How the snowballs flew! Almanzo ducked and dodged and yelled, and threw snowballs as fast as he could, till they were all gone. Royal came charging over the wall with all the enemy after him, and Almanzo rose up and grabbed Frank. Headlong they went into the deep snow, outside the wall, and they rolled over and over, hitting each other as hard as they could.
Almanzo’s face was covered with snow and his mouth was full of it, but he hung on to Frank and kept hitting him. Frank got him down, but Almanzo squirmed out from under. Frank’s head hit his nose, and it began to bleed. Almanzo didn’t care. He was on top of Frank, hitting him as hard as he could in the deep snow. He kept saying, “Holler ’nuff! holler ’nuff!”
Frank grunted and squirmed. He rolled half over, and Almanzo got on top of him. He couldn’t stay on top of Frank and hit him, so he bore down with all his weight, and he pushed Frank’s face deeper and deeper into the snow. And Frank gasped: “’Nuff!”
Almanzo got up on his knees, and he saw Mother in the doorway of the house. She called: “Boys! Boys! Stop playing now. It’s time to come in and warm.”
They were warm. They were hot and panting. But Mother and the aunts thought the cousins must get warm before they rode home in the cold. They all went tramping in, covered with snow, and Mother held up her hands and exclaimed: “Mercy on us!”
The grown-ups were in the parlor, but the boys had to stay in the dining-room, so they wouldn’t melt on the parlor carpet. They couldn’t sit down, because the chairs were covered with blankets and lap robes, warming by the heater. But they ate apples and drank cider, standing around, and Almanzo and Abner went into the pantry and ate bits off the platters.
Then uncles and aunts and the girl cousins put on their wraps, and they brought the sleeping babies from the bedroom, rolled up in shawls. The sleighs came jingling from the barn, and Father and Mother helped tuck in the blankets and lap robes, over the hoopskirts. Everybody called: “Good-by! Good-by!”
The music of the sleigh-bells came back for a little while; then it was gone. Christmas was over.
Chapter 27
Wood-Hauling
When school opened as usual, that January, Almanzo did not have to go. He was hauling wood from the timber.
In the frosty cold mornings before the sun was up, Father hitched the big oxen to the big bobsled and Almanzo hitched the yearlings to his bobsled. Star and Bright were now too big for the little yoke, and the larger yoke was too heavy for Almanzo to handle alone. Pierre had to help him lift it onto Star’s neck, and Louis helped him push Bright under the other end of it.
The yearlings had been idle all summer in the pastures, and now they did not like to work. They shook their heads and pulled and backed. It was hard to get the bows in place and put the bowpins in.
Almanzo had to be patient and gentle. He petted the yearlings (when sometimes he wanted to hit them) and he fed them carrots and talked to them soothingly. But before he could get them yoked and hitched to his sled, Father was already going to the timber lot.
Almanzo followed. The yearlings obeyed him when he shouted “Giddap!” and they turned to the right or left when he cracked his whip and shouted “Gee!” or “Haw!” They trudged along the road, up the hills and down the hills, and Almanzo rode on his bobsled with Pierre and Louis behind him.
He was ten years old now, and he was driving his own oxen on his own sled, and going to the timber to haul wood.
In the woods the snow was drifted high against the trees. The lowest branches of pines and cedars were buried behind it. There was no road; there were no marks on the snow but the featherstitching tracks of birds and the blurry spots where rabbits had hopped. Deep in the still woods axes were chopping with a ringing sound.
Father’s big oxen wallowed on, breaking a road, and Almanzo’s yearlings struggled behind them. Farther and farther into the woods they went, till they came to the clearing where French Joe and Lazy John were chopping down the trees.
Logs lay all around, half-buried in snow. John and Joe had sawed them into fifteen-foot lengths, and some of them were two feet through. The huge logs were so heavy that six men couldn’t lift them, but Father had to load them on the bobsled.
He stopped the sled beside one of them, and John and Joe came to help him. They had three stout poles, called skids. They stuck these under the log, and let them slant up to the bobsled. Then they took their cant-poles. Cant-poles have sharp ends, with big iron hooks swinging loose under them.
John and Joe stood near the ends of the log. They put the sharp ends of their cant-poles against it, and when they raised the poles up, the cant-hooks bit into the log and rolled it a little. Then Father caught hold of the middle of the log with his cant-pole and hook, and he held it from rolling back, while John and Joe quickly let their cant-hooks slip down and take another bite. They rolled the log a little more, and again Father held it, and again they rolled it.
They rolled the log little by little, up the slanting skids and onto the bobsled.
But Almanzo had no cant-hooks, and he had to load his sled.
He found three straight poles to use for skids. Then with shorter poles he started to load some of the smallest logs. They were eight or nine inches through and about ten feet long and they were crooked and hard to handle.
Almanzo put Pierre and Louis near the ends of a log and he stood in the middle, like Father. They pushed and pried and lifted and gasped, pushing the log up the skids. It was hard to do, because their poles had no cant-hooks and could not take hold of the log.
They ma
naged to load six logs; then they had to put more logs on top of those, and this made the skids slant upward more steeply. Father’s bobsled was loaded already, and Almanzo hurried. He cracked his whip and urged Star and Bright quickly to the nearest log.
One end of this log was bigger than the other, so it would not roll evenly. Almanzo put Louis at the smaller end, and told him not to roll it too fast. Pierre and Louis rolled the log an inch, then Almanzo stuck his pole under it and held it, while Pierre and Louis rolled it again. They got the log high up on the steep skids.
Almanzo was holding it up with all his might. His legs were braced and his teeth were clenched and his neck strained and his eyes felt bulging out, when suddenly the whole log slipped.
The pole jerked out of his hands and hit his head. The log was falling on him. He tried to get away, but it smashed him down Into the snow.