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 a queer, 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 to-day," 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. It 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!