at the puck as he had done before, but to his surprise he found his quickest movement too slow. The puck was moved by Merriwell’s stick and shot across the ice.
Packard stopped it and sent it flying back, where it was caught by the stick of Jack Ready, who dribbled it forward, skating easily and gracefully; then, seeing it was in danger of being taken from him, he managed to pass it to Merriwell. Starbright was in a better position than Merriwell to receive it, but to have sent it to Starbright would have put Merriwell off-side, and Ready believed that Merriwell could handle it better than any one else.