The idea I mentioned yesterday might work. It had better, at any rate, as I spent all of this day devoted to it. I reached the point of no return today. I stripped the canvas cover off the wagon. I have not seen our wagon thus since the week we started west.
Papa had finished outfitting the wagon with the various built-in cupboards and hooks, inside and out, and the cover, a used one he bought from someone who knew someone who had decided not to go on their own journey, had proven too short all the way around. He debated for a time whether to cut the ribs down, but decided that since he and the boys are tall and I am not terribly short for a girl, we might as well have the extra eight or so inches of height.
So what did he do? Without even asking if I might be up to the task, he hired Martha McGovern to sew extra canvas around the base. I could have done it, but admittedly she did a decent job of it, maybe better than I would have. Before I declare her work too wonderful, I will see how it holds up over time.
Martha is an interesting creature, and if Papa was not my Papa I might be more inclined to like her. Though she is clearly younger than Papa (and older than me), I believe she set her cap on Papa and would have done about anything he asked of her. I bet she wanted him to ask her to come along on the trip. I know she made all manner of twittery remarks about it. And now that I think on it, if she had—which means Papa would
have married her—she might well be here with me now. For good or ill, I know not which. That is a trail I do not want my mind to wander down.
At any rate, Papa and I measured and measured for hours to make sure he bought the correct amount of extra canvas. “There is no going back once this cover is in the works,” he’d said, winking.
I think Papa was at his happiest since Mama died when he was planning the journey, readying everything we might need. And now that I think back on it, I do wonder if he was even aware of Martha McGovern’s affections for him? Now I feel cruel and small in my remarks. But what’s done is done.
I dragged the cover down the slope to the nest. It took much doing to arrange it atop my frame and then it did not sit right. No matter how I rearranged it, the thing fought me like an ornery child. Of course it did not help that it was meant for something that resembled a loaf of tall-risen bread and my nest is anything but that shape.
A brief snow squall told me I did not have all the time in the world to play with the canvas, as the edges lifted and flopped in the breeze. I jammed dirt clods against the outside edges to hold it in place. That is when my second best idea of the day came to me. Laying enough clods on it all ’round, I was able to keep the canvas in place. Then I layered more and more clods, cutting into the hillside behind the nest as I went. I figure the wind will come from the other direction most often, the north and east, so I dug into that slope.
It was tiring work but I managed to get enough dirt clods layered on the thing, right on top of the canvas. I don’t mind saying that I began to get excited. It was shaping up to be stout, and the walls fairly thick. Inside I reckoned I could do as I wished with it, and I will. In fact, I might add dirt to the inside, too, depending on how much time and strength I have left.
But for now, though it is a misshapen thing, it is stout. Unless my poles suddenly give way with the weight of the clods, I suspect I have built something sturdy enough to protect me until Papa and the boys return. Perhaps other help will come in the meantime.
Beneath the dirt clods there is the layer of canvas. I do feel badly it has become so soiled, but I needed it and that is that. Beneath the canvas there is my frame of logs and poles and crosspieces woven with green boughs and anything else I could find that would bend. I decided to go up on the sides with clods only as high as I can reach. I am ashamed to say my strength isn’t what it was, what with the cold and trying to preserve food.
The way the frame is built above that, there isn’t much of a roof. It is not unlike a tipi, as we saw here and there on our journey. I recall thinking those Indians looked so very poor and miserable. Not a one of them did smile our way. I am quite certain I made up for this with my own grinning. Thomas told me I looked like the monkey in that book we used to own. At the time I wanted to box his ears, but now it seems a sweetenough comment. I will save the ear-boxing for a later date.
At the top I was able to arrange the canvas so smoke from the stove will make its way once again up through its pipe and out the metal ring, as it had been in the wagon. It took no end of configuring, though. I don’t know how it will be affected by snow. I dare say I will find out soon.
The space inside is not large, but it feels well insulated, or will, given all the sod I stacked and will continue to stack against the outside. It should hold heat well. At least better than the thin wood of the wagon.
I will cut pine boughs for the floor and arrange them so they will be fragrant and feel like cushions beneath my feet. That is my plan. As I have discovered lately, my plans don’t always end up appearing as I intend them. I take comfort that I have accomplished what I set out to do so far. There is some satisfaction in that.
At this point in the construction of the nest, the day was aging, as Papa often calls late afternoon. So I began the long task of carrying to the nest everything I would need from the wagon. The first would be the stove.
I had not reckoned on how heavy that little steel pig really is. I made certain my fire from the morning tea was out and the stove cold, then I pulled apart the pipe and leaned it outside against the wagon. Not having canvas walls on the wagon was a blessing at this point as I could toss items right out between the arched wood ribs that look how I imagine a whale’s bones might.
I managed to push and pull the stove to the end of the wagon. The tailgate was flopped down so I stagger-walked that stove to the back edge of the wagon and I set it down, but too far. It toppled with a godawful crash right to the ground. My heart wedged in my neck and I swear it stopped thudding for all of five seconds.
I jumped down beside the stove, expecting to find it cracked and broken and a smoke leaker far worse than it had been. But do you know what I found? It was fine, no damage at all. It helped that the ground is low and muddy there at the tailgate.
My next task was to move it the twenty feet to the slope, then down to the shelter. I took off the pieces that came apart easily—the lid and the door, which is on pin hinges. Then I bent to lift it, but found I could not. So I grabbed a bloody tarpaulin, folded it up, and rolled the stove onto it. Then I gathered the edges in my hand and dragged it backward. I found that by wedging my heels in the sloppy earth I was able to drag it several feet at a time. I tired right fast, though, and as I was nearly sitting on the ground after that last tug, I plopped down and rested.
I contemplated rolling it the rest of the way, but saw I was nearly to the top of the slope. That worried me. What if I could not slow it as it went down the slope? Surely such a rolling tumble would break the stove apart.
“Now, Janette,” I said, for I have taken to talking out loud to myself. Papa always says you meet nicer people that way. “What you need to do is let the stove and canvas work for you.” But how?
I walked around the contraption, and snapped my fingers. I had it. I pulled some of the tarp out from under itself so it was twice as big, then draped it over the stove. I grabbed the four corners, two to a hand, then I commenced to dragging again. It did not take long to reach the top of the slope.
Then as the weight of the stove nearly upset the apple cart, so to speak, I scrambled back around until I was on the upside of it. The weight of the stove kept pulling the bundle downslope, but I stayed upslope of it, jamming my heels in to slow it. In this manner we reached the bottom, me and the stove. Then came the hard part.
I made my door to the shelter quite high up on the wall, thinking it might be necessary should the snow build up. That storm had told me it would likely get deep. But how to get the stove all the way up there? I didn’t think I could yarn it up there by tugging on the corners of the tarp.
Once again I had to set down and give it a think. This time I rested on the stove itself. I drummed on it with a hand wearing a holey sock. What to do?
It took another couple of minutes, but I am pleased to say I figured it out. I rolled the stove off the tarp, unfolded the bloodstained thing to its full size, and dragged one end inside the door. Then I climbed back out and down that bloodstained thing.
From the outside it looked like a great tongue sticking out of a tiny open mouth. I rolled the stove back onto the tarp. Then I grabbed the two corners, climbed over the little steel hog, and back inside. Once inside I pulled on the tarp, walking to the other side of the shelter. That didn’t take but two strides.
I gathered more tarp and kept at it, each pull more difficult. Sure enough, it worked. Soon enough I saw the stove coming up to the hole as if it were peeking in at me.
“Hello, little stove. Welcome.”
But that is about as far as the fun went, because I didn’t have any idea how to get it inside and down to the floor. It was held in place by my own strength and my arms shook something fierce. I had to make a decision, and quick. So I gave the thing a mighty tug, then one more, and one more after that . . . and there was a second when I didn’t feel any more pull from the stove and I said to myself, “Oh, Janette, this is all going to go badly.”
But it didn’t, other than the crash of the stove to the floor of my little shelter. It was dim in there, the only real light coming in from the top where the smoke hole was and from the doorway, neither hole of much size. But they shed enough light to let me know the little stove was muddy and messy but not broken.
I was steamed up by then, so I muckled onto it and managed to walk it like a crawfish over to the spot it needed to be. Close enough, anyway. I patted it, sat on it, and rested. Then climbed back out through that doorway and retrieved the rest of its parts. And that is the story of how the little stove made it from the wagon to the nest.
Of course, only after all that work did it come to me I could have avoided a whole lot of work if I had put more planning into the venture. I could have dragged that stove all the way down there before I built the nest. When I thought of that, I had a laugh. A real belly laugh like I’d not had in a month of Sundays.
I’d like to say the rest of it went smoothly, and for the most part it did, but I ran out of daylight and since I had to spend the night in the new shelter, there were more things to do on the list in my mind that I had time to do them. I was not able to cut pine boughs for the floor that first night, but I did arrange a trunk and two crates to serve as a bed of sorts. It would be a luxury to stretch out fully and sleep like God intended me to. I made sure the quilts all stayed off the muddy floor.
The larger items, such as the trunk, I had to empty and carry the innards down over many loads. I dared not leave anything up by the wagon that I could not bear losing or that might get soiled should we get snow in the night. What I could not bring, I covered with that grubby tarp. I prayed as I made my last load down to the nest that the critters would not be interested in it that night.
Turns out I ended up having to leave a fair number of goods up at the wagon, mostly spare tools, a second bucket, the wash basin, the larger of the two Dutch ovens—cooking for myself I have little need of the one I use, let alone two of them. They are items that will not be bothered by a little hard water (Papa’s words for snow). I managed to cover them well enough with that tarp.
The most work I put into ferrying goods to the nest, after the heavy little stove, of course, was the salted meat. But I most definitely daren’t leave that out for the critters. By now it gives off no scent of blood or meat smell that I am aware of. I know dogs, which must include wolves and coyotes and whatnot, can sniff much better than humans, but I did my best to cover it up well inside the nest.