LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
While in this slough of despond, a man came one day to hang wall-paper for us. Hearing our lamentations, he suggested drying the wood in the oven before using it. Long may that man live and prosper! The curing process helped wonderfully,—only now the wood was too combustible; it burned out in a jiffy. We would fill the stove full, leave it fifteen minutes, come back to it, and not a vestige of fire would be left. We soon learned that the stove must never be left alone; one must stand there, with hand on the throttle, like the engineer of a locomotive.
The demand for fuel was always greater than the supply, though the oven was kept filled with it from January to May, except on baking days. Sometimes we would close the oven door, forgetting it until reminded by a great crackling, when, flinging the door open, flames would rush out in our faces, and every stick of the fuel would be found ablaze. I wonder we didn’t blow the stove up and burn the house down! Though we didn’t know enough to bake our wood without being told, we found out one thing for ourselves, and that was that when the wood was heated a pitch oozed from it that stuck to the fingers and burned like hot sealing-wax. Even after learning this fact, we kept forgetting it, and hurriedly reaching into the oven to seize a stick, we would shriek and dance around like Sioux Indians. All winter long our hands were blistered and seared. Once on the hand, the stuff
52
