"Here I've got wood to cut and water to bring and grub to cook, and I
can't do none of them because I've got to ride herd on you every minute.
You've got my goat, kid, and that's the truth. You sure have. Yes,
'Pik-k,' doggone yuh--after me going crazy with yuh, just about, and
thinking you're about to blow your radiator cap plumb up through the
roof! I'll tell yuh right here and now, this storm has got to let up
pretty quick so I can pack you outa here, or else I've got to pen you
up somehow, so I can do something besides watch you. Look at the way
you scattered them beans, over there by the cupboard! By rights I oughta
stand over yuh and make yuh pick every one of 'em up! and who was it
drug all the ashes outa the stove, I'd like to know?"
The coyote skin lifted a little and moved off toward the fireplace,
growling "Ooo-ooo-ooo!" like a bear--almost. Bud rescued the bear a
scant two feet from the flames, and carried fur, baby and all, to the
bunk. "My good lord, what's a fellow going to do with yuh?" he groaned
in desperation. "Burn yourself up, you would! I can see now why folks
keep their kids corralled in high chairs and gocarts all the time. They
got to, or they wouldn't have no kids."
Bud certainly was learning a few things that he had come near to
skipping altogether in his curriculum of life. Speaking of high chairs,
whereof he had thought little enough in his active life, set him
seriously to considering ways and means. Weinstock-Lubin had high chairs
listed in their catalogue. Very nice high chairs, for one of which Bud
would have paid its weight in gold dust (if one may believe his word) if
it could have been set down in that cabin at that particular moment. He
studied the small cuts of the chairs, holding Lovin Child off the page
by main strength the while. Wishing one out of the catalogue and into
the room being impracticable, he went after the essential features,
thinking to make one that would answer the purpose.
Accustomed as he was to exercising his inventive faculty in overcoming
certain obstacles raised by the wilderness in the path of comfort, Bud
went to work with what tools he had, and with the material closest
to his hand. Crude tools they were, and crude materials--like using a
Stilson wrench to adjust a carburetor, he told Lovin Child who tagged
him up and down the cabin. An axe, a big jack-knife, a hammer and some
nails left over from building their sluice boxes, these were the tools.
He took the axe first, and having tied Lovin Child to the leg of his
bunk for safety's sake, he went out and cut down four young oaks behind
the cabin, lopped off the branches and brought them in for chair legs.
He emptied a dynamite box of odds and ends, scrubbed it out and left it
to dry while he mounted the four legs, with braces of the green oak and
a skeleton frame on top. Then he knocked one end out of the box, padded
the edges of the box with burlap, and set Lovin Child in his new high
chair.