His open mouth was full of snow. He spit it out, and wallowed, scrambled up.
Everything was still. The road was empty. The calves were gone, the sled was gone. Pierre and Louis were coming up out of the snow. Louis was swearing in French, but Almanzo paid no attention to him. Pierre sputtered and wiped the snow from his face, and said:
“Sacre bleu! I think you say you drive your calves. They not run away, eh?”
Far down the road, almost buried in the deep drifts by the mound of snow over the stone fence, Almanzo saw the calves’ red backs.
“They did not run away,” he said to Pierre. “They only ran. There they be.”
He went down to look at them. Their heads and their backs were above the snow. The yoke was crooked and their necks were askew in the bows. Their noses were together and their eyes were large and wondering. They seemed to be asking each other, “What happened?”
Pierre and Louis helped dig the snow away from them and the sled. Almanzo straightened the yoke and the chain. Then he stood in front of them and said, “Giddap!” while Pierre and Louis pushed them from behind. The calves climbed into the road, and Almanzo headed them toward the barn. They went willingly. Almanzo walked beside Star, cracking his whip and shouting, and everything he told them to do, they did. Pierre and Louis walked behind. They would not ride.
Almanzo put the calves in their stall and gave them each a nubbin of corn. He wiped the yoke carefully and hung it up; he put the whip on its nail, and he wiped the chain and the lynch-pin and put them where Father had left them. Then he told Pierre and Louis that they could sit behind him, and they slid downhill on the sled till chore-time.
That night Father asked him:
“You have some trouble this afternoon, son?”
“No,” Almanzo said. “I just found out I have to break Star and Bright to drive when I ride.”
So he did that, in the barnyard.
Chapter 10
The Turn of the Year
The days were growing longer, but the cold was more intense. Father said:
“When the days begin to lengthen
The cold begins to strengthen.”
At last the snow softened a little on the south and west slopes. At noon the icicles dripped. Sap was rising in the trees, and it was time to make sugar.
In the cold mornings just before sunrise, Almanzo and Father set out to the maple grove. Father had a big wooden yoke on his shoulders and Almanzo had a little yoke. From the ends of the yokes hung strips of moosewood bark, with large iron hooks on them, and a big wooden bucket swung from each hook.
In every maple tree Father had bored a small hole, and fitted a little wooden spout into it. Sweet maple sap was dripping from the spouts into small pails.
Going from tree to tree, Almanzo emptied the sap into his big buckets. The weight hung from his shoulders, but he steadied the buckets with his hands to keep them from swinging. When they were full, he went to the great caldron and emptied them into it.
The huge caldron hung from a pole set between two trees. Father kept a bonfire blazing under it, to boil the sap.
Almanzo loved trudging through the frozen wild woods. He walked on snow that had never been walked on before, and only his own tracks followed behind him. Busily he emptied the little pails into the buckets, and whenever he was thirsty he drank some of the thin, sweet, icy-cold sap.
He liked to go back to the roaring fire. He poked it and saw sparks fly. He warmed his face and hands in the scorching heat and smelled the sap boiling. Then he went into the woods again.
At noon all the sap was boiling in the caldron. Father opened the lunch-pail, and Almanzo sat on the log beside him. They ate and talked. Their feet were stretched out to the fire, and a pile of logs was at their backs. All around them were snow and ice and wild woods, but they were snug and cosy.
After they had eaten, Father stayed by the fire to watch the sap, but Almanzo hunted wintergreen berries.
Under the snow on the south slopes the bright red berries were ripe among their thick green leaves. Almanzo took off his mittens and pawed away the snow with his bare hands. He found the red clusters and filled his mouth full. The cold berries crunched between his teeth, gushing out their aromatic juice.
Nothing else was ever so good as wintergreen berries dug out of the snow.
Almanzo’s clothes were covered with snow, his fingers were stiff and red with cold, but he never left a south slope until he had pawed it all over.
When the sun was low behind the maple-trunks, Father threw snow on the fire and it died in sizzles and steam. Then Father dipped the hot syrup into the buckets. He and Almanzo set their shoulders under the yokes again, and carried the buckets home.