Читать книгу Tomboy Bride, 50th Anniversary Edition - Harriet Fish Backus - Страница 17

CHAPTER 7

In good time my ordering of supplies was systemized so one delivery would last a month helped out by a store of extras, Maryland oysters shipped frozen in cans, canned salmon, chicken, and turkey which I kept on hand. George had a ravenous appetite requiring plenty of bacon at breakfast, an abundance of meat in his lunch bucket and for dinner. My monthly order list of meat generally included two legs of mutton (I remembered not to ask for lamb), three dozen veal, pork, and mutton chops, half a ham, a slab of bacon, several beef steaks, two roasts of beef, and a beef tongue.

We hung the meat from the rafters in the woodshed where it quickly froze solid. If I required small pieces, I tackled the job armed with both a butcher’s and a carpenter’s saw, whacking and slashing, “geeing” off there until I was exhausted. Too often the result was a hunk of meat a quarter inch thick on one side, two inches on the other. Sometimes I had only shreds, especially when trying to slice bacon.

Our canned fruits and vegetables, the best to be obtained then would not be acceptable now. Unbelievable improvement has been achieved in canning. We bought fruit, vegetables, and milk by the case. Occasionally two or three neighbors divided a case of something special to vary the monotony without investing too much. Canned food and eggs were allowed to freeze, but never potatoes or oil.

Ice cream, such as it was, often was our dessert. I merely poured the ingredients into a can, buried it in the snow stirring it occasionally. Chocolate or caramel flavor disguised the taste of canned milk. Chocolate and leftovers from dinner were kept on the end of a kitchen shelf.

One morning I couldn’t find a baked potato, left from the night before, which I wanted to fry for breakfast.

“George, did you see that baked potato I put on the shelf last night? It certainly isn’t there now!”

“No,” he called as he dressed for work, “I didn’t see it.”

“I can’t understand it,” I continued. “I’ve been missing several things lately. Yesterday I was certain that I had some Baker’s chocolate left, but last night I couldn’t find that either. It’s mighty strange because I have no other place to put those things.”

George had a strenuous day at the mill and that night we went to bed early. I was not long asleep when a noise woke me. Something was running around in the springs of our bed. Not moving a muscle I listened. Good heavens! Thump, thump, like the sound of a hammer but a hammer moving rapidly from head to foot of our bed. I grabbed George who was in a deep sleep. As he slowly woke up I whispered, “There’s something in the springs of this bed. What in the world is it?” I did not know whether to jump out of bed or play possum and not alarm this thing until George investigated.

Half asleep George listened, then sat bolt upright.

“Must be the packrats the old prospector told me about.”

“Rats!” I shouted. “How horrible.”

George got up and turned on the light. Instantly all was silent. Then we sat in bed with the light on, waiting. Where did they come from, and how did they vanish without our seeing them?

“Thank goodness they’re gone,” I said.

“There were two of them at least,” George said. “We must have scared them away by turning on the light. Don’t be afraid, honey. The miners say they never bother people.”

“But I don’t like the idea of rats under the bed. It’s terrible.”

George turned off the light and we settled down again but only for a few minutes. Back came the uncanny invaders bustling under the mattress, busy as bees.

Again George turned on the light and again the rats scooted away before we could see them. For the rest of the night we left the light burning and heard no more from our unwelcome callers.

But in the morning we both stared in amazement at the floor. Stretching from the kitchen through the diminutive bedroom and on across the denim carpet into the parlor was a train of kindling wood from the box beside the kitchen stove and our silver spoons, knives, and forks all crisscrossed in pairs as neatly as though I had arranged them myself.

This decorative project was repeated night after night. As soon as we were asleep, having abandoned racing up and down in the bedsprings, these clever rodents busied themselves silently with a soldierly formation of kindling and cutlery on the entire length of the floor. One morning there was an extra touch. A twenty-five-cent piece that had been in a small glass dish on the table the night before, now lay like a medal in line with the rest. Through all their work we had not heard a sound.

I longed to be transformed by some good fairy into an owl and perch in a corner to watch these dexterous creatures laying our kindling and flatware so silently and neatly in a chosen design. But longing was futile. I never saw our visitors. To this day I wonder why they went to such an effort and how it was achieved. They gained nothing by their hard work.

Johnny Midwinter who knew considerably about them could not explain why the packrats did what they did, but he knew how they did it.

“They are the cleverest devils I’ve ever known,” he said. “They’re about fifteen inches long from the tips of their noses to the end of their tails. The tails are long and are very bushy and look larger than their bodies. My partner and I had a great time with packrats. One year we were prospecting beyond Imogene Basin, living in an old cabin that had a loft.” He paused, as though recapturing old memories. “Yes, old Tim and I thought we had found a mine and we worked hard but it didn’t pan out. But the damn packrats sure gave us a bad time. We were always looking for missing things. We stored a crate of eggs in the loft and when we were ready to use them there wasn’t a single egg left in the crate. Those devils had carried every egg down that ladder and it was ten feet high.”

I smiled at him, “You’re just trying to make a monkey out of me.”

“No, I swear it. That’s the gospel truth. They can do harder things than that,” he said.

“But how could they carry eggs down a ladder?” I questioned.

“Well, we didn’t actually see them do it. But we’d seen them carry things over boxes. They work in pairs. One holds whatever they are stealing between its two front paws and the other drags him by the tail. And are they quick! By God, they move just like that!” He snapped his horny fingers.

It was hard to believe but all miners told the same stories, men whom we had no reason to doubt, and before it was ended we were convinced packrats are invisible and unbelievably smart. Yet we wanted to be rid of these nimble, resourceful inhabitants of the high country before they multiplied. We set traps but had no luck. We didn’t want to use poison lest they’d go near the house to die.

“Next time I hear them in the woodshed I’ll shoot them,” George declared boldly one day. Knowing he was anything but a marksman with a gun I had my doubts. However, next night, there came a low whisper from the shed: “Shssh! Bring the gun. I can see the eyes of a rat and I don’t want to lose sight of him,” and George prepared for the “kill.”

I had a terrific fear of guns. Nevertheless, I tiptoed to the rarely used pistol and cautiously holding it at arm’s length crept back to where George stood like a statue, glaring at one spot. Fingers stuffed into my ears I backed away, waiting, watching. George raised the gun and pointed it. The pair of eyes had vanished!

He turned toward another corner where eyes were gleaming and aimed again. I waited for the “bang.” Nothing happened. The beady shining eyes were gone before he could pull the trigger. George gave up.

“There’s only one way to catch ’em,” said Charley, the powder-monkey who each morning drove his sled to a small shed nearby to pick up blasting powder for the shifts. “If you’ll do what I say you’ll get rid of them damn things. Cut the top off an oil can and half fill it with water. Then balance two sticks across the top so they overlap a little. Tie the ends together loosely with a piece of cheese on top. How the devil they get up onto the sticks I don’t know, but they do. When they get to the middle they’ll drop in and drown, sure as hell.”

George came home that night, changed his work clothes, and, as usual, set his high leather boots behind the stove ready for the next day. After dinner he painstakingly carried out Charley’s instructions, placing the can in the kitchen. Thank goodness we’d now be rid of the other inhabitants of our shack. We were certain because George tested the sticks with his fingers and they flipped easily at a touch. With the trap all set, we went to bed.

I don’t like to see drowned creatures, even rats, so in the morning I waited for George to dispose of the victim. Then, hearing no cry of triumph, I cautiously looked. George was standing beside the oil can with a look of amazement on his face.

“Look!” he gasped. “The sticks are balanced exactly as I fixed them but the cheese is gone and so is the rat! How could he walk along that tottering stick and not fall in? I give up, I give up!”

Dismayed and discouraged he finished dressing and reached behind the stove for his boots. He shoved a foot into one and it struck a snag. Running his hand down inside the boot to the toe, he pulled out—the missing cheese!

Some weeks after the failure of the rat trap, I invited four friends for afternoon tea, a social highlight in the Savage Basin. That afternoon as I saw Beth coming up the hill pulling her precious Billy in a box on runners, the sled Jim had made, I hurried down to help.

The baby was a picture in his bright red snowsuit with peaked cap and mittens to match, tucked in deeply with a heavy white fur robe, his shining eyes and cold-pinked cheeks framed by the fur.

We chatted about everything over the teacups: cooking, sewing, our families, etc. Everything except styles and fashions. The latest addition to the group was soft-spoken Martha Snyder, wife of the man then establishing a branch of the Y.M.C.A. that we were to boast was “the highest Y in the world.”

“How is the Y getting along?” Beth asked.

“Hal thinks everything will work out nicely,” Martha said. “The company is very cooperative. Mr. Herron is going to put up a small building long enough for a bowling alley. And the national Y will furnish us with a small but good organ and song books. Hal says quite a few men have signed up already.”

We discussed the Y project and then the Sunday School that Grace Driscoll was starting in another month. The roster would contain the names of nine or ten children when the Frazier children returned including little Billy and the Matson baby.

“And mine,” cried Edna Caplinger, laughing and proud of the child within her. “I’ll be going down to the hospital in a few days. I thought I never would get up this hill today.”

Kate Botkin, guarding Thyra from the reaching hands of Billy who was fascinated by the dog’s eyes and nose, kept us entertained with her cheerful witticisms. When we began speaking of families and native states, I wanted to show them pictures of mine in California and George’s in the state of Washington. His parents lived there long before it became a state. The pictures were under the couch on which Beth sat and she rose to let me pull out the box.

Reaching into it I touched something rubbery and jerked back my hand. Reluctantly I held the box of pictures and said nothing but handed out some, commenting on them, until I cleared away enough to see what I had touched—something very obnoxious I was certain.

“Oh, look here!” I shouted.

I had uncovered an accumulation of old baked potatoes, pieces of cheese, and some chocolate. In unison came the shout “Rats!” From experience the girls knew the culprits. It made fascinating conversation until the party broke up. I heard more incredible stories of packrat ingenuity and achievement but no one could tell why the rats hid the food instead of eating it.

The wind had risen and was blowing in strong gusts. Beth tucked Billy into his sled and set out for home, but the minute she stepped on the icy trail she lost her footing and her hold on the sled rope. Like a flash the sled sped down and before our horrified eyes landed upside-down at the foot of the hill.

“Run, Harriet, run!” Beth screamed, waving her arms wildly but her legs unable to move, petrified from fright. “Billy’s been killed!”

Without snowshoes and with my long skirts entangling my legs I lunged down in huge strides through deep snow. My frigid hands pawed for the sled and turned it right side up. I feared and dreaded what I would find. There was Billy, looking up, a bewildered smile on his face, but chuckling happily.