Snow Ride

by Bonnie Bryant

  “I said I’m going to be deep-sea diving as part of an archaeological exploration of the underwater caves that housed the early Viking settlers who actually turned out to be the first cousins of Kublai Khan’s publicity men who gave the recipe for spaghetti to Marco Polo. We want to see if we can find the part of the recipe that includes sauce. You probably think I’m too young to be involved in something like that, but I’m actually forty-three years old. I just look young.”

  The man didn’t say another word to Stevie. That was all right with her. As the plane descended, she enjoyed looking out the window at the hilly white world below dotted with dark spots that she recognized as evergreens.

  Dinah and her father were waiting for Stevie at the gate. It was great to see her after such a long time. Dinah had moved away almost two years before. It wasn’t hard to recognize her, though. She was the girl who was leaping up and down excitedly and pointing and waving all at the same time. Stevie hurried through the gate and ran over to Dinah so she could give her a hug.

  “You’re finally here!” Dinah said.

  “I sure am, now where’s this maple stuff you’ve been talking about?”

  “Right this way,” Dinah said. She took Stevie’s carryall and handed it to her father. He grinned good-naturedly and followed the girls to the luggage claim area. Within a few minutes the three of them were in the Slatterys’ car. Mr. Slattery drove while Dinah talked a mile a minute, telling Stevie everything there was to know about sugaring off.

  “We can only do it at this time of year,” she explained. “See, it has to be when the days are warm enough for the sap to flow and the nights are cold enough to freeze it. So our job is to go get as much as we can in the daytime.”

  “Sounds perfectly logical to me,” Stevie said, “only I can’t figure out where the spigot is. What do we do? Twist off a branch?”

  “Ha ha, very funny,” Dinah said. “No, what we do is we make a hole. We drill it. Then we put a spigot—only it’s called a spile—into the hole. It’s a tube that fits into the hole and redirects the sap out of the tree into the bucket we hang on the spile. It’s all very clever and works very well.”

  “That’s all there is to maple syrup?” Stevie asked. “We just go get it from the tree?”

  “No way!” answered Dinah. “What we get from the tree is sap. That’s like very watery syrup. In fact, you can taste it and you’ll hardly be able to figure out what it is. No, what we do then is boil it. And boil it. And boil it. Depending on how you like it, it takes about fifty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Then, if you want maple sugar, you just keep on boiling. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it, believe me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing sweeter and more wonderful than maple syrup and sugar.”

  “This is all fine and good,” Stevie said. “But what does it have to do with horses? I distinctly remember your saying that your riding class was doing this.”

  “Oh, that’s the best part of all,” Dinah told her. “And it’s where you really come into the picture. See, our stable owns the Sugar Hut. The owner, Mr. Daviet, bought all the land at once for his stable and only discovered later that it was covered with sugar maples. So he named the place Sugarbush, built the Sugar Hut as well as the stable, and started this sort of off-shoot business. It’s mostly for fun, and the best part is what our riding class is doing. See, we’ve divided up into teams of three for a competition. The team that collects the most sap—and then makes the most syrup—wins the grand prize. When Mr. Daviet announced our teams and told us the rules, he didn’t say a thing about not having other friends help. So when my team was only two because of odd numbers, I figured we deserved a little bit of assistance from you. We’re sure to cop the grand prize!”

  Images of trips to Hawaii, million-dollar checks, and dream vacation houses popped into Stevie’s head. Somehow she didn’t think that’s what this was about. “What’s the grand prize?”

  “The winning team will always have first pick of riding horses at classes all next summer!”

  “Outstanding!” Stevie said, and she meant it. Being able to ride your favorite horse for every class was a real prize. “Let’s get started right away—don’t want to waste a minute.”

  “I was hoping you’d feel that way,” Dinah said. “See, it’s perfect weather for setting out the buckets because it’s still pretty cold. Later in the week, the weather is supposed to warm up and the sap will be flowing like crazy. So all we have to do is drop your suitcase off at my house and we’ll walk over to the Sugar Hut. You can meet Betsy Hale, who is my teammate for the competition, and we can get started.”

  “Today?”

  “No time like the present!”

  It had been a long time since Stevie had seen Dinah, and now she remembered why it was that she’d liked her so much in the first place. They both thought the same way. They were both clever and mischievous and eager to get going on anything that was going to be fun, no matter how much hard work it might be, and no matter how devious they were going to have to be to accomplish it.

  Stevie and Dinah stayed at the Slattery house only long enough for Stevie to take her suitcase upstairs and change into jeans and boots. The girls both donned warm winter jackets, hats, scarves, and mittens. Then they were ready to go.

  The Sugar Hut turned out to be almost exactly that. It was little more than a hut, but immediately Stevie decided that she loved it. It was a log cabin with a large central chimney. Sweet-smelling smoke curled out of the chimney. Stevie stopped and took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to love this.”

  “I know you are,” Dinah assured her.

  There was a girl their age standing by the door of the Sugar Hut. As soon as she spotted Stevie and Dinah, she waved cheerfully. “There you are!” she greeted them. “You must be Stevie, right?”

  “Right,” Stevie confirmed.

  “This is Betsy,” Dinah introduced her.

  “Ah, our partner in crime,” Stevie said, looking at the girl. She had dark brown hair that curled up around her cap. Her face was round. She had deep brown eyes and a quirky smile that made dimples on her cheeks. Stevie liked her immediately.

  “So what’s going on now?” Dinah asked. “Are we ready to start?”

  “Mr. Daviet has been sending out teams on snowshoes,” Betsy said.

  “That’s how we go out when we first put in the spiles,” Dinah explained. “Snowshoes are hard to walk in and slow, but that’s the way the competition works.”

  “Yeah, well, everybody but us has to go out on snow-shoes,” Betsy said.

  “Yes?” Dinah asked.

  Betsy’s eyes were sparkling mischievously. Stevie knew the look. She’d worn it often enough herself.

  “Well, see, I explained to Mr. Daviet about this friend you had visiting, and I told him all about the fact that she was somewhat lame.…”

  Betsy and Dinah looked at Stevie. She obligingly slung an arm across Dinah’s shoulder and started limping.

  “What’s the matter with me?” Stevie asked. She was doing a fairly good imitation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, favoring her right leg.

  Betsy giggled. “That’s what Mr. Daviet asked,” she said. “I had to think fast, too. The first thing that came into my head was that you’d thrown a shoe, but I knew he wouldn’t fall for that. I just told him you were recovering from surgery. It seemed to sort of cover everything. At first, he said that if you were so sick, you shouldn’t be in the woods, so I told him you were nearly all recovered.”

  Stevie took her arm off Dinah’s shoulder and modified her limp. Now she looked more like Tiny Tim, favoring her left leg.

  “Perfect,” Betsy declared.

  “Okay, now that my injury’s settled, what’s it going to do for us?” Stevie asked.

  “It’s getting us a horse-drawn sled,” Betsy said. “Now we don’t have to use the snowshoes. We’ll get a big head start on all the other riders because they have to walk, and we can ride. My sister’s going to
be here in just a few minutes with the sled.”

  “Your sister? What’s she got to do with it?” Stevie asked.

  “Her sister is Jodi,” Dinah explained. “Jodi is the stable hand who works for Mr. Daviet. She’s a great rider—”

  “She’s not all that great,” Betsy interrupted.

  “Well, she’s better than we are, and she gets to spend all of her time at the stable—”

  “—except for the time she says she’s at the stable, when she’s really with a boyfriend,” Betsy added.

  “And she helps in class and she can ride whenever she wants to and she told me that she’d take me on the Rocky Road Trail one of these days,” Dinah said.

  It was clear that Dinah and Betsy were very similar in many ways and agreed about almost everything except about Betsy’s sister Jodi. Stevie didn’t have any sisters. She had only brothers. She had the feeling, though, that Betsy felt the same way about her sister that Stevie did about her brothers (i.e., that they were quite unnecessary to a satisfactory life). Stevie decided she’d make up her own mind about Jodi when the time came.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a strangely familiar sound. It was a sound Stevie had heard only once before in her life—on the Starlight Ride at Pine Hollow on Christmas Eve when Max and his mother had ridden through the field on a horse-drawn sleigh. It was the sound of sleigh bells!

  Stevie stopped and turned around. There, coming along the wooded road, was a flatbed sleigh, drawn by a large workhorse. An older girl held the reins, and every time she flicked them, the bells on the leather rang out their song.

  Stevie had the wonderful feeling that she’d just traveled backward in time a century or two and was in colonial Vermont and she liked it very much. She just wished Carole and Lisa were there to share it.

  THE SLEIGH DREW to a stop in front of the Sugar Hut, and the older girl got off.

  “Here, you take the reins,” she said, handing the long leathers to Dinah.

  “Me?” Dinah said.

  “Yeah,” the girl returned. Then, without further ado, she walked back along the snowy path where she’d come from.

  “That was Jodi,” Betsy explained to Stevie. “My older sister.”

  “She’s usually friendlier,” Dinah hastened to add. “I guess she wasn’t crazy about the idea of having to hitch up the sleigh for somebody else. That must be why she hurried off. Anyway, you’ll meet her again while you’re here. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure,” Stevie said, though she felt she would be surer if Jodi had been nicer.

  “So much for my sister,” Betsy said. “Let’s get going now. I want to take advantage of every bit of time we have. After all, a lot’s at stake.”

  “And his name is Goldie,” Dinah said. “That’s the horse I’m going to use this summer—if we win.”

  “My favorite horse is named Mister, and I will ride him. We’ve just got to win,” Betsy said. “So let’s get going!”

  As far as Stevie was concerned, it was as if a gunshot had started the race. She was raring to go. But they weren’t quite ready to leave yet.

  First the girls had to collect the gear they would need. They look two large hand drills with big long bits in them. They also took an ample supply of spiles and buckets.

  “The more trees we tap, the more syrup we collect,” Betsy explained, putting another stack of buckets on the sleigh. “Some of the big old trees we’ll tap in two places. That’s why we need so many buckets. And the real advantage of not having to use snowshoes is that we can take a zillion buckets on the sleigh at once, and the others can take only what they can load onto a hand-pulled sled.”

  “But the disadvantage is that, according to the rules, every single bucket we take out we have to set to tap. For each bucket we bring back empty, we have to forfeit one bucket of sap to the other teams,” Dinah explained.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Betsy said. She regarded the stacks of buckets thoughtfully, estimating their ability to tap the trees. Eventually she decided to remove exactly six buckets from the sleigh.

  “How did you figure that out?” Stevie asked.

  “Beats me,” Betsy confessed. “It just looked like six too many!”

  Stevie laughed.

  With that, Betsy climbed up in the front of the sleigh and took the reins from Dinah. They were on their way.

  The three girls sat together on a wooden bench near the front of the sleigh. Betsy, in the middle, held the reins. She wasn’t sitting so much as standing, and she had her feet braced against a board at the front edge of the sleigh. She held one rein in each hand. When they were ready to start, she flicked the reins so they slapped the horse’s rump lightly, and she made a clicking sound with the back of her tongue. The horse began walking obediently, pulling the sleigh through the thick spring snow.

  At first Stevie was aware of the lumbering motion of the large horse, feeling the separate tugs of each step he took. Then, as the horse began moving more steadily, all she felt was the easy glide of the smooth runners of the sleigh.

  It really just confirmed her feeling that she’d traveled backward in time a few hundred years. She shared the thought with Dinah and Betsy.

  “Wait until we get to work,” Betsy said. “You’re going to wish for the twentieth century again!”

  Stevie wasn’t sure what Betsy meant, but the fact that both Betsy and Dinah seemed to find it funny made her slightly uneasy.

  Their first turn was a sharp right off a narrow section of path. Stevie watched with interest as Betsy approached the turn. First she flicked the reins gently to get the horse’s attention and then tugged a little on the left rein. The horse swished his tail amiably and moved to the left. The sleigh moved way to the left side of the path as well. Then Betsy tugged on the right rein gently and held it firmly. Slowly the horse turned to the right. The sleigh followed. Soon Betsy released the pressure on the rein, the horse stopped turning, and the sleigh straightened out, heading right along the path they’d wanted.

  “That’s complicated,” Stevie said. “Do you always have to go the opposite way before you turn?”

  “Only when it’s tight,” Betsy explained. “If I try to turn too sharply, I run the risk of having the horse break the shafts on the sleigh or having the shafts hurt the horse.” Stevie looked to see what she meant. The shafts were two long pieces of wood, one on either side of the horse, that attached to the sleigh. A sharp turn could be real trouble. It was clear, though, that Betsy knew what she was doing. It made Stevie feel confident.

  The woods were crisscrossed with trails, all totally mystifying to Stevie, but Betsy seemed to know where she was going, and when Betsy was in doubt, Dinah came to her rescue. Betsy drove the sleigh surely, directing the horse at each turn and urging him gently when he decided to slow down and examine something interesting.

  “Off to the right now,” Dinah said. Stevie didn’t know how Dinah could remember where to turn or how they’d even gotten where they were.

  “That’s right,” Betsy agreed. She tugged gently on the right rein at a fork in the path. The path rose to the right. The horse followed willingly.

  Suddenly they left the woods and came out into an open area that Stevie thought was probably a field in the summer. For the first time since they’d left the Sugar Hut, Stevie could see where they were. They were completely surrounded by forest-covered hills and mountains. Many of the trees, especially on the higher parts of the hills, were evergreens whose bushy branches weighed heavily under blankets of snow. Other trees, now bare of their leaves, stood in stark contrast, with snow on top of their branches, exposed bark below.

  “Oh,” Stevie said, surprised, and delighted at the wonderful sight that looked as if it had been painted for the occasion by a greeting card company.

  Dinah laughed, pleased by Stevie’s reaction. “They don’t call this place Ver-mont for nothing,” she said. “It’s from French, you know. The Ver means green and the mont—”

  “Don’t tell
me. It means mountain,” Stevie finished for her.

  “Go to the head of the class,” Dinah said.

  “Nope, go to the back of the sleigh instead,” Betsy corrected her. “Because we’re almost here, and it’s time to get to work.”

  Betsy gave the reins a final snick to urge the horse across the field. When they reached the edge of the forest, she pulled gently but firmly and brought the horse and the sleigh to a halt.

  “Everybody out,” she said. She secured the reins to keep the sleigh stopped, and the three girls piled out, ready to start their work. “Come on, now, I’ll show you what we do.”

  Stevie helped unload some of the equipment they’d so recently loaded onto the sleigh. She took a few buckets and some spiles and carried one of the large drills.

  Betsy began by examining some of the trees. “I’m looking for the sugar maples,” she explained.

  Stevie looked at the trees that surrounded them. They were all tall, they were all bare. They all looked alike. There seemed to be no way to tell any of them apart. Stevie had a sudden image of them going to a lot of work to collect sap from oaks or ashes.

  “How can you tell which are the sugar maples?” she asked.

  “They’re the ones with the sugar maple leaf painted on the bark at eye level,” Betsy explained, pointing to the nearest tree.

  Stevie blinked, looked again, and then laughed.

  “A real naturalist can tell the trees apart when they don’t have leaves,” Dinah explained, “but it can be kind of risky, so a long time ago they came up with this bright idea of marking the trees in the summer when it’s not hard to tell. It saves us a lot of trouble. It also keeps us from ruining a batch of syrup by adding the wrong sap.”

  “Bingo!” Dinah announced. “Here are three together.”

  The girls trod over to the trees Dinah had spotted. Betsy took her drill, checked to see that the bit was in tightly, and began the job. She drilled a hole into the trunk of the tree, about three feet above the ground. Stevie watched the wood shavings emerge from the hole, and then when the bit had gone in about an inch and a half, Betsy pulled the drill back out.