Winter Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

shave the hair right off my arm. Watch.” And sure enough as the blade moved across his arm, the thick fair hair just floated away before it. “Want to try it?”
    “Yes. Does it hurt?” Before Charlie did it, he looked around, as if he wasn’t sure whether he ought to be doing such a thing, as if Gretchen might not approve. But then he sat on the log next to George and carefully pushed the blade of the ax across his forearm. The pale blond hair fell onto the ax blade, just as thelong grass did when Matthew went through it with his razor-sharp scythe with the mowing blade. The skin behind the ax was completely smooth, much smoother than the skin of the hogs after they had been scraped at hog-killing time.
    “How do you get the ax so sharp, George? When I try to sharpen a sickle, the file just runs over the edge. I can’t make it bite.”
    So George Maupin showed him. The two of them huddled over the ax as George explained how the file was made and how you had to hold it to make it cut into the metal of whatever blade you were sharpening. And how you moved it slow and felt the metal give way to it. And how satisfying it was to test the blade all sharp after only a few strokes.
    When he got up from the log, Charlie smiled. But the smile left his face when he glanced down and saw the patch of skin with no hair, smoother even than the skin of the hogs or his father’s face after he had shaved in the morning.
    Meanwhile the horses dozed in the shade of the paradise trees at the woods’ edge. When one would twitch off a fly, the other might stir. But usually not. Their ears hung like sails in a calm. When the big oak had been cut into logs, George took loose the singletrees that hung from the hames on the leather collars and after pulling the traces out behind, hooked the singletrees to the doubletree. By this time thetwo geldings were awake and ready to go. Each had sneezed and swung his head around a little and picked up his ears. While Richie held on to the doubletree, George backed the horses into position and hooked the doubletree to the log.
    To Charlie the log looked huge. That evening, in his long and drawn out report to Matthew about his first day logging, he said that the log looked too big for the horses to move at all, let alone drag anywhere. Because in addition to sheer weight, there were the roots of other trees in the way, as well as whole trees. It looked impossible.
    When everything was hooked up, George and Richie picked up their peavey hooks, George looped the long steering lines over his arm and hollered “Come up, boys.” The two horses put their front legs deep under them, lowered their heads, and leaned into the collars. The log moved. Ahead a root protruded. As the log got to it, George and Richie rolled it sidewise with their peavey hooks just enough to clear the root. They went ten feet before George needed to change the angle so the log would miss a tree. George said, “Whoa,” and the horses stopped, eased back off the traces, and seemed to go to sleep again.
    Charlie was amazed. The horses and ponies he knew were for pleasure riding or foxhunting and not one would have stood still for this kind of use. Even Leonard Waits’s fat workhorse mares were not as quiet as this pair. Charlie said they were like a different kindof animal, said that when they leaned into the traces, you could see all the huge sets of muscles bulge in their shoulders and hindquarters and their nostrils widen. Then they would move—slow, like you would imagine a mountain to move—skidding the huge log forward while George and Richie kept it free of roots with their hooks.
    After a few moments’ rest George said, “Gee,” and used the lines. After three steps to the right the horses were in the clear and lined up to pull again. Of course, Charlie had to get into it at this point, figuring that since he had seen one pull, he was ready to drive the team and help out. George, who like his horses was a gentle soul, had