“Let ’em ride on the log carriage. That’s safe if they don’t get too near the saw, and you can ride with them and watch,” said Tom Case.
“All right,” agreed Mrs. Bobbsey.
The log carriage was a movable platform of framework, on which the logs rested as they were sawed into boards. The logs were rolled up on the carriage by men, when the machinery had been stopped and the big buzz saw was no longer whirring around. Once a log was fastened in place, Tom Case pulled a lever, and the turbine wheel began to turn the saw, and also move forward the carriage. The carriage, or framework carrying the log, moved slowly forward by means of cogwheels underneath, so that it fed the log into the teeth of the saw which ripped off wide planks and boards.
Mrs. Bobbsey and the little twins sat on the far end of the carriage, and began to ride forward with it. Of course if they had stayed on too long they would have been carried up against the dangerous saw just as the log was. But before this would happen they could step off, as the carriage moved slowly, like an automobile just before it stops.
“Oh, this is fun!” cried Flossie, as she dragged her feet through little piles of sawdust.
“’Most as much fun as nutting!” agreed Freddie. “I’m going to be a lumber-saw man when I grow up.”
“Then you aren’t going to be a fireman?” asked his mother, for that had been Freddie’s great ambition.
“Nope; I’m going to have a sawmill,” he decided. But as he changed his mind about every other day concerning what he intended to do when he grew up, his mother did not take him seriously this time.
She and the twins rode on the log carriage until the big tree length was almost sawed through, and then she helped Flossie and Freddie off. With a final zip and clatter the board was sawed off the side of the log. Then the carriage would move back its full length, the log would be shifted over to enable the saw to cut a new place, and the work would start over again.
The log carriage moved backward, when no sawing was being done, much faster than it moved forward. And the little Bobbsey twins liked this backward ride very much, as they went fairly whizzing along.