At noon when the men came in to dinner they reported that they had raked up a good load of the hay that had been scattered, and in the afternoon they took the mules and wagon with them and Tom brought the first load to camp on returning in the evening, while Jack remained and began skinning the dead buffalo. When I joined him we soon stripped the hide off, applied the strychnine to the carcass, and left it for the wolves. "First come, first served, will be the rule here to-night," I remarked as we started to camp. "The first wolves to reach the bait will probably get laid out before they have time to get half a feed, while those that come later may not get strychnine enough to give them a bellyache." "How many do you expect to find in the morning?" asked Jack. "Oh, about eight or ten for the first night will be a pretty fair haul; but by to-morrow night I'll poison the bait again, and by that time it ought to catch more--maybe as many as twelve or fifteen--for the scent of the dead buffalo will then attract them from a greater distance." I did even better than I anticipated, for next morning I found thirteen dead wolves lying around the bait awaiting my skinning knife. Jack remained in camp until I had skinned the wolves, brought in the pelts and pegged them down to dry, after which he took the team and went out to the hay-field where Tom was mowing. The dead buffalo only lasted for three nights' baiting, by which time I had taken nearly fifty pelts, some big gray wolves but mostly coyotes and little yellow foxes. We killed no more buffalo for wolf baits until the more important work was done. Our haymakers were now making a good showing, bringing in and stacking a load at noon and another at night, and in a week we had stacked as much hay as we should need. While doing duty as camp guard, I had put in all my spare time throwing dirt out of our stable dugout and had the excavation about completed. While Jack and I were doing a little trimming up inside and cutting a doorway through the wall of dirt on the side next the ravine, Tom had gone into the timber and cut and split a lot of poles and slabs to support the roof of dirt. First putting a small log, twenty-four feet long, on the brink of each side of the excavation, to serve as "plates" to rest the roof timbers on, we then laid twelve-foot slabs and poles across from side to side, as closely as they would fit, covering the larger crevices with brush. "Now," said Tom, stepping back to take an observation of our work when we had reached this point, "ef we had buffalo-skins enough to cover it, to keep the fine dirt from sifting through, we'd be ready to go to throwing the dirt on an' soon have the horses' stable finished up so's we could go to work on our own quarters." "Well, we can soon get them," I replied. "In the morning Jack and I will go out and kill a few buffalo and bring in the hides, and by to-morrow night we can have this dugout about completed."