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Updated: May 24, 2025
Of the half-dozen residences, one was composed exclusively of sod; another of bark; yet another of poles, roofed with a wagon-cover, and plastered on the outside with mud; the fourth was of slabs, nicely split from logs which had drifted into the Bend; the fifth was of hide stretched over a frame strictly gothic from foundation to ridgepole; while the sixth, burrowed into the hillside, displayed only the barrel which formed its chimney.
The canvas home of the chief was what is known as the hospital tent, but instead of being pitched with the ordinary ridgepole and uprights, a substantial wooden frame and floor had first been built and over this the stout canvas was stretched, stanch and taut as the head of a drum. It was all intact and sound.
As the hay got higher up in the mow, beyond the eaves, and almost up to the level of the topmost beam, one of the farm hands noticed the little bat hanging under the ridgepole. He was one of those dull fools, not cruel at heart, perhaps, but utterly without imagination, who, if they see something interesting, are apt to kill it just because they don't know any other way to show their interest.
Never a day now passed that one or both of the birds did not rest on my tent. When I put my head out, like a turtle out of his shell, in the early morning to look at the weather, Killooleet would look down from the projecting end of the ridgepole and sing good-morning.
He came to the eaves, and I could just reach him, but, as I was about to take him by a leg and haul him down, he retreated just out of my reach, and said what I imagined to be a pathetic "meow." I talked to him. I tried to coax him to come within reach again, but he only went up the roof to the ridgepole and looked down the other side and said "meow."
He then hauled up another section and repeated. When the ladder had reached to the eaves, he and his companions dragged the squirting, writhing hose up with them, chopped footholds in the roof, and lay flat to look over the ridgepole as over a breastwork. All this to the tune of admiring plaudits and with a pleasing glow of heroism.
I saw instantly in his face the change working in his mind. He looked at me searchingly, almost fiercely, and said, weighing each word, "Not one foot, young man, do you hear? not one foot! Own nothing but what you see. But this hulk is mine, mine from the mud to the ridgepole, with every rotten timber in it." The outburst was so sudden that I rose from my chair.
But these things, taken together, did no doubt prepare me to look upon it as a happy coincidence when, one morning, I heard the familiar cry of the red-headed woodpecker, for the first time in Florida, and looked up to see him flying the national colors from the ridgepole of the State House. I did not break out with "Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!"
In place of logs, houses were built of bricks burned in the dooryard; or else were constructed of frames of oak, often with pitched roofs that sloped to the ground. It was in such a house as this that Hannah Puddington lived. Old Buff, her large, yellow cat, would sometimes run to the ridgepole and from there watch for the river boats as they returned with fresh fish.
If she will try to swim in the watering-trough, she is just as likely to take a walk on the ridgepole of the house." Horace darted out of the room with a ghastly face, but came back looking relieved. He had been up in the attic, and climbed through the scuttle, without finding any human Fly on the roof, or on the dizzy tops of the chimneys, either. But where was the child? Had Ruth seen her?
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