MORE HOUSE-BUILDING.
It was an anxious and wondering household that Sandy burst in upon
next morning, when he had reached the cabin, escorted to the divide
above Younkins's place by his kind-hearted host of the night before.
It was Sunday morning, bright and beautiful; but truly, never had
any home looked so pleasant to his eyes as did the homely and
weather-beaten log-cabin which they called their own while they
lived in it. He had left his borrowed horse with its owner, and,
shouldering his meal-sack, with its dearly bought contents, he had
taken a short-cut to the cabin, avoiding the usual trail in order that
as he approached he might not be seen from the window looking down the
river.
"Oh, Sandy's all right," he heard his brother Charlie say. "I'll stake
my life that he will come home with flying colors, if you only give
him time. He's lost the trail somehow, and had to put up at some cabin
all night. Don't you worry about Sandy."
"But these Indian stories; I don't like them," said his father, with a
tinge of sadness in his voice.
Sandy could bear no more; so, flinging down his burden, he bounced
into the cabin with, "Oh, I'm all right! Safe and sound, but as hungry
as a bear."
The little party rushed to embrace the young adventurer, and, in their
first flush of surprise, nobody remembered to be severe with him for
his carelessness. Quite the hero of the hour, the lad sat on the table
and told them his tale, how he had lost his way, and how hospitably
and well he had been cared for at Fuller's.
"Fuller's!" exclaimed his uncle. "What in the world took you so far
off your track as Fuller's? You must have gone at least ten miles out
of your way."
"Yes, Uncle Charlie," said the boy, "it's just as easy to travel ten
miles out of the way as it is to go one. All you have to do is to get
your face in the wrong way, and all the rest is easy. Just keep
a-going; that's what I did. I turned to the right instead of to the
left, and for once I found that the right was wrong."
A burst of laughter from Oscar, who had been opening the sack that
held Sandy's purchases, interrupted the story.
"Just see what a hodgepodge of a mess Sandy has brought home! Tobacco,
biscuits, ginger, and I don't know what not, all in a pudding. It only
lacks milk and eggs to make it a cracker pudding flavored with ginger
and smoking-tobacco!" And everybody joined in the laugh that a glance
at Sandy's load called forth.
"Yes," said the blushing boy; "I forgot to tie the bag at both ends,
and the jouncing up and down of Younkins's old horse (dear me! wasn't
he a hard trotter!) must have made a mash of everything in the bag.
The paper of tobacco burst, and then I suppose the ginger followed;
the jolting of poor old 'Dobbin' did the rest. Ruined, daddy? Nothing
worth saving?"
Mr. Howell ruefully acknowledged that the mixture was not good to eat,
nor yet to smoke, and certainly not to make gingerbread of. So, after
picking out some of the larger pieces of the biscuits, the rest was
thrown away, greatly to Sandy's mortification.
"All of my journey gone for nothing," he said, with a sigh.
"Never mind, my boy," said his father, fondly; "since you have come
back alive and well, let the rest of the business care for itself. As
long as you are alive, and the redskins have not captured you, I am
satisfied."
Such was Sandy's welcome home.
With the following Monday morning came hard work,--harder work, so
Sandy thought, than miserably trying to find one's way in the darkness
of a strange region of country. For another log-house, this time on
the prairie claim, was to be begun at once. They might be called on at
any time to give up the cabin in which they were simply tenants at
will, and it was necessary that a house of some sort be put on the
claim that they had staked out and planted. The corn was up and doing
well. Sun and rain had contributed to hasten on the corn-field, and
the vines of the melons were vigorously pushing their way up and down
the hills of grain. Charlie wondered what they would do with so many
watermelons when they ripened; there would be hundreds of them; and
the mouths that were to eat them, although now watering for the
delicious fruit, were not numerous enough to make away with a
hundredth part of what would be ripe very soon. There was no market
nearer than the post, and there were many melon-patches between
Whittier's and the fort.
But the new log-house, taken hold of with energy, was soon built up to
the height where the roof was to be put on. At this juncture, Younkins
advised them to roof over the cabin slightly, make a corn-bin of it,
and wait for developments. For, he argued, if there should be any rush
of emigrants and settlers to that part of the country, so that their
claims were in danger of dispute, they would have ample warning, and
could make ready for an immediate occupation of the place. If nobody
came, then the corn-house, or bin, would be all they wanted of the
structure.
But Mr. Howell, who took the lead in all such matters, shook his head
doubtfully. He was not in favor of evading the land laws; he was more
afraid of the claim being jumped. If they were to come home from a
hunting trip, some time, and find their log-cabin occupied by a
"claim-jumper," or "squatter," as these interlopers are called, and
their farm in the possession of strangers, wouldn't they feel cheap?
He thought so.
"Say, Uncle Aleck," said Oscar, "why not finish it off as a cabin to
live in, put in the corn when it ripens, and then we shall have the
concern as a dwelling, in case there is any danger of the claim being
jumped?"
"Great head, Oscar," said his uncle, admiringly. "That is the best
notion yet. We will complete the cabin just as if we were to move into
it, and if anybody who looks like an intended claim-jumper comes
prowling around, we will take the alarm and move in. But so far, I'm
sure, there's been no rush to these parts. It's past planting season,
and it is not likely that anybody will get up this way, now so far
west, without our knowing it."
So the log-cabin, or, as they called it, "Whittier, Number Two," was
finished with all that the land laws required, with a window filled
with panes of glass, a door, and a "stick chimney" built of sticks
plastered with clay, a floor and space enough on the ground to take
care of a family twice as large as theirs, in case of need. When all
was done, they felt that they were now able to hold their farming
claim as well as their timber claim, for on each was a goodly
log-house, fit to live in and comfortable for the coming winter if
they should make up their minds to live in the two cabins during that
trying season.
The boys took great satisfaction in their kitchen-garden near the
house in which they were tenants; for when Younkins lived there, he
had ploughed and spaded the patch, and planted it two seasons, so now
it was an old piece of ground compared with the wild land that had
just been broken up around it. In their garden-spot they had planted a
variety of vegetables for the table, and in the glorious Kansas
sunshine, watered by frequent showers, they were thriving wonderfully.
They promised themselves much pleasure and profit from a garden that
they would make by their new cabin, when another summer should come.
"Younkins says that he can walk all over his melon-patch on the other
side of the Fork, stepping only on the melons and never touching the
ground once," said Oscar, one day, later in the season, as they were
feasting themselves on one of the delicious watermelons that now so
plentifully dotted their own corn-field.
"What a big story!" exclaimed both of the other boys at once. But
Oscar appealed to his father, who came striding by the edge of the
field where they chatted together. Had he ever heard of such a
thing?
"Well," said Mr. Bryant, good-naturedly, "I have heard of melons so
thick in a patch, and so big around, that the sunshine couldn't get to
the ground except at high noon. How is that for a tall story?"
The boys protested that that was only a tale of fancy. Could it be
possible that anybody could raise melons so thickly together as Mr.
Younkins had said he had seen them? Mr. Bryant, having kicked open a
fine melon, took out the heart of it to refresh himself with, as was
the manner of the settlers, where the fruit was so plenty and the
market so far out of reach; then, between long drafts of the delicious
pulp, he explained that certain things, melons for example, flourished
better on the virgin soil of the sod than elsewhere.
"Another year or so," he said, "and you will never see on this patch
of land such melons as these. They will never do so well again on this
soil as this year. I never saw such big melons as these, and if we had
planted them a little nearer together, I don't in the least doubt that
any smart boy, like Sandy here, could walk all over the field stepping
from one melon to another, if he only had a pole to balance himself
with as he walked. There would be nothing very 'wonderful-like' about
that. It's a pity that we have no use for these, there are so many of
them and they are so good. Pity some of the folks at home haven't a
few of them--a hundred or two, for instance."
It did seem a great waste of good things that these hundreds and
hundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack of
somebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty the
settlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finest
of the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had got
one of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leaving
the rest to the birds. By night, too, the coyotes, or prairie-wolves,
mean and sneaking things that they were, would steal down into the
melon-patch, and, in the desperation of their hunger, nose into the
broken melons left by the settlers, and attempt to drag away some of
the fragments, all the time uttering their fiendish yelps and howls.
Somebody had told the boys that the juice of watermelons boiled to a
thick syrup was a very good substitute for molasses. Younkins told
them that, back in old Missouri, "many families never had any other
kind of sweetenin' in the house than watermelon molasses." So Charlie
made an experiment with the juice boiled until it was pretty thick.
All hands tasted it, and all hands voted that it was very poor stuff.
They decided that they could not make their superabundance of
watermelons useful except as an occasional refreshment.