hdrew a
thin piece of soap from the folds of a red cotton handkerchief. Once
again he sat down and proceeded to rub the soap thickly upon the heels
and insteps of his socks and inside of his boots, whereupon, after much
pulling and stamping, he stood properly shod and drew on his chaps.

A short distance farther on, a cattle trail zigzagged down the steep
side of the coulee. The Texan paused at the foot of it. "Reckon I'll
just climb up onto the bank an' take a look around. With that rope
trailin' along from the saddle horn, that damn cayuse might run his fool
head off."

From the rim of the coulee, the man gazed about him, searching for a
familiar landmark. A quarter of a mile away, a conical butte rose to a
height of a hundred feet above the level of the broken plain, and the
Texan walked over and laboriously climbed its steep side. He sank down
upon the topmost pinnacle and studied the country minutely. "Just below
the edge of the bad lands," he muttered. "The Little Rockies loom up
plain, an' the Bear Paws an' Judiths look kind of dim. I'm way off my
range down here. This part of the country don't look like it had none
too thick of a population." In vain his eyes swept the vast expanse of
plain for the sight of a ranch house. He rose in disgust. "I've got to
find that damn cayuse an' get _her_ out of this, somehow." As he was
about to begin the descent his eye caught a thin thread of smoke that
rose, apparently from a coulee some three or four miles to the eastward.
"Maybe some nester's place, or maybe only an' Injun camp, but whatever
it is, my best bet is to hit for it. I might be all day trailin' Powder
Face. Whoever it is, they'll have a horse or two, an' believe me,
they'll part with 'em." He scrambled quickly down to the bench and
started in the direction of the smoke, and as he walked, he removed the
six-gun from its holster and after wiping it carefully, made sure that
it was in working condition.

The Texan's course lay "crossways of the country," that is, in order to
reach his objective he must needs cross all the innumerable coulees and
branches that found their way to the Missouri. And as he had not
travelled far back from the river these coulees were deep and their
steep sides taxed his endurance to the utmost. At the bottom of each
coulee he drank sparingly of the bitter alkali water, and wet the
bandage about his throbbing head. After each climb he was forced to
rest. A walk of three or four miles