wn agin yu from behind,"
indicating by an outstretched arm the point from where it would start.
"If it burns yu out I'm goin' to take a band from up there," pointing to
a cluster of rocks well to the rear of where the crowd would work from,
"an' I don't care whether yu likes it or not," he added to himself.

Hopalong scratched his head and then laughed. Taking up a pick and
shovel, he went out behind the cabin and dug a trench parallel with and
about twenty paces away from the rear wall. Heaping the excavated dirt
up on the near side of the cut, he stepped back and surveyed his labor
with open satisfaction. "Roll yore fire barrel an' be dogged," he
muttered. "Mebby she won't make a bully light for pot shots, though," he
added, grinning at the execution he would do.

Taking up his tools, he went up to the place from where the gang would
roll the barrel, and made half a dozen mounds of twigs, being careful to
make them very flimsy. Then he covered them with earth and packed
them gently. The mounds looked very tempting from the view-point of a
marksman in search of earth-works, and appeared capable of stopping any
rifle ball that could be fired against them. Hopalong looked them over
critically and stepped back.

"I'd like to see th' look on th' face of th' son-of-a-gun that uses them
for cover--won't he be surprised" and he grinned gleefully as he pictured
his shots boring through them. Then he placed in the center of each a
chip or a pebble or something that he thought would show up well in the
firelight.

Returning to the cabin, he banked it up well with dirt and gravel,
and tossed a few shovelfuls up on the roof as a safety valve to his
exuberance. When he entered the door he had another idea, and fell to
work scooping out a shallow cellar, deep enough to shelter him when
lying at full length. Then he stuck his head out of the window and
grinned at the false covers with their prominent bull's-eyes.

"When that prize-winnin' gang of ossified idiots runs up agin' these
fortifications they shore will be disgusted. I'll bet four dollars an'
seven cents they'll think their medicine-man's no good. I hopes that
puff-eyed marshal will pick out that hump with th' chip on it," and he
hugged himself in anticipation.

He then cut down a sapling and fastened it to the roof and on it he
tied his neckerchief, which fluttered valiantly and with defiance in
the light breeze. "I shore hopes they appreciates that," he remarked
whi