had made a fool of him. After awhile he felt his jaws
aching with the vicelike pressure of his teeth together.

They topped the ridge, Rambler hobbling stiffly. Ford had in mind a
sheltering rim of sandstone at the nearest point of the coulee he had
crossed in searching for the girl's horse, and made for it. He had
noticed a spring there, and while the water might not be good, the
shelter would be welcome, at any rate.

He had the saddle off Rambler, the shoulder bathed with cold water from
the spring, and was warming his wet hands over a little fire when the
first gleam of humor struck through his anger and lighted for a moment
the situation.

"Lordy me! I must be a hoodoo, where women are concerned," he said,
kicking the smoking stub of a bush into the blaze. "Soon as one crosses
my trail, she goes and disappears off the face of the earth!" He fumbled
for his tobacco and papers. It was a "dry camp" he was making that
night, and a smoke would have to serve for a supper. He held his book of
papers absently while he stared hard at the fire.

"It ain't such a bad hoodoo," he mused. "I can spare this particular
girl just as easy as not; and the other one, too, for that matter."

After a minute spent in blowing apart the thin leaves and selecting a
paper:

"Queer where she got to--and it's a darned mean trick to play on a man
that was just trying to help her out of a fix. Why, I wouldn't treat a
stray dog that way! Darn these women!"

CHAPTER VI

The Problem of Getting Somewhere

Dawn came tardily after a long, cheerless night, during which the wind
whined over the prairie and the stars showed dimly through a shifting
veil of low-sweeping clouds. Ford had not slept much, for hunger and
cold make poor bedfellows, and all the brush he could glean on that
barren hillside, with the added warmth of his saddle-blanket wrapped
about him, could no more make him comfortable than could cigarettes
still the gnawing of his hunger.

When he could see across the coulee, he rose from where he had been
sitting with his back to the ledge and his feet to the meager fire,
brooding over all the unpleasant elements in his life thus far,
particularly the feminine element. He folded the saddle-blanket along
its original creases and went over to where Rambler stood dispiritedly
with his back humped to the cold, creeping wind and his tail whipping
between his legs when a sudden gust played with it. Ford shivered, and
beat his