CHAPTER IX--SAWMILL FUN
Flossie and Freddie had teased to be allowed to go nutting with Bert andNan, especially when the smaller Bobbsey twins learned that theirbrother and sister were to take a lunch and perhaps stay all the rest ofthe 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 theChristmas trees!"
"We can't have any fun if they come with us," objected Bert, in awhisper to his mother.
"We'll take them some other time," added Nan. "They'd get tired and wantto come back before we found any nuts, Mother."
"Yes," said Mrs. Bobbsey, "perhaps they would. You can take them someother time, I suppose." Then, as she knew Flossie and Freddie would bedisappointed, Mrs. Bobbsey called to them:
"Come, little twins, we'll go down to the sawmill and see the big logssawed up into boards. Maybe you can ride on the log carriers."
Flossie and Freddie knew what this was, and to them there was no betterfun. Also they liked to see the big, jagged-tooth saw whizzing about andcutting its way through the logs with such a queer, ripping, buzzingsound.
"Oh, if we can go to the sawmill that will be 'most as much fun asnutting," 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 ofafterthought 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 fortwo meals, Mrs. Bobbsey said.
"But we'll get awful hungry in the woods," Bert remarked. "And we don'twant to have to eat the nuts we get."
True to his promise, Jim Denton, the foreman, showed the older Bobbseytwins where to take the path that led up along Pine Brook and deeperinto the forest about Cedar Camp, where the chestnut trees were growing.
"Good-bye!" called Flossie and Freddie, as they stood on the porch ofthe log cabin, waving to Bert and Nan, who started off with their lunchto be gone the rest of the day on the nutting party.
"Good-bye," echoed the older Bobbsey twins, and then they were soon lostto sight in the turn of the path along Pine Brook, which led deeper intothe North Woods.
"Now for some sawmill fun!" called Mrs. Bobbsey. "We'll go down and seethe little saw chew up the big logs."
In addition to sending to market logs for telegraph poles and the mastsof ships, Mr. Bobbsey's men in the North Woods also sawed up trees intoplanks and boards which were sold in the neighborhood. Besides thisthere was the Christmas tree trade, but that only took place at thistime of year, around the holidays.
Flossie and Freddie were too small to think much about the missingChristmas trees, which their father had come to camp to see about. Allthey were anxious for was to have some fun, and going to the sawmill waspart of this.
The sawmill was farther down on Pine Brook, where that stream widenedout and was dammed up to make a waterfall. Part of the waterfall wentthrough a flume, or sort of wooden canal, and the water, falling down ashaft, or wooden tunnel standing on end, turned a turbine wheel.
A turbine wheel is quite different from the ordinary mill wheel you mayhave seen. In fact you can not see the turbine wheel at all, for it isclosed in at the bottom of the water shaft. It is small, but verypowerful, and it was this kind of wheel which turned the saw machineryin Mr. Bobbsey's Cedar Camp mill.
Before the smaller Bobbsey twins reached the mill they could hear theripping, 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 withthe carving knife.
"Good morning, Mrs. Bobbsey--also little twins!" called Foreman TomCase, who had charge of the sawmill. "Did you come to buy some lumberthis morning?"
Flossie and Freddie knew Tom Case, for he had, at one time, worked inthe lumberyard of their father in Lakeport, so it was meeting an oldfriend to see him here.
"Do you want one or two million feet this morning, Flossie?" asked thejolly sawman. "And will you take it with you or have it sent?"
"I guess we'll just take some sawdust for Flossie's doll," laughedFreddie. This was a standing joke between the sawmill man and the littletwins. Tom Case was always trying to sell a big lot of lumber to Flossieand 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 lumbercamp," 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 camedown here to see what was going on."
"Well, we're sawing up a lot of logs to-day," said the head man of themill. "Here, you twins sit right down on this soft place, and you canwatch everything." Mr. Case spread a horse blanket on top of a pile ofsoft, fragrant sawdust, and on this Mrs. Bobbsey and the smaller twinssat down.
They saw the lumber men float logs down into the pond at one side of thedam and near the flume through which the water dropped to turn theturbine wheel. Into these logs a big iron hook was driven. The hook wasfast 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 drumturned, the chain was wound up and the log was pulled from the water upon land and ready to be put on the moving carriage which fed it into theteeth 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 logturned over, and got on your legs, it would break them. It wouldn't besafe--see there!"
One of the lumbermen had jumped on top of a log that was being pulledalong by the chain. For a time he kept his balance, and was given aride. But as Mrs. Bobbsey cried out, the log struck a stone and turnedover, 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 gottenoff 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 toonear 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 logsrested as they were sawed into boards. The logs were rolled up on thecarriage by men, when the machinery had been stopped and the big buzzsaw was no longer whirring around. Once a log was fastened in place, TomCase pulled a lever, and the turbine wheel began to turn the saw, andalso move forward the carriage. The carriage, or framework carrying thelog, moved slowly forward by means of cogwheels underneath, so that itfed the log into the teeth of the saw which ripped off wide planks andboards.
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 toolong they would have been carried up against the dangerous saw just asthe log was. But before this would happen they could step off, as thecarriage moved slowly, like an automobile just before it stops.
"Oh, this is fun!" cried Flossie, as she dragged her feet through littlepiles of sawdust.
"'Most as much fun as nutting!" agreed Freddie. "I'm going to be alumber-saw man when I grow up."
"Then you aren't going to be a fireman?" asked his mother, for that hadbeen Freddie's great ambition.
"Nope; I'm going to have a sawmill," he decided. But as he changed hismind about every other day concerning what he intended to do when hegrew up,
his mother did not take him seriously this time.
She and the twins rode on the log carriage until the big tree length wasalmost sawed through, and then she helped Flossie and Freddie off. Witha 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 beshifted over to enable the saw to cut a new place, and the work wouldstart over again.
The log carriage moved backward, when no sawing was being done, muchfaster than it moved forward. And the little Bobbsey twins liked thisbackward ride very much, as they went fairly whizzing along.
"All aboard!" called Tom Case, as he prepared to send the carriage onits return trip. Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie and Freddie took their places.
There was a rattle and a rumble, and back they shot, the twins shoutingin glee and kicking aside the piles of sawdust. Thus they had great funat the sawmill, and they did not want to come away when the noon whistleblew and it was time for lunch. For there was a steam engine in CedarCamp, as well as the turbine wheel, and this steam engine had a whistlewhich the engineer blew to tell the men to stop for dinner.
After dinner Mrs. Bobbsey went to lie down, and after cautioning Flossieand Freddie not to go near the sawmill without her, she left the smallertwins to amuse themselves near the cabin. Their father was out with someof his men looking after Christmas trees, and as Bert and Nan had gonenutting, Flossie and Freddie looked about to find some amusement oftheir own.
"Let's play sawmill!" proposed Freddie, as he and Flossie wandered downnear 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 thewheel for a saw and you can hold sticks against it and make believethey'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 theedge of the brook. We'll have our sawmill there, and make believe tosnake logs out of the water like Mr. Case did."
This suited Flossie exactly, and soon she had taken her place in thewheelbarrow. Freddie grasped the handles, but his sister was almost moreof 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 Freddieintended to set up his wheelbarrow sawmill. Toward this place he wheeledFlossie, and all might have gone well had it not been for the fact thatthe ground was covered with those slippery pine needles.
Freddie managed to wheel his sister up the slope, and he was just goingto set the barrow down and tell Flossie to get out so he could turn itover 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, andFlossie, sliding on the slippery, brown pine needles, began to go downthe slope and straight toward the brook, just back of the dam.
Freddie, too, sat down hard and suddenly, but though the breath wasknocked out of him for a moment, he managed to pick himself up and tocry:
"Mother! Mother! Come quick! Flossie's fallen into the brook and she'llbe carried over the dam!"
And, as he called, into the water at the foot of the pine needle hillsplashed poor Flossie Bobbsey!