The Golden Boys With the Lumber Jacks
Levi Parker Wyman
9781465658319
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The car, after hesitating several times as though undecided what to do next, finally came to an unmistakable stop. The rear wheels, although equipped with heavy chains, spun around for a moment and then they also stopped. “Looks as though we’re stuck, Mike.” The words came from a boy in the front seat, but they were lost to the driver in the roar of the wind as it drove the blinding snow against the windows of the sedan. The speaker tried again. “Looks as though we’re stuck, Mike.” This time he shouted at the top of his voice and the driver turned his head. “Stuck is right, begorra,” he shouted back. “Sure and it’s meself that’s been expecting it fer the last half hour, an’ how could ye expect inything on wheels to git through sich drifts, I dunno.” “How about a shovel, Mike?” The question came from a second boy in the back seat and it also was shouted with all the strength of a sound pair of lungs. “Sure and I’ve got a shovel, do yez expect to dig all the way to Skowhegan?” The two boys, Bob and Jack Golden, were on their way home from college for the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately they had missed the train which they should have taken at Boston, and the only other one for the day would take them as far as Waterville, nineteen miles from their home in Skowhegan. Rather than wait over a day, they had telegraphed to their father and he had sent his man, Mike, to meet them. The snow had begun to fall soon after they left Portland and the storm had increased rapidly in violence until, when they reached Waterville, at ten o’clock, two hours late, it had reached the proportions of a blizzard. Mike had been dubious about starting, declaring that they would never make it, but the boys had laughed at his fears and, against his better judgment, he had yielded to them. During the first hour they made seven miles, plowing through snow up to wheel hubs. And this brings us to the point where our story opens.
