The Corner House Girls Snowbound

Instead he got up and crept over to the fireplace where there were still some red embers. Rowdy, or somebody, had evidently been up more than once to put fuel on the fire, and now Sammy did the same and blew the coals until the wood caught and blazed.

Beside the fireplace was a great stack of billets of seasoned wood. Evidently this cave had been used as a living place for a long time; or perhaps it had merely been stocked with fuel for a long time.

Sammy hoped it was well stocked with food, too. For Sammy was hungry, right then! It seemed to him that the rabbit stew had been eaten a long time before. There was no clock; but judging from the way he felt he thought he must have slept the clock around.

He wondered if the storm had ceased. Was there likelihood of their being able to get back to Red Deer Lodge this morning (if it was morning), or would they have to remain until some one came to dig them out?

The fire having sprung up now, and the flickering light aiding him to see his way about the cavern, Sammy moved toward the entrance. This aperture beside the huge bowlder was scarcely higher than Sammy himself. Before it Rowdy and Rafe, the two strange boys, had hung a piece of matting. When Sammy pulled this matting away he saw snow – snow that filled the hole “chock-er-block,” as he expressed it.

“Je-ru-sa-lem!” muttered the startled Sammy, “I guess it did snow some. How are we ever going to dig out of here?”

There was a slab of wood standing beside the opening, leaning against the rock. Sammy seized this and began to dig desperately at the snow.

So interested did he become in digging through the bank that filled the cave entrance that he did not pay much attention to where he flung the snow behind him. He was still digging like a woodchuck when Rowdy’s voice reached him:

“What are you trying to do? Going to fill this cave with snow?”

“Say!” said Sammy, “it’s getting-up time. And there’s an awful lot of snow here. I guess we’re buried alive, that’s what I guess!”

Just then Rafe coughed again, and his brother hopped up and went to him.

“Don’t scatter that snow all about, Sammy,” he commanded. Then to Rafe: “What’s the matter, Rafe, dear? Don’t you feel any better?”

“I’m – I’m chilly,” chattered the boy with the cough.

“I’ll cover you up better,” said Rowdy, getting his own blanket. “And we’ll have more fire and some breakfast. Are you hungry, Rafe?”

“I’m thirsty,” said Rafe, rather whiningly. “I want some – some coffee.”

“I’ll make some right away. Don’t be sick, now, Rafe. I don’t see what we should do for you if you got sick. What are you scratching for?”

“Because I itch,” replied Rafe drowsily.

But he snuggled down under the coverings until the coffee should be made. He seemed in a pleasanter humor, at least, than on the evening before.

Rowdy bustled about, making coffee and stirring up some kind of bread by the light of the fire. Soon the fuel heaped upon the blaze made the cave warm again, although the smoke set them all to coughing.

The two little girls woke up. Dot demanded a light.

“I don’t like this old smoky fire to see by,” she complained. “Why don’t you keep your fire in a stove, Rowdy?”

“Haven’t a stove,” replied Rowdy promptly. “How did you girls sleep?”

“All right, I guess,” Tess replied. “What are you doing, Sammy? Can we go home this morning?”

Sammy was still digging. He tramped the snow into a corner behind him. But the more snow he dug out of the hole the more there seemed to be. He took a round stick as tall as he was himself and pushed it up through the snowbank, and it let in no light at all.

“Je-ru-sa-lem!” he cried. “There’s all the snow in the world blown into this hole, I guess. We’ll never get out of here!”

“Oh!” squealed Dot, “don’t say that, Sammy. Of course we must get out. It’s coming Christmas, you know, and I’ve got to finish my motto that I’m making for Ruthie. It’s got to be done, and I didn’t bring it with me.”

“But,” said Tess, yet with some hesitation now, “the folks will surely come to find us. Don’t you say so, Rowdy?”

“If they know where you are,” said Rowdy.

“But we didn’t tell ’em,” growled Sammy, coming to the fire to get warm.

“That’ll be all right,” Dot declared, seeing no difficulty. “Tom Jonah will find us. You know, we never can hide from Tom Jonah.”

Tess explained to Rowdy that Tom Jonah was a dog, and a very good dog, too. But she secretly had some doubts, as did Sammy, that the old dog would be able to find them away down at the bottom of this hole where they had coasted. She was careful to say nothing to frighten Dot, or to discourage her.

They were all much interested in Rowdy’s preparations for breakfast. He produced a strip of bacon and he fried some of this in a pan while the bread was cooking. There was no butter, and the coffee was rather muddy; but not even Dot complained, as long as she got her share.

While they ate, they talked. At least, Rowdy and the visitors talked. Rafe drank the coffee and ate his share of the breakfast, and then went back to the bed and heaped almost all the coverings over him. He had little red specks on his chest and arms, and he said he could not get warm.

Sammy was desirous of getting out through the cave entrance to see if it had stopped snowing and what the prospect was for clear weather. But he dug for an hour after breakfast without accomplishing much. Then Rowdy came to help him.

“I tell you what I think,” said the Milton boy, in a low voice, so the girls would not hear. “I b’lieve all that snow that was up on that hill has just come tumbling down before this cave – so there!”

“An avalanche!” gasped Rowdy.

“I don’t know what you call it. But that’s what I think,” repeated Sammy. “We’ll never dig out of here in this world.”

“But I guess we’ve got to,” said Rowdy sharply. “We can’t live here long.”

“It ain’t a bad sort of a place,” said Sammy cheerfully. “I guess Robinson Crusoe didn’t have a better cave.”

“He had more food than we have,” said Rowdy thoughtfully. “And you kids do eat a lot. If I’d known you were coming here to live I’d have brought more stuff to eat – I surely would!”

“Can’t we catch any more rabbits?” suggested Sammy.

“How are you going to catch rabbits when we can’t get outside this cave?” returned Rowdy. “I guess all boys are foolish. That sounds just like Rafe.”

“Say! You’re a boy yourself,” said Sammy, in surprise. “You needn’t talk.”

“Oh!” rejoined Rowdy, and said nothing more for a time.

But they gave up digging through the snowbank. The snow seemed packed very hard, and it was difficult to dig with a slab of wood. If there had been an avalanche over the mouth of the cave their chances for digging out were small, indeed. Luckily none of the children realized just what that meant.

Living in the cave was some fun, as Sammy declared. At least, it had the virtue of novelty. The time did not drag. They played games, paid forfeits, and Tess told stories, and Rowdy sang songs. He had a very sweet voice, and Tess told him that he sang almost as well as Agnes did.

“And Agnes sings in the church chorus,” explained Tess.

“And I think you cook ’most as good as a girl,” said Dot. “I guess you cook ’most as good as our Linda, at home, in Milton.”

If Rowdy considered these statements compliments he did not say so. Indeed, he seemed to be very silent after they were made. He sat beside Rafe on the bed for some time, and they whispered together. Rafe seemed to get no better, and he slept a good deal.

So did the other children sleep, after a while. Having no means of telling whether one day or two had passed, after eating a second time they all curled down, covering themselves as best they could, and found in slumber a panacea for their anxiety.

It was not Sammy who awoke the next time, but Tess. She became wide awake in a moment, hearing a sound from somewhere outside of the cave. She sat up to hear it repeated.

Something was scrambling and scratching in the snow. She even heard a “woof! woof!” just as though some animal tossed aside the snow and blew through it. Tess was badly frightened.

“Sammy! Rowdy! Oh, please!” she cried. “Is it a bear?”

“Is what a bear?” demanded Rowdy, waking up in some confusion. “I guess you’ve been dreaming, Tess.”

“That isn’t any dream!” cried the Corner House girl, and she sprang up, seizing Dot in her arms.

Rowdy screamed now; not at all like a boy would cry out. He leaped from the bed and ran to the other side of the room. There, hanging on two pegs, was a small rifle. Sammy had eyed it with longing. But Rafe, awakened as well, shouted:

“No good taking that, Rowdy! It isn’t loaded. You know I shot away the last cartridge at that old fox.”

“Oh, Rafe! I told you then you were foolish,” said Rowdy. “What shall we do?”

“What is it?” yelled Sammy, tumbling out of bed.

“It’s a wolf!” replied Rowdy. “I can hear it! Listen!”

Dot added her voice to the din. “Tell that wolf we haven’t anything to throw to him, so he might’s well go away,” she declared.

Rowdy ran to the hole in the snow. It seemed to be suddenly lighter there. Was the beast that was scratching through letting daylight into the cave?

Rafe shrieked and leaped out from under his coverings.

“You’ll be killed, Rowdy! Don’t go there!” he cried.

Dashing across the floor of the cave, he seized Rowdy and pulled him out of the way.

“Give me the gun!” he ordered, wresting it from Rowdy’s hands. He seized it by the barrel and poised it as a club.

“Get out, Rowdy!” he commanded. “This isn’t any place for a girl!”

At that amazing statement the little girls from the old Corner House and Sammy Pinkney were so utterly surprised that they quite forgot the savage animal that seemed to be trying to dig into the cave to attack them.

CHAPTER XXV – HOLIDAYS – CONCLUSION

It was rather fortunate that Ralph Birdsall had shot way his last cartridge in killing the fox three nights before from the garret window of Red Deer Lodge. Otherwise he might have hurt Tom Jonah.

For the old dog scrambled through the drift ahead of the searching party that had started out as soon as the gale ceased. Tom Jonah was pretty near crazy – or he acted so.

Barking and leaping, the dog threw himself upon Ralph and tumbled him over. He was prodigal with his expressions of joy and affection, going from one to the other of the five children, and in his boisterousness tumbling them in heaps.

“I never did! Tom Jonah! why don’t you behave?” demanded Tess. “And I have been telling Rowdy and Rafe, these nice boys, just how good and smart you are.”

“Je-ru-sa-lem!” gasped Sammy, finally getting his breath. “They ain’t boys!”

“Who aren’t boys?” asked Tess, wonderingly.

“Well – well, this one isn’t,” said Sammy, pointing at Rowdy. “He’s a girl, that’s what he is.”

“Why, Rowdy! I thought there was something funny about you,” Tess Kenway said. “You – you were so much nicer than boys are. I declare!”

But this point was discussed no further at the time. For into the entrance to the cave came tumbling Neale O’Neil and Luke Shepard, covered with snow and shouting their joy, while behind them was Ike M’Graw.

“Ralph! Roweny!” shouted the old timber cruiser. “Jest what sort of doin’s do you call this?”

Neale and Luke greeted the three lost Milton children with vehemence. Afterward Sammy confessed that maybe it was a good thing to get lost, for then you found out how much folks thought of you.

These three, with Tom Jonah, made up the searching party this time. They had come away from Red Deer Lodge without letting the others know where they were going.

It was really Agnes who started them off on the right trail. While the gale still rocked Red Deer Lodge in its arms and nobody could go out of doors, Agnes remembered about the fork in the road where she and her friends had coasted.

“If the little ones tried to slide, they might have taken that wrong road,” she said. “They could have slid right into it without knowing. Where does it go, Mr. M’Graw?”

It did not take Ike long to study out what she meant. Then he did some more “figgering.” He knew exactly where the branch road led to.

He was so successful in this figuring that he encouraged the young people from Milton to believe as he did. He saw a chance for the three little folks who had gone sliding to be safely housed in the cave that he called “Ralph and little Missie’s playhouse.”

The Birdsall twins had often camped out in that cave hollowed in the hillside at the bottom of the valley. If Sammy and Tess and Dot had slid down there, more than likely, so Ike said, they had found the cave and had taken refuge there.

In addition (but this was his own secret) the timber cruiser believed that the twins, having been in Red Deer Lodge, had started for that very cave some hours before the gale broke.

If the young Birdsalls were there, the lost children would be safe enough. This had proved to be the case.

Nevertheless, the old woodsman scolded Ralph and Rowena heartily.

“What d’you mean?” he demanded, “by running way from your guardian! Mr. Howbridge is as fine a man as ever stepped in shoe-leather. I’m ashamed of you children. And when you did come clean up here, why didn’t you come to my shack and stay?”

“We did go there; but you were away. Then we thought we had a right to live in our own house. You know papa built it,” said Rowena, bravely. “We didn’t know anybody was coming there this winter. And we brought some food with us from Coxford. Then those people came, and we waited till we could get out without being caught at it.”

“Some young ones! Some young ones!” groaned M’Graw. “Well, now, you’ll go back to the Lodge and see what Mr. Howbridge has to say to you. And you dressed like a boy, Roweny!”

“I don’t care,” said “Rowdy.” “Ralph dressed up like a girl at first. We came up here that way. But other kids picked on us so that I thought I’d better be a boy as well as Ralph. And we had these clothes at Red Deer Lodge. I make as good a boy as he does a girl.”

“Say!” asked Neale O’Neil, vastly interested, “you two stopped a week at the village on the ice and fished, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Rowena.

“And you were girls there?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Neale, laughing now, “what I want to know is, which of you it was that thrashed those two boys that tried to steal your set-lines?”

“That was Rowena!” croaked Ralph from the bed. “I acted just like a girl ought to and let them take the lines; but Rowena fought them, and licked them good, too!”

There was a deal of talk after that, but most of it was done following the arrival of the party at Red Deer Lodge. As soon as that had occurred, however, and Mrs. MacCall had heard Ralph cough and heard about the itching, she made an examination.

“There!” she declared, half an hour later after she had put the boy between blankets and given him a hot drink, “I might have known something would happen if we came up to this out-of-the-world place.”

“I should think something had happened!” murmured Ruth, who still held Dot in her lap and hugged her as though she could not let her go again. “What is the matter with Ralph?”

“Chickenpox. And it’s coming out thick on him right this minute.”

“Oh! Oh! Chickens?” gasped the smallest Corner House girl. “Are they roosting on him? No wonder Rafe scratched.”

“And like enough you’ll be scratching my lassie,” said the Scotch woman. “One an’ all of you. I never knew it to fail. If one bairn gets it, all the others in the neighborhood catches it.”

Nor was she a poor prophet. All the little folks, even Rowena, developed mild cases of chickenpox and were kept in the house for most of the holidays.

Holidays they were, nevertheless. Perhaps the little Corner House folk had never had so good a time over Christmas and New Year’s. Ralph and Rowena Birdsall proved to be rollicking, good-natured children, and they felt themselves at home at Red Deer Lodge and could entertain Tess and Dot and Sammy Pinkney.

“We won’t blame them for giving us chicken scratches,” said Dot to Tess. “At least, Ralph did. But he couldn’t help it. And mine’s most gone, anyway.”

The “older young folks,” as Mr. Howbridge called them, had most delightful times out of doors, as well as in. There was four or five feet of snow on the ground, on the level, and it was packed hard enough to make splendid snow-shoeing.

Ike M’Graw had plenty of snowshoes, and he taught them all how to use them. When they became adept he led them in short jaunts all about the section in which Red Deer Lodge was situated.

The boys went out with him at night, hunting. Neale and Luke both killed rabbits, and Neale shot a bigger fox than the one Ralph Birdsall had knocked over.

Those were wonderful days; but the nights were still more wonderful, for they were moon-lighted for most of the holiday time.

There is nothing better than coasting by moonlight, and of that sport Ruth, Agnes and Cecile, as well as the two boys, had their fill.

Nor did they overlook the two holidays, Christmas and New Year’s. Ike cut and trimmed a huge Christmas tree and that was set up in the main hall of the Lodge and decorated in a most beautiful manner. Presents had been brought up from Milton for everybody. And although Ralph and Rowena Birdsall and Ike M’Graw were “added entries,” as Luke said, they were not allowed to feel slighted when the presents were given out on Christmas night.

A big sledge came through from Coxford two days after Christmas, and this brought additional supplies for the party at Red Deer Lodge. There came on the sledge, too, the red-faced Mr. Neven who wished to buy the standing timber on a part of the Birdsall tract.

There was much talk between the lumberman, Mr. Howbridge and M’Graw regarding the timber. But Ike proved himself a good “figgerer” in more ways than one. The lawyer remained determined to accept the old timber cruiser’s report as correct and finally Neven came to their terms.

Before the holiday of the Milton party was ended, a big gang of lumbermen came up the tote-road from Coxford and the lake, ready to set up a camp in the valley near the twins’ cave, and finish the season by cutting over several acres of the Birdsall piece.

“I won’t want to see our place up here again until the new timber is grown,” cried Rowena, mournfully.

“Then you’ll have to wait till we get through college,” Ralph told her. “Mr. Howbridge is going to have us live with him till we go to college. But I expect he’ll bring us up here once in a while if you change your mind, Rowdy, and want to come.”

“Don’t call me ‘Rowdy,’ Ralph,” said his sister. “That was only for our trip up here. And, anyhow, I am not going to be a boy – never – any more!”

“We’re going to have a lot to tell the kids back home,” remarked Sammy Pinkney one day before they left Red Deer Lodge. “Je-ru-sa-lem! think of that long slide, Tess.”

“But it ended bad,” said Tess.

“It ended good!” cried the boy. “Didn’t we find Ralph and Rowena, and live in a cave, and eat rabbit stew, and – ”

“And get chicken scratches,” put in Dot. “But mine don’t scratch any now. The chickens went away quick.”

THE END