In a low lean-to he found fuel, and concluded to unpack and make the best of the hard lay-out, for McGuire was not a quitter. With a rusty hatchet that he had unearthed in the shed he began opening his freight. The first long box contained a rifle, two six-shooters, and many rounds of ammunition. Another held sugar and coffee, and from a third he got a neat medicine chest that contained cotton bandages and liniment. Scenting the biscuits and bacon, the little brown squirrel came nosing ’round the freight, and the agent, appreciating its company, gave it bits of cracker, and gained a companion. The first work of the operator was to examine his fire-arms and load them. He was not an expert with a rifle, but he had been three winters in St. Louis, and he reasoned that a man who could hit a snipe on the wing with a shot-gun ought to be able to hit a Sioux on his door-sill with a six-shooter. When he had carried all his belongings into the shanty and the shed, and had spread his bedding upon the hard board bunk, he sat down upon an empty box to think. The sun, big and red, was burning down the west at the end of a short squaw-summer day. Out of the east the shades of night came creeping across the sea of sage-brush, and the operator turned to contemplate the glory of the sunset. When the red disc was cut in half by the line of the horizon, the lone man fixed his eyes upon it and held them there. Far out on the plain, a long, lean animal, that looked to be part sheep and the rest dog, limped across the face of the falling sun, and immediately disappeared in the gloaming.