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.