The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill

Author:Kirkpatrick Hill [Hill, Kirkpatrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

In November Little Pete had to go to the trapline with his grandpa and his dad and his uncles. Little Pete’s auntie Bernie usually went to winter camp with them and did all the cooking.

Little Pete’s mom was dead, that’s why. A long time ago, when Little Pete was just born, they had measles at our old village of Dolbi. Those measles killed a lot of people, mostly the old people and the babies, but Little Pete’s mom died then.

Big Bernie, we always called his aunt. She was really big, like Little Pete, and could do anything a man could do. Once she even made a cabin by herself. Eight logs high, Grandpa said, and it was a good one, too.

Usually Little Pete was dying to get out to camp as soon as it snowed. He really liked it out there at their camp because he liked being out in the woods. But he didn’t really want to go this year because school was so interesting with Miss Agnes there. Most of all he didn’t want to miss the end of Robin Hood. He wasn’t good enough at reading to read it for himself, so Miss Agnes read extra long the last day he was in school, and we finished the book.

So Little Pete was glad of that. And Miss Agnes gave him a little notebook and told him to write in it every day so he wouldn’t forget all he’d learned about printing nicely.

A few weeks later Roger went to camp, too. Roger’s family was very big. There were nine kids altogether, and he was the only one still going to school. The oldest ones hadn’t gone very much. And there were the little ones who didn’t go to school yet. The twins were four, and Frankie was two years old, and there was a new one, the baby, Liza.

There was a lot of hoorah in the village when Roger’s family got ready to go, because they were taking three dog teams. We all stood out in the street at recess time and watched them leave.

All the dogs in town were barking and pulling at their chains, wishing they could go, too.

Roger’s oldest brother was loading up the freight sled Roger was going to drive, and those dogs were just jerking in their harnesses and barking, wanting to get out on the trail. Roger was standing on the brake with both feet, and he could just barely keep the dogs from moving the sled. It was funny to watch.

The sleds were piled high with bales of dried dogfish and food and all the stuff they needed at camp. They didn’t tie it down real careful the way most people did. It was just kind of thrown in there. They were a happy family, happy-go-lucky.

Nearly every day some other family would go off to winter camp and the village was getting emptier and emptier.

Soon Marie Solomon had to stay home from school to take care of the kids because her mom was going out to help her dad trap.

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