Read "The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound" by Harold Bindloss online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The frost soon broke up, and it was raining heavily one afternoon, when the boys were at work in an excavation they had driven under a big fir stump shortly after their shooting trip. Frank, very wet and dirty, lay propped up on one elbow with his head and shoulders inside the hole, chopping awkwardly at a root. His legs and feet were in a pool of water outside and there was very little room to swing the ax, while at every blow the saturated soil fell down on him. Grubbing out a stump in wet weather is a singularly disagreeable task.
Harry crouched close beside him where he was partly sheltered from the rain by the network of roots which rose above his head. The boys had spent most of the day cutting through those which ran along the surface of the ground and digging to get at the rest, until they had been forced to drive a tunnel to reach one or two which went vertically down, for it was an unusually large stump. At last when his ax shoved through the obstacle Frank paused for breath, and, as it was getting dark in the excavation, Harry lighted a piece of candle. The light fell upon a massive shaft of wet wood which sank into the ground.