Shack

“ Having seen the shack, and le Père Battin and that one overcrowded room where flies in dense black swarms settled on everything, where dogs scratched and where age-old dirt gathered more dirt to its arms with the dawning of every day, that jam pot contained so many possibilities, we felt that to eat its contents would be sheer murder. ”

“ We must have been fully a mile from the houses when we discerned the first evidences of life. A little figure darted out of the shack on Twenty-two to the edge of the gully; then for a few minutes sank from sight; then reappeared on our side of the stream and rushed into the shack on Fourteen. Almost instantly two figures appeared at the door; paused for a moment, then swooped like wild things down the trail toward us. And we stood up on the top of the wagon and waved our hats and yelled like mad, until even Spoof down on section Two must have heard us. ”

“ In the afternoon, the shack is especially charming. Throughout our beautiful, southern winter days, I enjoy being alone by the tall mantelpiece, while several twigs of tamarisk smoke away in the hearth. The howling mistral or tramontana makes the doors bang, the reeds scream, and a range of noises that make the great, natural clamour all around. The rays of the winter sun gather and are then scattered by the fierce wind. Great shadows race around under a perfect blue sky. ”

“ It is curious how much value a thing has if one has put some effort into it. We were still as disillusioned with the country as we had been the first day, we felt as out of place on a homestead as a coyote sauntering up Fifth Avenue, we felt the tar-paper shack to be the most unhomelike contraption we had ever seen; but from the moment we began to make improvements, transforming the shack, it took on an interest for us out of all proportion to the changes we were able to make. ”

“ The ground behind them lifted, heaved; the walls, the roof of the shack rose, cracked like eggshells, and scattered in flying pieces—and the mighty, deafening detonation of the explosion echoed up and down the gorge, echoed again—and died away. ”

“ This was Spoof's! These were the sunflowers which he had planted in accordance with Jake's grotesque advice. Spoof's shack must be nearby. Surely, there to the left, was duller darkness through the snow.
I hurried toward it. The angular outline of Spoof's shack emerged gradually out of the mist, like a sunken boat rising slowly to the surface of the water. Half of it was concealed at best by the great drifts that bordered it. I found my way to the shack, around the corner, to the door. Should I knock? Prairie manners, particularly among bachelor neighbours, are free and easy. ”

“ It was a little wooden shack, sagging and discolored, its windows broken and its whole appearance denoting that utter desolation to which only a deserted homestead can attain; not even a human wreck can equal this silent abandonment. ”

“ It was a large, rambling affair, more like a hotel than a house, and not at all in keeping with the type of shack or cabin usually erected in the North. Branches of a tall birch tree brushed against the pointed roof and the wind whined most distressingly around the many corners of the building. ”

“ I saw plain enough there was no chance of saving the shack, so I snatched up what I could lay my hands on in the way of food and clothing and blankets, and tore out. I don't remember putting the knife in my pocket, but that's where I found it later. The shack burned down to nothing, and that thing burned with it; probably not a bone of it left. The scientists were out of luck and the mystery of mankind would remain unsolved. ”

“ The girls settled down to Craft work in the shack, for they had chosen that as their workroom, on account of the hinged shelves around the walls, which were so convenient to spread work out on. The front wall of the shack, facing the lake, was all windows, which could be lowered, making the room as cool and airy as could be desired. ”

“ The corner of the oiled paper which half concealed the light within the shack was lifted, a blood-shot eye applied to the chink, and he was admitted into the uncertain glow of a low-hanging lantern, flickering on three very diverse and ugly figures sprawled out on the bunk and the floor. ”

“ There is nothing the cities can give one to compare with the warmth of the log shack at night when you lie, aching a little, about the stove, telling stories with the boys, while the shingles snap and crackle under the frost. ”

“ The Forks was a spot at which a road that led down from the mountains joined the road to the Junction. The mountain road was little more than a trail, seldom traveled, and almost overgrown with grass, and where it joined the other stood the shack which was used as a schoolhouse. This shack had been built by some early homeseeker, who had long ago abandoned it to seek other pastures. ”

“ There were as many as a dozen, I should think, built of logs and unpainted shack, consisting for the most part of a single large room, though a few had a loft above and a rough lean-to in the rear. A walk bordered by laurels stretched down the center between the two rows, and as the trees had not been clipped for a good many years, the shade was somewhat sombre. ”

“ The shack serves very well for a single young fellow whose necessities are reduced to the barest minimum. If he is an adventurous spirit with a dash of humour he relishes his life, and if he has two or three companions settling at the same time as himself on neighbouring homesteads they will work together and tide each other over the roughing period. ”

“ It is now a simple matter to erect a shack which may be roofed with bark as in Fig. 72 or thatched as in Fig. 74. Fig. 72 shows the unfinished shack in order that its construction may be easily seen; this one is being roofed with birch bark. A fireplace may be made by enclosing a bed of mud (Fig. 73) between or inside of the square formed by four logs. On this clay or mud you can build your camp-fire or cooking fire or mosquito smudge with little or no danger of setting fire to your house. ”

“ Where?"
"That line behind the shack—don't you see?—a little streak right through the grass."
"No; I don't see anything."
"Come along and I'll show you. Come along, boys. We'll get him. He's only going on his belly."
"Yes, and be croaked, like this poor guy! Don't forget that the bird over there can give you a dose of lead." ”

“ The shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the former down between the platforms, and pays out the latter. The coupling-pin strikes the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and again strikes the ties. The shack plays it back and forth, now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for every variety of impact and rebound. Every blow of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death. ”

“ Now a rock, slipping from a ledge at the side of the trail, went crashing down through the sloping forest. Now a pebble, rolling beneath Marion’s foot, sent her with a thud to the ground. And now the dead branch of a tree, clung to for a second’s rest, gave way with a screaming snap that must have been heard a mile away.
A half mile down the trail they came upon a cabin. A mere shack built of logs with a low chimney, with one door and no windows, it could hardly be called a human habitation. ”

“ Man has placed but one habitation upon this toy of the great waters, and that a fisherman's shack, surrounded with the usual net-drying racks and other crude tools of the fisherfolk. One would rightly guess that the occupant of an abode built upon such a tiny bit of old mother earth must be a hardy customer, who understood the ways of the winds and sea and who dared combat them. ”

“ By studying the illustration below, you will be able to build a very serviceable shack, affording protection from the dews and rain. While two or more boys are building the shack, another should be gathering firewood, and preparing the meal, while another should be cutting and bringing in as many soft, thick tips of hemlock or balsam boughs as possible, for the roof of the shack and the beds. How to thatch the "lean-to" is shown in this illustration.
If the camp site is to be used for several days, two "lean-tos" may be built facing each other, about six feet apart. ”

“ The shack next door is a cold slough, and the nearest kip to the joint is one look and a peep. There is a speeder in the shanty, and we can get to the main stem and catch the rattler and be in the main fort by daylight. The trick is easy worth fifty centuries. Now let me know, and make your mark and time. I am getting this out through a broad who will give it to our fall-back, you know who.
Yours in durance vile, SLIM.
Mason had not answered the letter, and only the day before Dillon had appeared, bringing with him a youth called Squeak. ”

“ A sturdy-looking old fellow with grizzled beard and flowing locks steps out of the shack, and, as has been his wont for years, he scans the horizon for a sail or perchance for other more modern craft of the sea. ”

“ There was no road, apparently, leading away from the cabin. There was only the footpath that disappeared into the forest. Neither, anywhere, was there a house in sight nearer than the white specks far down in the valley by the river.
Within the shack a wide fireplace dominated one side of the main room. It was June now, and the ashes lay cold on the hearth; but from the tiny lean-to in the rear came the smell and the sputter of bacon sizzling over a blaze. ”

“ The homestead shack is now giving place to the comfortable residence, large barns are being erected where the improvised log and mud stable sheltered a few head of cattle, fields are fenced, roads built, and great fields of grain and luxuriant pastures are always in evidence. ”

“ I put my eye to a crack in the high stockade fence and saw that the little shack office that was used for a scale-house was lighted up. My burnt hand was healing tolerably well by this time and I could use it a little. There was a slack pile just outside of the big gate, and by climbing to the top of it I got over the fence and crept up to the scale-house.
A small window in one end of the shack, opened about two inches at the bottom, answered well enough for a peep-hole. Three men were in the little box of a place—three besides Kestler; Hatch, his barrel-bodied partner, Henckel, and one other. ”

“ Several settlers came before that shack was moved, but they only stood around and talked among themselves, and were careful not to get in the way or to hinder, and to lower their voices so that the Happy Family need not hear unless they chose to listen.
So they slid that shack into the coulee, righted it carefully and left it there—where it would be exceedingly difficult to get it out, by the way; since it is much easier to drag a building down hill than up, and the steeper the hill and the higher, the greater the difference. ”

“ In several small shacks at Juneau, old fashioned iron stoves were seen, with stove pipes leading above the roof. The inside of a shack is an omnium gatherum, not only of people of both sexes and of all ages, but of fishing nets, axes and saws, boat paddles, and blocks on which wooden work was being done. ”

“ Life in a shack was a distinct contrast from life in New York. My hostesses slept together in a bed 21⁄2 feet wide in order to accommodate their guest. In the dark of the wintry morning, about 7 a.m., I roused up sleepily to find Aylmer Bosanquet bringing me hot water, herself fully dressed and armed with logs, just going out to light the stove in the church, so that it might be warm when the people came at eight o'clock. ”

“ The two boys had divided the cabin neighborhood into two sections. Each one walked half way around the shack at intervals, so that part of the time they met in back, and part of the time in front, like two coast guards meeting each other on their beach patrols. ”

“ He built a hostelry called the Shack-de-Poker-Huntus, and advertised in the Carson Appeal, a paper which even the editor, Sam Davis, says fills him with wonder and amazement when he knows that people actually subscribe for it. Very soon Piutes began to go to the shack to spend the heated term. Every Piute who took the Appeal saw the advertisement, which went on to state that hot and cold water could be got into every room in the house, and that electric bells, baths, silver-voiced chambermaids, over-charges, and everything else connected with a first-class hotel, could be found at that place. ”

“ The old shack had evidently once been lived in, for it was fitted up with furniture of a crude sort. Along one side of the room ran two long bunks, one above the other, and on the walls were some old dilapidated-looking pictures, evidently cut out of magazines or news periodicals.
There was a three-legged, rickety table in the center of the room, and about this the conspirators—for such they were—were gathered. Two of the men had chairs, patently home-made, for seats, while the third, who sat facing Bob, had merely an empty wooden box turned on end. ”

“ Ever to grind to soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)
There he had built his stolen shack.
It had to be a stolen shack
Because of the fears of fire and loss
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
Visions of half the world burned black
And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
We know who when they come to town
Bring berries under the wagon seat,
Or a basket of eggs between their feet ”