Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/114

 less bosom of the wind had swept away every shrub and plant like a lashing flame.

The structure showed joints in the clumsy masonry of sod, where it had been enlarged from time to time, although all of it appeared to be of one age. Rain had guttered its walls; it was pitted as if by cannon-shots where the grass roots which bound the sod had given away, dropping earth along the base of the wall. The attrition of winds which never quieted had rounded its corners: rains had made gullies of the narrow buffalo trails which ran down to the river past its door.

The roof was slightly conical, an arch greatly flattened, sod-covered, making all of it but the shallow plank gables seem one with the walls, and the dun earth from which they were fashioned. This sod covering served the triple purpose of insulating against heat in summer, turning the winter cold, and anchoring the roof against the gales which raged over the unfended country in the fall.

There were three doors and four windows, almost as long as doors, their sills being but a few inches above the ground, in the front of Major Cottrell's house; two windows in the shorter wing. Behind the house some low sod buildings for sheltering livestock and fowls could be seen, flanked by a corral with high gate which could be opened from the saddle by a long lever. A fence surrounded the house, embracing about two acres in its enclosure. Tumble-weeds of last autumn were banked against its wires, which were bulged inwardly by pressure of the wind against this melancholy drift. There was not a tree nearer than the river, not a shrub nor flower; not even a bramble of wild prairie rose. Nothing but a mangy growth of buffalo grass, through which a deep