“It come on to snow ’bout the time we was hitchin’-in after takin’ our noon snack, just siftin’ down through the treetops like an old lady siftin’ powdered sugar on a ’lection-day cake,” and Walky smacked his lips. “But it gathered fast. We soon see we was goin’ to be snowed up there in the woods if we didn’t light out for home soon.”
“Did it snow as hard as it does to-night, Walky?” asked Marty, the curious.
“Jest as hard, I reckon. Hard enough, anyway. But Job Eldridge didn’t believe it’d be much more’n a squall. He never did have the sense of a mite! He was on the choppin’ gang and he wanted to keep on. Us that had teams up there jest hooked up aour chains and lit out for home. If it snowed like that in the timber, we knowed it would be as bad ag’in outside.
“Now, Job wouldn’t come at first. Then he found he was left alone at the choppin’ and that, I reckon, scare’t him. It snowed hard enough to scare anybody. He started for home an hour behind us.
“There he showed poor jedgement ag’in,” said Walky. “There was somethin’ that resembled a shack handy, and he might have gone in there and staid hived up till the wust was over.
“But no. That wouldn’t do for Job. He was as panicky inside as though he’d eat a sour apple with the Jamaica ginger ten miles away. He set off runnin’ through the wood, not follerin’ the wagon road even, but tryin’ to cut across’t and ketch up with us.
“Must ha’ got twisted around purty soon,” continued the narrator. “Reckon he follered a trail like a corkscrew, Jason, to find that old holler maple, eh?”
“Must have,” agreed Uncle Jason, broadly smiling.
“Anyway, he come plumb upon it. He was as scare’t as a cat then. The holler offered refuge, and he plumped in. The wind was a-howlin’, and the trees a-writhin’, and the snow a-suckin’ into the holler, though ’twas on the lee side. So Job, he scrouged back inter the dark—an’ he come upon somethin’ there.”
“Oh!” gasped Janice, for the suggestion of the bear’s presence, hibernating in the hollow tree for the winter, could not be mistaken. Marty and even Nelson were round-eyed.