matched against many, almost invariably. Instead of plotting some cunning method of defense in which one man might equal several, Rawlins withdrew a discreet distance from his haystacks and house, posting himself in a little depressed circle which he recognized, from old association on the Kansas prairies, as a buffalo wallow.
Greasewood and small bushes had grown thick around the edges of this embankment, which was about fifty yards from his house. It made a screen and shelter behind which a man might lie and do considerable damage with a rifle before even ten men could drive him into the open. At night it would be almost unassailable from any direction except the front, screened in the rear and flanked on either hand by a thick growth of sage and taller greasewood.
It must have been thirty years since a buffalo bull rolled and wallowed in that pit, rubbing off his shaggy winter coat, but it had been worn so deep, and trampled so hard, that no seed or shoot of shrub had sprung there in all the intervening leap of time. Grass had crept in and woven its tenacious sod, as some faithful custodian keeping the castle of an absent baron ready to his repose against his long-deferred return.
A man could watch there in comfortable security, Rawlins believed. He could creep out, dodging in the skirting bushes, and approach within twenty yards of the house, even in daylight, without being seen. He was grateful to the old buffalo that had planned so well to meet his needs these long years after its bones had whitened in the sun and gone back to dust in the pasture of the plains. In the security of this place he sat
