Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

  CHAPTER XIV.

  MORE HOUSE-BUILDING.

  It was an anxious and wondering household that Sandy burst in uponnext morning, when he had reached the cabin, escorted to the divideabove Younkins's place by his kind-hearted host of the night before.It was Sunday morning, bright and beautiful; but truly, never hadany home looked so pleasant to his eyes as did the homely andweather-beaten log-cabin which they called their own while theylived in it. He had left his borrowed horse with its owner, and,shouldering his meal-sack, with its dearly bought contents, he hadtaken a short-cut to the cabin, avoiding the usual trail in order thatas he approached he might not be seen from the window looking down theriver.

  "Oh, Sandy's all right," he heard his brother Charlie say. "I'll stakemy life that he will come home with flying colors, if you only givehim time. He's lost the trail somehow, and had to put up at some cabinall night. Don't you worry about Sandy."

  "But these Indian stories; I don't like them," said his father, with atinge of sadness in his voice.

  Sandy could bear no more; so, flinging down his burden, he bouncedinto the cabin with, "Oh, I'm all right! Safe and sound, but as hungryas a bear."

  The little party rushed to embrace the young adventurer, and, in theirfirst flush of surprise, nobody remembered to be severe with him forhis carelessness. Quite the hero of the hour, the lad sat on the tableand told them his tale, how he had lost his way, and how hospitablyand well he had been cared for at Fuller's.

  "Fuller's!" exclaimed his uncle. "What in the world took you so faroff your track as Fuller's? You must have gone at least ten miles outof your way."

  "Yes, Uncle Charlie," said the boy, "it's just as easy to travel tenmiles out of the way as it is to go one. All you have to do is to getyour face in the wrong way, and all the rest is easy. Just keepa-going; that's what I did. I turned to the right instead of to theleft, and for once I found that the right was wrong."

  A burst of laughter from Oscar, who had been opening the sack thatheld 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 onlylacks milk and eggs to make it a cracker pudding flavored with gingerand smoking-tobacco!" And everybody joined in the laugh that a glanceat 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'the 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? Nothingworth 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, afterpicking out some of the larger pieces of the biscuits, the rest wasthrown 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 comeback alive and well, let the rest of the business care for itself. Aslong as you are alive, and the redskins have not captured you, I amsatisfied."

  Such was Sandy's welcome home.

  With the following Monday morning came hard work,--harder work, soSandy thought, than miserably trying to find one's way in the darknessof a strange region of country. For another log-house, this time onthe prairie claim, was to be begun at once. They might be called on atany time to give up the cabin in which they were simply tenants atwill, and it was necessary that a house of some sort be put on theclaim that they had staked out and planted. The corn was up and doingwell. Sun and rain had contributed to hasten on the corn-field, andthe vines of the melons were vigorously pushing their way up and downthe hills of grain. Charlie wondered what they would do with so manywatermelons when they ripened; there would be hundreds of them; andthe mouths that were to eat them, although now watering for thedelicious fruit, were not numerous enough to make away with ahundredth part of what would be ripe very soon. There was no marketnearer than the post, and there were many melon-patches betweenWhittier's and the fort.

  But the new log-house, taken hold of with energy, was soon built up tothe height where the roof was to be put on. At this juncture, Younkinsadvised 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 rushof emigrants and settlers to that part of the country, so that theirclaims were in danger of dispute, they would have ample warning, andcould make ready for an immediate occupation of the place. If nobodycame, then the corn-house, or bin, would be all they wanted of thestructure.

  But Mr. Howell, who took the lead in all such matters, shook his headdoubtfully. He was not in favor of evading the land laws; he was moreafraid of the claim being jumped. If they were to come home from ahunting trip, some time, and find their log-cabin occupied by a"claim-jumper," or "squatter," as these interlopers are called, andtheir 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 tolive in, put in the corn when it ripens, and then we shall have theconcern as a dwelling, in case there is any danger of the claim beingjumped?"

  "Great head, Oscar," said his uncle, admiringly. "That is the bestnotion yet. We will complete the cabin just as if we were to move intoit, and if anybody who looks like an intended claim-jumper comesprowling around, we will take the alarm and move in. But so far, I'msure, 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 farwest, without our knowing it."

  So the log-cabin, or, as they called it, "Whittier, Number Two," wasfinished with all that the land laws required, with a window filledwith panes of glass, a door, and a "stick chimney" built of sticksplastered with clay, a floor and space enough on the ground to takecare of a family twice as large as theirs, in case of need. When allwas done, they felt that they were now able to hold their farmingclaim as well as their timber claim, for on each was a goodlylog-house, fit to live in and comfortable for the coming winter ifthey should make up their minds to live in the two cabins during thattrying season.

  The boys took great satisfaction in their kitchen-garden near thehouse in which they were tenants; for when Younkins lived there, hehad ploughed and spaded the patch, and planted it two seasons, so nowit was an old piece of ground compared with the wild land that hadjust been broken up around it. In their garden-spot they had planted avariety of vegetables for the table, and in the glorious Kansassunshine, watered by frequent showers, they were thriving wonderfully.They promised themselves much pleasure and profit from a garden thatthey would make by their new cabin, when another summer should come.

  "Younkins says that he can walk all over his melon-patch on the otherside of the Fork, stepping only on the melons and never touching theground once," said Oscar, one day, later in the season, as they werefeasting themselves on one of the delicious watermelons that now soplentifully dotted their own corn-field.

  "What a big story!" exclaimed both of the other boys at once. ButOscar appealed to his father, who came striding by the edge of thefield where they chatted together. Had he ever heard of such athing?

  "Well," said Mr. Bryant, good-naturedly, "I have heard of melons sothick in a patch, and so big around, that the sunshine couldn't get tothe 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 bepossible that anybody could raise melons so thickly together as Mr.Younkins had said he had seen them? Mr. Bryant, having kicked open afine melon, took out the heart of it to refresh himself with, as wasthe manner of the settlers, where the fruit was so plenty and themarket so far out of reach; then, between long drafts of the deliciouspulp, he explained that certain things, melons for example, flourishedbetter on the virgin soil of the sod than elsewhere.

  "Another year or so," he said, "and yo
u will never see on this patchof land such melons as these. They will never do so well again on thissoil as this year. I never saw such big melons as these, and if we hadplanted them a little nearer together, I don't in the least doubt thatany smart boy, like Sandy here, could walk all over the field steppingfrom one melon to another, if he only had a pole to balance himselfwith as he walked. There would be nothing very 'wonderful-like' aboutthat. It's a pity that we have no use for these, there are so many ofthem and they are so good. Pity some of the folks at home haven't afew of them--a hundred or two, for instance."

  It did seem a great waste of good things that these hundreds andhundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack ofsomebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty thesettlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finestof the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had gotone of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leavingthe rest to the birds. By night, too, the coyotes, or prairie-wolves,mean and sneaking things that they were, would steal down into themelon-patch, and, in the desperation of their hunger, nose into thebroken melons left by the settlers, and attempt to drag away some ofthe fragments, all the time uttering their fiendish yelps and howls.

  Somebody had told the boys that the juice of watermelons boiled to athick syrup was a very good substitute for molasses. Younkins toldthem that, back in old Missouri, "many families never had any otherkind of sweetenin' in the house than watermelon molasses." So Charliemade 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 ofwatermelons useful except as an occasional refreshment.