m pass. He
wanted to talk with him. Maybe he had a bottle and Purdy needed a drink.
The man was idly twirling the end of his rope and singing a song as he
rode. He seemed care-free, even gay. The song that he sang was a popular
one on the cattle range, grossly obscene, having to do with the love
intrigues of one "Big Foot Sal."

Purdy felt suddenly very much alone. Here was one of his kind with whom
he would like to pass the time of day--smoke with him and if
circumstances permitted, drink with him, and swap the gossip of the
range. Instead, he must skulk in the thicket like a coyote until the man
passed. A great wave of self-pity swept over him. He, Jack Purdy, was an
outcast. Men would not drink with him nor would women dance with him.
Even at this moment men were riding the range in search of him, and if
they caught him--he shuddered, cold beads of sweat collected upon his
forehead, involuntarily his fingers caressed his throat, and he loosened
the collar of his shirt. Every man's hand was against him. His anger
blazed forth in a volley of horrible curses, and he shook his gloved
fist at the back of the disappearing rider. He rode on. "Damn 'em all!"
he muttered, the sullen hatred settling itself once more upon him. "Wait
till I get to the bad lands, an' then--" Purdy had no definite plan
further than reaching the bad lands. His outfit had worked the range to
the northward of Milk River, and he knew little of the bad lands except
that they furnished a haven of refuge to men who were "on the run." He
was "on the run," therefore he must reach the bad lands.

It was late in the afternoon when he rode unhesitatingly into the
treeless, grassless waste of dry mud and mica studded lava rock, giving
no heed to the fact that water holes were few and far between and known
only to the initiated. Darkness found him following down a dry coulee
into which high-walled, narrow mud cracks led in a labyrinth of black
passages. His horse's head was drooping and the animal could not be
forced off a slow walk. No spear of grass was visible and the rock floor
of the coulee was baked and dry. Purdy's lips were parched, and his
tongue made an audible rasping sound when he drew it across the roof of
his mouth. The dark-walled coulee was almost pitch black, and he
shivered in the night chill. His horse's shod feet, ringing loudly upon
the rock floor, shattered a tomb-like silence. It seemed to Purdy that
the sound could be heard for miles an