OUR FIRST DAYS IN THE BARN.
The route we had chosen, a drive of about eighteen miles, was supposed
to be the least steep in its ups and downs; an important consideration,
with our heavy load. When we crept round the last turning and could see
our hill, with its little patch of brown earth turned up, and the barn
which looked like a small wooden box, we felt that our difficulties
for the day were conquered. At that moment we were passing a ranch
which was just being enclosed with a fence made of narrow laths wired
together; these were lying in large bundles at intervals all along the
road for a distance of about a quarter of a mile. To our dismay, when
Dan reached the first of these bundles, he put back his ears and gave
a sudden and most violent shy, almost lurching the surrey over, and
then stood trembling, his legs planted apart in an obstinate manner,
and absolutely refused to move an inch further.
We tried coaxing, then whipping, till Dan showed us his heels in a
series of most vicious kicks, higher and higher, till we feared he
would break some part of the harness, or the surrey itself.
Eventually he did allow himself to be slowly coaxed past, I making
myself as broad as possible to try and screen that side of the road,
and leading him, and my husband checking his evident desire to bolt
after each separate bundle was left behind. By this time it was grey
twilight, and when we reached our haven, we had to be satisfied with
the simplest arrangements possible for the night.
As we were occupying the rooms which by rights belonged to the horses,
they had to be staked out on the open hillside, and during the night
Joe managed to get loose and went careering off, up and down and round
the barn, so that we were awakened by the clattering of his hoofs. It
was a brilliant starlit night, perfectly still and mild, and all the
family turned out in their night gear to help to catch him and fasten
him up again. It was a curious sensation to be so absolutely alone, and
free, with nothing but the great ranges of big bare mountains lying
spread out into the far distance.
The absolute stillness was very weird; the smallest sound from miles
around reached us in the calm quiet. The plaintive call of the little
brown owls had a sad uneasy ring in it, and the coyote’s mocking yelp
seemed most uncomfortably near.
The mountain ranges looked so calm and stately and unreachable in the
cold clear moonlight, and we felt horribly lonely.
There was one cañon some four miles away, across the Silvero Valley,
called Mexican Cañon, and we wondered uneasily whether Indians and
Mexicans lived there; for we seemed to be on the very borders of
civilisation. When we got to know the neighbourhood better, we found
nothing but peaceable ranches, and more ranches far back into the hills.
Returning to the barn we were rather glad to roll the big door to,
and close it fast. We crept into our makeshift beds and were asleep
before long. But we were awakened with a disagreeable start, hearing
right inside the barn a strange cry, which, in our sleepiness and
ignorance, might well have been the call of a Red Indian, straight from
the Mexican Cañon, intent on securing the scalps of us “tenderfeet.”
The cry was repeated, as we sat up listening eagerly, and then we all
laughed to see a little squatty figure sitting on one of the open
windows, and recognised a harmless little brown owl.
In the morning we made some kind of order and comfort around us. The
one large room in the barn (viz., the hayloft) we had divided into
two with a temporary screen, one half for our bedroom, the other for
sitting- and dining-room. A small shanty had been added outside for
kitchen, and a shed which was to receive the cow, when we had one,
served meanwhile as bedroom for our “coloured lady.” There was a lower
floor which was divided into stalls for the horses, and which was
entered by a lower road, as the barn stood on a steep slope.
The fifty cases of furniture, which had been stored at San Francisco
till we sent for them, were strewn all about the hill top on which the
barn stood, and our first task was to open most of these, take a few
things out, and pack away all the rest safely before the rains came.
For days and days we worked away busily at this, my husband and I, and
our boys, standing out in that hot glaring Californian sun, with the
dry dust of the soil getting into our shoes and stockings and soaking
all our clothes. Our ranchman was busy with the trees, and the coloured
lady looked on when she was not cooking; looked on with a disdainful
air, showing by many signs a great contempt for people who could be so
foolish as to carry about such quantities of “stuff,” as she called it.
To English eyes many Californian houses look very empty, and no doubt
our possessions did seem ridiculously unnecessary to this darky, who
thought only of the bother they would be to keep clean.
As we packed away case after case into every available corner,
stringing up chairs and sofas, and all manner of things on to the
rafters, we began to wonder where we ourselves were to be housed. We
have always since considered that it was a proof positive of great
sweetness of temper that we got through a time of such terribly close
quarters without doing any violence to each other.
But with all our contriving there were a number of cases for which
we could find no room, and these we covered with bits of oil-cloth,
and left them out of doors. They led us a dreadful life, those seven
cases; our ranchman was for ever predicting rain, which did not come,
but kept us anxiously on the watch. Finally, when it did come, it was
unexpected, and we had to rush out one night to see if the high wind,
which had risen with the rain, had dislodged the oil-cloth. That was a
lively night, for the rain came running down the inside walls of our
barn in little streams on the windward side, and pictures and other
things hung there for safety had to be hurriedly removed.
It was the first night, too, that a large, handsome kangaroo rat
paid us a visit, running about like an acrobat among the chairs on
the rafters, and when I carried a candle quite near to him, to see
what he was like, he looked down at me with the greatest coolness and
impudence, with his brilliant black eyes. The place seemed to suit
him, for he became a constant visitor. Another intimate guest was a
particularly large lizard, who darted in and out under the big door.
We were a little uneasy lest some less harmless visitors should invite
themselves. We knew that there were scorpions and tarantulas; the men
who had built our barn had unwittingly pitched their tent the first
night just over a nest of tarantulas, and had discovered them in the
early evening, and spent the rest of the night in searching for and
killing them with their hammers.
Ugly, wicked-looking things they are, with their enormous hairy legs
and body and cruel nippers; they are very aggressive, too, and would
much rather fight than run away.
But most of all we dreaded the rattlesnakes. Our ranchman had killed
thirty on the adjoining land, and several had already been found on
ours. Everyone told us they were very easy to kill, but that did not
reassure us.
Our first introduction to snakes was more alarming than dangerous. We
had put all our umbrellas and sticks into a corner of the barn behind
a large corner seat. One day whilst we were quietly resting after
dinner, our youngest boy, Gip, asleep on his couch, my husband chanced
to be looking at these umbrellas, thinking sleepily that he did not
recognise one of the handles, which seemed to stand out from the rest,
when he was suddenly made wide awake by seeing it move quietly round,
first to one side then to the other, and knew that it was a snake. He
reached out his hand quietly for something to strike it with, but it
darted out of sight at once behind the couch, and though we searched
long for it, we did not find it. We found, however, a large notch hole
through which it had probably crept in, and we lost no time in closing
this securely. It was not a rattlesnake, however, and was probably
quite harmless, as numbers of the snakes are, some of them being
considered valuable as destroyers of vermin.
Some of these try to pass themselves off as rattlers, however, and we
often wondered how they knew that the faint sound of the rattle is so
strangely horrible and frightening, that they should try to imitate it
as a means of defence.
Another fright which we had, while still in the barn, was very
thrilling. It was in the night, and we had been fast asleep, when all
at once we became wide awake, straining our ears for the repetition
of a horrible sound that we seemed to have heard in our sleep. It is
impossible to describe the cold horror and fear which that curious dry
rattle gives one.
Here was the thing we had so dreaded—a rattlesnake in the room. As we
sat up in the dark the sound was repeated, seemingly from the middle
of the room. Someone whispered, “Do you hear,” and we answered, “Do
not move.” We reached cautiously for matches and candle, and of course
these poor, wretched Californian matches—the worst surely in the
world—did nothing but break off or go out. For some minutes the sound
continued with an angry crescendo, till we began to wonder if the
dreadful thing had got itself wedged in somewhere between the piles of
furniture.
At last a feeble, uncertain light and four pairs of strained eyes
searched the dim room. And there, sitting nicely balanced on his hind
legs, with his sharp black eyes shining brightly, was a small field
mouse with a long rattle between his teeth, shaking it about vigorously
every few minutes, then running a few paces and rattling it again.
We had cut off a number of rattles from the snakes killed on our ranch
to keep them as curiosities, and this was one of them which the mouse
had got hold of and seemed to find such a good plaything.
(_To be continued._)
VARIETIES.
HOW HE GREW RICH.
A man who had by his own unaided exertions become rich, was asked by a
friend the secret of his success.
“I accumulated,” said he, “about one-half of my property by attending
to my own business and the other half by letting other people’s
entirely alone.”
TOIL ON.—If you want knowledge you must toil for it; if food you
must toil for it; if pleasure you must toil for it. Toil is the law.
Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence.
When a girl gets to love work her life is a happy one.
I DON’T CARE!—When you say “I don’t care!” see that your tone of voice
doesn’t indicate that you do.
NO, NOT HEAVY.
A little girl was wandering in an Edinburgh street, dragging about a
great baby boy almost as big as herself.
A clergyman who was passing stopped and said, “Why, my little lass, can
you carry that boy? He must be heavy.”
The child looked up in his face and gasped, “No, sir, he’s no heavy.
He’s my brither.”
Surely a whole sermon in itself!
WITH HIS FRIEND.
In a London mission school near a “settlement,” the teacher asked,
“Where does Jesus live?”
A small boy spoke up: “Some of His friends have come to live in our
alley, and I think He lives with them.”
A POET’S MARRIAGE.
Robert Browning, the famous poet, and Elizabeth Browning, one of the
sweetest and truest of our poetesses, were married on the 12th of
September, 1846, in the parish church of St. Marylebone.
The poet proved a model husband, intensely devoted to his wife, proud
of her genius, and watchful over her happiness. In his “Life” we read
that in 1851, and indeed “on each succeeding visit paid to London
with his wife, he commemorated his marriage in a manner all his own.
He went to the church in which it had been solemnised and kissed the
paving-stones in front of the door.”
TIME FOR EVERYTHING.—There is time enough for everything in the day if
you do but one thing at once.
OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;
OR,
VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE OF BYGONE TIMES.