tarpaulin lay, he apostrophized it with--"Break if you want to;
pieces is good enough for your Uncle Brick!"

When he left the wagon with his next burden, he was obliged to bend
low under buckets, tools, cans and larger objects. As he moved
slowly to preserve equilibrium, he began to chuckle. "Reckon if the
Injuns saw me now," he said aloud, "they'd take me for an elephant
with the circus-lady riding my back!" At the crevice, he flung in
all that would pass the narrow opening intact, and smashed up what
was too large, that their fragments might also be hidden.

"Pshaw!" grunted Willock, as he started back toward the wagon,
mopping his brow on his shirt-sleeve, "Robinson Crusoe wasn't in
it! Wonder why he done all that complaining when he had a nice easy
sea to wash him and his plunder ashore?"

He was beginning to feel the weariness of the morning return, and
the load that cleaned out the wagon-bed left him so exhausted that
he fell down on the ground beside the crevice, having thrown in his
booty. Here, with his gull at his side and a pistol in his hand,
he fell fast asleep.

He lay there like a man of stone until some inner consciousness
began beating at the door of his senses, warning him that in no
great time the moon would rise. He started up in a state of dazed
bewilderment, staring at the solemn stars, the vague outlines of
giant rocks about him and the limitless sea of darkness that flowed
away from the mountain-top indicating, but not defining, the
surrounding prairie.