The Cabin on the Prairie Part 13

"If you want a little help in getting started here," said Mr. Jones, "I'll send up my Tom; I guess he'd like to lend you a hand."

"Could he come to-day?" asked Mrs. Payson.

"I'll send him right along," said the squatter, as he bent his steps towards home.

"What are we going to do for a stove?" asked the wife, as soon as he was out of sight.

"That'll be forthcoming," said the minister.

Tom, having made his appearance, was requested by Mr. Payson to take the team and go to town, and say to Mr. Palmer that they had decided to move into the cabin, and would like to get settled before night; which message brought Mr. Palmer back with Tom, accompanied by a wagon-load, containing a large cooking-stove, a bag of flour, some chairs, a little crockery, and a supply of various eatables. And by nightfall the missionary family were domiciled in the frontier cabin; and the next morning you would have thought the missionary's wife already quite 'westernized,' with her neat calico and tidy ap.r.o.n, busy in her preparations for the house-raising.

"I don't mean to stay in a borrowed house a great while," she said.

"Husband, how soon do you calculate that we can be housekeeping in our own cabin?"

"It will take some weeks, do our best," he answered.

"Well," she rejoined, "I'll set the time four weeks from to-day; and if it isn't ready then, I shall go into it if I have to leave you behind."

But how slowly everything dragged, except the raising! The settlers went into that with right good will; men and teams were busy drawing the logs, while experienced hands placed them properly upon each other, till the ridge-pole crowned the whole. Then they sat down on the gra.s.s to partake of the tempting eatables that Tom and Mr. Payson had brought on the ground. There were the light biscuits and the golden b.u.t.ter, nice venison steaks for which they were indebted to the rifle of Mr. Jones, dried apple turnovers, and the sheets of crisp gingerbread, loaf cake, and fragrant coffee.

"We don't get any whiskey at this raising!" said Mr. Palmer, nudging his next neighbor.

"No," he replied; "and it's an example that I hope will be often followed."

Then there was the door to be made and hung, and the windows to be put in, and the crevices between the logs to be mortared, and the floors laid--long and tedious operations, where everybody was over-busy, and labor could be hired neither "for love nor money." Mr.

Payson found that much of the work had to be done by himself, with the occasional help of Tom. He was city-bred, and his bodily strength feeble; but necessity obliged him to perform prodigies of teaming, lifting, and joinering, and even of quarrying stone for the well that was being dug. A few weeks had wrought a wonderful change in the man of books; his study was wherever he chanced to be; his white hands had become h.o.r.n.y and browned, his pale face tanned. His retiring habits had given place to a broad sociality, his diffidence to a generous self-reliance, and it seemed to him that he could do and dare almost anything. From early morning till late at night he worked to get his log home ready, while his wife and little ones remained in the solitary cabin by the riverside.

It was a long walk for him, however after toiling all day; and when the sky was overcast at nightfall, he was in danger of getting lost. This gave his wife much uneasiness; then she feared that he might meet some prowling wolf, or other beast, in the darkness; and when he was very late, she would be sure to think he was lost, and would ring her house-bell, which consisted of a tin pan, on which she would drum vigorously with the stove-lifter. She said he would recognize that sound, she thought, at a great distance.

But the four weeks went by, and on account of the difficulty of getting lumber, and other necessary articles, the roof was still unshingled, and the floor only half laid. The wife, like most women, had a very good memory for dates. The log cabin they occupied was open, and the prairie winds cold and piercing, and for a few days she had been quite ill; but that morning, after her unsuspicious husband had left for his joinering, Tom might have been seen guiding a yoke of cattle, attached to a cart, into the enclosure, which, after much "geeing" and "gee-hawing," he managed to make stand before the door.

"Charlie," said he, as that urchin made his appearance from the inside of the cart, "you stand by the cattle while I put the things aboard."

And bringing out a barrel filled with crockery and other things, which Mrs. Payson had clandestinely packed for the occasion, and the wash-boiler full of eatables, and hanging the chairs over the cart stakes, he took down the bedsteads, and placed them in a manner that was highly satisfactory to the energetic minister's wife, and tying up the bed-clothes in great bundles, deposited them also; and saying to Mrs. Payson, "I shall have to fix an easy place for you to ride, as you've been sick," he laid the hard beds in the empty s.p.a.ce which he had left for that purpose in the cart, with the feather beds above, saying,--

"There, you won't feel the motion much now;" and a.s.sisting her to mount, she was enthroned on her downy seat on the top of the load, with the children in high glee by her side.

The steers, which were notoriously unruly, as if aware that they had a minister's wife aboard, behaved with becoming decorum under Tom's wise supervision.

Now, it chanced that some careless hunter, firing into the dry prairie gra.s.s on the other side of the town, had started a fire. Mrs. Payson had noticed in the morning that there was a smell of burning in the air, and a hazy appearance, but had attached no particular importance to it; but as they approached the town, a scene of great magnificence burst upon her. The fires, driven with velocity before the wind, had swept over the prairies, and reached the belt of woods, in a portion of which were the eighty acres that her husband was at work upon. The flames were crackling and roaring in the forests, burning up the dry underbrush, shooting to the tops of the old dead pines, so that the scene being constantly on her left, was more or less in view for most of the distance.

"What shall we do?" asked Tom, in alarm. "Hadn't we better go back?"

"Do you think the fire has reached my husband's claim?" she answered.

Tom scanned the appearance of the smoke with a practised eye, and at length replied,--

"No; it's not got as far as there yet."

"Do you think it will?" she inquired, anxiously.

"If the wind does not change, it must before a great while," he said, "although it will have to cross the road, which will backen it some."

"Would it burn up the cabin, then?" she inquired.

"I am afraid it would," he answered.

"Well," said she, firmly, "I said I would go into that cabin in four weeks, and if it's not burnt down, I shall keep my word. At any rate we shall be in season to see the fire!" Then she added, looking grave, "I do hope, if it is the Lord's will, that the fire will be checked in time, my husband has toiled so hard."

As the cart turned up the main street of the town, she caught sight of the cabin that was to be her future home, and she saw her husband, too, at the same moment, for there he sat on the roof, gazing at the fire, which seemed to be dying out. He heard the rumbling of the wheels as they drew near, and as he caught sight of the picturesque-looking object approaching, he called out,--

"Why, what under the canopy have we here? Wife, and babies, and household effects! What does this mean? You are not going to emigrate farther west--are you?"

"If you'll _de_scend from your elevated position," she replied, cheerily, "I'll _con_descend to inform you. Now," she added, "you know I told you, husband, I should move into the cabin to-day; and did you ever know me to break my word?"

"But," said he, looking disconcerted, "I'm not ready for you yet; the floor isn't half laid."

"Well," she replied, "I can't stand it to have you sweating up here all alone at your task, running the risk of being devoured by the wolves, or losing your way at night because you think the cabin isn't comfortable enough for me. Why, you are as particular about having everything done just so about this cabin, as you used to be, east, in having every word exactly in its place when you wrote your sermons.

Please, now, just help Tom unload, and set these things in, and I'll have tea ready directly, and we'll be where we can cheer you a bit.

But what about this fire?"

"Our cabin has had a very narrow escape."

"Yes," said Tom, coming up, "I've been out to look, and the fire just came up to your line, and then stopped."

Mr. Payson was deeply affected by the intelligence, for, knowing that no human power could stay the advancing flames, upon the cabin top he had been praying that the wind might change. Was it in answer to his silent pet.i.tions that it had taken place in so timely a manner?

CHAPTER XI.

OLD MRS. SKINFLINT IN TROUBLE.--LOST IN THE WOODS.

There is no man so bad as he might be--a fact that everybody knows, but that most are apt to forget in their estimate of those who have offended their sense of right.

Mr. Smith had his virtues as well as faults; perhaps more of the latter than the former; but there were some mollifying circ.u.mstances to be taken into the account in the summing up of his character. His natural love of money had been stimulated and intensified by the malign influence of his wife. She was miserly when he married her. To keep what she had, and get what she could, was her ruling pa.s.sion; besides which she had a pa.s.sion _for_ ruling. And often, when her husband's gentler heart would be touched by a tale of suffering, and his hand be opened to relieve the distressed, would she interfere to prevent the indulgence of the benevolent impulse; and now, after some thirty years' matrimonial moulding, he had become so a.s.similated to her grasping spirit, and so accustomed to yield to her stronger will, that his dealings in business made him appear worse than he really was. In the sale of the "eighty-acre lot" to the missionary, about which much indignation was felt in the settlement, Mrs. Smith was the chief actor. Mr. Smith was the monkey employed to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, although, it must be confessed, he relished the chestnuts. She was a crafty woman, and kept out of sight in the transaction while she urged him on, so that people saw only Mr. Smith in the wrong-doing, when, if they could have peeped behind the curtain, they would have seen that his "better half" was the more guilty.

The thirty dollars which Mr. Smith finally consented to take for the "improvements on the claim," Mr. Payson was unable to pay all at once; he was, therefore, subjected to many vexatious duns for the balance.

Fearing that, at last, her husband would relent, and the debt might not all be realized, Mrs. Smith resolved to turn collector herself.

So, putting on her best cap, and her faded black alpaca, she made her way through the woods to the missionary's cabin.

When she reached it, she found no one but Tom and Bub within; for Mr.

Lincoln had called with his team, and taken the family to dine at his house.

"Is the minister to home?" she asked.

"No," replied Tom.