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Somehow he felt very sure that one or the other of the captains would single him out; they couldn't afford to pass him by. But in that one respect only was Judge Maynard's barn-raising to be like those that had passed down into history a score of years back.
In our neighborhood, to harvest without whisky in the field was not to be thought of; nobody ever heard of a log-rolling or barn-raising without whisky. Be it said to the everlasting honor of my father, that he set himself firmly against the practice. He said his grain should rot in the field before he would supply whisky to his harvest hands.
The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his flushed face and curly yellow hair. "Look," Clara whispered, "that's the way I want to grow old." On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once in a way, rose early.
No barn-raising or militia general muster was deemed to be complete without the jug, and in process of time the use of spirits was so habitual that Peter Fisher was able to quote statistics in 1824 to prove that the consumption of ardent liquors was nearly twenty gallons per annum for every male person above sixteen years of age.
Perhaps I was much of both. But this is a digression. I did not pay any attention to women. I shunned them. I said that to be a great author and a philosophical thinker, one must not be a man of society. I never went to a wood-chopping, to an apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a barn-raising, nor indeed to any of our rustic feasts.
Our way is not now so lonely as it was in the morning. Parties of the male population are frequently passing. One of the settlers has to-day a "barn-raising frolic," and thither they are bound. They present a fair specimen of their class in the forest settlements. The bushwhacker has nothing of the "bog-trotter" in his appearance, and his step is firm and free, as though he trod on marble floor.
For Judge Maynard was going to give a barn-raising an old-fashioned barn-raising such as the hill country had not seen in twenty years. Already Young Denny knew that there were to be two team captains who would choose from among the best men that the country boasted, the very pick of strength and endurance and daring.
New doors were hung and a new stove secured, and then came the painters to put a new coat of paint on the inside. The cold weather forbade repainting the outside. The sheds were rebuilt by men whose hearts glowed with old-time fire. It was like pioneer days, when "barn-raising" and "bees" made life worth while in a wild, stern land. It was a beautiful time.
Sam Wiles was there, and his impish shadow, Zibe Turner, and Long Tom, and the rest of his cronies. Sam Wiles' family was a part of that large Wiles faction which warred with the Barkers, but Sam was not present at the barn-raising. He was only fourth cousin to the Wiles men who were killed, but felt himself bound with the rest of his kin to avenge their death.
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