_The Building of a Cabin_
Jack routed out the entire party before daylight next morning and bade
them "get breakfast quick and eat it in a hurry. We've got to begin our
house to-day," he added.
They were eager enough, for, apart from the frolic of house building,
they knew how badly they should need a more secure shelter than their
temporary abode could furnish, should rain or snow come, as was likely
now at any time.
Breakfast over, Jack took his axe and marked a number of trees for
cutting. Most of them were trees nearly a foot in thickness--none under
eight inches--and all were situated in the thickest growth of timber.
"Why not choose trees farther out in the open?" asked Ed Parmly, "where
they would be easier to get at and get out."
"Because, if you will use your eyes, Ed, you'll see that out in the
open, the trees taper rapidly from stump to top. I want trees that will
yield at least one, and if possible, two logs apiece, with very little
taper to them. Otherwise, our house will be lop-sided."
"But I say, Jack, what causes the difference? Why do trees in the thick
woods grow so much taller and straighter and of more uniform size than
trees out in the open?"
"Because every tree is continually hunting for sunlight and air,"
answered Jack. "Out in the open, each tree finds these easily and goes
to work at once to put out its branches, about ten feet from the ground,
and to make itself generally comfortable. But where the trees are
crowded close together each has to struggle with all the rest for its
share of sunlight and air. They do not waste their energies in putting
out branches that they can do without, but just keep on growing straight
up in search of the air and sunlight. So you see if you want long sticks
you must go into the thick woods for them. Out there in that half open
glade there isn't a single tree with a twenty-foot reach before you come
to its branches, while the trees I have marked here in the thick woods
will give us, most of them two logs apiece twenty-one feet long and with
not more than three or four inches difference between their diameters at
the butt and their diameters at the extreme upper end. It's a good deal
so with men, by the way. Those that must struggle for a chance usually
achieve the best results in the end."
By this time the axes were all busy felling the marked trees, and within
an hour or so they all lay upon the ground, trimmed of their branches,
and cut into the required lengths of twenty-one feet each.
Having felled his share of them, Jack went a little further into the
woodlands, and began blocking out great chips from one after another big
chestnut tree. Having blocked out these chips, Jack sat down and began
to split them, observing the result in each case with care. Presently he
satisfied himself and set to work to cut down the giant chestnut whose
chip had yielded the best results.
"What's all that for, Jack?" asked the Doctor. "Why did you split up
those chips in that way, like a little boy with a new hatchet?"
"I was hunting for some timber that isn't 'brash,'" answered Jack, "to
make our clapboards out of."
"What do you mean by 'brash?'"
"Why, some timber splits easily and straight along its grain, while
other wood breaks away slantwise across the grain. That last kind is
called 'brash,' and, of course, it is of no account for clapboards. See
here!" and with that he took up two of the big sample chips and
illustrated his meaning by splitting them and showing the Doctor how one
of them split straight with the grain, while the other showed no such
integrity.
"Oh, then, you're going to make clapboards out of this tree to roof our
shanty with and to close up its gables."
"I'm going to make clapboards for our roof," answered Jack, "but not for
our gables. They'll be made of logs, in true mountain fashion."
"But how is that possible?" eagerly asked the Doctor.
"I'll show you when we come to build. I can't very well explain it in
advance. And another thing, Doctor, you remember that we have only ten
pounds or so of nails, all told."
"That's true!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost in consternation. "We can't
roof our house till somebody goes down the mountain and brings a
supply."
"That's where you are mightily mistaken, Doctor. There isn't a log cabin
in these mountains that has a nail in its roof."
"But how then are the clapboards held in place?"
"That again is a thing I can show you far better than I can explain it
without demonstration. But we must first get our clapboards, and if
you'll go back to the camp and bring a cross cut saw, I'll have this
giant of the forest laid low by the time you get back, and then you and
I will cut it into four-foot lengths for clapboards."
It should be explained that in the mountains of Virginia the word
"clapboard" and the simpler word "board," mean something quite different
from what they signify elsewhere. When the Virginia mountaineer speaks
of a "board" or a "clapboard" he means a rough shingle, four feet long,
simply split out of a piece of timber and not dressed in any way.
When the Doctor returned with the cross cut saw, Jack first marked off
ten feet of his great tree at the butt and the two set to work to sever
it.
"But you said we were to cut it into four-foot lengths," said the
Doctor, as they began to pull the saw back and forth.
"So we are," answered Jack, "after we saw off this butt. You see, the
butt of a tree is always rather brash, and so we won't use that for
clapboards. Besides, I've another use for it."
"What?" asked the Doctor.
"I'm going to dig it out into a big trough and make a bath tub out of
it. You see, that spring up there under the cliff has a fine flow of
water. I'll sink this trough in the ground, at a proper angle, and
train the water into it. It will run in at one end and out at the other,
continually, so we'll always have a fresh bath ready for any comer."
"But will the boys relish a cold bath out of doors when the thermometer
gets down into the small figures?"
"Well they'd better. Little Tom is a crank on cold bathing in the
morning, and if any fellow in the party doesn't relish that sort of
thing, Tom will souse him in any how till he teaches him to like it. He
won't do you that way, Doctor, of course, but--"
"But why not? I need the tonic influence of cold morning baths more than
anybody else in the party, and as soon as we get our bath tub in place I
shall begin taking them. And more than that, I'll help little Tom in the
work of dousing any boy in the party that neglects that hygienic
regimen."
Having sawed off the butt of this big tree, Jack went back to the house
site and directed the boys as to the work of building. The forty sticks
of timber already cut, when piled into a crib would make the body of a
cabin nearly twenty feet square, allowing for the overlapping of the
timbers, and about ten feet high under the eaves. Jack showed the boys
how to notch the logs at their ends so as to hold them securely in place
and so also as to let them lie very close together throughout their
length. For, of course, without notching, each log would lie the whole
thickness of another log above the timber below it. Having thus started
the four in the work of building, he returned to the woods where he and
the Doctor continued the work of sawing the big tree trunk into
four-foot lengths. About noon the Doctor volunteered to go and prepare a
roast venison dinner, and Jack proceeded to split the tree-lengths into
sizes convenient for the riving of the clapboards.
By the time that he had accomplished this, the Doctor whistled through
his fingers to announce dinner, and every member of the party was
eagerly ready for the savory meal, the very odor of which made their
nostrils glad while they were washing their hands and faces in
preparation for it. There were not many dishes included in it--only some
sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes, and some big pones of black ash
cake, to go with the great haunch of roast venison.
Ash cake is a species of corn bread, consisting of corn meal mixed up
with cold water and a little salt, and baked hard in a bed of hot ashes
and hotter coals, and if any reader of this story has ever eaten ash
cake, properly prepared, I need not tell him that there is no better
kind of bread made anywhere--no, not even in Paris, a city that prides
itself about equally upon its "pain"--bread,--and its paintings, of
which it has the finest collections in all the world. Finally, there was
the sauce--traditionally, the best in the world,--namely, hunger. Half a
dozen young fellows high up on a mountain side, who had breakfasted
before daylight and swung axes and lifted logs till midday, needed no
highly-spiced flavoring to give savor to their meat. They ate like the
healthy, hard working fellows that they were, and they had no fear of
indigestions to follow their eating.
After dinner the work of building went on apace. The main crib of the
house was finished by noon of the next day, and the roof and gables only
remained to be completed after that. This was to be done as follows:
Logs to form the gables were cut, each a few feet shorter than the one
below. Then poles six inches in diameter were cut to form a resting
place for the clapboards, and were placed lengthwise the building,
resting in notches in the steadily shortening gable timbers. The gable
timbers were permitted, however, to extend two feet or so beyond the
notches in which the lengthwise poles rested, and a second notch was
cut in each end of each of them. When a row of clapboards was laid on
the lengthwise poles, another lengthwise pole was placed on top to hold
the clapboards in place, and this top pole rested in the outer notches
of the gable logs, thus securely holding the roof in position, and as
the clapboards overlapped each other as shingles do, the roof was
rainproof.
Meantime Jack had been riving clapboards with a fro. Does the reader
know what a fro is? The dictionaries do not tell you in any adequate
way, though in Virginia and throughout the south and the great west that
implement has played an important part in enabling men to house
themselves with clapboards or shingles for their roofs. So I must do the
work that the dictionaries neglect. A fro is an iron or steel blade
about eight or ten inches long, about three inches wide, a quarter of an
inch thick at top, tapering to a very dull edge at bottom. In one end of
it is an eye to hold a handle.
The fro is used in splitting out clapboards and rough shingles. The
operator places its dull edge on the end of a piece of timber of proper
width, at the distance of a clapboard's thickness from the side of the
timber. Then he hits the back of the fro blade with a mallet or club,
driving it well in like a wedge. Then, by working the handle backwards
and forwards, and pushing the fro further and further into the crack, as
it opens, he splits off a shingle, or a clapboard, as the case may be.
In the south, and in some parts of the west nearly all of the shingles
and clapboards used are still split out in this way with the fro. Until
recent years, when shingle making machines were introduced, all shingles
were made in that way, so that next to the axe, and the pitsaw, which
used to do the work now done by the saw mill, the fro played the most
conspicuous part in the creation of human habitations in all that
pioneer period when sturdy arms were conquering the American wilderness
and stout hearts were creating the greatness in which we now rejoice. It
is stupid of the dictionaries not to tell of it.
In splitting out his clapboards from three-cornered sections of his
chestnut logs, Jack gradually reduced those sections to a width too
small for the further making of clapboards. This left in each case a
three-cornered stick two inches thick at its thickest part, and perhaps
three inches wide to its edge. The Doctor wanted to utilize these sticks
for firewood and proposed to carry a lot of them to the temporary
shelter for that purpose.
"Not by any means," said Jack. "Those wedge-shaped pieces are to be used
for chinking."
"What's chinking?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, you see," answered Jack, "the logs of which our house or hut is
built, are not quite straight, though they are the straightest we could
find in the woods. There are spaces between them that are open, and when
the zero weather comes we should be very uncomfortably cold in there if
these spaces remained open. No fire that we could make in our chimney
would keep us warm under such conditions. So we must stop up the cracks.
We'll do that by fitting these pieces of chinking into the cracks
between the logs, and then 'daubing' the smaller cracks with mud. That's
an operation that will try your resolution, Doctor, and determine
whether you are really only sixteen years old, as we voted that you
were, or are a much older person, to be specially considered by us
boys--for I don't know any more disagreeable job than daubing a log
cabin."
"Good!" answered the Doctor. "I'll submit myself to the test very
gladly. You'll show me how to 'daub' of course, and if I don't 'daub'
with the best and youngest of you, then I'll give up and go down the
mountain, acknowledging myself a failure. But I give you fair warning
that I don't expect or intend either to give up or to go down the
mountain."
"We should all be very sorry if you did, Doctor. We've adopted you now.
We've decreed that for this winter, at any rate, you are only sixteen
years of age, and upon my word, if you'll allow me to say so--"
"Now, stop right there," broke in the Doctor. "Don't say 'if you'll
allow me to say so.' That undoes the whole arrangement. You fellows have
accepted me as a boy among boys, and you've got to stick to that. There
are to be no deferences to me. There is to be precisely the same
comradeship between me and the rest of you that exists among yourselves,
otherwise I shall consider myself an intruder."
"All right," responded Jack, seizing the Doctor's hand and pressing it
warmly. "We all feel that you are altogether one of us, and I for one
shall hereafter treat you as such. So when the daubing time comes I'll
set you your task like the rest of them and I'll criticize every crevice
you leave open. What with an open roof--for a clapboard roof is very
open--through which the wind can blow at its own sweet will, and what
with the necessity of keeping the door open most of the time for light,
it's going to be very hard work to keep the place comfortably warm."
"But why keep the door open for light?" asked the Doctor. "Why not let
in the light through windows?"
"We haven't any windows," answered Jack, "and we haven't any sash or
glass to make them with."
"Of course not," said the Doctor, "but still, if you'll let me, I'll
show you how to have windows that will keep out the wind and let in
light at the same time. I've all the necessary materials in my shoulder
pack."
"I can't guess how you're going to do it, Doctor, but at any rate I
accept your statement, and if you'll tell me what sized openings you
want in the walls for your windows, I'll go at once and saw them out."
"That's what troubles me," said the Doctor. "I don't see how we are
going to make window openings without sawing through the logs, and I
don't see how that is to be done without weakening the structure, and
letting the unsupported ends of the logs fall out of place."
"Oh, that's easy enough," answered Jack. "You tell me what sized window
openings you want in our walls, and I'll take care of the logs."
The Doctor thought a moment, and then said:
"Well, we ought to have two windows, each about two feet and a half one
way by about three feet or a little more the other way."
"Does it make any difference," asked Jack, "whether the long way is up
and down, or to the right and left?"
"None. You can make the openings long either way and short either way."
"Good!" answered Jack. "Then I'll make them long to right and left and
short in their up and down dimensions, so that I shall have to saw out
only two logs for each window."
Jack went immediately to work. He split out six or eight boards, each
four times the thickness of any ordinary clapboard, and, taking a
handful of the small supply of nails on hand, went to the cabin now well
advanced in construction, and selected the places for the two window
openings. Then he nailed the thick boards securely to the logs, one on
each side of one of the proposed window openings. The boards were long
enough to reach over four of the logs. Jack nailed them securely to all
four of the logs, thus binding the timbers together, and making each a
support to all of the others. Then he sawed out three-foot lengths of
the two middle logs, leaving their ends securely supported by the boards
which were firmly nailed to them, and also to the uncut logs above and
below. Then, to make all secure, he fitted pieces of his thick boards
to the ends of the sawed logs, and nailed them firmly into place as an
additional protection against sagging.
"Now, then, Doctor," he called out, "come on with your windows. I'm
curious to see what they are like."
"In a minute," answered the Doctor, who was busy with his materials on a
log in front of the house. He had taken two strips of thin yard-wide
muslin each a little over four feet long, and with the inside of a bacon
rind he was busily greasing them.
The result of the greasing was to render the thin cotton fabric quite
translucent, and indeed, almost transparent. With tacks, of which there
was a small supply in the Doctor's own pack, he securely fastened one of
these pieces of greased muslin on the outside of the window opening that
Jack had made, and the other on the inside, leaving a space of several
inches between.
"There," he said, when all was done, "that will let in light almost as
well as glass could do, and it will keep out wind and cold even better
than the logs you sawed away could have done, no matter how well chinked
and daubed they might have been."
Then he and Jack proceeded to deal with the other window opening in the
same way. By the time that they had done the boys were clamorously
calling them to supper, and they were not reluctant to answer the
summons. By this time the roof was on the house and a door of
clapboards, split out of double thickness, was hung by hinges made of
limber twigs, called withes, to pegs in the logs, and supplied with a
wooden latch, catching into a wooden slot. The door opening was made
precisely as the window holes were. The mountain form of log cabin
involved the least possible use of metal in its construction, and except
for the nails used in making the door and windows this one had involved
the use of no metal at all. It was not all done, by any means, but at
least its outer shell was done after two days of hard work, and the rest
could be safely left till the morrow--all of it, except one thing, of
which Jack was mindful during supper.