After an early breakfast next morning Jack and I mounted and started. We found fully as big a job as I had anticipated, for the night's catch yielded us over fifty wolfskins. It took us most of the morning, brisk work, to get them all gathered in, and our horses were so well loaded with the hides that we had to walk and lead them back to camp. Jack proved an apt pupil at wolf skinning and soon could snatch a hide off as quickly as I. When we reached camp with our loads we found that Tom, with his usual foresight, had whittled us out a good lot of pegs, which greatly assisted us in disposing of the pelts, and we soon had them stretched and pegged down, flesh side up, on a smooth piece of ground near the tent where we had already started a drying yard. Each evening, while there was anything left for a wolf bait of the buffalo we had recently killed, I made the round, poisoning the flesh, and next morning Jack and I visited the baits, skinned the dead wolves, brought in the pelts, and pegged them down. This generally "spoiled" the forenoon, while the afternoon would be spent in digging our dugout; but, as our winter quarters were to be only about half the size of the stable, we soon had the new excavation finished. After putting the roof timbers on our dugout we placed the stove in its corner, put on the extra joints of pipe provided for the purpose, extending it up through an opening in the slabs, and plastered a lot of mud around the pipe to prevent it setting fire to the timbers. Then spreading buffalo-hides over the timbers, we heaped up the earth on it, as we had on the other one, and our winter residence was ready for its furniture and tenants. Our ten-foot-square room was rather cramped quarters to hold us and all that we had designed to put in it, and we found it necessary still to use the tent to store such of our plunder as would not need protection from the cold. Without giving any reason, Tom insisted on moving the tent up as close against the rear side of the pile of dirt that constituted the roof of our dugout as we could get it. I suspected then that this was one of his strategic plans, and a few days later my surmise was verified when we found him at work digging a tunnel from the dugout room to the centre of the tent. By this underground connection we could go from one place to the other without being exposed and, if necessary, could use the tent as a lookout station. On the evening that we moved into the dugout, as we sat down to our first meal in winter quarters, Tom remarked with evident satisfaction: