“I wish it had been my arm,” said Will, one day, when Ally had been brought down stairs into the sitting-room, and was lying on the lounge. “Then I shouldn’t have to be bothering my head about subjunctives in Latin and aorists in Greek, and dear knows what!”
It was at about this time that a supply-team was starting for the logging-camp in the far woods. That day Old Uncle had taken Aunt Susan up with him, in the driving-sleigh, saying she really needed some sort of an outing.
When Will had seen the prancing black horses shaking off showers of bell-tones, he had begged hard to go, and harder still when he heard there was a hatchet and knife in the sleigh, and saw Old Uncle examining his revolvers, there being a rumor of wolves on the way, although probably a baseless rumor. But Will’s entreaties had been promptly silenced, and he was told that he must stay and attend to his lessons if he wanted to enter Bowdoin year after next.
Well, Will didn’t want to enter Bowdoin. He wanted to go to the logging-camp. Year after next was a great way off. The woods, the life there, the stories, the games, the hunting for bears, the gathering of gum, the deer-hunt, the escape from panthers or gray, gaunt wolves, the coming down with the drive in the spring, the jam of the logs at the falls with the raftsmen skipping round on them as lightly as Mercury in the mythology, handling them with long hooks, and springing for dear life as one dexterous thrust loosened the whole mass and sent them rearing, rolling, plunging, and shooting over the cataracts,—all that was close at hand. And Will, as he thought of it, was bound to be a lumberman.
“I want to go up and stay all winter, and come down on the drive and shoot the rapids,” grumbled Will, when he went in. “And I might bring home a caribou’s horns and a catamount’s pelt.”
“You!” said Charlie. “A catamount would tear you to bits with his great claws before you could run! You’d be scared to death nights just hearing him cry round the camp!”
“Will,” said Aunt Rose, as she gathered up her work and left the room, “it’s quite enough for you to read of the killings in your Virgil, if you want to reach Bowdoin before you’re gray.”
“Oh, Bowdoin, Bowdoin! I don’t want to reach Bowdoin! Ever!” shouted Will. “I’m tired and sick of hearing about Bowdoin. I’m going to take my nose-money, and buy a township up in the Aroostook and cut off the timber and be a lumberman, just as much as I please!”
“How many bears and wolves would have to be killed, do you think,” said Charlie, who rather loved to tease, “before you’ve got enough nose-money to buy a township?”