and curled down in the bed-tent with the others and went to sleep.

It was late that night when Rowdy crept silently into his corner of
the tent; but Pink was awake, and whispered to know if he found water.
Rowdy's "Yes" was a mere breath, but it was enough.

At sunrise the herd trailed up the Rocking R coulee, and Pink and the
Silent One pointed them north of the old trail.

CHAPTER 12. "You Can Tell Jessie."

In the days that followed Rowdy was much alone. There was water to
hunt, far ahead of the herd, together with the most practicable way of
reaching it. He did not take the shortest way across that arid country
and leave the next day's camping-place to chance--as Wooden Shoes had
done. He felt that there was too much at stake, and the cattle were too
thin for any more dry drives; long drives there were, but such was his
generalship that there was always water at the end.

He rode miles and miles that he might have shirked, and he never slept
until the next day's move, at least, was clearly defined in his mind and
he felt sure that he could do no better by going another route.

These lonely rides gave him over to the clutch of thoughts he had never
before harbored in his sunny nature. Grim, ugly thoughts they were, and
not nice to remember afterward. They swung persistently around a central
subject, as the earth revolves around the sun; and, like the earth, they
turned and turned on the axis of his love for a woman.

In particularly ugly moods he thought that if Harry Conroy were caught
and convicted of horsestealing, Jessie must perforce admit his guilt and
general unworthiness--Rowdy called it general cussedness--and Rowdy be
vindicated in her eyes. Then she would marry him, and go with him to
the Red Deer country and--air-castles for miles! When he awoke to the
argument again, he would tell himself savagely that if he could, by any
means, bring about Conroy's speedy conviction, he would do so.

This was unlike Rowdy, whose generous charity toward his enemies came
near being a fault. He might feel any amount of resentment for wrong
done, but cold-blooded revenge was not in him; that he had suffered
so much at Conroy's hands was due largely to the fact that Conroy was
astute enough to read Rowdy aright, and unscrupulous enough to take
advantage. Add to that a smallminded jealousy of Rowdy's popularity and
horsemanship, one can easily imagine him doing some rather nasty things.
Perhaps the meanest, and t