Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/74

Rh was seen to start up like a flash. Some one said it must be a band of Indians on the war path, whooping, and firing the grass, for it was autumn and the grass was dry. The facts were, as we learned next day, that Uncle Charlie's truck heavily loaded and drawn by three yoke of oxen was enroute across the valley and one of the spindles took fire and burned off before the teamster, who was busy with the cattle, noticed that anything unusual had happened.

Sleds were also used for hauling. They were very heavy to draw on the ground and there was hardly ever any snow. Fifty green rails on a sled were a load for two yoke of oxen. As we had much fencing to do, the hauling of rails was a very common occupation. At times we worked three yoke of oxen to the sled and could haul a hundred dry rails, and with such a team we could haul all the firewood we could load onto the sled.

One day my oldest brother and myself were sent to haul a load of rock from a place in the hills a mile or so from the house; we had never hauled rock. As we had a team of three yoke, we piled rock on the sled till the bulk appeared to be about as big as a hundred rails. My brother had a long whip lash braided of rawhide with a buckskin thong for a cracker and with a straight wild cherry sprout for a stock. When he whirled the whip around and applied it to an ox, the cracker popped like a toy pistol and cut the hair like a glancing bullet. The sled being loaded, my brother spoke to the oxen to move on and cracked his whip, but though the team surged forward a little, the sled did not move; then the long lash of the whip performed rapid circles through the air and the cracker became a terrible scourge. The oxen sprang forward, wavered, then stood still. But the sled had not moved an inch. That team had never balked before. We were indignant, and after a short consultation, concluded that the use of the whip was not sufficient for the occasion; so it was laid aside and we both went to a hazel thicket and cut switches about nine feet long. With these we attacked the team in the rear, on the flanks, and all along the line, shouting the while words of encouragement and threats that awoke the echoes of the hills far away to the spurs of the Coast range. Every steer was by this time mad all over and resolved to move forward if he