7 Wild East (9 page)

Their day had begun with a routine hike through the woods to
the mouth of the Ruby Valley where Whisky Jack had proposed running the
pipeline. Once there, the charts and maps came out and they began using the
theodolite to track their location. Whisky Jack worked with the precision
equipment as if it was second nature. Anatoli watched the man perform his craft
and asked plenty of questions. Within no time he’d learned the basic triangulation
process and from that point on Whisky Jack allowed him to perform the sightings
while he logged the numbers.

Whisky Jack ordered his crew around as if he was used to
being in charge and no one saw fit to argue against his leadership, not even Anatoli.
He maintained a fast pace which was aided by the fact that they were beginning
to work together well as a team. With Anatoli’s help, Whisky Jack maintained
detailed records of their route as they penetrated the valley. Jack even went
so far as to gather and bag rock samples along the way which he labeled as to
the sampling location. Sasha and Horace were relegated to positions of pack
animals which they didn’t seem to mind.

As they moved deeper into the valley the terrain became
rugged. Anatoli was forced to help Sasha and Horace to keep up. Both men were
flagging under their heavy loads. Anatoli offered to carry some of their
equipment on his own back. This made his load even more awkward and burdensome.
The excess load hardly mattered to Anatoli, that is until they came to the
narrow path carved into a wall of stone.

“You might want to consider leaving your pack and going the
rest of the way on a line,” Whisky Jack suggested, gesturing toward the
perilous way ahead.

Jack was already retrieving one of the many ropes from his
pack. Anatoli knew the man was right, that the way ahead was probably too
dangerous to cross even without the pack. But if they had to haul the packs
over separately they would lose time.

He felt that this was an opportunity to prove himself to the
old man. So he did something stupid.

“No, I’ll be fine,” he said stoically, waving away the
safety line.

“Suit yourself,” Whisky Jack said, rebinding his rope to his
pack.

Anatoli inched himself along the path, leading the way for
the small group. He was as careful as he could be and yet trouble was only
moments away. It was when he had almost made it back on solid ground that the
rock he was standing on shifted and gave way. In no time at all, Anatoli was
dangling from his fingertips from the ledge.

The man who saved him was Whisky Jack.

Once he was pulled to safety, Anatoli saw that Jack had left
his pack behind and was bound to Sasha by a safety line. So, there was little
danger to him. Yet he had saved Anatoli’s life. The thought of being indebted
to such a man and of having humiliated himself in front of Jack and the others
was far more painful to bear than his various cuts and scrapes.

The remainder of the afternoon went more slowly since Whisky
Jack had to take over performing the sightings. Eventually they made it to the
perfect spot to set up camp. Anatoli was thankful when they finally stopped. He
moved off to the edge of the camp to find a place to sit. That’s when he
started reliving his near-death experience. Anatoli sat alone, mentally licking
his wounds, until Whisky Jack approached. Whisky Jack uncapped one of his many
canteens and handed it to Anatoli.

“Here, you look like you could use some water,” he said.

“I’m not thirsty,” Anatoli replied.

“Drink the water,” Jack insisted.

Anatoli grabbed hold of the canteen and took a large gulp of
its contents. He almost choked when the whisky hit the back of his throat. He
let the acidy liquid slide down his gullet as his eyes watered. Then he took
another more moderate sip and sighed with pleasure.

“You’ve been drinking,” he challenged.

“I haven’t had a drop all day,” Jack replied. “I don’t
believe in drinking on the job. But just wait and see me when we get back to
the Gulch,” he warned with a wry chuckle.

“Why?” Anatoli asked, keeping hold of the canteen. “Why the
drink?” he tried again when he saw that he wasn’t understood.

“Boy, you’re not old enough to know diddlysquat, let alone
question my life,” Jack snapped back. “If you live long enough, you might find
out for yourself why I drink. I just pray that you don’t, that you never
encounter the day when the bottom of a bottle holds more promise than a
beautiful woman or a perfect summer’s day.”

Whisky Jack stomped off to set up the radio. He’d insisted
on carrying the heavy piece of equipment in his pack and also insisted that he
be the one to radio in their situation report each evening. Anatoli could only
imagine how the old man would play up the adventure of saving his life.

“McIntyre’s Gulch, this is Survey One reporting in, over,” Jack
began.

“We read you, Survey One,” Anatoli heard Big John reply. “How
goes the surveying project?”

“We had a minor incident today, but no injuries. Other than
that everything is on schedule,” Jack reported. “We began work today at the
mouth of Ruby Valley. Initial readings confirm my thought that this passage is
far superior to the route through the Gulch. Alluvial formations and the
natural slope of the contour of the valley are conducive to the even flow of a
viscous fluid through an extended artery.…”

Anatoli sat and listened to the update in awe and wonder of
the man giving the report. Jack had depths that none of them had anticipated.

The Flowers announced the next morning that it was time that
she and Sasha and Ricky moved into their own home—someplace smaller than the
inn where she could keep a better eye on her boy. We were all in the pub having
coffee and chatting, but this stopped conversation.

I understood her fear—after yesterday, who wouldn’t? The
Gulch was at once the safest and also the most dangerous place to raise a
child. No person would ever harm him and there would always be love—but there
were physical dangers all around. We lived in a place that made routine
attempts to kill the innocent and unwary. An unprotected child didn’t stand a
chance.

What the hell would I do if I was pregnant? The question
kept chewing at me though I did my best to ignore it and to get on with the job
at hand.

“Then we shall make it happen,” Big John said. We nodded.

We had anticipated this need soon after Ricky arrived—even
before then, since Sasha and the Flowers wanted more privacy than they could
get at the pub—and they had chosen the location of their eventual home. We had figured
that we would wait to hold the cabin-raising until Sasha returned from the
survey. However, that morning the smell of fall was in the air and we sensed,
even in the bright sun, the latent cold that was beginning to push down on us.

There was another benefit to holding the raising
immediately. It kept idle hands from doing the devil’s work. Pete seemed
enthused about possibly being able to be of some practical help while we waited
for the radio parts that weren’t coming, and Thomas sounded fascinated at the
chance to have a “new cultural experience.”

Since there is no time like the present, a work party was
ordered up with the labor divided along traditional lines. That meant that
women began cooking and men dug out their tools.

The trees for the cabin had been felled as soon as the snow
melted. Stripped of their bark, they had been drying in the sun all summer, the
pungent smell of their death perfuming the air. The discarded limbs and skin
had been taken for kindling, added to woodpiles which were being stored up
against the coming cold.

I think there was a certain pleasure that finally it was
time to put the logs to their intended use. It is perhaps unusual to see people
excited about doing hard, physical labor, but building a cabin was a rare event
and a nice change from the daily chores. Faces were happy as they prepared, and
I heard more than once, “many hands make light work.”

“I feel like I’m watching history,” Chuck said.

Some homes, like the apartment Chuck had lived in, were
buildings without souls, built without love or personality. That was not the
case here. Small or smaller, every cabin in the Gulch had a story and was
vested by the emotions of the people who built them. Stories would be told
about the raising of this building. Chuck was right. This day would become part
of our history.

“A cabin-raising is a wonderful example of fundamental
nineteenth-century human cooperation.” Thomas sounded enthused as I handed him and
Chuck a selection of saws, axes, and hammers to carry to the building site.

“Just so long as no one needs to come and study us while we
are doing it,” I said with a slight smile.

Fortunately, I had a nice supply of cookies in the tin, so
armed with a tin coffee pot and sweet edibles, I headed for the construction
site too. I knew that this was traditionally a man’s world, but I wasn’t going
to miss it for anything.

Harry McIntyre is our specialist in doweling and joinery. He
had been the one to repair my cabin when I came to the Gulch.

A cabin is only as strong as its joints, he explained as he
examined the logs and chose the order they would be used in. A house is only as
square and level as its joints and no one wants a sloping floor or crooked log
walls.

We nodded.

Half the battle of a successful cabin is choosing the right
site, he went on. You need some sunlight, good drainage, and above all a well.

Wendell had already witched a well for us, and Sasha had
been working with Big John all summer getting the well finished and a pump
installed. Fortunately our water table is high and finding water is rarely a
problem. It’s just a matter of hard work.

Thomas was fascinated with the idea of witching water and
Wendell had to promise to show him how to do it later.

Dirt floors are easiest, but no one wants a dirt floor
anymore, so we had to begin with a stone foundation for a raised floor. Flat
stones that can be stacked are easiest but we have more round stones, so step
one was to begin hauling them up from the stream and to begin mortaring them
together. We didn’t need many, just enough to get the logs up off the ground
and to install a plank floor. The planks we had. They had been intended for a
shed Wendell’s uncle had planned to build, but he had passed away last autumn
and so Wendell donated the planed boards. Technically, this made it a log house
and not a cabin, though in all other ways it appeared identical to the other
cabins in town.

Big John knew about laying stone foundations. It was one of
the skills his Celtic forefathers had brought with them from Scotland where
houses were more often built of stone than logs. And quick-drying cement helped.

Harry explained to Thomas—and to Chuck and me—that
we would be doing a purlin roof instead of rafters. For those not up on their
cabin architecture, a purlin roof consists of horizontal logs that are notched
into the gable-wall logs. The gables are progressively shortened to form the
characteristic triangular gable end. The steepness of the roof is determined by
the reduction in size of each gable-wall log as well as the total number of
gable-wall logs. Flatter-roofed cabins might have only two or three gable-wall
logs. We needed a great pitch to accommodate the snow loads and so there were
six logs in the gable.

Rather than build a fireplace and chimney,
heating would be done with a Franklin stove. The Flowers seemed to feel that
cooking on the stove wouldn’t be a problem, but it can be a pain—I know this
for a fact since I do it—and I had a feeling a lot of meals would be taken at
the pub. I also had the feeling that a generator would be installed before
autumn was very far progressed. Reading by oil lamp has its charms, but the
Flowers was used to more civilized things.

Windows and the door would have to come up from Seven Forks
and that would need to wait until we were done pretending we were cut off from
the world, but at least Big John was able to place the order when no one was
listening. Later, they could also cover the cabin in clapboards like Doc’s
place if they wanted.

I was stunned at how quickly the foundation went up. Every
time I ran back to my cabin for coffee or to the pub to squeeze the pricey but
wonderful lemons for lemonade, I would return to find another course of logs
laid out with the joints cut in. By the time we stopped for a meal, three
courses had already been laid out in preparation for assembly. All the logs
would be cut and rough fitted by the end of the day.

Chuck did surprisingly well with his ax. He was closely
supervised and only allowed to do the rough work, but he was good with tools
and earned praise from Harry. Perhaps this was a gift from his father, though
Horace seemed more drawn to things that went boom and caught fire.

Thomas was less adept though and eventually it was decided
that it might be best to keep the sharp things away from him. We would need
people to help with the chinking and other finish work later, and everyone
agreed that with his attention to detail and careful planning he would be good
at that. I also whispered in his ear that it might help the Flowers to relax if
someone else kept an eye on Ricky while she was cooking.

Accepting his limitations—and seeing that Ricky really was
in the way—Thomas suggested to the boy that they pack up a picnic lunch and go
exploring around town.

Ricky was reluctant. He turned eyes toward Chuck and waited
hopefully for an invitation from that quarter. But when it was apparent that it
was the new Mountie or no Mountie, he reluctantly agreed to go.

“Take the dogs,” I said to Thomas. “And my shotgun.” I added
to Ricky in Gaelic, “
You must take him away before he hurts himself with an
ax. And how will he learn about all the different trees and animals if no one
shows him? It is our duty to help him become a better Mountie.
”