30,000 On the Hoof

by Grey, Zane

  It did not occur to Huett, as he stretched out under the blankets, that he was a happy man. Nevertheless he felt a great sense of accomplishment--to have won Lucinda Baker for a wife, to have driven safely into Sycamore Canyon with supplies and stock sufficient for the long task ahead--this seemed as much of a miracle as he ever dared hope for. The rest depended upon him, and he was positive that he was equal to the task. He had never tested his powers, but he felt that they were unlimited. Sleep glued his eyelids the instant he closed them.

  At dawn he was up, wading through the dewy grass to 'fetch in his horse.

  He saw deer with the cattle, and wished he had brought along his rifle.

  Venison was tasty after the first frosts and would keep if hung up in the shade. Returning to camp, he put his heaviest saddle on Buck and left him standing bridle down. Logan next applied himself to putting up a tarpaulin shelter in a convenient place. He had a camp-chair somewhere in the wagon. This and a box for a table would do for Lucinda.

  The sun struck down early into Sycamore--another of the many desirable features of this canyon. In summer it would be hot, but in winter the more sun the better. Huett anticipated much from those ample south slopes and walls, Which, would not only melt snow off promptly, but reflect heap down-upon the level. What corn, beans, cabbage, hay, grapes, peaches, he would raise! While mixing the biscuit dough that morning Logan located certain spots for gardens and fields.

  Lucinda appeared, her face sunburned and slightly swollen.

  "Mawnin', settler," she said, with a brightness that he was quick to grasp.

  "How are you, Luce?" he greeted her, heartily.

  "Fine. Only burnt to a crisp, lame in one leg, and sore from sundry scratches," she replied wryly. She had brushed her hair and left it to hang in a braid, a way that made her look more girlish, and pleased Logan. "I'm afraid to wash my face, it's so sore."

  "Don't. Be chary of water in this country till you're broken in."

  "Heaven!--What'll we do for a bath?"

  "There's the brook."

  "Be sensible, Logan. Besides, I felt that water last night. Cold--why, it made me jump! Can't you fix a place for us?"

  "Sure I can. And I'll do it pronto. The brook will be good enough for me yet awhile."

  "Where's my dog?"

  "I haven't seen her."

  "She went out before daylight."

  "Coyotes! By gum! I hope she doesn't run true to form. Them half-wolf dogs are queer. She might go back to her kind; for she's more wolf than shepherd."

  Lucinda made a face. "Oh dear!--I suppose I mustn't let myself love anything out here, because I can't keep it."

  "I reckon, Luce. Nothing except me," he replied, not realizing the jest.

  "You? Why--er--of course, Logan. But can't I keep pets?"

  "Sure. But I won't swear how long. You can have bear-cubs, fawns--anything I can catch for you."

  "A bear-cub? Oh, how darling! I'd love that."

  While they sat at breakfast Coyote came back, her long fur full of burrs, her tongue hanging out. Lucinda was delighted at her return, while Logan was manifestly not displeased. The dog had evidently been chasing some wild animal, but apparently knew when to return home.

  "Well, Luce, you clean up while I tackle the big job," drawled Logan finally.

  "What?"

  "Our cabin."

  "How thrilling! Let me help."

  "I should smile you will help."

  "Where'll we put it? How big?"

  "Right there, in the centre of the bench. I reckon those pines are good to stand a hundred more years. How big?--Doggone, that stumps me. I guess I can manage twenty-four-foot logs, if they're not too big around."

  "Twenty-four feet! How many rooms?"

  "One. We'll have to live in one room. After a time, as our needs grow, we can add a section."

  "But, Logan, that Holbert cabin was awful," cried Lucinda impetuously.

  "Small, dark--no floor, no porch..."

  "Don't worry, Luce. I've thought of that," Logan assured her. "We'll have a floor and a flat stone hearth. I'll extend the roof beyond the cabin wall--say twenty more feet... Like this," he drew a rude plan on the ground, "with posts to hold it up at the corners. And a loft to store things."

  "Logan, can you do all this alone?" she queried, as if suddenly appreciating the enormity of his undertaking. "Sure can. You'll have to help, though. Our tough jo! will be to lift logs one above the other, after we get so high. But I'll cut a forked sapling, heave up an end of the log in that. You'll hold the sapling while I tend to the other end."

  "But suppose the log should slip," suggested Lucinda fearfully.

  "I won't let it. Shall I move your things under the shelter? I've a chair and a box. Then you can find something to do until I come back."

  "Yes, please. I've plenty of sewing."

  "Good. Can you knit, Luce?"

  "That is one of my few accomplishments."

  "I'll bet you have a lot of them," Logan declared pridefully. Then, having moved her belongings and the boxes to the shelter, he took his axe, and, mounting Buck, rode up the canyon. Round the bend and conveniently half-way up the slope stood a dense grove of pines which Logan had remembered from a former trip. He could drag what he needed downhill all the way, a factor saving of labour and time.

  It took less than half an hour to cut and trim the first log for snaking down to camp. How deep the heavy axe had bitten into the pine, and how satisfying the feel of swinging it! Logan took a half-hitch with his rope round the log's end and, mounting, looped the pommel and started at a long angle downhill. The lop slipped along as if greased. As he neared camp the dog barked, and Lucinda ceased her work to watch him. It was something deeply exhilarating tor Logan to see her there.

  "Making out fine, Luce," he called in a cheery tone, as he dragged the log into camp. "What have you been doing?"

  "Chastening my spirit, Logan," she returned cryptically.

  Riding back up the canyon, he wondered what Lucinda bad meant. But he did not ponder long over her complexity.

  In the following hour Logan snaked down the three other logs, and by the time Lucinda called him to eat 'he had the four foundation sides of his cabin squared, levelled, and blocked up with flat stones.

  "I'll cut logs this afternoon and to-morrow," he told Lucinda. "Maybe it'll take another day. Fine crop of small pines to choose from. But the shakes have me stumped."

  "Shakes?" inquired his wife.

  "Yes. Shingles for the roof. They're called shakes in the West. You split them out of a big pine log. It's got to be straight grain, and not too sappy. Maybe I can find a lightning-struck pine. Ought to, for lighting sure strikes in this forest."

  "Thunderstorms, you mean?" asked Lucinda fearfully. "I'll say. Terrible electric storms. Trees crashing all around you--rain, wind..."

  "I'm afraid of storms," said Lucinda in a troubled voice. "When I was a child, Mother used to shut me up in a dark hall."

  "Don't worry, Luce. It's too late for that kind of storm." He glanced at the sky, shaking his dark head. "Lord, I hope the snow holds off till we're under a roof. But the weather here is fine till Thanksgiving, mostly."

  When Logan finished his work, supper was almost ready and would have been earlier, Lucinda explained, but for the biscuits. She had burnt the first batch.

  "Luce, it's no easy job," said Logan, hastening to excuse her. "Did you remember to heat the lid while you wen heating the oven?"

  "No. But I put a shovelful of coals on the lid."

  "Always heat it first... Well, this has been a doggone good day. Only too short."

  "It was long for me--and lonesome," she replied wistfully. "You'll always be at work, won't you?"

  Logan nodded gravely. "I reckon so, Luce, come to think of it. But I like work. That's what I want. And presently you will be so busy the days will fly."

  Lucinda did not seem to share his optimism. The thought struck Logan that he must be kind and attentive to her. He hel
ped her with the work after supper, talked about the cabin, and afterwards persuaded her to walk with him along the brook. He felt affection and solicitude, and warm yearning; but he was clumsy about expressing such feeling. Still his presence and his attention had a brightening effect upon her that he was glad to see.

  Lastly he kissed her good night, and was amazed at her wet eyes, shining in the firelight.

  Before sunrise next morning Logan shot and dressed a deer, cut and stacked firewood, and had breakfast ready when Lucinda arose. He then put in a prodigious day with the logs, cutting and trimming fifty, and peeling most of them. He did not know where the hours went, but that one spent with Lucinda after supper seemed to bring them closer. She was beginning to display interest in his work, to ask about the future. Yet she seemed to have a dread of being left alone, and she hated the cold.

  Logan vowed he would make their cabin snug and warm; and as if the daylight hours were not enough, working by firelight, he notched and laid the second square of logs.

  "But there's a space between," protested Lucinda when she noticed their arrangement.

  "Sure. We can't get the logs perfectly flat one on another."

  "What will we do, then? The rain and wind would blow in."

  "Tenderfoot! What's dobe mud for if not to fill in the chinks? This kind here in Arizona sets like mortar."

  "I used to build mud houses--and now I'm to live in one," said Lucinda dreamily, then, "But where'll the doors be?"

  "Only one door. Opening on the porch to the east. Storms usually blow from the south-west. I'll strain a point, and put in a window for you--in the south wall. That'll let in sun and light."

  Without any help, the following day Logan notched and lifted and squared four sections of logs on top of the two already laid. This, he told Lucinda, was getting somewhere, but he would need her assistance from then on. His mode of procedure might not have been original, but it was effective. He leaned a forked sapling against the cabin wall and lifted the end of a log to rest in it. Then Lucinda held the sapling while he performed a like service with the other end of the log. He managed to hold it, too, while he climbed up on the wall. Then he set his notched end in place, after which he crossed to Lucinda's side and placed hers. Logan was delighted with his ingenuity, and could not see why his wife was not the same.

  The fifth day bade fair to be the hardest and most trying of all. Log after log Logan notched and set in place, one on, top of the other. The fragrant yellow wall went up. Once Lucinda came near to disaster. A log slipped at Logan's end while he was climbing and holding at the same time. It fell. Only by remarkable strength for a girl did Lucinda hold here prop in place.

  For once Logan lost his characteristic reserve.

  "Luce girl, are you all right?" he cried anxiously as he swung down from the ladder. "My God! If that had come down to hit you..." He could not finish the sentence.

  After the log had slipped into place, Lucinda leaned against the wall, her face white. "I'm all right--I guess," she said.

  "Lord! what a jackass I am! After this I'll use the rope and haul my end up!" exclaimed Logan fervently. "But, then you haven't got those square shoulders and round arms for nothing." Coincidentally his pride in her grew.

  They worked late that night and completed the walls. Log was jubilant. He relieved the weary Lucinda from the supper task and laughed at her sore hands, although he tenderly picked the splinters from them. Then he gave her a good night embrace and sat up long beside the fire pondering the problem of the roof. Before he went to bed he solved it; and the following morning, putting the simple plan into effect, had flattened poles, laying them across from wall to wall, giving him a foothold from which to erect the roof structure. He wanted a high peak for two reasons: first to make a steep slant from which the snow would slide, and secondly to give the loft room for a man to stand.

  That brought Logan to another problem--to find a suitable pine, cut it down and split out the shakes. But, his good fortune attended him further. He found a fallen pine, riven at the top by lightning. It lay at the edge of the pines above the cabin. Another downhill haul!

  Logan's first few bundles of shakes would make excellent firewood and no more. Presently, however, he got the knack of it and made up for lost time by putting on extra muscle. Packing the shakes down proved a harder job than he had expected. His initial attempt was to drag down a bundle in a canvas. This proved a poor way. Then he tried packing bundles on Buck, an equally ineffectual task, because Buck was a poor pack-horse and displayed temper. By using a burlap bag as a pad on his shoulders, Logan carried a bundle of a hundred or more shakes down at a trip. The climb up was short, and unburdened he made it quickly. Sunset of that day saw his roofing piled neatly beside the cabin.

  The weather had been fine, even too hot in the afternoons, but on the last day a change threatened. A haze overspread the sky. The golden Indian summer was at an end. The wind moaned in the pines; November was at hand.

  That night Logan was awakened by dull, rumbling thunder away to the south-west. He groaned. Then he swore. Pattering rain fell upon his canvas. The first fall storm always began in that way: usually it rained a little, turned into snow, and then into a blizzard. It would be serious indeed if Lucinda and he were caught without their cabin completed.

  Morning came, drab, raw, with misty cold rain falling. Logan built a fire, cooked breakfast, and then carried firewood for Lucinda to burn while he worked. It heartened him that she still preserved a cheerful spirit.

  Logan tackled his job grimly. He placed bundles of shakes along the wall, so that he could heave them up with a rope. Lucinda slipped the noose under the bundles as fast as he could loft them. He laid as many along the rafters as he thought he would need on that side, then, while Lucinda repaired to her shelter to get warm and dry, he set to work.

  With the cold rain falling, the slippery rafters hard to straddle, and the nailing to be accomplished with benumbed hands, Logan had as grievous a job as even he wanted. But he stuck doggedly at it without time wasted at noonday. Lucinda called him, but he kept on. Every shake meant so much. Another few inches of roof! About mid-afternoon the rain ceased, to Logan's grateful surprise, the clouds broke up a little, and a pale sun shone through. Logan finished a whole side of the roof by evening in a tremendous burst of energy. Then, wet and starved and half-frozen, he clambered down the pole ladder to a warm fire and a hot supper.

  "Logan, you are wonderful," said Lucinda with enthusiasm. "But, giant though you are, I fear you'll kill yourself."

  "Ha! Work never hurt any man... I don't know, though. If I'm not tired I'm damn near froze!... Golly! Venison and mashed potatoes. And gravy!

  Whoopee!... Luce, I'll have a roof over us by to-morrow night."

  On the morrow the sun shone again, and before it set Logan made good his boast.

  "There! She'll shed--water," he panted, huskily, as he came down, a flame in his grey eyes. "Our homestead cabin is up--and roofed. Now let's move in."

  "I see," replied Lucinda. "But Logan, how do we move in? There's no door--no window."

  Logan stared. His jaw dropped. "Holy mavericks!" he exclaimed in consternation verging on mirth. "I'm a son-of-a-gun if I didn't forget to cut either... Luce, I guess we don't move in to-night, after all."

  Huett kept up his mighty pace of labour. He began his floor from the foundation log of the cabin. Here his proficiency with an axe asserted itself. To rough-hew logs and lay them close and flat, with level sides uppermost, called out all his skill. He laid the floor in two days, leaving a large open square against the north wall for the stone hearth and fireplace.

  Logan built a bough bedstead in the corner, framing it so it would hold a goodly mattress of evergreen foliage. He wanted to use balsam for this, but he did not believe that species of evergreen could be obtained as low down from the rim as Sycamore Canyon. Therefore he chose fir, which was as springy as balsam, if not so sweet-smelling. He packed huge bundles of fir boughs down from the slope, an
d cut them, using only the tips, in short lengths. When he had a sufficient quantity he carried it in. He folded a piece of canvas and laid that over the bed. "Here, wife, is a job for you," he said cheerfully, and he showed her how to lay the tips of fir with the butts down, one, upon another, in layer after layer.

  While she laboured at this task Logan spread the blankets in the warm sun, then sat down for the first daytime rest. This was not through weariness--he never acknowledged such a weakness as that--but because he became conscious of something no longer possible to put aside. Once released, it surged over Logan, warm, imperious, staggering... his love for his wife and his need of her. Of late she had appeared less strange and no longer aloof. She had worked willingly at whatever task he gave her, and sometimes she laughed. This isolation, he could see, was tremendously hard for her, being used to family and friends, to the social life of a town; but he believed she would grow used to solitude and become engrossed in their great task. Strong emotion, so seldom actuating Logan, and never before like this, came over him. He had been considerate of Lucinda, far more than most husbands would have been, and during these days of toil he felt that she had grown dearer for his restraint. He packed in the warm woolly blankets and threw them in a bundle at Lucinda's feet.

  In the subdued light of the cabin she looked pale, and her dark eyes met his questioningly. Logan took her in his arms. "Dear wife," he said, "I love you--and I want you. Will you make our bed--and let me come to you--to-night?"

  "Why, Logan! Of course," she answered, shyly. "I'm your wife. And I--I love you, too."

  If Huett had been happy before he was happier now. The still, smoky, warm days persisted. He laid his hearthstones and built' his fireplace and chimney. It was a serviceable job, though wanting the finish he had been able to put upon his carpentry. But he was not a mason. When he found that his chimney would draw, and not fill the cabin with smoke, he whooped his delight. Then with boards he had brought in the wagon he built shelves and a table. He drove pegs in the logs upon which to hang utensils. In his mind's eye he saw a fine head of elk antlers on the wall for his rifles. In an opposite corner he constructed shelves for his ammunition, of which he had a large amount, and his few personal belongings. For Lucinda he built a wardrobe with a canvas curtain, and a box-like affair she could use as a bureau. Above this he hung a little mirror.