The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-03-27

Not many scrumtiferous fxin's of any
kind, for the matter of that.
Fact is. it was a shack. And. on
ton of that one-room shack. Built
il myself after working hours. Cut the
scrub spruce and fir to build ii, too
Il was a timberman then in a new
silver mine sixty miles from the rail-
road. Got SIS a week. which wasn't
lmuch. counting how costly it was to
live.
well. after I got the shack built I
went down to Boise and asked Mary
she was teaching school down there
Mary was agreeable about it-we'd been
beaus since we'd first met a year before
although after l went to work in the
new mine l didn't have much chance
to see her.
But Mary was ready. and We got
married in Boise City, and | took her to
the shack I'd built Marvellous days,
those-both of us young. You see, and
mot bothering much about anything nor
Winding any sort of inconvenience. so
| long as we were close enough to each
SOS 7 could holler across the gulch on
my way to work and on my way home.
! And it was a home plumb and proper
never had any such home since.
Il made the stove myself too. out of
| an old rusty tWO-nOrSe-pOWer DOller
| that I cribbed from the engine house.
Made most of the furniture, too, includ
| ing the bed. spare times. Wagon
| freighting was costly. and beds and
gear like that ready made cost a heap
of money out there those days-anyhov,
they were beyond me.
Had a rag carpet on the floor of the
shack that Mary'd been making herself,
after school hours. for a year. Dishes
were mostly wooden-I was pretty
handy with jackknife those days
Had calico curtains in the one window
Mary had an artistic eye, and the
way she draped those curtains sure was
something dainty.
Il got the water from the crick. about
400 yards back of the shack. Used to
fill up the three barrels once a week and
let the water settle.
Didn't have any fresh meat, unless
shot it o. Sundays-freighters used to
fetch in the salt meat one a week over
the trail. Canned vegetables. too, and
scandalously high they were.
I'D started a truck patch, but the
soil wasn't adapted to truck raising.
All right for flowers, though. Mary got
hold of some flower seeds-subscribed
hold of some flower seeds-subscribed to
a $1-a-year-weekly, I believe, and got
the seeds as a subscription prize-and
she had the prettiest little garden of
flowers in front of the shack you ever
saw: sweet william and panses. and
bachelor buttons, and china asters, and
marigolds. and old things like those.
She used to sit in that teenchy flower
garden of summer evenings and play
OH the little old ten-stringed either,
fixed out with numbers for each string,
I a
Mighty fetching and sweet the music
from the either sounded, too, out there
in the open air, with the wind stirring
through the branches overhead, and
Mary with her pretty head and a flower
in her dark hair. tilted back against
tree, humming the tunes she played.
Our first born arrived in that shack. !
The medical man who officiated on that |
occasion was a fellow who'd been ar
rested and locked up for horse stealing. |
They allowed him to come to our shack |
in company with a deputy marshal. and |
then they took him back to the lookup I,
again.
We'll, Mary and land later. the first |
one-kept house in that little old hand |
made shack. squatting at the base of
the mountain. for three years Speak
ing for myself-and if Mary was on
earth she'd join me in saying it-those
were far and away the happiest years
of our lives, they sure WERE
After some music the old man took
his leave. with CHEEKY praises for the
young wife's dinner of shoulder and
green's. The two young people sat pen
sive and silent for quite while after
the old gentleman had gone
Il guess our little old fiat isn't so
dinky, after all, Ell, little woman?"
said the young husband then, pinching
his Wife's cheek,