Winter Fun

by William O. Stoddard

There was a large amount of conversation performed in Benton Valley the day following the party at Squire King's. It began before breakfast. In some sleeping-rooms it began before people were out of bed. It went on all over the village; and the whole affair was discussed at the drug-store, and in the blacksmith-shop, and at the tavern. It is safe to say that every thing that could be said was said; and the unanimous verdict was, that the party had been a success. So had Susie Hudson been, and she was not omitted from a single description of the company. As for Adonijah Bunce, he obtained some liniment of his mother without telling her just where he had been standing when he spilt the coffee. Susie knew where he stepped next; but she was not very lame, and felt kindly towards Adonijah.

Vosh came over pretty early in the forenoon to see Port and Corry upon a matter of some importance.

"Snow-fort!" exclaimed Porter Hudson a little dignifiedly. "Don't you think we're a little too old for that?"

"Not if it's finished up in the way they began it," replied Vosh. "They went at it after school, and I guess they must have finished it this morning. We'll have the biggest game of draw you ever got into, and we can keep it up all day."

"I'm in for it," said Corry; but Port had really never seen any snow citadels, nor had he been in any game of draw. He remembered reading that Benedict Arnold mounted his cannon on a snow-fort, the better to pepper Quebec, but he had a dim and small opinion of such matters. Still it was a promise of fun, and he went right along. The weather had been growing milder for two days, and that Saturday morning the sun had actually risen with yellow in his face. Deacon Farnham had predicted a change in the weather yet to come, and said something very deep about sap in trees, and of how he must watch it. Port could not imagine any method of watching the movements of sap in trees, or any reason for caring how it moved. He was now thinking with increasing interest about snowballs and their uses, for Vosh explained to him the proposed game of "draw" as they went down the hill.

"Three to one is fair odds," he said; "and, if a fellow gets hit, he changes sides. I've seen a fort drawn so full, they had half of 'em to sit down; and the last fellow out had no chance to pick up a snowball, for dodging what they gave him. It's just so if there's only one left in the fort. He can hardly show his head without having one of his ears filled. The snow'll pack first-rate just now. It'll stick together, but it won't make too hard a ball. Wet snow'll pack into a wad that stings, and it'll do damage too, sometimes."

Port remembered something about that from even his small experience in the city. He had paid for a pane of glass once.

The boys of Benton Village had snowballed a great deal that winter. They had grown to be pretty expert marksmen, and their dodging qualities had improved. They had even made snow breastworks two or three times; but their ambition in that direction had recently been stimulated by a picture in one of the illustrated papers. All hands had agreed that the right kind of a fort had never yet been built upon that green, and that it was time to have one. Snow was plentiful, and so were shovels; and, so long as it was play, there were boys enough to do the work, hard as it might be. They made it square, and the walls were nearly two feet thick. They were so high that the shorter boys complained that only their heads came above it.

It made them all the safer in a game of draw, and they could throw nearly as well. The fort was not finished on Friday evening, because so many of the leading boys were to be at Mrs. King's party; but, by the time Vosh and his two neighbors got there Saturday forenoon, they were beginning to draw for sides.

"There's just twenty-four of us, Vosh," said Adonijah Bunce. "That's six for the fort, and eighteen for the field, to begin on. Draw your cut now, and see where you belong."