Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 3
III
“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Tom, “we are now about to attempt the bold feat of reaching the second floor of the house of the Ranch of the Pointed Firs. Having myself once successfully made the ascent of the architectural Matterhorn leading to that region, I am prepared by that experience to act as your guide. First, allow me to inquire, are you all wearing shoes with hobnails and cleats? Very good. The ladies will need alpenstocks,” handing us each a bed-slat. His glance just then falling upon a coil of rope used during the process of moving, his face lighted with the sudden thought of further absurdity.
“That the exploit upon which we are embarking is a perilous one, I will not deny. To guard against accidents and possible loss of life, it is necessary that we should be firmly bound one to another with this rope. Reverend Chadband, allow me to begin with you,” deftly twining the cord around the waist of Bert, whose clerical title had been suggested by his having recently donned a very old and dilapidated Prince Albert coat.
Our self-constituted guide, having gravely bound us together and tied the rope about his own person, looked us over with gratified pride.
“We are now, I think, in proper climbing trim. An X-ray worn as a miner’s lamp would prove serviceable, but may be dispensed with. Forward, march!”
We filed out on a long narrow porch, the surface of which had a thick slippery coating, caused by continual rains. It was as slippery as if both greased and soaped. An iron rake leaning against the wall gave to our careful leader another inspiration. Passing it to Bert, he remarked, “If our esteemed brother will insert the iron teeth of this implement in the girdle of the rear lady, giving it a secure twist, it may be of invaluable service to us when the actual ascent begins.” The “brother” complied with cheerful alacrity, especially as to the “secure twist.”
At the end of the porch a door opened into a dark closet. Directly opposite was an extremely narrow stairway, almost as nearly perpendicular as a fire-escape, with sides roughly boarded up. It was as dark as Erebus, with not a ray of light except a faint glimmer from above. Looking up this black funnel, Tom’s elaborate preparations seemed less preposterous. He now called out, “Brother Chadband, is the hoisting apparatus in position?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” was the unclerical response.
“Very well; now, ladies, cling bravely to the rope. Plant your alpenstocks firmly with each advancing step. Be cool, be calm. Keep your eyes fixed upon the summit, and don’t look back.”
Strictly obeying instructions, we had scarcely got under way before our guide halted. “Perhaps, if the ladies feel up to it, a bit of yodelling might relieve the tedium of the ascent and add much to its realism.”
As the ladies were now laughing hysterically, they were hardly “up to it.” The ever-willing Chadband, however, was equal to the emergency. An oily voice was heard saying, “I myself, carnal vessel that I am, will essay a few joyful notes unto these hills.” Whereupon arose a sound of lamentation not unlike the lonely howling of a distant wolf, broken at intervals by a shrill war-whoop. By steady pulling from above and violent shoving from below, we were finally landed in a heap upon the floor, in the centre of a big, garret-like room, dimly lighted by one small, dusty, cobwebby window. While being released from bondage, our guide remarked, as he glanced around, “We are now in the Cave of the Winds, a locality rarely visited by the ordinary tourist; those glittering stalactites above our heads are Nature’s own formation.” It was a true statement, the stalactites being long rows of yellow seed-corn strung on wires. A couple of bottomless chairs, a few joints of rusty stovepipe, and an old scythe with a broken blade, hanging over one of the rafters, completed the attractions.
We were very eager for a glimpse of the adjoining apartment, as we had been told it was built and had been used exclusively as a ball-room. Just think of it,— we were about to visit our own private ball-room! Do you wonder that our hearts swelled with pride as we entered that hall of many past festivities? It certainly was spacious,—twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a truly beautiful smooth floor. It was rather cheerful, too, lighted by four windows. An immense alder stood so near the eastern windows that its leafless branches trailed across their panes. A rose-bush had climbed half-way up its trunk and was swinging gracefully from its boughs, still fresh and green. From the west we looked straight into the encircling arms of a glorious big fir tree.
Between two of the windows was a slightly elevated platform, upon which stood a nail-keg, which we inferred had been used as a seat for the long-ago musician, as an empty violin case still leaned pathetically against it. Here were also an iron bootjack and a perforated tin lantern, suggestive of tight wet boots and dark nights. The room was simply boarded up, with no ceiling, but merely rafters and shingles overhead. Starting from the musician’s stand, were rough board seats extending around the room, supported by blocks of wood. Shallow boxes were nailed to the walls, each containing a small kerosene lamp. Near one of the windows hung a long narrow mirror, framed in cheap red, now badly scratched and marred. Lying beneath this was a set of quilting-frames, which gave us the idea that a quilting-party sometimes preceded the dance. In one corner of the room was a pile of abandoned rubbish,—fragments of an old loom, and many broken and disabled farming implements. Tom, delving among these relics, suddenly shouted: “Hello! I’ve found the ‘Entailed Hat.’ It wasn’t buried with that old duffer, after all.” He certainly had unearthed the most antiquated specimen of headgear ever seen outside the walls of a museum,—a faded brown beaver, with wide brim and high bell-shaped crown, which he was jamming in here and bulging out there, with a view of restoring its original shape. “It’s been a dandy in its day,” he commented, as he smoothed its frowsy surface, “and it’s not a bad tile yet. I don’t know but I might wear it myself on Sundays, walking about in the holy calm, looking over my possessions. How do I look, Bert?” he asked, having donned it and pulled it well down over his ears.
“Well, if I must answer, I should say you look a composite of Guy Fawkes, Puritan father, and Buffalo Bill, with perhaps just a dash of Oregon farmer,” replied the reverend joker.
While this by-play was going on, I had been trying to burnish the old mirror’s cloudy surface, finding the bluish haze was there to stay. I thought of the antique mirror of which Hawthorne tells us, that hung in the old Province House,—the one old Esther Dudley so often stood before, leaning upon her gold-headed staff, seeing pass across its blurred surface in shadowy procession the pomp and pageantry of the past. As the others came up, I said,—
“We have a real treasure here!”
“It looks it,” said one.
“I find it is an enchanted mirror; it possesses magical properties, and if one stood here at just the right hour she would see crossing its dim surface the shades of all the dead and gone revellers this old room has ever known.”
“Do you reckon, if a fellow should come up here about the witching hour of twelve in the dark of the moon, with a rabbit’s foot in each hand—”
“Hush, foolish scoffer! even now they come—”
“Well, they’re in a mighty big hurry. You tell ’em we ain’t fixed up at all; that we are sleeping on the floor, and—”
“Behold, a great, swarthy, athletic young mountaineer, tall and straight as his native pines—”
“Gee whiz! Must be a hundred feet high!”
“Don’t interrupt, please; remember, there were giants in those days. They quickly pass. But what strange figures are these stealthily gliding through the gray shadows?”
“Injins, I’ll bet you! Are they togged up in fringed buckskin and moccasins, with a lot of danglin’ beads and feather fixin’s?”
“Alas! Shocked by your skepticism, they recede. Ah! they are gone!”
“Good! Let the old spooks go! Say, let’s try a waltz; this old floor is a daisy.” And then, the spirit of folly being in full possession, if you could have looked through the windows of this old garret, you would have seen four elderly figures half veiled in dust gliding and whirling up and down the long room, while the rain rattled like hail upon the shingles. We thought we did it fairly well, with the exception, as Tom said, of “breathin’ a little ’ard, like the young recruit at the ’angin’ of Danny Deever.”
“Now for a schottische,” he cried, as he began whistling “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
“Oh, Tom, that’s too awfully plebeian!”
“Plebeian? That’s just where you’re wrong. The ‘shortish’ was mighty popular in airly days.”
The cuckoo below, just then chiming out the noon hour, nipped this discussion, and quickly restored our lost sanity.
“Twelve o’clock!” said Mary, excitedly. “Who could have thought we had idled away a whole hour in this idiotic fashion? I truly believe, if we had been caught at this nonsense, we would all have been clapped into strait-jackets and carted off to the madhouse!”
Tom rushed across the room to the corner of odds and ends, and hung the old hat on the top of a hoe handle, hurriedly remarking, “Mr. Milburn, revered though in visible shade, I return your valuable inheritance, thanking you kindly for its loan. The inaugural ball is now over. Lights will be turned off at once. Follow me—fly!” And he dashed through the Cave of the Winds, and dropped into the hole in the floor, shouting back through the darkness, “Shoot the chute everybody!”
Prosaic duties were awaiting us below. The men hurried off in search of fuel,—just then one of our most crying needs. We busied ourselves with preparations for cooking our first dinner by a fireplace. Potatoes were buried in the ashes, and then covered with a nice warm blanket of coals. Onions were given the same treatment, after being partially peeled and wrapped in white tissue-paper. Fiery coals were raked out to make a hot-box for the teakettle. A row of fine apples was placed on the hearth at proper distance from the heat. Then the perspiring cooks rushed to the door for air and to cool their blistered faces. We agreed that cooking by an open fire was interesting as a new experience, but that in time it might pall upon one. In a surprisingly short time, however, the apples turned a golden brown, plumped up and burst open, their escaping juices bubbling into white foam. “Done!” said the experts, as they were placed in a dish and given a liberal powdering of sugar. Then, with well-bandaged hand, and face shielded by the dustpan, one of the brave pioneers volunteered to exhume the potatoes. They were found, like the apples, to be roasted to the Queen’s taste, were taken by the assistant chef and carefully folded in a napkin, while the red-eyed explorer probed the next mound. This proved to be less satisfactory; the onions were yielding but slowly to their doom. More coals were added. Thin slices of ham were laid across the bars of the wire toaster and broiled beautifully, coffee was made, and the dry-goods box given a real table-cloth in honor of the occasion. At each plate was a spray of buckthorn,—a lovely, dark, waxen leaf, in color and shape like holly.
When the onions did give in, they did it handsomely. Upon removing their wrappers, we found a soft, pulpy mass, which, when seasoned and buttered, was delicious. The gentlemen pronounced the dinner good enough to satisfy the most epicurean taste. We bowed our burning heads in acknowledgment of the compliment. We couldn’t blush; our crimson faces could take no deeper tint.
After three days of this underground cooking we struck. But one loaf of bread remained, and we were much too amateurish to attempt bread-baking over the coals or under them; so we said decisively, “To-morrow morning that range goes up or we go out.”