ly. But
there was the grist. We needed that; I knew that we should have to go
hungry without the grist. It would get wet from above and below if I
tried to carry it on the back of a horse. I warmed myself by the fire
and hitched my team near it so as to thaw the frost out of their
forelocks and eyebrows. I felt in my coat pockets and found a handful
of nails--everybody carried nails in one pocket those days--and I
remember that my uncle's pockets were a museum of bolts and nuts and
screws and washers.

The idea occurred to me that I would make a kind of sled which was
called a jumper.

So I got my ax out of the wagon and soon found a couple of small trees
with the right crook for the forward end of a runner and cut them and
hewed their bottoms as smoothly as I could. Then I made notches in them
near the top of their crooks and fitted a stout stick into the notches
and secured it with nails driven by the ax-head. Thus I got a hold for
my evener. That done, I chopped and hewed an arch to cross the middle of
the runners and hold them apart and used all my nails to secure and
brace it. I got the two boards which were fastened together and
constituted my wagon seat and laid them over the arch and front brace.
How to make them fast was my worst problem. I succeeded in splitting a
green stick to hold the bolt of the evener just under its head while I
heated its lower end in the fire and kept its head cool with snow. With
this I burnt a hole in the end of each board and fastened them to the
front brace with withes of moosewood.

It was late in the day and there was no time for the slow process of
burning more holes, so I notched the other ends of the boards and
lashed them to the rear brace with a length of my reins. Then I
retempered my bolt and brought up the grist and chain and fastened the
latter between the boards in the middle of the front brace, hitched my
team to the chain and set out again, sitting on the bags.

It was, of course, a difficult journey, for my jumper was narrow. The
snow heaped up beneath me and now and then I and my load were rolled off
the jumper. When the drifts were more than leg deep I let down the fence
and got around them by going into the fields. Often I stopped to clear
the eyes of the horses--a slow task to be done with the bare hand--or to
fling my palms against my shoulders and thus warm myself a little.

It was pitch dark and the horses wading to their bellies and the snow
coming faste