Page 22 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

The Butler family, consisting of the parents, this girl of seven and a boy of five, had come to this country in a pickup. To show how shiftless Butler was, he had traded the pickup for a horse and some supplies, had traded the horse for a rifle and a few supplies, had traded the rifle for a revolver and some food and proceeded to lose the revolver. It was already November, and the weather was beginning to be cold, but Butler had made no attempt to provide shelter for his family. Instead they had piled weeds and brush in a high horseshoe- shaped circle and were living in the center of it — cooking, eating and sleeping.
They had not been able to pay the filing fee on a homestead but had selected some land for “squatting.” This term applied to the act of living on the land for a designated length of time, when, if the requirements had been met and a certain amount of improvements added, the man received a title to his land. If he left the land he forfeited his rights to it.
All the neighbors for miles around, feeling so sorry for the children, had agreed to meet on this Saturday to have a log-raising for the Butlers. The women all brought food and the men came armed with saws, axes, and hammers. After cutting down the trees and trimming and notching the logs, the men soon had the walls up, and before the day was over, the roof was on and the whole house complete except for the chinking and daubing — an easy job for Mr. Butler. Chinking consists of filling the larger cracks in the walls (left by irregularly shaped trees) with wedges cut from the small limbs trimmed from the logs. After the
chinking was completed, the whole area between the logs was daubed with mud.
Two months later after the log-raising, the cracks were still unchinked but the larger ones had been stuffed with rags.
I had always read of log-raisings in the early pioneer days, and I was thrilled to be a part of this one.
I’m sure my life that winter at Ed’s would have been much more boresome if it had not been for Guinn Dickerson from Lovington. Of the three cowboys working for Ed, two of them, Gayle and Riley Miller, were Diana’s brothers, as I have said. Gayle was a quiet man of thirty, who was in great demand as a fiddler for the dances. Riley was a callow youth of eighteen who was always bashful and ill at ease. Guinn was twenty-eight years old and the tallest of the three, six feet three inches. When I had reached the limit of boredom and confinement, and was about ready to climb the walls, Guinn would insist that I take a walk in the snow. I thought he was taking advantage of my five feet and ninety pounds when he pushed me into the snowdrifts in my high-laced boots, but I knew he was basically a kind person. He would clear the ground of snow, build a fire, and make me dry my feet before we went on. Also he must have been a fair student of psychology, for getting angry at him made me lose my tensions and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the walk, and was thereafter able to live through another period of cabin fever.
One weekend, Guinn and I rode horseback over to the Mask homestead. There was only one horse available at the ranch, so