“You need hard wood for that, too, to curl the end—and it takes time to steam the wood and get it bent, anyhow,” Mills replied.
“Wait—I have it!” Joe cried. “You folks be getting three or four strips of board ten feet long planed down thin, with the under side smooth. I’ll come back presently.”
He put on his skis and vanished down the trail, with a shovel over his shoulder.
While he was gone Tom and the Ranger took two boards left over from the stable, each about six inches wide, and made another by hand-hewing it from a fallen log close to the cabin. Before this was done, Joe had returned, bearing triumphantly a twenty-five pound butter box.
“I saw it behind the hotel, on the trash pile, when I got the hens,” he said. “I went down there and dug where I thought it was. Had to make three holes and a tunnel before I got it—but it’s hard wood, and all curled.”
When the third board was hewn out, and all three planed smooth and thin, they were laid side by side and connected with light crosspieces. Then the bottom was removed from the big butter box, the side drum severed, and one end securely fastened under the front end of the toboggan bottom. Thus the butter box curled up and around like the front of a real toboggan. The loose end was secured with thongs, and rings were put on either side of the boards, to run ropes through to hold on a load. Finally, a rope to pull it by was made fast.
“There!” Tom said. “That’s a regular toboggan, and she’ll ride on top of the softest snow.”
“I wonder if she’ll buck when we throw a diamond hitch?” Joe laughed.
As soon as supper was over, Joe went alone, with his rifle, up to the yard, and watched over the dead deer till eleven o’clock, when Tom relieved him. Tom watched till three, and then the Ranger guarded till daylight.
But before daylight Joe was up, cooked some breakfast, roused Tom, and taking food for Mills and pulling the toboggan, they hurried over the snow, now well packed into a trail by their frequent trips to the yard. All that morning they worked skinning the deer, to save the valuable hides for moccasins, thongs, and similar uses, and quartering the carcases which the lion had not molested after killing them. The meat, of course, was frozen now, and would keep indefinitely. It was a great load of skins and meat they finally packed upon the toboggan, piled high and fastened securely on, but a very dirty, bloody, tired lot of people to drag it home, and they were glad enough that the yard was above the cabin, not below it.