Falcon and Wolf 10

 

Chapter 10

 

Luke and Wolf went to bed early, and set to from an early hour, felling trees to build a footing against the sheer valley wall, a half-house like a claim-shanty, and with both of them working with a will, had the sides up and the frame of the roof by midday.

“Wolf leave now,” said Wolf. “I be back bye’n’bye.”

“Take care,” said Luke. He watched his friend go off down the valley, and started to build the framework for the roof. Bark tiles would make it secure, and strips off the rough shaping of them would jam into cracks between the logs of the walls. Mud smeared over the filled gaps inside and out would make the little house windproof. The valley floor had precious little soil; but there was enough to dig out grooves to fit the rounded backs of felled trees, split in half to make floorboards, and smoothed with Luke’s skilful use of the hatchet. He preferred it to an adze. He had cut a hole for the door, and split planks using a wedge, and the back of his axe as a hammer, to peg round the hole. Another for a window, and horn, purchased in town by Wolf made a pane to let in light, if precious little else.  Luke was used to sitting for hours in an asi, or winter house with Cherokee friends, and contemplated digging down into the rocky soil for warmth.  His own family dwor had copied the Cherokee fashion, in being partly underground, but with verandas around for summer coolness, rather than having two separate houses for summer and winter living as was the Cherokee way.

Luke made himself a meal of pork and beans, and moved his bedroll into the rough hut. The tent tied onto the structure as a roof for the time being, and the pine branches made a bed off the floor. Luke was tired enough to expect to fall asleep as soon as he had laid some logs against the door hole, and dowsed the fire, lit in what was a hole in the wall against a harder spur of rock. It needed a fourth wall of stones and mud, which would be a job for the morrow. A convenient slit in the valley wall which went on down made a latrine. He could build a rough lean-to around it. His mind continued to work on what had to be done.

Luke had no fear of solitude; but he had to admit that he missed Wolf. Even though they spent much of their time in companionable silence, his friend’s presence was noticeable in its absence.  Luke had set up his thread to a bell in the doorway, and dismissed any night fears of being disturbed, just because he was more used to the prairie or desert than the mountains. He lay for a while, working on relaxing, and pushing aside the unsettled feeling he could not fully analyse. But it was not long before he slept.

The creatures of the night which investigated the strange man-thing were few, and small, and kept their skittish distance; no man brought his curiosity into the valley, the moon kept her own council, and any fish in the tarn beneath the waterfall kept such cold and piscine thoughts they might have to themselves. Luke rose at dawn, and washed in the tarn’s icy waters with the sort of enthusiasm only a briskly fit young man can manage.  He potted a big jack-rabbit with his pistol, which pleased him mightily, though he pulled a face at the damage to what had been its head. It went in the pot, however, skinned and cleaned, and he continued to build the chimney with mud and stones, using the pluck of the rabbit as bait on a number of lines.

Apparently the trout around here were hardy enough to make the trip upriver to spawn, and that was supper sorted out. Luke cut off the tails and separated the head to the backbone to draw them, and baked them in mud in the embers. He could make flatbreads to go with them, baked on a big flat stone. He had onions for his stew, and carrots, and went foraging for other wild herbs and vegetables. One rabbit and three trout would feed him for several days if he was not too fussy about variety. If he had been planning to stay, he would have been setting up a smokehouse. But he was not. Being brought up the way he was, however, he was a believer in the aphorism, ‘If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’

 

Any homesteader would have been justly proud of Luke’s small spot of home by the time his little house was completed.  And a smokehouse set up, just to provide trail rations, because it seemed a shame not to do so. This decision had been reached when Luke took down a deer. Hearing a squeal and a growl in the night, he had got up and opened the door, only to see a deer turn on and gore a young wolf. He had raised the gun and shot almost before he thought about it, and smiled ruefully that his instinct was to protect the wolf. He approached, warily, and the injured wolf growled.

Luke growled back, and the young wolf whimpered, and bared its throat to him. Luke took off the lower leg of the dead deer, and tossed to the young wolf, which whined, and then set to with hungry will. Luke butchered the deer, tossing the pluck to the young wolf.

He kept the brain; pegging out the skin and using the brain to cure it would occupy him once he had built a smokehouse in his own chimney. It was easy enough to do, taking out a stone and building a wooden structure around the chimney, raised on a platform on which he laid the meat, and a spare trout, to smoke. It was cool enough to dig a rough chamber under the board floor to store meat.  And he fed the young wolf, which had had its rear leg badly gored, until it was fit. The wild creature never let him touch it, but it deferred to him as an alpha. Luke hoped that the habit would hold when the nasty wound healed, and that the cub – for it was little more – would not decide to challenge him.

He could probably have tamed it if he had wanted to; but that never crossed Luke’s mind. The wolf was a free creature, as he was.

And one morning, it was gone.

Luke was happy that the wolf felt better, and laughed at himself for missing its company.

He took to digging into the side of the valley, to increase the amount of room he had indoors, using the tailings to add an outer layer to his walls.

 

Wolf had teased Luke about striking gold, which Luke never expected.  He did not expect to find anything with his efforts. However, the silvery-coloured nugget in the vein of quartz made him raise an eyebrow.

“Probably not silver,” said Luke, to himself. “But I suppose it won’t hurt to set aside what I find.”

His first caller was Jim Carstairs.

“Dang me, you know how to hide,” said the sheriff, who had knocked rather diffidently on the door, and was answered by Luke with a gun in his hand.

“I’m impressed that you found me.”

“I followed your trail the first day, and losing it at the waterfall, figured it was a good place to go. My horse managed it up the slope, but I’m not popular with him.”

“Poor old boy.  I built a lean-to barn, for Wolf’s horse, and gathered some hay.”

“I took the liberty of putting him in it. I’m sure I don’t recall this shanty; did you build it?”

“Wolf helped me get started, but yes. It’s not the scale I’d build to settle in, but it does me well enough.”

“Many people would be glad of something less solid,” said Carstairs, dryly. “And you’re digging out further; what, is that a heap of silver ore in the corner?”

“You tell me,” said Luke. “I’m no geologist, but it seemed a shame to just throw it away. It’s quite pretty, where it’s followed the veins of quartz, and I figured it might come in handy.”

“You appear to be one of those people followed by Lady Luck,” said Carstairs. “D’you want me to have it assayed for you?”

“Sure, why not?” said Luke. “I don’t really have time to do any serious mining – it’s not my idea of a fulfilling occupation – and I don’t know how to smelt it to purify it at all, but I might as well get a buck or two from it, as it’s here.”

“As you ain’t plannin’ on settlin’ permanent-like, I might be able to put you in way of a partner, who’d be mighty glad of a well-built house, room for a little garden, and some hunting, and a bit of mining to keep him occupied over the winter, so long as you ain’t lookin’ for him to hit it rich, and make it a serious commercial concern.”

“Suits me; anything I get out of it is a bonus. I built the house because I can’t bear not to do a job properly. It’s well-founded for the winter, though he might want some glass for the windows rather than shutter up. There’s a door into the barn, and you can go through it to the latrine, and I’ve channelled off a drain to it as well. Nothing fancy, but convenient for the bad weather. And it’ll be a bad one.”

“Joe will be glad to have a quiet one; he took an injury, mining, and where he was working is pretty much worked out, any road. So he went to live with his married daughter, and she yaps in his ear all day long, criticising this or that, so he escapes to the bar, and then she’ll have it that he’s an unregenerate lush.”

“He’s welcome to come out any time, and live in; so long as he’s aware we might be in and out any time.”

“You don’t mind smoking?”

“I smoke a pipe myself at times,” said Luke. “I ain’t one for cigars or these newfangled cigarettes or cigarillos.”

“Joe has a pipe,” said Carstairs. “What can I smell cooking?”

“Fish chowder,” said Luke. “I got tired of trout as trout, so  I mixed myself up a white sauce with a bit of spice to it, and I’m about to set some potato and vegetable cakes on the griddle to go with it. Fetch down the table folded up in the corner there, the plates are behind it on shelves.”

“And you still have tree stumps as chairs, with all that ingenuity elsewhere,” laughed Carstairs.

Luke shrugged.

“It suits me well enough,” he said. “It ain’t broke; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“You’ll want something with a back to sit on in the long evenings.”

“Or, I might sling a hammock and sit and swing.”

“I’m told they can be tricky.”

“Well, they probably can; I’ve never tried, to be honest. I’ll maybe make a rocking chair for the old man, if Wolf ain’t here soon.”

“Well, that would be civil. Say, this chowder is good – and the cakes. Potato and vegetable, you said?”

“Ma calls it ‘Bubble and squeak;’ she’s English. Potato mashed with any left-over vegetables, or made special.  It’s a fine breakfast with a couple of fried eggs over, but I’ve no eggs. Wolf forgot to get any.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Carstairs.

 

It was good to see someone; Wolf had been gone a week, but Luke expected him to take as long as it took. A week was nothing. And Wolf was quite likely to ride down the grade to the ambush, and track the gang from there, which would take time if he was being careful. And Wolf would be careful.

Luke cut some hickory saplings and soaked them, and pegged them, to start making the curved rockers and bent top of a rocking chair, and cut and soaked withies from the willow to weave as seat and back. It was gentle work compared to digging out a larger room, or building the house, and he enjoyed himself, knowing that he could turn his hand to almost anything. He promised himself that when he and Ida set up house, he would not trouble with boughten furniture, but would teach their children how to fend for themselves, and make anything they needed, the way he had been taught.