A Busy Year at the Old Squires | Page 8

a
towel, he gave Sylvester such a rubbing as it is safe to say he had never
undergone before.
Gradually signs of life and color appeared. The man began to speak,
although rather thickly.
By this time the little camp was like an oven; but the old Squire kept up
the friction. We gave Rufus two or three cups of hot coffee, and in the
course of an hour he was quite himself again.

We kept him at the camp until the afternoon, however, and then started
him home, wrapped in a horse-blanket instead of his army overcoat. He
was none the worse for his misadventure, although he declared we tore
off two inches of his skin!
On Sunday the weather began to moderate, and the last four days of our
ice-cutting were much more comfortable. It had been a severe ordeal,
however; the eighty-one dollars that we collected for it were but scanty
recompense for the misery we had endured.
CHAPTER III
A BEAR'S "PIPE" IN WINTER
After ice-cutting came wood-cutting. It was now the latter part of
January with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet
of snow on the ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred
during the first of the month. In those days we burned from forty to
fifty cords of wood in a year.
There was a wood-lot of a hundred acres along the brook on the east
side of the farm, and other forest lots to the north of it. Only the best
old-growth maple, birch and beech were cut for fuel--great trees two
and three feet in diameter.
The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with
levers, and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house,
where they lay in four huge piles till March, when all hands turned to,
with axes and saws, and worked it up.
It was zero weather that week, but bright and clear, with spicules of
frost glistening on every twig; and I recollect how sharply the tree
trunks snapped--those frost snaps which make "shaky" lumber in
Maine.
Addison, Halstead and I, with one of the old Squire's hired men, Asa
Doane, went to the wood-lot at eight o'clock that morning and chopped
smartly till near eleven. Indeed, we were obliged to work fast to keep

warm.
Addison and I then stuck our axes in a log and went on the snow crust
up to the foot of a mountain, about half a mile distant, where the
hardwood growth gave place to spruce. We wanted to dig a pocketful
of spruce gum. For several days Ellen and Theodora had been asking us
to get them some nice "purple" gum.
As we were going from one spruce to another, Addison stopped
suddenly and pointed to a little round hole with hard ice about it, near a
large, overhanging rock across which a tree had fallen. "Sh!" he
exclaimed. "I believe that's a bear's breath-hole!"
We reconnoitered the place at a safe distance. "That may be Old Three
Paws himself," Addison said. "If it is, we must put an end to him." For
"Old Three Paws" was a bear that had given trouble in the sheep
pastures for years.
After a good look all round, we went home to dinner, and at table
talked it over. The old Squire was a little incredulous, but admitted that
there might be a bear there. "I will tell you how you can find out," he
said. "Take a small looking-glass with you and hold it to the hole. If
there is a bear down there, you will see just a little film of moisture on
the glass from his breath."
We loaded two guns with buckshot. Our plan was to wake the bear up,
and shoot him when he broke out through the snow. Bears killed a good
many sheep at that time; the farmers did not regard them as desirable
neighbors.
The ruse which Addison hit on for waking the bear was to blow black
pepper down the hole through a hollow sunflower stalk. He had an idea
that this would set the bear sneezing. In view of what happened, I laugh
now when I remember our plans for waking that bear.
Directly after dinner we set off for the wood-lot with our guns and
pepper. Cold as it was, Ellen and Theodora went with us, intending to
stand at a very safe distance. Even grandmother Ruth would have gone,

if it had not been quite so cold and snowy. Although minus one foot,
Old Three Paws was known to be a savage bear, that had had more than
one encounter with mankind.
While the rest stood back, Addison approached on tiptoe with the
looking-glass, and held it to the hole for some