Sometimes from the ranch we saw deer, and once
when we needed meat I shot one across the river as I stood on the
piazza. In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was
white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a
bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes traveled up and
down it as if it had been a highway passing in front of the ranch house.
Often in the late fall or early winter, after a hard day's hunting, or
when returning from one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the
ranch until hours after sunset; and after the weary tramping in the
cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the fire-lit
windows across the snowy wastes.
The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall and Dow, who, like
most men from the Maine woods, were mighty with the ax. I could chop
fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third the work they
could. One day when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees, to begin
our building operations, I heard some one ask Dow what the total cut had
been, and Dow not realizing that I was within hearing, answered: "Well,
Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered
down seventeen.
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