Free In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake, J Blake Page B

families having settled in the region shortly after Jackson put down the Creeks, others of more recent arrival. The newest family, they whose house was today being erected, had come from the Alabama highlands to farm Mississippi’s rich bottom country.
    When the talk came round to the brothers John offered his lie about the uncle they were going to apprentice with in New Orleans and delivered his low opinion of Mobile and told of the floods he and Edward had come through in Alabama and told too of the graverobbers they’d seen at their grisly trade. Some of the men cleared their throats and cast sidewise glances at the women among them and the women concentrated intently on the plates before them and Edward gave his brother a look to warn him off any such further talk. They mopped their plates clean with chunks of cornbread and then looked at each other and John told the men at the table he and his brother would be proud to lend a hand and their offer was gratefully accepted.
    Over the preceding days the building party had felled the timber they would need and trimmed it clean and cut the logs to length and hauled them by oxen to the cabin site. Today they would raise the cabin itself.
    The house would be a two-room round-log with top-saddle corner notches and no dogrun. Edward and John grinned at the simplicity of it and the work went fast. At Daddyjack’s side they had erected houses of square-hewn logs, using broadaxes with offset handles to keep their hands clear of the logs as they squared them. All that was required here was to notch the logs and raise the walls by rolling the logs one atop the other by means of skids, one pair of men hauling on the logs from above with ropes as another two men pushed them up the skids with sturdy poles from below. As the brothers worked with the party putting up the walls, other men rived shingles with mallets and froes and shaved them down with drawknives. Against one of the end walls, a group of older children under the direction of an elderly man erected a makeshift catted chimney to be later replaced with one of stone. The warm morning air shook with the steady clatter of axes and thumping of mallets. By the time the women rang the dinner iron the walls and most of the chimney were up and the roof frame was in place.
    The men converged on the creek to rinse themselves amid much familiar joking and shoving with each other and remarking upon the brothers’ impressive skill with an ax. Then everyone sat to a dinner of venison stew and roast potatoes and blackeyed peas and yams and cobbed corn and biscuits and gravy and strawberry cobbler. The tabletalk was full of news of who in the region had married and who had been born and who had died. Most of the deaths reported had come by way of violent accident. One man’s skull stove by a kick from a mule. Another man mis-stepping as he crossed a plank bridge and he and the young son riding his shoulders plunging into the quickmoving river where both did drown. Another’s saw slipping wildly from its groove to gash his thigh to the bone and bleed him to death as he limped for home. Among the other news passed at the table was an announcement of a barndance to be held at Nathaniel Hurley’s farm on Saturday evening next. John whispered to Edward that he surely wished they could be here for that, considering all the pretty girls about. When the men had done with eating they took another few minutes’ ease with their pipes and cigars and then went back to work.
    While one party of men completed the roof, another, including John and Edward, cut openings in the walls for windows and door, and still another set to chinking the walls with clay. The brothers demonstrated their mastery of a variety of saws and by the end of the day had secured reputations among these men as true craftsmen in timber. The sun was still above the trees when the cabin stood finished. The men clapped each other on the shoulder and each man gathered his tools and