Page:Samuel Scoville -Abraham Lincoln, His Story.djvu/22

 the Ohio River to find a new home in Indiana. On the way the raft capsized, but he saved his tools and most of the whiskey. On the Indiana shore he chose some land for his new farm and then went back for his family. The last thing that the little boy remembers of his Kentucky home was that his mother took him and his sister to say good-bye to the little brother whom they were leaving behind in an unmarked grave in the wilderness.

On two borrowed horses, with some bedding and a few pans and kettles, the Lincoln family cut their way through the forest for eighteen miles to Little Pigeon Creek. There Thomas Lincoln hurriedly built a shed out of saplings entirely open on one side, and in this the family lived a whole year while he cleared a cornpatch and built a rough cabin.

All through the freezing winter storms they huddled together in this rude camp. Finally the new log cabin was built and the family moved in. One can gain an idea of how hurriedly and roughly it was put together from a memorandum made by Abraham Lincoln in later years: "A few days after the completion of his eighth year," he wrote, "in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a new rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack