Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/290

 282 WILLIAM BARLOW fine young carpenters heard that I wanted a fine barn built and would trade horses for work. They came out to see me and I told them just what kind of a barn I wanted built. It was to be 74x40 feet 18 feet high, but they must take it from the stump. I would deliver everything on the ground, lumber and all, but they must make the shingles. The, lumber I would get sawed, as there was a sawmill started about a mile off. That suited them exactly. "Well how much wages are you going to want," I asked. They thought they ought to have one, dollar a day and board. "Well, if you can put up with bachelor cooking you can take the job," I said. They had some tools and I bought some more. I had to get a broadax and a chopping ax or two. They went right to work with a will. I saw they meant business right from the start. They drew a draft of the barn so they would know just how to get out the timber, to which they had to walk about a mile. It was Uncle Sam's timber and free for all. They thought they would better take their dinner with them. I had several fine cows and we made up all our bread with pure cream. So every morning they would start with a big pone of cream bread, a jug of milk, a pot of coffee and often Chinook salmon that needed no lard to cook it in. In those days, could get a salmon that weighed twenty or thirty pounds for ten or fifteen cents. I had also plenty of salt beef and pork. The men said they never lived better in their lives and that it beat city grub out of sight. So they finished the barn in time for me to store my crop of wheat in August. I fitted them out for the mines and they went off the best pleased set of fellows I ever saw. But I never heard of them afterwards. Pretty soon the emigrants began to pour in. This was now 1848. One evening, about the middle of September, I saw three or four emigrant wagons steering for the house. I went out to meet them. When lo ! and behold, up drove old Mathias Swiggle and all his family. He was our old neighbor right from Illinois. He hallooed so loudly you could hear him a half a mile away. He wanted to know if here was where old Samuel K. Barlow's son William lived. I told him it was. He said,