Before the holiday of the Milton party was ended, a big gang of lumbermen came up the tote-road from Coxford and the lake, ready to set up a camp in the valley near the twins’ cave, and finish the season by cutting over several acres of the Birdsall piece.
“I won’t want to see our place up here again until the new timber is grown,” cried Rowena, mournfully.
“Then you’ll have to wait till we get through college,” Ralph told her. “Mr. Howbridge is going to have us live with him till we go to college. But I expect he’ll bring us up here once in a while if you change your mind, Rowdy, and want to come.”
“Don’t call me ‘Rowdy,’ Ralph,” said his sister. “That was only for our trip up here. And, anyhow, I am not going to be a boy – never – any more!”
“We’re going to have a lot to tell the kids back home,” remarked Sammy Pinkney one day before they left Red Deer Lodge. “Je-ru-sa-lem! think of that long slide, Tess.”
“But it ended bad,” said Tess.
“It ended good!” cried the boy. “Didn’t we find Ralph and Rowena, and live in a cave, and eat rabbit stew, and – ”
“And get chicken scratches,” put in Dot. “But mine don’t scratch any now. The chickens went away quick.”
THE END