He had to sit down and rest a minute. But he got up, and he petted Star and Bright and spoke to them encouragingly. He took an apple away from Pierre and broke it in two and gave it to the little steers. When they had eaten it, he cracked his whip and cheerfully shouted:
“Giddap!”
Pierre and Louis pushed the sled with all their might. The sled started. Almanzo shouted and cracked his whip. Star and Bright hunched their backs and pulled. Up they went out of the ditch, and up went the sled with a lurch.
That was one trouble Almanzo had got out of, all by himself.
The road in the woods was fairly well broken now, and this time Almanzo did not put so many logs on the sled. So he rode homeward on the load, with Pierre and Louis sitting behind him.
Down the long road he saw Father coming, and he said to himself that this time Father must turn to let him go by.
Star and Bright walked briskly and the sled was sliding easily down the white road. Almanzo’s whip cracked loudly in the frosty air. Nearer and nearer came Father’s big oxen, and Father riding on the big sled.
Now of course the big oxen should have made way for Almanzo’s load. Or perhaps Star and Bright remembered that they had turned out before. Or perhaps they knew they must be polite to older, bigger oxen. Nobody expected them to turn out of the road, but suddenly they did. One sled-runner dropped into soft snow. And over went the sled and the load and the boys, topsy-turvy, pell-mell.
Almanzo went sprawling through the air and headfirst into snow.
He wallowed and scrambled and came up. His sled stood on edge. The logs were scattered and up-ended in the drifts. There was a pile of red-brown legs and sides deep in the snow. Father’s big oxen were going calmly by.
Pierre and Louis rose out of the snow, swearing in French. Father stopped his oxen and got off his sled.
“Well, well, well, son,” he said. “Seems we’ve met again.”
Almanzo and Father looked at the yearlings. Bright lay on Star; their legs and the chain and the tongue were all mixed up, and the yoke was over Star’s ears. The yearlings lay still, too sensible to try and move. Father helped untangle them and get them on their feet. They were not hurt.
Father helped set Almanzo’s sled on its runners. With his sled-stakes for skids, and Almanzo’s sled-stakes for poles, he loaded the logs again. Then he stood back and said nothing while Almanzo yoked up Star and Bright, and petted and encouraged them, and made them haul the tilted load along the edge of the ditch and safely into the road.
“That’s the way, son!” Father said. “Down again, up again!”
He drove on to the timber, and Almanzo drove on to the woodpile at home.
All that week and all the next week he went on hauling wood from the timber. He was learning to be a pretty good ox-driver and wood-hauler. Every day his foot ached a little less, and at last he hardly limped at all.
He helped Father haul a huge pile of logs, ready to be sawed and split and corded in the woodshed.
Then one evening Father said they had hauled that year’s supply of wood, and Mother said it was high time Almanzo went to school, if he was going to get any schooling that winter.
Almanzo said there was threshing to do, and the young calves needed breaking. He asked: “What do I have to go to school for? I can read and write and spell, and I don’t want to be a school-teacher or a storekeeper.”
“You can read and write and spell,” Father said slowly. “But can you figure?”
“Yes, Father,” Almanzo said. “Yes, I can figure—some.”
“A farmer must know more figuring than that, son. You better go to school.”
Almanzo did not say any more; he knew it would be no use. Next morning he took his dinner-pail and went to school.
This year his seat was farther back in the room, so he had a desk for his books and slate. And he studied hard to learn the whole arithmetic, because the sooner he knew it all, the sooner he would not have to go to school any more.
Chapter 28
Mr. Thompson’s Pocketbook
Father had so much hay that year that the stock could not eat it all, so he decided to sell some of it in town. He went to the woods and brought back a straight, smooth ash log. He hewed the bark from it, and then with a wooden maul he beat the log, turning it and pounding it until he softened the layer of wood that had grown last summer, and loosened the thin layer of wood underneath it, which had grown the summer before.
Then with his knife he cut long gashes from end to end, about an inch and a half apart. And he peeled off that thin, tough layer of wood in strips about an inch and a half wide. Those were ash withes.
When Almanzo saw them piled on the Big-Barn Floor, he guessed that Father was going to bale hay, and he asked: