Man of the Family by Ralph Moody

Author:Ralph Moody [Moody, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION
ISBN: 9780803281950
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2013-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

17

Hal Finds the Answer

RIDING home, I planned to hitch Lady right to the wagon, and go back for a load of ties before lunch. But I didn’t do it. First, Mother wanted me to fix the henyard fence, and then she wanted me to go and take cookery orders. Grace and I both tried to get her to wait another week before she began cooking again, but Mother had her mind made up.

It was nearly half past four when I got home with the cookery orders; and nearly five before Philip and I had finished splitting out ramps and had Lady harnessed to the spring wagon. The sun was still pretty high, though, and I thought it might be better to try taking the first load of ties out after the section crew had gone home for the night. I wasn’t too sure that Mr. McEnerney would like my idea about driving the wagon in over the D. & R. G. tracks . . . and, besides, I wouldn’t have to whistle “Kathleen Mavourneen” after he’d gone home.

I didn’t tell Mother about my talk with Mr. McEnerney; not that there was anything to hide from her, it was just that we were both too busy. I only said that Philip and I wanted to go after a load of ties before the section hands burned them. Muriel and Hal wanted to go with us, and Mother said they could.

To make the ramps, Philip and I had sawed a tie into foot lengths and split the pieces from corner to corner. We’d had to make eight of them, because there were double tracks on the D. & R. G. grade. When we had driven to the place where we were going to cross the tracks, I stopped Lady beside the road, and Philip and I went to set the ramps against the rails. To be sure we had them spaced right, we broke a stick that was as long as the distance between our wagon wheels. When everything was ready, I told the children to hold on tight, and drove up over the track. It was a little bumpy, but we didn’t have a bit of trouble, and drove right down into the hollow between the two railroads.

The ties were kind of heavy, but we didn’t have much trouble in loading them. We’d fasten a piece of rope to one end of a tie, then back Lady up, so that the end of the wagon was right over the rope. Muriel and Hal would stand on the tail gate and pull up on the rope while Philip and I boosted from the ground. Once we had an end resting on the tail gate, it wasn’t too hard to pull and shove it along into the wagon body.

We would have been all right if I hadn’t been too greedy. I knew Lady would be able to pull a load of six ties up over the D. & R. G. grade, but the sun was getting low.

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