The Unseen Hand; or, James Renfew and His Boy Helpers

by Elijah Kellogg

James rather exceeded the instructions of Emily, and raised the wall high enough to make a good chamber above; laid the floor with boards, and made a ladder to reach it.

He went seven miles to a limekiln and brought lime in the pockets of the pack-saddle, that would contain half a bushel each, and built a fireplace and chimney of stones, with the chimney at the end of the camp and outside, thus affording more room.

The camp was twenty feet long by twelve wide; he put a bark partition across at thirteen feet, leaving a room of seven feet by twelve. This room he divided by a bark partition into a bedroom and a storeroom; the doors were a bear’s skin and a blanket hung up. His single glazed window and two windows filled with oiled paper were put in the kitchen, as there all the spinning, weaving and sewing was to be done, and the most light would be needed. In the intervals of hoeing he cleared a road to the highway, and made it passable with wheels by great labor and two days’ help from Prescott and his boys.

Haying and wheat harvest were now at hand. There was not a pair of wheels in the whole section of country in which James lived; the settlers hauled their hay and grain on sleds, or carried it on poles and hand-barrows. James contrived a singular vehicle for the present necessity. He hewed out two pieces of tough ash eighteen feet in length, fashioned one end of each into the form of cart-arms, and by pouring on hot water bent the other ends to a half circle; he then spread them the width of a sled, put cross-bar and whiffletree on, and two stakes behind the cross-bar and some light slats across. The trouble now was in respect to a harness; the rope traces did as well as leather, but the breastplate of cedar-bark needed constant renewal, and he had neither saddle or lugs to support the arms. He put a torch on the stem of the birch, paddled about five miles up the creek in the night, and shot a deer that attracted by the light came to the water’s edge. With this rough hide he went to Prescott, who had shoemaker’s tools, and by doubling the hide made a breastplate that would bear all the horse could pull; he also made lugs to support the arms and put them over the pack-saddle, and on this he hauled hay and grain, and even stones; it went much easier than a sled would have done, because there was less surface to drag on the ground, and a good portion of the weight was on the horse’s back. As he had neither barn nor threshing-floor, when his grain was ripe he threshed it on a platform of timber placed on the ground, and the hovel being filled with hay, stored it in the kitchen as a makeshift, and went to ask advice of Prescott, who he knew began very poor and had passed through many similar exigencies.

“You may put it in my barn, Mr. Renfew, but there is a better method than that. There are a great many emigrants passing along the valley of the Susquehannah going west, and a good many settling round the mouth of the creek. They want supplies. Grain and pork have gone up, and the miller is buying all the old corn and grain he can get to grind, and all the new wheat, and storing it for a rise. I have no doubt you could sell it.”

The next day James received a letter from Bertie, who informed him that during the winter his father and Peter had made him a wagon to move with, and his mother had woven the cloth to cover it, and as he was not much of a mechanic he was going to paint it as his share of the work.

James wrote Bertie to thank his father and mother and Peter, and to ask his father to put in a tongue suitable for cattle to work, as he should move with oxen.

He now went to the mill and sold his wheat for ninety cents, and carried it down in the birch; it measured sixty bushels. He brought back some flour, cornmeal, a grindstone, pork, and a keg of molasses.

“This is better than living on the Monongahela,” said James to himself; “there wheat won’t pay to carry over the mountains or down the Ohio, but it will pay to carry it yourself in a birch down a creek.”

He now dug a potato hole in which to store his potatoes for the winter, and built over it a log house eight feet in width and fourteen in length, underpinned it, and pointed the underpinning with lime mortar, hewed the logs at top and bottom, put on a bark roof and laid a floor with flattened poles, and made a good door with wooden hinges and latch and two windows closed by shutters; here he put all his tools and traps, intending to make at some future time a workshop of it, and for the present it served as a convenient storehouse and protected his potatoes from freezing, otherwise he must have covered them with such a depth of earth that it would have been difficult to get at them during the winter.