The Bobbsey Twins Megapack

by Laura Lee Hope

  “What makes him slide, Mother?” asked Flossie, as she saw her little brother go down the hill standing up, just as he and his small sister had often done on a snowy, icy slope.

  “It’s the pine needles,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “The ground is covered with the long, brown, smooth pine needles, and they make a slippery carpet. You may slide on them. If you fall you won’t be hurt.”

  Soon the two smaller Bobbsey twins were having great fun sliding down the slippery pine-needle-covered hill, and Bert and Nan also took their turns.

  But after two or three slides Bert found something on the ground that made him exclaim in delight and run to his mother to show her.

  “Look!” he cried. “A chestnut! Are there chestnuts in these woods?”

  “Yes, I did hear your father say something about them,” Mrs. Bobbsey replied.

  “Oh, let’s hunt for some!” cried Nan.

  “We’ll help!” added Flossie and Freddie, deserting the pine-needle slide for the joys of nutting.

  But though the twins looked in all directions they found only a few scattered chestnuts.

  “The squirrels have picked up most of them,” said Jim Denton, coming along a little later. “But there’s a chestnut grove not far away, up Pine Brook, and there ought to be plenty left if you don’t wait too long.”

  “Oh, Mother! may Nan and I go chestnutting?” asked Bert. “I want to get a lot!”

  “Will it be safe for them?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of the foreman.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Jim. “It isn’t more than a mile and the trail is plain. I’ll tell ’em how to go and show ’em the way.”

  And so, the next morning, Bert and Nan started off on a chestnut party, little dreaming of the strange things that were to happen to them and the other Bobbsey twins.

  CHAPTER IX

  Sawmill Fun

  Flossie and Freddie had teased to be allowed to go nutting with Bert and Nan, especially when the smaller Bobbsey twins learned that their brother and sister were to take a lunch and perhaps stay all the rest of the day in the woods.

  “Oh, I want to go nutting!” cried Flossie.

  “So do I!” wailed Freddie. “An’ I want to eat my dinner under the Christmas trees!”

  “We can’t have any fun if they come with us,” objected Bert, in a whisper to his mother.

  “We’ll take them some other time,” added Nan. “They’d get tired and want to come back before we found any nuts, Mother.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “perhaps they would. You can take them some other time, I suppose.” Then, as she knew Flossie and Freddie would be disappointed, Mrs. Bobbsey called to them:

  “Come, little twins, we’ll go down to the sawmill and see the big logs sawed up into boards. Maybe you can ride on the log carriers.”

  Flossie and Freddie knew what this was, and to them there was no better fun. Also they liked to see the big, jagged-tooth saw whizzing about and cutting its way through the logs with such an odd, ripping, buzzing sound.

  “Oh, if we can go to the sawmill that will be ’most as much fun as nutting,” agreed Freddie.

  “Will you bring us some nuts?” asked Flossie.

  “Yes,” promised Nan. “And next time we go we’ll take you.”

  So the nutting party was arranged. Taking lunch was a sort of afterthought on the part of Bert.

  “What’ll we do if we get hungry?” he had asked his mother.

  “We’ll take something to eat in our pockets,” Nan had said.

  “I’m going to eat mine outside—sitting on a log!” laughed Bert.

  “Smarty!” laughed Nan. “I’ll catch you next time!”

  Mrs. Baxter put up for the children a good lunch, more than enough for two meals, Mrs. Bobbsey said.

  “But we’ll get awful hungry in the woods,” Bert remarked. “And we don’t want to have to eat the nuts we get.”

  True to his promise, Jim Denton, the foreman, showed the older Bobbsey twins where to take the path that led up along Pine Brook and deeper into the forest about Cedar Camp, where the chestnut trees were growing.

  “Good-bye!” called Flossie and Freddie, as they stood on the porch of the log cabin, waving to Bert and Nan, who started off with their lunch to be gone the rest of the day on the nutting party.

  “Good-bye,” echoed the older Bobbsey twins, and then they were soon lost to sight in the turn of the path along Pine Brook, which led deeper into the North Woods.

  “Now for some sawmill fun!” called Mrs. Bobbsey. “We’ll go down and see the little saw chew up the big logs.”

  In addition to sending to market logs for telegraph poles and the masts of ships, Mr. Bobbsey’s men in the North Woods also sawed up trees into planks and boards which were sold in the neighborhood. Besides this there was the Christmas tree trade, but that only took place at this time of year, around the holidays.

  Flossie and Freddie were too small to think much about the missing Christmas trees, which their father had come to camp to see about. All they were anxious for was to have some fun, and going to the sawmill was part of this.

  The sawmill was farther down on Pine Brook, where that stream widened out and was dammed up to make a waterfall. Part of the waterfall went through a flume, or sort of wooden canal, and the water, falling down a shaft, or wooden tunnel standing on end, turned a turbine wheel.

  A turbine wheel is quite different from the ordinary mill wheel you may have seen. In fact you can not see the turbine wheel at all, for it is closed in at the bottom of the water shaft. It is small, but very powerful, and it was this kind of wheel which turned the saw machinery in Mr. Bobbsey’s Cedar Camp mill.

  Before the smaller Bobbsey twins reached the mill they could hear the ripping, tearing sound of the saw as it cut its way through the logs, slicing them into boards as your mother slices the loaf of bread with the carving knife.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bobbsey—also little twins!” called Foreman Tom Case, who had charge of the sawmill. “Did you come to buy some lumber this morning?”

  Flossie and Freddie knew Tom Case, for he had, at one time, worked in the lumberyard of their father in Lakeport, so it was meeting an old friend to see him here.

  “Do you want one or two million feet this morning, Flossie?” asked the jolly sawman. “And will you take it with you or have it sent?”

  “I guess we’ll just take some sawdust for Flossie’s doll,” laughed Freddie. This was a standing joke between the sawmill man and the little twins. Tom Case was always trying to sell a big lot of lumber to Flossie and Freddie, and they always said all they wanted was a little sawdust.

  “Oh, shucks! you aren’t any kind of customers to have around a lumber camp,” laughed Mr. Case. “Where’s the rest of the family?” he asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “Bert and Nan have gone nutting,” their mother answered. “So we came down here to see what was going on.”

  “Well, we’re sawing up a lot of logs today,” said the head man of the mill. “Here, you twins sit right down on this soft place, and you can watch everything.” Mr. Case spread a horse blanket on top of a pile of soft, fragrant sawdust, and on this Mrs. Bobbsey and the smaller twins sat down.

  They saw the lumber men float logs down into the pond at one side of the dam and near the flume through which the water dropped to turn the turbine wheel. Into these logs a big iron hook was driven. The hook was fast to a chain, and the chain was wound around a drum, or big roller.

  When a man threw over a lever that started the machinery, the drum turned, the chain was wound up and the log was pulled from the water up on land and ready to be put on the moving carriage which fed it into the teeth of the saw.

  “Could we ride on the logs?” cried Flossie, as she saw them pulled, or “snaked,” as it is called, out of the pond and up on shore.

  “Yes! Yes!” chimed in Freddie.

  “Oh, no,” his mother answered. “You might roll off, and if the log turned over, and got on your legs, it would break them. I
t wouldn’t be safe—see there!”

  One of the lumbermen had jumped on top of a log that was being pulled along by the chain. For a time he kept his balance, and was given a ride. But as Mrs. Bobbsey cried out, the log struck a stone and turned over, and if the lumberman had not jumped he would have been thrown.

  He leaped to one side with a laugh, and ran into the mill.

  “That’s what might have happened to you, only you might not have gotten off so easily,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “I’d like to ride,” sighed Flossie.

  “So would I!” added Freddie.

  “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.

  “All aboard!” called Tom Case, as he prepared to send the carriage on its return trip. Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie and Freddie took their places.

  There was a rattle and a rumble, and back they shot, the twins shouting in glee and kicking aside the piles of sawdust. Thus they had great fun at the sawmill, and they did not want to come away when the noon whistle blew and it was time for lunch. For there was a steam engine in Cedar Camp, as well as the turbine wheel, and this steam engine had a whistle which the engineer blew to tell the men to stop for dinner.

  After dinner Mrs. Bobbsey went to lie down, and after cautioning Flossie and Freddie not to go near the sawmill without her, she left the smaller twins to amuse themselves near the cabin. Their father was out with some of his men looking after Christmas trees, and as Bert and Nan had gone nutting, Flossie and Freddie looked about to find some amusement of their own.

  “Let’s play sawmill!” proposed Freddie, as he and Flossie wandered down near Pine Brook, where it ran over the dam, making a waterfall.

  “All right,” agreed the little girl. “But what’ll we have for a saw?”

  Freddie looked around and noticed a wheelbarrow not far off.

  “That’ll do,” he said. “We’ll turn it downside up, and I’ll turn the wheel for a saw and you can hold sticks against it and make believe they’re being sawed up.”

  “All right,” agreed Flossie. “That’ll make a fine saw.”

  They went over to the wheelbarrow, and then a new idea came to Freddie.

  “Oh, Flossie!” he cried, “you sit in it and I’ll wheel you down to the edge of the brook. We’ll have our sawmill there, and make believe to snake logs out of the water like Mr. Case did.”

  This suited Flossie exactly, and soon she had taken her place in the wheelbarrow. Freddie grasped the handles, but his sister was almost more of a load than he had bargained for. Still he was a sturdy little chap, and he managed to stagger on, wheeling Flossie toward the brook.

  There was a smooth place on a little knoll near the brook where Freddie intended to set up his wheelbarrow sawmill. Toward this place he wheeled Flossie, and all might have gone well had it not been for the fact that the ground was covered with those slippery pine needles.

  Freddie managed to wheel his sister up the slope, and he was just going to set the barrow down and tell Flossie to get out so he could turn it over and make a saw of it, when his feet slipped. He lurched forward, gave the wheelbarrow a push, and, an instant later, it turned over, and Flossie, sliding on the slippery, brown pine needles, began to go down the slope and straight toward the brook, just back of the dam.

  Freddie, too, sat down hard and suddenly, but though the breath was knocked out of him for a moment, he managed to pick himself up and to cry:

  “Mother! Mother! Come quick! Flossie’s fallen into the brook and she’ll be carried over the dam!”

  And, as he called, into the water at the foot of the pine needle hill splashed poor Flossie Bobbsey!

  CHAPTER X

  A Sudden Storm

  While Flossie and Freddie were having such fun at the real sawmill, and before Freddie had, by accident, upset Flossie down the pine needle bank into the brook above the mill dam, Bert and Nan were trudging along through the woods on their way to the chestnut grove, about which Jim Denton had told them.

  “Aren’t you glad we came to Cedar Camp, Bert?” asked Nan.

  “I sure am!” answered her brother. “It’s like having two vacations in the same year. We had fun out West, and we’ll have fun here.”

  “We can have a party when we get back, and roast the chestnuts,” suggested Nan.

  “I hope we get a lot,” went on Bert, kicking aside the pine cones and dried leaves. “We’ll want some for Flossie and Freddie.”

  “Yes, and for daddy and mother,” added Nan. “They like chestnuts, too.”

  The day had started as a bright and sunny one, though it was colder up here in the North Woods than down in Lakeport. But Bert and Nan were warmly dressed, and they were so accustomed to being out of doors that a little cold did not bother them.

  But though the sun had shone brightly when they had started on their nutting trip, they had not gone far before the sky began to be overcast with clouds. Not that Bert and Nan minded this. They were too busy looking for chestnut trees and thinking what a good time they were having to mind the weather.

  For it was fun just to walk through the woods and breathe the sweet, spicy odors of the pine and cedar trees. The ground underfoot was thickly carpeted with dried leaves and pine needles, so that the footfalls of the older Bobbsey twins made scarcely any sound as they walked along.

  It was so quiet that the children heard many sounds in the forest which was all about them. They were following a path that led along Pine Brook, and Jim Denton had said that if they kept to this path they would come after about a mile’s walk to a grove of chestnut trees.

  “And if you don’t find any nuts there, keep on a little farther,” the lumberman had said. “The squirrels and chipmunks can’t have taken all of them.”

  So interested were Bert and Nan that they paid little attention to the weather. In fact, they could scarcely see the sky at times. This was because the cedar and other trees were so thick overhead.

  As
they were going along the path where the pine needles made a thicker carpet than usual, Bert, who was in the lead, came to a sudden stop.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Nan, shifting from one hand to the other the bundle of lunch she carried.

  “I thought I heard something,” said Bert in a low voice.

  A moment later there was no doubt of this, for both he and his sister heard a grunting noise in the bushes, and then they heard the rustle of dried leaves and the snapping of twigs.

  “Oh, Bert! Maybe it’s a bear!” cried Nan, clinging to her brother.

  “A—a bear!” gasped Bert. He hardly knew what else to say.

  “Oh, look!” gasped Nan. She pointed toward a bush, and, coming out from under it, was a little animal, somewhat larger than a rabbit, but with different kind of fur, small ears, and with a tail that seemed to have rings of fur around it.

  “It’s a little bear!” gasped Nan. “Oh, Bert! we’d better run back to camp before the big bear comes.”

  Bert looked at the furry animal, whose bright eyes peered at the Bobbsey twins, and then Nan’s brother laughed.

  “I know what it is!” he said. “It’s a raccoon. I can tell by the rings on its tail.”

  “A raccoon!” gasped Nan. “Will it—will it hurt us?”

  “No,” answered Bert, and this was borne out a moment later, for with a snorting grunt the raccoon turned and scurried away into the bushes.

  “There!” said Bert. “He’s gone!”

  “I’m glad of it,” returned Nan, with a sigh of relief. “I don’t like raccoons when I’m chestnutting.”

  “They’re nice!” declared Bert. “I wish I could see him again.”

  But the raccoon did not show itself, probably being just as much frightened at having seen the Bobbsey twins as Nan was at getting a glimpse of the ring-tailed creature.

  Over this little fright, the Bobbsey twins walked on again, and soon they had reached the grove that the foreman had told them about.

  “This must be the place—there are chestnut trees here,” said Bert. His father had taught him how to tell the more common sorts of trees by means of their leaves and bark.