glare, he got up
and went nipping awkwardly over the hot beach. He was going into the
next river-bottom--wherever that was--on the chance of finding a
cow-camp, or some cabin where he could, by some means, clothe himself.
He did not like the idea of facing the Happy Family in his present
condition; he knew the Happy Family. Perhaps he might find someone
living down here next the river. He hoped so--for Happy Jack, when
things were so bad they could not well be worse, was forced to give
over the prediction of further evil, and pursue blindly the faintest
whisper of hope. He got up on the bank, where the grass was kinder to
his unaccustomed feet than were the hot stones below, and hurried away
with his back to the sun, that scorched him cruelly.

In the next bottom--and he was long getting to it--the sage brush grew
dishearteningly thick. Happy began to be afraid of snakes. He went
slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never
could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to
himself. His only hope lay in getting clothes.

Halfway down the bottom, he joyfully came upon a camp, but it had long
been deserted; from the low, tumble-down corrals, and the unmistakable
atmosphere of the place, Happy Jack knew it for a sheep camp. But
nothing save the musty odor and the bare cabin walls seemed to have
been left behind. He searched gloomily, thankful for the brief shade
the cabin offered. Then, tossed up on the rafters and forgotten, he
discovered a couple of dried sheep pelts, untanned and stiff, almost,
as shingles. Still, they were better than nothing, and he grinned in
sickly fashion at the find.

Realizing, in much pain, that some protection for his feet was an
absolute necessity, he tore a pelt in two for sandals. Much search
resulted in the discovery of a bit of rotted rope, which he unraveled
and thereby bound a piece of sheepskin upon each bruised foot. They
were not pretty, but they answered the purpose. The other pelt he
disposed of easily by tying the two front legs together around his
neck and letting the pelt hang down his back as far as it would reach.
There being nothing more that he could do in the way of
self-adornment, Happy Jack went out again into the hot afternoon. At
his best, Happy Jack could never truthfully be called handsome; just
now, clothed inadequately in gray Stetson hat and two meager
sheepskins, he looked scarce human.

Cheered a bit, he set out sturdil