Thus encouraged, the boys started off for Portland in exuberant spirits, having first made an arrangement with Fred that he should employ Ricker and the Eatons to cut logs enough on Charlie’s land to make one hundred and seventy-five thousand of boards, begin to haul them to the mill on the first snow, in order to have them seasoning, to load the Hard-Scrabble.
“We thought Fred wouldn’t have so good a chance as ourselves,” said Charlie, “because, not being a carpenter nor blacksmith, he couldn’t turn in his work, but he’s turned in his goods. He sent those poor hake, that nobody here could eat, out South to feed the negroes, and got pitch, turpentine, and corn. He’ll pay for most of the flax, and for the weaving, in goods. He’s taken a good many orders since we’ve been building. He’ll pay the Eatons for cutting and hauling the timber, and the mill men for sawing, from the store. He won’t get much out of Ricker only his tobacco; so I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t have to pay much money, after all.”
“I guess,” said John, “it will be you, and I, and Isaac that will have to pay the money. His goods will come to more than our labor.”
CHAPTER XIX.
PLEASURE AND PROFIT.
It is the latter part of December, just before sunset. The snow, which had fallen in successive storms since the first of the month, now lay deep on the ground. Making their way in Indian file through the forest are four persons, in whom we recognize Uncle Isaac, Joe Griffin, Charlie, and John. They are each of them harnessed to a singular sort of a vehicle, called in hunters’ phrase “toboggin,” by long thongs of deer-skin, which are put across the breast, and secured to the neck by another strap to prevent their slipping down, like the breastplate of a horse. The vehicle consists of a cedar board, eight feet long and eighteen inches wide, quarter of an inch thick, made perfectly smooth, and the forward end bent up like the nose of a sled, some bars put across to strengthen it, to which to fasten the load. This formed the lightest sled imaginable, being so long, in proportion to its width, as to receive but little obstruction from the snow. The forward part, bent up, glided easily over the drifts or logs, and it was withal so thin, that it bent, and accommodated itself to the inequalities of the surface. Upon the sledges they carry their rifles, powder, balls, and buckshot, steel-traps, blankets, and a small kettle, pork, bread, and parched corn, a large file, whetstone, axe, and other necessaries, including a frow (a large knife) for splitting shingles. They wear moccasons and snow-shoes; in their belts a knife and hatchet. Each man also has a horn of tinder, flint, steel, and brimstone matches.
The boys were, evidently weary with their unaccustomed work, and Charlie cast many a furtive glance towards the setting sun, the light of which shone red through the trees. It was also evident that even Joe was not unaffected by fatigue; but upon the seasoned frame of Uncle Isaac the journey apparently made no impression.
“There ought to be a brook somewhere about here,” said he. “Ah! I see the place. It’s just beyond that hemlock, though the water itself is all covered with ice and snow. We’ll camp there. We ought to have camped two hours ago, but I wanted to reach this spot.”
This was the first experience of real camp and hunter’s life the boys had ever known. To be sure they had camped out in summer, on Smutty Nose and in other places; but now it was bitter cold, and the snow two feet deep. They were also tired. Uncle Isaac, taking counsel only of his own toughened sinews, had not made sufficient allowance for the little practice they had ever known in snow-shoe walking. Their shoulders ached with the cutting of the straps, and their feet from the pressure of the snow-shoes. Their loads, light at first, grew heavier every mile.
As they looked around upon the trees covered with snow, their loads white with frost, realized that they were in a wilderness, no house within thirty miles, they began to feel that the hunting, to which they had looked forward with such rapturous anticipations, had its rough as well as its romantic side. The place where they had halted was in a heavy growth of hard wood, largely mixed with hemlock, which, in the gathering twilight of the short winter day, with their long branches, gave a peculiar black and gloomy appearance to the spot in the eyes of Charlie and John; but not so with the others.
“What a glorious place for a camp!” said Joe, going up to a large hemlock, which had been turned up by the wind the year before, which made, with its great roots matted together and filled with frozen earth, an impenetrable barrier against the north-west wind, blowing keen and cold; “and here is something to warm us,” taking his axe from the sled, and attacking with vigorous blows a large beech, that stood with its dead, dry branches extended to the wintry sky.