Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance | Page 5

to miss his mother more each day. When he went into the schoolhouse, he looked up and saw a pair of deer antlers. Master Crawford had gone hunting. He had shot a deer and nailed the antlers above the door.
What a wonderful place to swing! thought Abe. He leaped up and caught hold of the prongs. He began swinging back and forth.
CRASH! One prong came off in his hand, and he fell to the floor. He hurried to his seat, hoping that the master would not notice.
But Master Crawford was proud of those antlers. When he saw what had happened, he picked up the switch on his desk. It made a swishing sound as he swung it back and forth.
"Who broke my deer antlers?" he shouted.
No one answered. Abe hunched down as far as he could on the bench. He seemed to be trying to hide inside his buckskin shirt.
Master Crawford repeated his question. "Who broke my deer antlers? I aim to find out, if I have to thrash every scholar in this school."
All of the children looked scared, Abe most of all. But he stood up. He marched up to Master Crawford's desk and held out the broken prong that he had been hiding in his hand.
"I did it, sir," he said. "I didn't mean to do it, but I hung on the antlers and they broke. I wouldn't have done it, if I had thought they'd a broke."
The other scholars thought that Abe would get a licking. Instead, Master Crawford told him to stay in after school. They had a long talk. He liked Abe's honesty in owning up to what he had done. He knew how much he missed his mother. Perhaps he understood that sometimes a boy "cuts up" to try to forget how sad he feels.
Abe felt sadder than ever after Master Crawford moved away from Pigeon Creek. Then Tom Lincoln left. One morning he rode off on horseback without telling anyone where he was going. Several days went by. Even easy-going Dennis was worried when Tom did not return.
Abe did most of the chores. In the evening he practiced his sums. Master Crawford had taught him to do easy problems in arithmetic, and he did not want to forget what he had learned. He had no pen, no ink, not even a piece of paper. He took a burnt stick from the fireplace and worked his sums on a flat board.
He wished that he had a book to read. Instead, he tried to remember the stories that the schoolmaster had told. He repeated them to Sally and Dennis, as they huddled close to the fire to keep warm. He said them again to himself after he went to bed in the loft.
There were words in some of the stories that Abe did not understand. He tried to figure out what the words meant. He thought about the people in the stories. He thought about the places mentioned and wondered what they were like.
There were thoughts inside Abraham Lincoln's head that even Sally did not know anything about.

4
[Illustration]
Abe took another bite of cornbread and swallowed hard. "Don't you like it?" asked Sally anxiously. "I know it doesn't taste like the cornbread Mammy used to make."
She looked around the room. The furniture was the same as their mother had used--a homemade table and a few three-legged stools. The same bearskin hung before the hole in the wall that was their only door. But Nancy had kept the cabin clean. She had known how to build a fire that didn't smoke. Sally glanced down at her faded linsey-woolsey dress, soiled with soot. The dirt floor felt cold to her bare feet. Her last pair of moccasins had worn out weeks ago.
"I don't mind the cornbread--at least, not much." Abe finished his piece, down to the last crumb. "If I seem down in the mouth, Sally, it is just because--"
[Illustration]
He walked over to the fireplace, where he stood with his back to the room.
"He misses Nancy," said Dennis bluntly, "the same as the rest of us. Then Tom has been gone for quite a spell."
Sally put her hand on Abe's shoulder. "I'm scared. Do you reckon something has happened to Pappy? Isn't he ever coming back?"
Abe stared into the fire. He was thinking of the wolves and panthers loose in the woods. There were many dangers for a man riding alone over the rough forest paths. The boy wanted to say something to comfort Sally, but he had to tell the truth. "I don't know, I--"
He stopped to listen. Few travelers passed by their cabin in the winter, but he was sure that he heard a faint noise in the distance. It sounded like the creak of wheels. The noise came again--this time much closer. A man's voice