The Grammar School Boys Snowbound Part 13

"What?" demanded Joe.

"This great old forest, this silence, this grandeur of solitary nature?"

"It ought to do first rate for lunatics, and such like," answered Joe, gazing with disfavor at the bare trees and desolate looking bushes.

"What have you boys been doing that you've got to spend a fortnight away from comfortable livin'?"

"Why, we're doing this for pleasure," said Dan Dalzell.

"Humph!" muttered Joe, and there the matter rested.

It was nearly half past two when the horses were finally hauled up before the log cabin. But now the truck was bare of boys. d.i.c.k & Co. had leaped overboard the instant they came in sight of the cabin, and had scampered on before for a look at the place.

"Say, this is great!" cried Greg. "The old cabin looks good and solid, too."

"But how do you get in?" queried Dan, bracing his shoulder against the door and pushing hard. "The place seems to be locked."

More boys tried their shoulders against the door, but it did not yield.

"We'll have to try the windows," proposed Dave. "Hurry and see if they're fastened. This one is."

All the windows proved to be fastened.

"We don't want to break any gla.s.s," said Tom Reade ruefully. "We might have a big freeze around here, and then we'd appreciate window gla.s.s."

Here was a poser, indeed.

"There doesn't seem to be any keyhole, and yet the door is locked,"

muttered d.i.c.k, studying the door. "Hold on! What's this string for?"

He took hold of a cord that appeared to run through the wooden barrier.

Giving the cord a hard pull, d.i.c.k once more pushed against the door. It yielded and swung open.

"Hurrah!" sounded the chorus.

"We're bright ones," laughed d.i.c.k. "Thought we knew a lot about log cabins, and we clean, plumb forgot the latch-string."

"Let's get inside and get warm," begged Dan.

"Let's get warm by tumbling the things off the wagon," dissented Prescott. "I know Joe is in a big hurry to get started back."

So the stuff was bundled off in rapid order, after which Joe backed his team and swung it around.

"I hope you fellows have a real, nice, loony time!" was Joe's parting salute.

"Now, let's get the stuff inside," urged Dave. This was done with speed, if not with order.

"Now, I'll go out and chop firewood," proposed Dave. "Who'll go with me?"

"Let's all go out and take a look around," suggested d.i.c.k. "We want to know all of our surroundings before dark, which isn't a great way off."

"We can't have a fire too soon to suit me," grumbled Dan.

Outside one of the first sights that met their eyes, back of the cabin, was a pile of four foot logs that would have measured five or six cords.

"Now, that's what I call bully," gloated Dalzell. "It won't take us long to have a real fire going in that big chimney-place."

"Let's see what this other little shack is," urged d.i.c.k, leading the way to a log shanty some eight feet by ten. Again it was necessary to pull a latch-string, after which the door of the shanty yielded.

"Why, there's a cook stove in here, and a table and a couple of chairs,"

cried Tom. "This must have been the summer cook house."

"We'll use it for our jail to lock up the bad ones in," jested d.i.c.k.

"There are no bunks here for sleeping."

"What do you say if we get some of those logs and start a fire in the big cabin?" pleaded Dan. "I'm getting chilled."

The idea prevailed. But the youngsters found snow between the logs, which were tightly frozen in place. After a good deal of work and much panting, d.i.c.k and Dave succeeded in freeing one log.

"Huh!" grunted Dan, who had not done any of the work. "Getting these logs is going to be harder work than chopping down young trees."

Whistling, Tom Reade had gone around to the cabin. Now, with a whoop of glee he returned, bearing a crowbar.

"Found this in one corner of the cabin," he explained. "Now, we'll pry logs loose in fast order."

His prediction turned out a good one. Within five minutes more than a dozen of the logs had been loosened and d.i.c.k & Co. busied themselves in carrying the logs around and into the cabin.

"Now, Danny Coldfeet, we'll soon have your flame red medicine ready,"

laughed Dave Darrin jovially. "Get one of the coal oil tins, Danny boy.

Greg, tear off some of the paper to stuff under the logs. Hurry! Then I'll lay the fire. Tom, you and Harry bring the logs closer."

Some nearly burned bits of log lay in the broad fireplace under the chimney. Dave bent over to lift these charred bits out. Three or four he tossed back of him. Then suddenly he stiffened up, sticking a finger in his mouth.

"Ouch!" he grunted.

"What's the matter?" asked Tom.

"I burned my finger," sighed Dave.

"Burned your finger--in a dead fire?"

But d.i.c.k, stirring the burned bits of wood with his shoe, suddenly lay bare some dull red coals.

"Look-a-here, fellows," hailed Dan in the same moment. "Here's meat and bread, and part of a can of tomatoes on the table. The bread ain't old enough to be mouldy."

"Fellows," announced d.i.c.k Prescott, moving about, "there's some one living here--some one besides ourselves!"