[Sam P. Davis, The Lumber Herder, from Short Stories (1886)]

 

THE LUMBER HERDER.

            They were sitting in front of the saloon discussing the availability of different states as places for poor men to settle in. All had some startling thing to tell, of many of which were apt to strain the credulity of the listeners.

174      SHORT STORIES.

            When everybody had done his level best to move a little fox-faced man, who was a stranger to the group, who should speak but the fox-faced man himself. He began his remarks in a drawling tone, with the slow and deliberate enunciation of a man who expects his words to be received with considerable consideration.

            " I did pretty well in Nebraska as a lumber herder until I got malarious."

            " What's a lumber herder ?" asked an old gentleman at his right, whose very face was a chronic interrogation point.

            The other party looked very much astonished at being asked such a stupid question, but finally said :

            " Why a man who herds lumber, of course."

            Several of the group admitted that they had never heard of such a thing.

            Had his listeners asked about some simple poker proposition, the speaker could not have been more thoroughly astonished, but he finally went on :

            " The ranches in Nebraska have to hire lumber herders in the summer months. The only building material out there is cottonwood. You know how like blazes cottonwood warps ? Well, lay a cottonwood board down on a hot day and one side curls up. In a very hot day you can see a board curl up at each end. The ends curl until the board loses its equilibrium, and over it goes. Then a new surface is presented and it twists again, this time clean over. Do you catch on to the proposition, gentlemen ? Then you can easily understand that every time a board turns over it covers fresh ground. Well. in one awful hot spell in Nemaha county, Nebraska, the lumber old Hoover had got so scattered that he hired me at thirty dollars a month to herd his lumber,

SCRAPS.         173

and he furnished a horse. The lumber would begin to twist nine ways for Sunday by nine o'clock, and by noon I've seen ten or twelve thousand feet of new lumber making for the hills like a drove of sheep. It would follow the sun, and if I couldn't steer it into a shady place it would get several miles from home. We had to load it up and cart it back at night.

            " Sometimes we would run in with another herd of lumber and get mixed up. Of course this resulted in a good deal of trouble, and sometimes a lawsuit. I originated the idea of branding lumber so that when pieces wandered off to the hills they could be recognized. Of course some of you don't believe this plain, unvarnished tail ?"

            " I know it to be the gospel truth," said one of the most attentive listeners. " For one hot day, just as you describe, I was chased by a lot of warped lumber and would have been over run and killed if I hadn't reached a tree just as I did. I assure you, gentlemen, that having a thousand feet of sixteen-foot lumber chasing you over the prairie is no joke. Did you ever get a deal like that ? " continued the listener, bending forward to the story-teller as if he had him in the door.

            The Nebraska liar was only nonplussed for a couple of seconds while he gave a slight cough to give himself time to think.

            " No, I was never treated with that severity by a thousand feet of lumber, but on several occasions I have hitched this sort of lumber to a buggy—a light buggy—and driven over the road, that is, to funerals and slow civic parades, but I can't conscientiously say that I ever went after the doctor or tackled a race with it."

            " Oh, of course not," said the listeners in unison.