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 shingles, 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.
[Illustration: 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 spaces 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 "chinked" 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 glass
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 passed 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 title. "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.