George Eggleston - Camp Venture - A Story of the Virginia Mountains

Tom was much too weary to attend to it, but there were eager hands to help, and while Tom slept, they dressed the venison, and when Tom waked in the morning, he found that he had been completely excused from sentry duty throughout the night. His toilsome hunt, his painful carrying of the deer, his nervous strain over the necessity of encountering the mountaineer, and pretty seriously injuring him, and above all, his rise in wrath and his deliverance of a new Declaration of Independence as a defiance to the mountaineers, had been decreed by unanimous vote of the party to be the full equivalent of sentry service, and so Tom had been permitted to sleep through all the hours till breakfast was served.

Jack routed out the entire party before daylight next morning and bade them "get breakfast quick and eat it in a hurry. We've got to begin our house to-day," he added.

They were eager enough, for, apart from the frolic of house building, they knew how badly they should need a more secure shelter than their temporary abode could furnish, should rain or snow come, as was likely now at any time.

Breakfast over, Jack took his axe and marked a number of trees for cutting. Most of them were trees nearly a foot in thickness – none under eight inches – and all were situated in the thickest growth of timber.

"Why not choose trees farther out in the open?" asked Ed Parmly, "where they would be easier to get at and get out."

"Because, if you will use your eyes, Ed, you'll see that out in the open, the trees taper rapidly from stump to top. I want trees that will yield at least one, and if possible, two logs apiece, with very little taper to them. Otherwise, our house will be lop-sided."

"But I say, Jack, what causes the difference? Why do trees in the thick woods grow so much taller and straighter and of more uniform size than trees out in the open?"

"Because every tree is continually hunting for sunlight and air," answered Jack. "Out in the open, each tree finds these easily and goes to work at once to put out its branches, about ten feet from the ground, and to make itself generally comfortable. But where the trees are crowded close together each has to struggle with all the rest for its share of sunlight and air. They do not waste their energies in putting out branches that they can do without, but just keep on growing straight up in search of the air and sunlight. So you see if you want long sticks you must go into the thick woods for them. Out there in that half open glade there isn't a single tree with a twenty-foot reach before you come to its branches, while the trees I have marked here in the thick woods will give us, most of them two logs apiece twenty-one feet long and with not more than three or four inches difference between their diameters at the butt and their diameters at the extreme upper end. It's a good deal so with men, by the way. Those that must struggle for a chance usually achieve the best results in the end."

By this time the axes were all busy felling the marked trees, and within an hour or so they all lay upon the ground, trimmed of their branches, and cut into the required lengths of twenty-one feet each.

Having felled his share of them, Jack went a little further into the woodlands, and began blocking out great chips from one after another big chestnut tree. Having blocked out these chips, Jack sat down and began to split them, observing the result in each case with care. Presently he satisfied himself and set to work to cut down the giant chestnut whose chip had yielded the best results.

"What's all that for, Jack?" asked the Doctor. "Why did you split up those chips in that way, like a little boy with a new hatchet?"

"I was hunting for some timber that isn't 'brash,'" answered Jack, "to make our clapboards out of."

"What do you mean by 'brash?'"

"Why, some timber splits easily and straight along its grain, while other wood breaks away slantwise across the grain. That last kind is called 'brash,' and, of course, it is of no account for clapboards. See here!" and with that he took up two of the big sample chips and illustrated his meaning by splitting them and showing the Doctor how one of them split straight with the grain, while the other showed no such integrity.

"Oh, then, you're going to make clapboards out of this tree to roof our shanty with and to close up its gables."

"I'm going to make clapboards for our roof," answered Jack, "but not for our gables. They'll be made of logs, in true mountain fashion."

"But how is that possible?" eagerly asked the Doctor.

"I'll show you when we come to build. I can't very well explain it in advance. And another thing, Doctor, you remember that we have only ten pounds or so of nails, all told."

"That's true!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost in consternation. "We can't roof our house till somebody goes down the mountain and brings a supply."

"That's where you are mightily mistaken, Doctor. There isn't a log cabin in these mountains that has a nail in its roof."

"But how then are the clapboards held in place?"

"That again is a thing I can show you far better than I can explain it without demonstration. But we must first get our clapboards, and if you'll go back to the camp and bring a cross cut saw, I'll have this giant of the forest laid low by the time you get back, and then you and I will cut it into four-foot lengths for clapboards."

It should be explained that in the mountains of Virginia the word "clapboard" and the simpler word "board," mean something quite different from what they signify elsewhere. When the Virginia mountaineer speaks of a "board" or a "clapboard" he means a rough shingle, four feet long, simply split out of a piece of timber and not dressed in any way.

When the Doctor returned with the cross cut saw, Jack first marked off ten feet of his great tree at the butt and the two set to work to sever it.

"But you said we were to cut it into four-foot lengths," said the Doctor, as they began to pull the saw back and forth.

"So we are," answered Jack, "after we saw off this butt. You see, the butt of a tree is always rather brash, and so we won't use that for clapboards. Besides, I've another use for it."

"What?" asked the Doctor.

"I'm going to dig it out into a big trough and make a bath tub out of it. You see, that spring up there under the cliff has a fine flow of water. I'll sink this trough in the ground, at a proper angle, and train the water into it. It will run in at one end and out at the other, continually, so we'll always have a fresh bath ready for any comer."

"But will the boys relish a cold bath out of doors when the thermometer gets down into the small figures?"

"Well they'd better. Little Tom is a crank on cold bathing in the morning, and if any fellow in the party doesn't relish that sort of thing, Tom will souse him in any how till he teaches him to like it. He won't do you that way, Doctor, of course, but – "

"But why not? I need the tonic influence of cold morning baths more than anybody else in the party, and as soon as we get our bath tub in place I shall begin taking them. And more than that, I'll help little Tom in the work of dousing any boy in the party that neglects that hygienic regimen."

Having sawed off the butt of this big tree, Jack went back to the house site and directed the boys as to the work of building. The forty sticks of timber already cut, when piled into a crib would make the body of a cabin nearly twenty feet square, allowing for the overlapping of the timbers, and about ten feet high under the eaves. Jack showed the boys how to notch the logs at their ends so as to hold them securely in place and so also as to let them lie very close together throughout their length. For, of course, without notching, each log would lie the whole thickness of another log above the timber below it. Having thus started the four in the work of building, he returned to the woods where he and the Doctor continued the work of sawing the big tree trunk into four-foot lengths. About noon the Doctor volunteered to go and prepare a roast venison dinner, and Jack proceeded to split the tree-lengths into sizes convenient for the riving of the clapboards.