While I blanketed the horses, tied them out of the wind in the hemlocks, and fed them, Grandfather put the axe heads to warm by a little fire of cones. Then he took the story pole, and we went to pick out the trees we’d use for framing the barn. “First off,” he told me, “we’ll spy out the gable uprights. Keep your eye peeled for ary big trunk that’s straight and tall, and where the branches is high. Don’t cal’late to have no knots in the uprights, and the hewing logs need be five poles long and two foot thick at the little end. We’ll find ’em nigh the middle of the grove, where they had to reach high to get their tops out to sunlight.”
Grandfather was right about our finding the straight, tall trees at the center of the grove. Standing almost in a circle, were five great trunks that looked like the pillars in pictures I had seen of the old Greek temples. “There they be, Ralphie! There they be!” he said, as he looked each tree over carefully from root to top. “Four to fall whole, and one to bust. Have to be tarnal careful of ’em with the wood dead and brittle. Cal’late we’ll do well if we lose but one.”
As he spoke, Grandfather turned slowly, and seemed to be studying every tree, rock, and stump around us. “Gorry sakes,” he said, when he’d made the full turn, “ain’t a living tree nigh enough to fetch ’em down on. Cal’late we’ll have to cradle ’em with spring-poles.”
I didn’t know what he meant, and asked, “What is a spring-pole?”
“Spring-pole! Spring-pole to fell ’em onto! Gorry sakes, Ralphie, you didn’t cal’late we’d drop ’em flat on the ground? Stave ’em all to smithereens! Them trunks weighs close onto a ton apiece. With no live branches to break the fall, we got to ease ’em down gentle. Let me see. Let me see. Where’s best to lay this nighest one?”
Grandfather picked an alley through the trees, where there was room for the first great trunk to fall. After he’d walked the length of it, and looked at every hummock and stump, we built the cradle. It was made of four white-birch trunks, seven or eight inches thick, for spring-poles. After we had their ends lifted to stumps on opposite sides of the alley, it looked like a steeplechase course. When everything was ready, Grandfather sighted the line of fall, and marked it in the snow with his axe handle. At the base of the tree, he drew a right-angle mark across the line, and said, “Fetch the story pole, Ralphie! We got to be tarnal sure the cross-mark’s true and square. Can’t run no risk a-felling so tall a tree off line.”
Careless as Grandfather was in most things he did, he was as careful in the woods as Uncle Levi was at his workbench. “Never fell a big tree in a tight place till you line it true, Ralphie,” he told me. “Always square your angle with the story pole: three lengths one way, four t’other, and five acrost the angle. Fetch the crosscut saw. I cal’late we’re all sot to lay the first one down.”
I’d been shivering while Grandfather laid out the felling marks, but pulling the big crosscut saw warmed me all over, and made my heart pound. For Grandfather, it didn’t seem hard work. He swayed back and forth with the sweep of the long saw. When it was his turn to pull the blade ran smoothly, but on mine it caught and jerked. “Hold it steady! Hold it steady!” he snapped at me as the saw bound in its kerf. “How in thunderation do you cal’late to fall a tree straight with a crooked scarf?” The saw was still binding and catching a little when we’d cut nine or ten inches into the three-foot trunk, and Grandfather sang out, “Leave be, Ralphie! Leave your old grampa learn you how to lay a tree on a line.”
I stood and watched as Grandfather drew the saw back and forth carefully; sighting it with the cross-mark in the snow. When the saw and the mark were exactly in line, he stopped and looked up at the treetops that were rattling in the wind. “Hmmm, hmmm,” he hummed as he watched them. “Cal’late the wind force will heave it five, six feet afore it’s down.” Then he sawed the kerf a half inch deeper on the upwind side, took his axe, and chopped away the wood above the kerf. When the notch was cut to a half V that met the back of the saw mark exactly, Grandfather straightened up, and crowed, “There she be, Ralphie! True as a trivet! Cal’late she’ll fall dead center acrost the cradle. Fetch the saw, and we’ll tarnal soon find out.”
Watching Grandfather, and remembering the things Uncle Levi had told me about swinging a scythe, helped me with the long saw. I took a lighter hold on the hand grips, let my wrists loosen, and swayed on the balls of my feet. Within ten or fifteen minutes, we’d sawed in from the back of the tree till only a few inches of solid wood stood between the two kerfs. Grandfather stopped the saw, came to my side of the tree, and said, “By gorry, you done all right, Ralphie. Didn’t cal’late you’d be that far along, nor keep your cut so straight.” He scratched a line on the bark, and told me, “Hold off a trifle, and don’t let the teeth pass that mark. I cal’late she’ll go in a minute or two.”
We’d only taken a few more strokes with the saw, when there was a sharp crack, and Grandfather shouted, “Timber! There she goes, Ralphie! Stand back afore the butt hits you!”
For a moment or two, the great tree stood balanced, then slowly, slowly, the top began to move. The trunk leaned a little, but not in line with the cradle. Then there was a loud crack, as if a gun had been shot close to my ear. The speed of the fall grew faster, the wind caught the top branches, and the trunk fell in a swerving crash. The butt kicked free from the stump, and through the thunder of the crashing trunk and snapping branches came four sharp explosion sounds. Snow flew high, broken branches and twigs shot through the air, and then the woods were still. When the snow settled, the great chestnut trunk lay squarely in the center of the alley. There wasn’t a crack in it anywhere, but the four birch spring-poles were bent beneath it like sprung bows.
On the second tree, I knew more about what we were doing, and Grandfather let me guess what alley we should use, where to set the spring-poles, and how much to allow for windage. He said I was about right on the wind allowance and the spring-poles, but I’d picked the wrong alley. If we’d used the one I thought we should, there would have been no way of turning so long a log to get it out of the woods. We had as good luck with the second tree as with the first. It fell squarely across the spring-poles of the cradle, and didn’t break. Grandfather had picked an alley just opposite to the first one, so that the two great trunks lay almost end to end in the snow. Before we built a fire and ate our dinner, we measured each trunk with the story pole, and sawed the logs five poles long. Neither of them had a knot in the whole forty feet of their length, and neither was less than two feet through at the small end.
Before the logs could be loaded onto the bobsled, the tops of the fallen trees had to be cleared away. Then half a dozen smaller trees had to be felled, saplings cut, and turns in the logging road widened, so that the forty-foot logs could be sledded out of the wood lot. The last thing before we started the loading, the spring-poles were chopped away, skids laid, and the logs rolled with cant hooks to one side of their alleys. To start the big logs and roll them on the level skids took every ounce of strength Grandfather and I had. I was sure we’d never be able to load them on the bobsled alone. “There! There they be, Ralphie!” Grandfather puffed. “Fetch your hosses, and your old grampa’ll learn you how to load a log man-fashion. By fire, I wisht we had a good yoke of oxen.”
When I’d harnessed the horses, Grandfather had me drive the bobsled up beside the log that was farthest from the clearing. He had me move it until the back runners were the length of one story pole from the side and end of the log. Then he unhooked the coupling chains, and had me pull the front runners to the butt end. “Keep off! Keep off!” Grandfather called to me as I drove. “Butt end’s bigger’n the top. Leave a pole and a half length ’twixt the runner and the log.” He was as particular about setting the sled runners as he had been about felling the trees. He measured the big end of the log carefully with the story pole, then the small end, and had me set the runners even with the butt and a pole and three quarters away from the log.
Next we cut maple poles, ten inches through,
flattened them at the ends, and placed them for ramps between the bottom of the log and the top of the sled bolsters. After we’d rolled the log back, so that its weight was resting on the ends of the ramps, Grandfather wrapped the loading chains. They were long and heavy. At both the front and back sled, he hooked one end of a chain to the center of the bolster, passed the loose end under the log, wrapped it once around, and I carried it to the far side of the sleds. Then we hitched Old Nell to one chain, and the yella colt to the other.
Grandfather was nervous. “Hosses! Hosses!” he spluttered as I hooked the yella colt’s singletree to the end of the chain. “Ain’t worth a tinker for loading logs! Like as not the tarnal critter’ll go to jerking and upset the sled or bust a chain. Let that infernal log get to slipping back whenst it’s halfway up, and ’twould take the Almighty Hisself to stop it. Aptly as not, ’twould throw both hosses and kill ’em.”
I was as nervous as Grandfather but I tried not to let him know it. “You lead Old Nell,” I told him, “and I’ll take the yella colt, but don’t shout if we get stuck. He’s high-strung, and I might not be able to handle him. Just raise one hand when you’re ready for us to pull.”
While Grandfather was walking over to where Nell was hitched to the other chain, I eased the yella colt up into his collar till the chain was tight. Then I stepped a couple of feet away from his head and watched Grandfather. When he raised his hand and called, “Gitap! Gitap!” to Nell, I clucked quietly to the colt. He pushed his weight into the collar, looked toward me, and I clucked again. The muscles in his thighs and legs swelled into knobs, the tendons in his flank stretched taut, the chain links crackled with the strain, and the maple ramps groaned as they took the full weight of the log. Step by straining step, the old horse put every pound of his strength behind the collar. I looked back and saw the great chestnut log rolling slow and steadily up the ramps. Then there was a thump, as it settled onto the sled bolsters. Grandfather shouted, “Whoa!” and the yella colt stood trembling. I was patting his neck and telling him he was a good horse when Grandfather came running toward us. “Good on your head, Ralphie! Good on your head!” he called out as he came. “By fire, we’ll show ’em what kind of logs makes wide shingles! Never in all my born days seen a yoke of oxen fetch a log aboard no steadier’n that. By thunder, I knowed all the time the old critter would do it. Never yipped a yipe once, did I, Ralphie?”
The butt had rolled enough farther than the small end that the log lay straight on the sleds. When it was chained fast to the bolsters, it made a bobsled forty feet long, with thirty feet between the front and back runners. The second log loaded just as the first one had. Half an hour before sunset, we had the two great logs bound side by side, and were leaving the woods for home.
The wind went down with the sun, and the still cold pressed in from all sides. Until our faces stiffened, Grandfather told me stories of logs and logging. Then, one or the other of us walked most of the time; thrashing arms to keep warm, throwing blankets over the horses when they stopped to rest at the top of a hill, or binding chains onto the runners to act as brakes on the way down. From the top of Hall’s hill, we could see Millie’s lamp in the kitchen window, and when we drove into the yard, she came to the door and called, “Victuals is hot and on the table.”
As the week went on I got more used to the crosscut saw and the long-handled double-bladed axe. I didn’t have to think to turn the axe at the top of the swing. I could make it hit fairly close to the spot I aimed at, and had learned to hold the snap of my wrists back till the last moment, so the blade would bite deep. With the logging road packed and widened to the chestnut grove, and my being more help to Grandfather, we were able to haul two loads of logs a day. We’d get to the wood lot by sunrise, set up our cradles, and fell all the trees for the day. Then, while Grandfather was taking the first load home, I’d cut the tops and larger branches to cordwood length, clear away the brush, and chop spring-poles for the next day’s cradles. By Friday night, we had all the logs for the barn sills and uprights piled in the dooryard.
Saturday morning Grandfather took the butter and eggs to Lewiston, and he seemed as excited as he had been on those mornings when he was going to hunt for Millie. While he was gone, I burned junipers in the wilderness field, and he came home while I was milking. I didn’t hear him till he pushed the big barn doors open and drove the pung into the runway. I couldn’t guess why he had driven it into the barn, so I left stripping Clara Belle and went to see. Instead of shouting, as he usually did when he’d brought something home, Grandfather met me at the tie-up door, and whispered, “Come see what I fetched home for Millie! Don’t cal’late on letting her lay eyes on it till Christmas Eve. Come help me histe it out and hide it away.”
When Grandfather turned the horse blanket back, I saw a big box lying in the back of the pung. Sears Roebuck was printed in red letters at one end of it, and under the name, This end up. Handle with care. “Cream Separator,” Grandfather whispered. “Tarnal good one, and I got a powerful good trade on it. Writ off to the mail-order comp’ny in Chicago. Cal’late ’twill save Millie a power of work on her skimming. Saving on the cream too. Catalog says that nary a drop can get a-past it. Let’s fetch it into the stall with Old Hannibal. Don’t cal’late ever Millie’ll go in there, do you?”
Before I went to Medford for Christmas, we had all the logs for the barn timbers piled in the dooryard, and had hauled the rafter logs to the mill for sawing. We butchered a suckling pig for me to take with me, and my suitcase was crammed with butter, honey, and apples. It was a fine Christmas. Mother’s cooking tasted better than ever, the tree was loaded with presents, and it snowed all three of the days I was home. We hardly went out of the house, but played games, remembered stories about Colorado and the Christmases we’d had there, and in the evenings Mother read aloud to us. I was both sorry and glad when the time came for me to go back to the farm.
Uncle Levi went back with me, and stayed through most of February. He didn’t often go to the woods with Grandfather and me, but spent most of his time doing the fine carpentry for the barn. He made the big rolling door for the new addition, all the smaller doors, the window frames and sash, the stanchion yokes, and the feedbins. Uncle Levi didn’t like to work out in the weather, so I dragged logs into the barn runway for him to hew square, mortise, and tenon. He made himself patterns, and every mortise and tenon was cut to a perfect fit. By the middle of February, all the girders and cross-braces were hewn and tenoned; the straight mortises—and the tricky angled ones for the cross-braces—cut into the uprights, and the framing made for the window in the gable peak.
Soon after Christmas, Grandfather had sent away for the tomato seed. Most of them were Earliana, but there were a few later varieties. As soon as Uncle Levi had finished all the window sashes for the barn, he used them to build one of the hencoops over into a hothouse. After he’d set up an old pot-bellied stove, he and Millie planted the tomato seed, and she adopted the hothouse for her own. Half a dozen times a day, she’d go to see if the temperature was right, and to watch for the first shoots to come through the ground, but she wouldn’t let Grandfather or me go any nearer than the windows.
Between dark and chore time, I often had an hour or two to work with Uncle Levi. I worked with him the whole last Saturday before he went back to Boston. When we were putting away the tools, we heard the sleigh bells on Old Nell’s harness, and Grandfather turned into the driveway from taking the butter to Lewiston. Uncle Levi laid a hand on my shoulder, and said, “By hub, I calc’late the war’s all over for Thomas. Wa’n’t you tickled ’bout him sending off for that cream separator? Wouldn’t hardly guess ’twas the same Thomas that raised all the ruction over the horsefork, would you? Ain’t seen him so chipper since he come home from the war.”
While Uncle Levi had been working on the barn and the hothouse, Grandfather and I had been busy in the woods. We’d cut and sledded to the mill all the chestnut logs that would be cut into floor planks, sheathing, and clapbo
ards. There were eighteen or twenty cords of firewood stacked by the logging road in the Bowdoin wood lot, and we’d felled the cedars that would be sawed into shingles—wide ones.
All through February and most of March we worked on the blighted chestnut grove. Grandfather had only one light touch of malaria all winter, and by the first day of spring there wasn’t a stick of chestnut left in the woods. Long rows of cordwood stood along the top of the dooryard wall, floor planks, rafters, sheathing boards, and bundles of shingles were piled high beside the hewn barn timbers in the barnyard, and in the hothouse the tomato plants were two inches tall. The deep frost was leaving the ground, and the first green grass was showing in the hayfields.
33
New Crops
BILL HUBBARD came to work for us steady on the first day of spring. The ground was still too muddy for working in the fields, so the first job we did was to dig the cellar for the barn addition. Then, while Bill and I laid the base boulders for the foundation, Grandfather hauled gravel and brought cement from Lewiston for the concrete floor. We didn’t build the new cellar like the old one, but laid a smooth floor for wagons and farm machinery at the front.
The fields were dry enough that we could haul dressing as soon as the new cellar floor was laid. Grandfather liked to do the spreading with the machine Uncle Levi had rebuilt, and it kept him from working too hard on the barn foundation. All three of us would pitch on the loads, then, while Grandfather was spreading them in the fields, Bill and I would hoist boulders to the walls, chink them in place with broken stone, and fill the spaces around them with cement.
Bill helped me with the milking, so we could get an early start on the day’s work, and we never quit till it was too dark to see.
By April tenth the foundation was finished, and we plowed the first furrow in the wilderness field. Grandfather let me hold the plow, and he drove the horses. During the winter in the woods, he’d learned not to shout at the yella colt, but as he drove he couldn’t help chirping, “Gitap! Gitap! Gee off! Gee off, Nell!” or “Haw to, you tarnal fool colt.” Often when we’d stop the horses for a rest, Grandfather would look back along the furrows, and gloat, “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie! Never cal’lated I’d be laying a plow to this field again in all the days of my life.”