Page 31 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

The First Spring - Chapter 7
Dad’s Cabin
When school was out in April, after only eight months, I moved to my Dad’s cabin which George and Tom had completed before Sally had had to go back to Oklahoma. I still didn’t have a cabin on my claim, of course.
As I stated before, Dad’s cabin was just off the Beaverhead-Magdalena highway, and was visible from the road. It was a small canyon running north and south which opened into a larger canyon running east and west. The latter one was about three hundred yards across with a flat meadow of black grama grass almost the entire length of it. The broad meadow with its gentle slope to the west, and to the highway, provided us with space for our road.
The log cabin was fourteen feet square. There were no openings on the north side, but there was a double window on the east and on the west sides, and a door on the south side. It had a lumber and tarpaper roof, but only a dirt floor. This was not so bad as it sounds, though, because the soil was all adobe around there. The floor was
almost as hard as sandstone, and we kept it that way by putting water on it occasionally. Even sweeping didn’t disturb its hardness.
George and Sally had brought some hens with them when they first came to Beaverhead, and I inherited them when they left. They brought them over to Ed Moore’s where I was living, and turned them loose with Ed’s chickens. After I moved over to my Dad’s place, that was one of my first priorities — to get the chickens back home.
I didn’t have any means of transportation so I had to catch a ride wherever I wanted to go. One day I was over at Freeman’s and walked several miles to Ed’s place to see about getting the hens.
When I arrived there, not a soul was at home, so I despaired of ever catching the hens by myself. It would have been difficult enough if they were running loose in a pen, but these were completely free in the wide open spaces. As I was standing there in a quandary about what I should do, some of the hens began approaching me through the tall grass and weds, squawking as they came. I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with them until Lobo appeared behind them, limping with rheumatism and old age, and driving them toward me. With the help of that precious dog I caught all eight of the Buff Orpington hens I had to take back with me — a feat could never have accomplished without him.
After catching all the hens with Lobo’s help, I then had the herculean task of carrying