Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/220

 had been told that Galloway was bigger than either in that part of the State.

Rawlins got out his pipe after the moon had been gone two hours or more, to ease the tension of his silent waiting. There was no honesty in secrecy, let the smoke betray his presence as it might. He was not hiding out from anybody, only availing himself of the advantage that caution might give him. He did not want them to believe him absent, but to take it that he was standing off just that way, watching and ready, with his gun at his hand, determined to fight for that little chunk of earth that was his birthright as a citizen of the United States.

So he reasoned, back against the bowl of the old buffalo wallow, hands clasped behind his head, looking up at the cold blue points of the stars.

Rawlins sprang out of what he thought a momentary doze, alarmed by the creak of riving planks, the splintering crash of breaking glass. He cursed his treasonable lapse when he saw that it was daylight, and that four men on horseback were trying to drag his house down with ropes tied to their saddle-horns.

Another mounted man, who was supervising the job, was posted before the door, as if watching for the inhabitant of the little plank box to appear. This man was holding his gun poised ready to throw it down in a quick shot, just as if he waited for a rabbit at a hole in a hedge.

Rawlins was not concerned about the house coming down, for he had anchored it well at the corners to posts set deep in the ground, as he had seen such houses on the Kansas prairies tied down against the wind. It