The Boy Settlers Part 10

Oscar burst into a laugh, and said, "Wish you were an Indian!--so you could go hunting when you like, and not have any work to do? Why, Sandy, I didn't think that of you."

Sandy colored faintly, and said, "Well, I do hate work, honestly; and it is only because I know that I ought, and that father expects me to do my share, that I do it, and never grumble about it. Say, I never do grumble, do I, Oscar?" he asked earnestly.

"Only once in a while, when you can't help it, Sandy. I don't like work any better than you do; but it's no use talking about it, we've got to do it."

"I always feel so in the spring," said Sandy, very gravely and with a little sigh, as he went pegging away down another furrow.

Forty acres of land was all that the settlers intended to plant with corn, for the first year. Forty acres does not seem a very large tract of land to speak of, but when one sees the area marked out with a black furrow, and realizes that every foot of it must be covered with the corn-planter, it looks formidable. The boys thought it was a very big piece of land when they regarded it in that way. But the days soon flew by; and even while the young workers were stumping over the field, they consoled themselves with visions of gigantic ripe watermelons and mammoth pumpkins and squashes that would regale their eyes before long. For, following the example of most Kansas farmers, they had stuck into many of the furrows with the corn the seeds of these easily grown vines.

"Keep the melons a good way from the pumpkins, and the squashes a good way from both, if you don't want a bad mixture," said Uncle Aleck to the boy settlers. Then he explained that if the pollen of the squash-blossoms should happen to fall on the melon-blossoms, the fruit would be neither good melon nor yet good squash, but a poor mixture of both. This piece of practical farming was not lost on Charlie; and when he undertook the planting of the garden spot which they found near the cabin, he took pains to separate the cuc.u.mber-beds as far as possible from the hills in which he planted his cantaloupe seeds. The boys were learning while they worked, even if they did grumble occasionally over their tasks.

CHAPTER XII.

HOUSE-BUILDING.

There was a change in the programme of daily labor, when the corn was in the ground. At odd times the settlers had gone over to the wood-lot and had laid out their plans for the future home on that claim. There was more variety to be expected in house-building than in planting, and the boys had looked forward with impatience to the beginning of that part of their enterprise. Logs for the house were cut from the pines and firs of the hill beyond the river bluff. From these, too, were to be riven, or split, the "shakes" for the roof-covering and for the odd jobs of work to be done about the premises.

Now, for the first time, the boys learned the use of some of the strange tools that they had brought with them. They had wondered over the frow, an iron instrument about fourteen inches long, for splitting logs. At right angles with the blade, and fixed in an eye at one end, was a handle of hard-wood. A section of wood was stood up endwise on a firm foundation of some sort, and the thin end of the frow was hammered down into the grain of the wood, making a lengthwise split.

In the same way, the section of wood so riven was split again and again until each split was thin enough. The final result was called a "shake." Shakes were used for s.h.i.+ngles, and even--when nailed on frames--for doors. Sawed lumber was very dear; and, except the sashes in the windows, every bit of the log-cabin must be got out of the primitive forest.

The boys were proud of the ample supply which their elders had brought with them; for even the knowing Younkins, scrutinizing the tools for woodcraft with a critical eye, remarked, "That's a good outfit, for a party of green settlers." Six stout wedges of chilled iron, and a heavy maul to hammer them with, were to be used for the splitting up of the big trees into smaller sections. Wooden wedges met the wants of many people in those primitive parts, at times, and the man who had a good set of iron wedges and a powerful maul was regarded with envy.

"What are these clumsy rings for?" Oscar had asked when he saw the maul-rings taken out of the wagon on their arrival and unloading.

His uncle smiled, and said, "You will find out what these are for, my lad, when you undertake to swing the maul. Did you never hear of splitting rails? Well, these are to split rails and such things from the log. We chop off a length of a tree, about eight inches thick, taking the toughest and densest wood we can find. Trim off the bark from a bit of the trunk, which must be twelve or fourteen inches long; drive your rings on each end of the block to keep it from splitting; fit a handle to one end, or into one side of the block; and there you have your maul."

"Why, that's only a beetle, after all," cried Sandy, who, sitting on a stump near by, had been a deeply interested listener to his father's description of the maul.

"Certainly, my son; a maul is what people in the Eastern States would call a beetle; but you ask Younkins, some day, if he has a beetle over at his place. He, I am sure, would never use the name beetle."

Log-cabin building was great fun to the boys, although they did not find it easy work. There was a certain novelty about the raising of the structure that was to be a home, and an interest in learning the use of rude tools that lasted until the cabin was finished. The maul and the wedges, the frow and the little maul intended for it, and all the other means and appliances of the building, were all new and strange to these bright lads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAKING "SHAKES" WITH A "FROW."]

First, the size of the cabin, twelve feet wide and twenty feet long, was marked out on the site on which it was to rise, and four logs were laid to define the foundation. These were the sills of the new house.

At each end of every log two notches were cut, one on the under side and one on the upper, to fit into similar notches cut in the log below, and in that which was to be placed on top. So each corner was formed by these interlacing and overlapping ends. The logs were piled up, one above another, just as children build "cob-houses," from odds and ends of playthings. Cabin-builders do not say that a cabin is a certain number of feet high; they usually say that it is ten logs high, or twelve logs high, as the case may be. When the structure is as high as the eaves are intended to be, the top logs are bound together, from side to side, with smaller logs fitted upon the upper logs of each side and laid across as if they were to be the supports of a floor for another story. Then the gable-ends are built up of logs, shorter and shorter as the peak of the gable is approached, and kept in place by other small logs laid across, endwise of the cabin, and locked into the end of each log in the gable until all are in place. On these transverse logs, or rafters, the roof is laid. Holes are cut or sawed through the logs for the door and windows, and the house begins to look habitable.

The settlers on the Republican Fork cut the holes for doors and windows before they put on the roof, and when the layer of split shakes that made the roof was in place, and the boys bounded inside to see how things looked, they were greatly amused to notice how light it was. The s.p.a.ces between the logs were almost wide enough to crawl through, Oscar said. But they had studied log-cabin building enough to know that these wide cracks were to be "c.h.i.n.ked" with thin strips of wood, the refuse of shakes, driven in tightly, and then daubed over with clay, a fine bed of which was fortunately near at hand. The provident Younkins had laid away in his own cabin the sashes and gla.s.s for two small windows; and these he had agreed to sell to the newcomers. Partly hewn logs for floor-joists were placed upon the ground inside the cabin, previously levelled off for the purpose. On these were laid thick slabs of oak and hickory, riven out of logs drawn from the grove near by. These slabs of hard-wood were "puncheons," and fortunate as was the man who could have a floor of sawed lumber to his cabin, he who was obliged to use puncheons was better off than those with whom timber was so scarce that the natural surface on the ground was their only floor.

"My! how it rattles!" was Sandy's remark when he had first taken a few steps on the new puncheon floor of their cabin. "It sounds like a tread-mill going its rounds. Can't you nail these down, daddy?"

His father explained that the unseasoned lumber of the puncheons would so shrink in the drying that no fastening could hold them. They must lie loosely on the floor-joists until they were thoroughly seasoned; then they might be fastened down with wooden pins driven through holes bored for that purpose; nails and spikes cost too much to be wasted on a puncheon floor. In fact, very little hardware was wasted on any part of that cabin. Even the door was made by fastening with wooden pegs a number of short pieces of shakes to a frame fitted to the doorway cut in the side of the cabin. The hinges were strong bits of leather, the soles of the boots whose legs had been used for corn-droppers. The clumsy wooden latch was hung inside to a wooden pin driven into one of the crosspieces of the door, and it played in a loop of deerskin at the other end. A string of deerskin fastened to the end of the latch-bar nearest the jamb of the doorway was pa.s.sed outside through a hole cut in the door, serving to lift the latch from without when a visitor would enter.

"Our latch-string hangs out!" exclaimed Charlie, triumphantly, when this piece of work was done. "I must say I never knew before what it meant to have the 'latch-string hanging out' for all comers. See, Oscar, when we shut up the house for the night, all we have to do is to pull in the latch-string, and the door is barred."

"Likewise, when you have dropped your jackknife through a crack in the floor into the cellar beneath, all you have to do is to turn over a puncheon or two and get down and find it," said Sandy, coolly, as he took up two slabs and hunted for his knife. The boys soon found that although their home was rude and not very elegant as to its furniture, it had many conveniences that more elaborate and handsomer houses did not have. There were no floors to wash, hardly to sweep. As their surroundings were simple, their wants were few. It was a free and easy life that they were gradually drifting into, here in the wilderness.

Charlie declared that the cabin ought to have a name. As yet, the land on which they had settled had no name except that of the river by which it lay. The boys thought it would give some sort of distinction to their home if they gave it a t.i.tle. "Liberty Hall," they thought would be a good name to put on the roof of their log-cabin. Something out of Cooper's novels, Oscar proposed, would be the best for the locality.

"'Hog-and-hominy,' how would that suit?" asked Sandy, with a laugh.

"Unless we get some buffalo or antelope meat pretty soon, it will be hog and hominy to the end of the chapter."

"Why not call it the John G. Whittier cabin?" said Uncle Aleck, looking up from his work of shaping an ox-yoke.

"The very thing, daddy!" shouted Sandy, clapping his hands. "Only don't you think that's a very long name to say in a hurry? Whittier would be shorter, you know. But, then," he added, doubtfully, "it isn't everybody that would know which Whittier was meant by that, would they?"

"Sandy seems to think that the entire population of Kansas will be coming here, some day, to read that name, if we ever have it. We have been here two months now, and no living soul but ourselves and Younkins has ever been in these diggings; not one. Oh, I say, let's put up just nothing but 'Whittier' over the door there. We'll know what that means, and if anybody comes in the course of time, I'll warrant he'll soon find out which Whittier it means." This was Oscar's view of the case.

"Good for you, Oscar!" said his uncle. "Whittier let it be."

Before sundown, that day, a straight-grained shake of pine, free from knot or blemish, had been well smoothed down with the draw-shave, and on its fair surface, writ large, was the beloved name of the New England poet, thus: WHITTIER.

This was fastened securely over the entrance of the new log-cabin, and the Boy Settlers, satisfied with their work, stood off at a little distance and gave it three cheers. The new home was named.

CHAPTER XIII.

LOST!

"We must have some board-nails and some lead," remarked Uncle Aleck, one fine morning, as the party were putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the Whittier cabin. "Who will go down to the post and get them?"

"I", "I", "I", shouted all three of the boys at once.

"Oh, you will all go, will you?" said he, with a smile. "Well, you can't all go, for we can borrow only one horse, and it's ten miles down there and ten miles back; and you will none of you care to walk, I am very sure."

The boys looked at each other and laughed. Who should be the lucky one to take that delightful horseback ride down to the post, as Fort Riley was called, and get a glimpse of civilization?

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Sandy, after some good-natured discussion. "Let's draw cuts to see who shall go. Here they are. You draw first, Charlie, you being the eldest man. Now, then, Oscar. Why, hooray! it's my cut! I've drawn the longest, and so I am to go. Oh, it was a fair and square deal, daddy," he added, seeing his father look sharply at him.

The matter was settled, and next morning, bright and early, Sandy was fitted out with his commissions and the money to buy them with.

Younkins had agreed to let him have his horse, saddle, and bridle.

Work on the farm was now practically over until time for harvesting was come. So the other two boys accompanied Sandy over to the Younkins side of the river and saw him safely off down the river road leading to the post. A meal-sack in which to bring back his few purchases was snugly rolled up and tied to the crupper of his saddle, and feeling in his pocket for the hundredth time to make sure of the ten-dollar gold piece therein bestowed, Sandy trotted gayly down the road. The two other boys gazed enviously after him, and then went home, wondering, as they strolled along, how long Sandy would be away. He would be back by dark at the latest, for the days were now at about their longest, and the long summer day was just begun.

At Younkins's cabin they met Hiram Battles, a neighbor who lived beyond the divide to the eastward, and who had just ridden over in search of some of his cattle that had strayed away, during the night before. Mr. Battles said he was "powerful worrited." Indians had been seen prowling around on his side of the divide: but he had seen no signs of a camp, and he had traced the tracks of his cattle, three head in all, over this way as far as Lone Tree Creek, a small stream just this side of the divide; but there he had unaccountably lost all trace of them.

"Well, as for the Indians," said Charlie, modestly, "we have seen them pa.s.sing out on the trail. But they were going hunting, and they kept right on to the southward and westward; and we have not seen them go back since."

"The lad's right," said Younkins, slowly, "but still I don't like the stories I hear down the road a piece. They do say that the s.h.i.+ans have riz."

"The Cheyennes have risen!" exclaimed Charlie. "And we have let Sandy go down to the post alone!"