It was December, but all thoughts of Santa Claus were kept out of mind by the preparation of the blocks of snow for the building of the snow hut in the garden. This structure the children from the south could not actually believe in till they saw it rising. But it was a real hut, with a roof, with a low doorway, with a window of thin ice, with a chimney—a chimney that could have a fire in it! It seemed to the children from the south that they were living in a wonder-world!
But, either owing to the fire in the chimney or to a short season of thaw, the roof of their hut one day fell in. It then, almost immediately, became a fort to attack and to defend over the battlements. The children organized into two parties, for assault and repulse, with soft snow-balls, broken icicles for spears, and baskets for shields.
It was a little hard for them to divide into two parties. It was hard for Ally that Jane took Bobbo inside the fortification—Ally’s cat, you remember. It was just as hard for Janet that Bose and Diamond—her dogs—belonged to the attacking party, and were always its most furious members, their bark as good as a war-whoop. And Essie might not have forgiven Janet at all for belonging to the other side had not it been for the sappers and miners later.
Will and Jack and Janet were the colonists, inside the fort. Charlie and Essie and Ally were the Indians. Puss Bobbo was an Indian captive in the fort. The dogs were allies of the Indians; and the Indians were continually being repulsed with great slaughter, although presently very active again, for dead and wounded.
One morning during the siege, Bose happened to find a rabbit-hole. The snow had been blown or scuffed away from it, and into the little tunnel of frozen earth Bose plunged, and of course Diamond after him; and along it both made their way, scratching and burrowing and yelping with all their might. Suddenly their movements were heard inside the fort, which had been built, it seems, directly over the rabbit burrow. Will gave the alarm.
“Sappers and miners! sappers and miners! The enemy are upon us!”
“Oh! we are lost!” cried the garrison.
And then Bose’s head emerged in the very middle of the snow fort’s floor, and the colonists seized the dogs with tremendous cheering and also, it must be owned, with any amount of hugging, and held them captive.
This unwarrior-like conduct so displeased Bobbo that he sprang upon the battlements and deserted to the enemy on the instant, to the great relief of Ally and Essie.
“Oh, Aunt Rose!” cried Essie, when they went in at night, “do you believe the little Esquimau children in their snow huts have any better time than we do?”
The battles were renewed morning after morning, the weather being bright. Hostilities were sometimes suspended in order that the besieged party might sally out for more snow, after the way in which the Samoan armies borrow ammunition of each other; for, of course, if you want the fun of fighting, both parties must have munitions of war.
“I guess that ball did the work!” cried Jack, as his missile hit the captain of the Indians square in the face. “I put a lot of ’em in the water-butt and then froze ’em, last night.”
“My goodness, Jack!” cried Will. “That’s like poisoning wells in the enemy’s country! It’s as bad as shooting with poisoned bullets! Don’t you know ice-balls might kill people? Ah, it did do the work! See, Charlie’s nose is bleeding!”
At this Jack began to cry. “You’re a fine bawl-baby for a soldier!” said Will then with much scorn. “You going to pity the enemy? Why, I broke a finger once, and never thought of crying! Here they come! Ready now! Aim low! Fire!” And the garrison overwhelmed the assailants with such a shower of snow that they retreated in disorder.
Charlie rallied his men, however, in spite of the gore that reddened the field, and charged again with such vehemence that there was a scream of real pain, and then one of his soldiers fell over and lay still; and it was found that Ally had fainted with a broken arm.
Charlie carried Ally into the house, followed by every one of the poor little people in dead silence after the first exclaiming and crying, all feeling like murderers.
“Oh! is she going to die?” asked Janet, her face buried in the skirts of her cloak, and her sobs making her words something you had to guess.
“People don’t die of simple fractures,” said Old Uncle, who knew something of surgery. “But we will send for Dr. Brent. Keep the arm cool—not cold, remember—till he comes.” And he went for Dr. Brent himself.
The doctor kept Ally quiet, with Aunt Rose, for some days; and everyone forgot the business and battles of the snow hut, and hung about the house, without lessons and without games. Will used his best exertions to commit to memory the names of the Greek ships, and Essie and Janet spent much of the time in tears till Aunt Susan took them into the kitchen every day for Diane to teach them how to make little frosted cakes and tarts.
At last the doctor allowed them to see the invalid—at first one at a time, and at last all together. One was allowed to put cologne on her handkerchief, one to change her pillows, one to bring the milk for her, and one just to hang over her and kiss her now and then, till Ally felt rather important, and thought it wasn’t such a bad thing to have a simple fracture after all.
“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?”
“Oh, don’t bother me with your sums!” cried Will.
For the backwoodsmen brought to Old Uncle, who was a justice of the peace, the black and brown noses of the wolves and bears and cubs which they destroyed; and he gave them a certificate which entitled them to collect the bounty paid by the State for the killing of the creatures. Then he gave to the children the small silver piece each man paid as fee, all sharing the fund together. It would require, indeed, quite an arithmetical process to tell just when Will’s share would amount to enough to buy one of the plantations in the Aroostook.
“I don’t care,” continued Will, “I haven’t the making of a scholar in me!”
“No one has, without work,” said Charlie, going away to learn his own lesson, as he said, in peace.
“But I should be a very good—”
“You just be a very good boy now,” said Janet, in a patronizing way, “and mind Ally for me while I go and get my eggs. I found old Speckle’s nest yesterday.”
Pretty work for a boy who had “the making of a very good logger” in him, who could swing an axe in a circle round his head! He pretended not to see when Ally held out her little hand to him—the well hand—not even when her dear lip began to tremble.
He left the room, and sauntered out into the yard; and meeting Janet, with her apron full of eggs, he said, gruffly: “Your sister’s all alone.”
Then he looked up the axe, and hacked at the chopping-block, feeling much too ill-humored even to make his chopping useful with kindling-sticks.
He chopped till his blood began to circulate, and he was almost in a happy mood when he threw down the axe. He had reached a determination that was highly satisfactory to himself, without a thought of the trouble and anxiety he was going to give everyone in the house.