CHAPTER IV
“The wilderness allus seems full o’ spectres ’n’ creepin’ crawlin’ panthers. Sometimes I think it’s God, an’ then agin, the devil.”–Old Cy Walker.
Tim’s Place, this refuge in the wilderness, cleared and colonized by Tim Connor, was neither better nor worse than such pioneer openings in Nature’s domain are apt to be. Tim, a hardy Irishman of sod-hovel and potato-diet ancestors, had been blacksmith for a lumber camp on this broad river and at its junction with a tributary called the Fox Hole years before Chip was born.
When all the adjacent lumber was cut and sent down this river, the camp was abandoned, and then Tim saw his opening. With his precious winter’s wages he purchased a large tract of this now worthless land, induced a robust Bridget, his brother Mike, and his consort to join fortunes with him, brought in cows, horses, pigs, and poultry, and began farming with the lumber camp as domicile.
Another log cabin was soon added, the first crop of potatoes sold readily to other lumbermen farther in the wilderness, the pigs in a sty adjacent to his own throve, the poultry multiplied, children came, and the red-shirted men coming into the wilderness or going out found Tim’s Place convenient.
With this added business came an enlargement in Tim’s ideas, the outcome of which was a framed house containing a kitchen and dining room and half a dozen others of closet-like proportions, furnished with box-on-legs beds. It was not a pretentious hostelry. Paint, shutters, and carpets were absent, benches served for chairs, the only mirror in it was eight by twelve inches, and used in common by Bridget and Mary. The toilet conveniences consisted of a wash-basin in the kitchen sink and a “last year’s” towel, used semi-occasionally. A long table bare of cloth and set with tinware served in the dining room, warmed in winter by a round sheet-iron stove; above it usually hung an array of socks and mittens, and a capacious cook stove half filled the kitchen. It was the crudest possible backwoods abode, and yet compared to the log cabin first occupied by Tim, it was a palace, and he was proud of it.
In autumn swarms of lumbermen halted there, content to sleep on the floor if need be. In spring they came again, log-driving down stream; later a few sportsmen occasionally tried it, and all fared alike.
There was no sentiment about Tim. If the citified fishermen objected to what they found, “Be gob, you kin kape away,” he readily told them. A quarter for each meal, or a night’s lodging, was the price, whether a bed or the floor was provided, and from early spring until frost came, all the occupants went barefoot.
When snow had made the sixty miles of log road to the nearest settlement passable, Tim invariably journeyed hither with horse and bob-sled for clothing and supplies.
No knowledge or news from the world reached here, unless brought by chance visitors. Sundays were an unknown factor, the work of clearing land and potato-raising became a continuous performance from spring until autumn; and the change of seasons, the rise and fall of the river, were the only measure of time.