Chapter XVII: The Cabin in the Woods

“Reckon the feller that lived here had matches, though,” he reflected half aloud. “Maybe there’s one around somewhere.” Then began a most careful and minute search that ended after some time in the discovery of a match head and about a half inch of stick attached to it in a crack between two boards. It looked all right, too. He gathered the brittle, yellowed paper from the floor and laid it in the stove. Then he selected the driest and most resinous of the bits of wood and placed them carefully atop the paper. Finally, holding a wisp of the paper in his left hand, he anxiously drew the match head along the edge of the stove. The first attempt brought no result, but at the second there was a heartening little crackle and the match lighted. Jerry held the paper to it and then tucked the flaming torch down to the bottom of his pile. Success was instantaneous. So was smoke. By the time he had filled the tiny fire box with wood and slid the cover back on again it was necessary to seek the door. That something was radically wrong with the draft was very evident, but that was a small matter just then. The important thing was that he had heat to dry his clothing, and leaving his newly-discovered residence he hurried back for his possessions. He found them without trouble and returned to the cabin. The fire was burning most enthusiastically, the top of the stove was red-hot in places and the smoke poured merrily from every crevice.

Choking but happy, Jerry improvised a rack of a maple branch and hung his clothes over it. Twice it fell to the floor, but eventually he got it to stay, one end on the box nailed by the stove and the other poked into a crevice of the end wall. Then he gathered more fuel and heaped it conveniently by the stove. It began to be unpleasantly warm inside and he took his knife and went out again. Finding a straight, stiff branch an inch thick, he fell to work and severed it from the parent stem. Then he trimmed off the twigs at one end and began to cut smaller branches some two feet long. When he had enough of the latter he pulled some creeping vines from the soft, leafy earth, bringing the brown roots with them. The roots he cut off and then, holding the shorter branches around one end of the stick, he bound them there with the pliable tendrils. When his work was finished he had a very satisfactory broom, and, returning to the smoke-filled cabin, he set to work. Cobwebs, litter and dust were alike attacked, and presently he stopped, panting and gasping, and viewed with tear-filled eyes the result of his labor. The cabin looked quite respectable and Jerry’s heart warmed to it anew. With a bed over there――just a frame with branches and leaves piled on it――a couple of boxes for chairs and a table such as he could soon knock together with hatchet and nails, the place would be palatial! Perhaps Jerry didn’t use the word palatial, but it is what he meant.

Then he faced the problem of the smoky stove. There were no dampers save one halfway up the sagging pipe, and that experiment showed to be properly open. So he went outside and viewed the little chimney of cross sticks and clay. That, too, appeared to be all right save that the amount of blue smoke escaping from the top into the sunlight was about a quarter of what was going into the cabin! It was no task to squirm to the roof, and once there the mystery was solved. The opening of the chimney was choked with an accumulation of leaves and twigs, and when these were pulled out a veritable volcano of smoke followed. After that the little stove behaved very well, although it proved a most greedy consumer of fuel, and manipulation of the pipe damper appeared to have no effect on its appetite. However, fuel was plentiful and Jerry didn’t begrudge it. By this time his clothes, if not actually tinder-dry, were fit to put on again, and he dressed, disposed his watch and other treasures in their various pockets and considered his next undertaking.

Without a hatchet, however, there wasn’t much he could do. He looked at his watch, still going in spite of its recent immersion in the brook, and found that the time was just short of eleven. The distance from school was not more than two miles, he judged. He could return there, borrow a hatchet and some nails from Cicero, and get back in time to eat his lunch in his own dwelling. For Jerry no longer thought of the cabin as any one’s property save his! So, making sure that the fire was safe to leave, he started out, following the path that led down the hillock. The path brought him, as he had supposed it would, to the brook at a place some twenty yards beyond where he had crossed it so sensationally. But here there was a tree trunk athwart the stream, and its worn surface showed that it had been frequently used as a bridge. It looked rather rotten, but Jerry took a chance on it and crossed safely. The path turned to the left and wound through the woods in the general direction of the road. In some places it was hard to follow, since it had probably not been used in some time, and young shrubs and weeds had taken possession. But his wood lore carried him to the end and he came out on the road. He blazed a sapling at the entrance so that he might readily find it again and set forth for North Bank.

By the time he was back at the school his mental list of requirements had lengthened remarkably, and he spent nearly a half hour there collecting his articles. The hatchet and nails were speedily found, and so was a box of matches and a piece of harness strap, but a coffeepot and some coffee and a little sugar required time and diplomacy. Fortunately, the colored cook, an ancient, white-wooled darky, was good-natured, and Jerry’s explanation that he wanted to have a picnic in the woods and cook his own food aroused a sympathetic memory, perhaps. At all events, the colored woman found an old, discolored enamel-ware coffeepot after some search and poured a good half pound of coffee into it. The sugar went into a paper bag. Then Jerry became the recipient without intent of three eggs and a small slice of ham. At the cook’s suggestion, he made his way from the kitchen by the back entrance, thus escaping the likelihood of meeting the inquisitive gaze of such of the faculty as remained at school. He reached the stable by a circuitous route and gathered the rest of his load, which, at the last moment, was made to include an empty box. While he was within sight of the grounds――most of the boys were on the ball field――he swung the box carelessly in one hand, but later, on the road, he emptied his other loot into it and placed it comfortably on his head. Of course he remembered when he was halfway back to the cabin that he should have provided himself with a knife and fork and spoon, but those were things that for the present could be fashioned with a jackknife. The return trip was not so easy, for the sun was considerably warmer and it tired his arms to hold the box in place. Occasionally he shifted the latter to one shoulder or the other and brought relief to aching muscles. He missed the blaze and had to retrace his steps quite some distance before he found it. The half shade of the woods was a welcome relief after the glare of the road and he set down his burden and himself and rested. It was nearly half past twelve when the cabin came into sight once more and well after that time when a new fire had been built――at the expense of many matches, since he had neglected to bring more paper――and the old frying pan, thoroughly cleaned with sand and water, held the slice of ham and one of the eggs. Jerry decided to save the other two eggs against a future visit.

Coffee-making was a crude and expeditious ceremony with Jerry. He dumped about two tablespoonfuls of the ground coffee and the eggshell into the pot, half filled it with water from the brook, set it on the stove――and remembered that he had neither cup nor mug! That was a serious lack, but he decided that it wouldn’t keep him from having coffee for dinner; for he had begun to think of the impending feast as dinner rather than luncheon. Luncheon, anyway, was something Jerry had never heard of before coming to North Bank. At home a meal was one of four things, a breakfast, a dinner, a supper or a “snack,” and the present repast was far too hearty to deserve the name of snack. While the ham and egg frizzled cheerfully and the coffee began to ooze vapor from the blunt spout of the pot, Jerry set about fashioning utensils. A pointed stick served as a fork and a shovel-shaped stick as a spoon: he had a knife ready to hand. The empty box was placed bottom-up and became a table. On it Jerry spread his banquet: the sandwiches――a trifle soggy, but still appetizing――the cake of chocolate and, presently, the frying pan containing a sizzling slice of ham and a golden-and-white egg. The coffee pot, lid open, was placed at the doorway to cool while Jerry hungrily attacked the food. As the table was low, he took his place on the floor beside it. He wished that he had some drinking water, but there was nothing to hold it. Besides, he had somewhere read that it was not healthful to drink water with your meals!

So Jerry feasted, with the open door an oblong of golden sunlight and the window beside it a square of tender green, with the little stove cooling to an accompaniment of sharp cracking sounds and the ham still sizzling softly in the hot pan. He had set his “table” near the doorway for coolness, and presently, by the simple expedient of rolling over and rolling back again, he added the coffee to the repast. The first time he tried to drink it, after adding sugar and stirring it with his improvised spoon, he burned his lips against the rim of the pot. Even after that it was no easy matter, for the lid got in his way, but the coffee wasn’t half bad and he was satisfied. That meal tasted far better than had any meal for a long, long time, and when he had sopped up the last drop of ham fat with a last scrap of bread and drained the last drop of coffee――together with some of the grounds――he went out to the shade of the trees at the back of the hut and consumed his dessert. And when the cake of chocolate had gone the way of all else he went down the path and, sprawling on the log that crossed the brook, drank his fill of the cool, clear water.

Back at the cabin, he seated himself on the low sill and laid his plans, searching the near-by wood for material. Presently he was up again, hatchet in hand, and had set to work. The sun passed overhead and was well down the afternoon sky by the time he ceased. But the cabin had suffered quite a transformation. The door hung evenly on two hinges and, although there was no way to fasten it from without, bolted securely from the inside. In the end away from the stove was a low bed formed of green maple wood. For this he had cut two and three inch saplings and with them worked out a design of his own. Instead of trying to set the bed on upright legs, he took two lengths about four feet long and spread them in a wide V. Then he crossed them with a third piece two and a half feet in length and securely nailed it there. He repeated the operation and had “headboard” and “footboard.” His next task, that of securing side strips to the crosspieces, was not so easy, for his workbench, which had been a dining table an hour before, was too low, but he succeeded finally. Then, his two V’s having been inverted into A’s, he was ready for his slats. As he had fitted the upper ends of the slanting pieces forming the sides of the A’s together as closely as was possible with only a hatchet and a knife to work with, and nailed them so, the danger of the legs of his bed spreading was obviated. The more weight that was placed on them the closer they pressed together at the apex. There was, however, a tendency on the part of the bed to sway endwise, and this feature he had to remedy with braces running from side rails to legs, which to some extent marred the symmetry of the article. After that he laid inch-sized poles crosswise of the bed and, because the green wood split when he tried to nail it, bound them there with withes. In a way, while less secure, the withes were better since they allowed more play when Jerry experimentally stretched himself on the bed. Then he piled small branches atop his slats and went far afield for armfuls of bracken and ferns to top the whole. And when he had finished and again laid his now somewhat tired body down the result was so successful that he had hard work urging himself up again!

A table had been easier, though when the wood is green and your hatchet only fairly sharp, manufacturing furniture is something of a slow and tedious task, and long before he had finished the second article of his suit his arms were pretty tired. The table was not a very ambitious affair. It stood on four not overly straight legs, braced at the corners, and its top was formed of the bottom and one side of the empty box. When he set it up near the stove it wobbled badly, but, lacking a saw, he hadn’t the heart to tackle the task of making the legs even. That could wait for another day.

There was still work to be done, for coffeepot and skillet confronted him, and he took them rather tiredly down to the brook and cleaned them, setting them at last against the front of the cabin to dry in the sun. After a rest, ambition returned and he spent ten minutes gathering firewood and piling it beside the stove. On his next visit, he reflected, he might be glad to find fuel ready to his hand, especially if it should rain meanwhile. Having neither pencil nor fountain pen with him, he couldn’t set down as he wished he might the list of things he meant to bring back the next time: a saw, another empty box――two if he could manage them――more nails, plenty of stout cord, a pail for water, a padlock for the door, two tin cups, fork, knife and two spoons, a cake of soap――the list was interminable! And, of course, he must have food as well! In the end he took a piece of charcoal, wrenched another board from the vanishing box and wrote down everything he could think of. He would carry the board home with him and so have the list to refer to. He ended the visit by rebuilding the stone fireplace out front, and finally, when the spring shadows were lengthening, closed the door from the inside, shot the wooden bolt and squirmed through a window, carrying hatchet and board. So ended Jerry’s perfect day; perfect save for one slight mishap. In carrying the board home Jerry tucked it under one arm and when, later, he tried to read his list there was nothing there to read!