Wade Timber's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

By the third day, six pines lay across the clearing. Wade's axe had done its work well. But the logs stayed where they fell. Each one weighed more than his horse. He could not drag them to his building spot. He set his shoulder against one and pushed. It did not move. The bark was already going soft at the underside. Sap wept into the dirt. Rot would take them before he stacked a single wall. He sat on a log and opened the worn leather saddlebag. Inside lay the tools he still owned. A rusted Bowie knife, its broad blade spotted brown. A heavy chisel wedge, thick and blunt. He turned the wedge in his hands. It could not move a log any better than his hands could. His dog watched him, ears up. Wade looked at the horse, then at the ground. The dirt sloped down toward his building spot. He had fought that slope all week. Now he saw it different. Downhill was help, not trouble. He walked to the treeline and cut two thin pines. He limbed them fast. Then he laid them side by side down the slope, like a track. He rolled the first log onto the poles with the chisel wedge for a pry bar. He drove the wedge under the log, leaned his weight on it, and the log turned a quarter. Again. Again. The log climbed onto the poles. He cut a length of dead sagebrush and jammed it behind the log as a chock. Then he tied his rope to the log and to the saddle. He clicked to the horse. The animal leaned into the harness. The log slid down the greased poles, faster than Wade expected. It ran the whole slope and stopped hard at the flat below, right where he wanted his cabin wall. Wade stood still a moment. One log lay at his building spot. He had moved it alone, with a horse, a rope, and two poles. He could move them all this way. He worked the rest of the day. He rolled each log onto the track and let the slope carry it down. By dusk, five logs lay stacked at his building spot. The sixth waited on the poles. His arms shook. His hands bled where the rope had burned them. But the logs were where he needed them now. He knelt to loose the rope from the saddle. His dog went stiff beside him. A low growl came up in its throat. Wade turned. Across the clearing, at the edge of the trees, the black wolf stood watching. It was not alone now. A second shape moved behind it in the dark. The logs were down. The walls were not yet up. And the woods had sent more than one hunter to the open ground he had cleared.