Читать книгу Buffalo Bill, Peacemaker; Or, On a Troublesome Trail онлайн

11 страница из 85

The construction of the roof was as simple as that of the rest of the house.

A log was laid lengthwise across the top of the dugout, in the direction of its greatest length. This was the ridgepole. Smaller logs were then placed with one end on this and the other on the ground. Poles covered the rafters, hay covered the poles, and a layer of earth covered the hay. A door was contrived in the slant of roof from the ridgepole. Stairs communicating with the door were sometimes cut in the solid earth, and sometimes—as in the case of Red Steve’s dugout—the only stairway was a stepladder.

In a cattle country, where cowboys go galloping recklessly over the range, or where longhorns occasionally stampede, it stands the dugout dweller in hand to make his roof exceptionally strong. Either Red Steve had failed to make his roof of the proper strength, or else age had weakened it.

This was not the scout’s first visit to such a house, but it was the first time he had ever dropped bodily into a dugout and into the curious tangle he had found in this one.