The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp Part 13

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 ca.n.a.l, 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 sh.o.r.e.

"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 s.h.i.+fted 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 st.u.r.dy 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!

CHAPTER X--A SUDDEN STORM