Chapter XX.
ANOTHER START UP THE CHISHOLM TRAIL.
I hadn't been at home but a few days when I came very near getting killed by a falling house.
Mother had become tired of the neighborhood she lived in and wanted me to move her and her shanty down the creek about a mile, to Mr. Cornelius's. So hiring a yoke of oxen—although a pair of goats would have answered the purpose—I hauled her household goods down to the spot selected. I then went to work tearing the shanty down.
In building it I had set eight pine posts two feet in the ground, and then nailed the sidings, etc., to them. There was only one room and it was eight feet wide and fourteen long. The roof had been made of heavy pine boards. After tearing both ends out, I climbed onto the roof to undo that.
I was a-straddle of the sharp roof, about midway, axe in one hand and a large chisel in the other, when all at once the sides began spreading out at the top. Of course I began sinking slowly but surely, until everything went down with a crash. The pine posts had become rotten from the top of the ground down; and just as soon as the roof and I had struck bottom the sides flopped over onto us.
A neighbor's little boy by the name of Benny Williams, had been monkeying around watching me work, and unluckily he was inside of the shanty when the collapse came.
I was sensible, but unable to move, there being so much weight on me.
Finally little Benny who was one thickness of boards under me woke up and began squalling like a six months old calf being put through the process of branding.