A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Part 2

Thereupon Addison and Thomas laid hold of him, and lifted him to his feet by main strength.

"Now run!" they cried. "Run before your clothes freeze stiff!" The man seemed lethargic--I suppose from the deadly chill. He made an effort to move his feet, as they bade him, but fell flat again; and by that time his clothes were stiffening.

"He will freeze to death!" Addison cried. "We must put him on his sled and get him home!"

Thereupon we picked him up like a log of wood, and laid him on his horse-sled.

"But he will freeze before we can get this old lame horse home with him!" exclaimed Thomas. "Better take him to our camp over there."

Addison thought so, too, and seizing the reins and whip, started for the sh.o.r.e. The old horse was so chilled that we could hardly get him to hobble; but we did not spare the whip.

From the sh.o.r.e we had still fifteen or twenty rods to go, in order to reach the camp back in the woods. Rufus's clothes were frozen as stiff as boards; apparently he could not move. We feared that the man would die on our hands.

We s.n.a.t.c.hed off one of the side boards of his sled, laid him on it, and, taking it up like a stretcher, started to carry him up through the woods to the camp.

By that time his long overcoat and all the rest of his clothes were frozen so stiff and hard that he rolled round more like a log than a human body.

The path was rough and snowy. In our haste we stumbled, and dropped him several times, but we rolled him on the board again, rushed on, and at last got him inside the camp. Our morning fire had gone out. Halse kindled it again, while Addison, Thomas and I tried to get off the frozen overcoat and long cowhide boots.

The coat was simply a sheet of ice; we could do nothing with it. At last we took our knives and cut it down the back, and after cutting open both sleeves, managed to peel it off. We had to cut open his boots in the same way. His under-coat and all his clothes were frozen. There appeared to be little warmth left in him; he was speechless.

But just then we heard some one coming in through the outside camp. It was the old Squire.

Our farmhouse, on the higher ground to the northwest, afforded a view of the lake; and the old gentleman had been keeping an eye on what went on down there, for he was quite far-sighted. He saw Sylvester arrive with his team, and a few minutes later saw us start for the sh.o.r.e, lashing the horse. He knew that something had gone wrong, and hitching up old Sol, he had driven down in haste.

"Hot water, quick!" he said. "Make some hot coffee!" And seizing a towel, he gave Sylvester such a rubbing as it is safe to say he had never undergone before.

Gradually signs of life and color appeared. The man began to speak, although rather thickly.

By this time the little camp was like an oven; but the old Squire kept up the friction. We gave Rufus two or three cups of hot coffee, and in the course of an hour he was quite himself again.

We kept him at the camp until the afternoon, however, and then started him home, wrapped in a horse-blanket instead of his army overcoat. He was none the worse for his misadventure, although he declared we tore off two inches of his skin!

On Sunday the weather began to moderate, and the last four days of our ice-cutting were much more comfortable. It had been a severe ordeal, however; the eighty-one dollars that we collected for it were but scanty recompense for the misery we had endured.

CHAPTER III

A BEAR'S "PIPE" IN WINTER

After ice-cutting came wood-cutting. It was now the latter part of January with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet of snow on the ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred during the first of the month. In those days we burned from forty to fifty cords of wood in a year.

There was a wood-lot of a hundred acres along the brook on the east side of the farm, and other forest lots to the north of it. Only the best old-growth maple, birch and beech were cut for fuel--great trees two and three feet in diameter.

The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with levers, and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house, where they lay in four huge piles till March, when all hands turned to, with axes and saws, and worked it up.

It was zero weather that week, but bright and clear, with spicules of frost glistening on every twig; and I recollect how sharply the tree trunks snapped--those frost snaps which make "shaky" lumber in Maine.

Addison, Halstead and I, with one of the old Squire's hired men, Asa Doane, went to the wood-lot at eight o'clock that morning and chopped smartly till near eleven. Indeed, we were obliged to work fast to keep warm.

Addison and I then stuck our axes in a log and went on the snow crust up to the foot of a mountain, about half a mile distant, where the hardwood growth gave place to spruce. We wanted to dig a pocketful of spruce gum.

For several days Ellen and Theodora had been asking us to get them some nice "purple" gum.

As we were going from one spruce to another, Addison stopped suddenly and pointed to a little round hole with hard ice about it, near a large, overhanging rock across which a tree had fallen. "Sh!" he exclaimed. "I believe that's a bear's breath-hole!"

We reconnoitered the place at a safe distance. "That may be Old Three Paws himself," Addison said. "If it is, we must put an end to him." For "Old Three Paws" was a bear that had given trouble in the sheep pastures for years.

After a good look all round, we went home to dinner, and at table talked it over. The old Squire was a little incredulous, but admitted that there might be a bear there. "I will tell you how you can find out," he said. "Take a small looking-gla.s.s with you and hold it to the hole. If there is a bear down there, you will see just a little film of moisture on the gla.s.s from his breath."

We loaded two guns with buckshot. Our plan was to wake the bear up, and shoot him when he broke out through the snow. Bears killed a good many sheep at that time; the farmers did not regard them as desirable neighbors.

The ruse which Addison hit on for waking the bear was to blow black pepper down the hole through a hollow sunflower stalk. He had an idea that this would set the bear sneezing. In view of what happened, I laugh now when I remember our plans for waking that bear.

Directly after dinner we set off for the wood-lot with our guns and pepper. Cold as it was, Ellen and Theodora went with us, intending to stand at a very safe distance. Even grandmother Ruth would have gone, if it had not been quite so cold and snowy. Although minus one foot, Old Three Paws was known to be a savage bear, that had had more than one encounter with mankind.

While the rest stood back, Addison approached on tiptoe with the looking-gla.s.s, and held it to the hole for some moments. Then he examined it and looked back at us, nodding. There was moisture on it.

The girls climbed upon a large rock among the spruces. The old Squire, with one of the guns, took up a position beside a tree about fifty feet from the "hole." He posted Asa, who was a pretty good shot, beside another tree not far away. Halstead and I had to content ourselves with axes for weapons, and kept pretty well to the rear.

Addison was now getting his pepper ready. Expectancy ran high when at last he blew it down the hole and rushed back. We had little doubt that an angry bear would break out, sneezing and growling.

But nothing of the sort occurred. Some minutes pa.s.sed. Addison could not even hear the faintest sneeze from below. He tiptoed up and blew in more pepper.

No response.

Cutting a pole, Addison then belabored the snow crust about the hole with resounding whacks--still with no result.

After this we approached less cautiously. Asa broke up the snow about the hole and cleared it away, uncovering a considerable cavity which extended back under the partially raised root of the fallen tree.

Halstead brought a shovel from the wood-piles; and Addison and Asa cut away the roots of the old tree, and cleared out the frozen turf and leaves to a depth of four or five feet, gradually working down where they could look back beneath the root. We had begun to doubt whether we would find anything there larger than a woodchuck.

At last Addison got down on hands and knees, crept in under the root, and lighted several matches.

"There's something back in there," he said. "Looks black, but I cannot see that it moves."

Asa crawled in and struck a match or two, then backed out. "I believe it's a bear!" he exclaimed, and he wanted to creep in with a gun and fire; but the old Squire advised against that on account of the heavy charge in so confined a s.p.a.ce.

Addison had been peeling dry bark from a birch, and crawling in again, lighted a roll of it. The smoke drove him out, but he emerged in excitement. "Bears!" he cried. "Two bears in there! I saw them!"

Asa took a pole and poked the bears cautiously. "Dead, I guess," said he, at last. "They don't move."

Addison crept in again, and actually pa.s.sed his hand over the bears, then backed out, laughing. "No, they are not dead!" he exclaimed. "They are warm. But they are awfully sound asleep."

"Let's haul them out!" cried Asa; and they now sent me to the wood-sled for two or three small trace-chains. Asa then crawled in and slipped a chain about the body of one of the bears. The other two chains were hooked on; and then they slowly hauled the bear out, the old Squire standing by with gun c.o.c.ked--for we expected every moment that the animal would wake.

But even when out on the snow crust the creature lay as inert as a dead bear. It was small. "Only a yearling," the old Squire said. None of us were now much afraid of them, and the other one was drawn out in the same way. Their hair was glossy and as black as jet. Possibly they would have weighed seventy-five pounds each. Evidently they were young bears that had never been separated, and that accounted for their denning up together; old bears rarely do this.