Squatted, there'll be no chance o' thar diskiverin' us, unless they stumble right atop o' us." His companion is not in the mood to make objection, and the two lay themselves along the earth.

The miniature forest not only gives them the protection of a screen but a soft bed, as the tiny trunks and leaf-laden branches become pressed down beneath their bodies.
They remain awake only long enough to give Hamersley's wound such dressing as the circumstances permit, and then both sink into slumber.
With the young prairie merchant it is neither deep nor profound.

Horrid visions float before his rapt senses--scenes of red carnage--causing him ever and anon to awake with a start, once or twice with a cry that wakes his companion.
Otherwise Walt Wilder would have slept as soundly as if reposing on the couch of a log cabin a thousand miles removed from any scene of danger.
It is no new thing for him to go to sleep with the yell of savages sounding in his ears.

For a period of over twenty years he has daily, as nightly, stretched his huge form along mountain slope or level prairie, and often with far more danger of having his "hair raised" before rising erect again.

For ten years he belonged to the "Texas Rangers"-- that strange organisation that has existed ever since Stephen Austin first planted his colony in the land of the "Lone Star." If on this night the ex-Ranger is more than usually restless, it is from anxiety about his comrade, coupled with the state of his nervous system, stirred to feverish excitement by the terrible conflict through which they have just passed.