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."
Next morning the Irishman and I saddled up and started out to secure the hides. We could have killed what we needed out of the first band we struck, but, as I wished to use the carcasses for wolf baits, we decided to distribute the baits at different points about the camp and not less than a mile from it.
We killed and skinned six bulls, making a complete circuit of our camp, and by noon had returned with the hides.
After dinner we spread enough of them over the roof timbers to completely cover them and then set to work shovelling on the dirt, making quite a mound of it. This finished our stable, except for the mangers and feed-boxes inside and making a door of some kind to close up the opening we had cut through the bank. This last Tom made next day by a frame of poles on which was tacked a buffalo-hide. This door was hung on rawhide hinges.