ers and scratches. He thanked the Lord in sincere if
unorthodox terms, and went down the hill in long, ungraceful strides.

It was far down that hill, and it was farther across the coulee. Each
step grew more wearisome to Happy Jack, unaccustomed as he was to
using his own feet as a mode of travel. But away in the edge of the
pine grove were food and raiment, and a shelter from the night that
was creeping down on him with the hurried stealth of a mountain lion
after its quarry. He shifted the sheepskin mantle for the thousandth
time; this time he untied it from his galled shoulders and festooned
it modestly if unbecomingly about his middle.

Feeling sure of the unfailing hospitality of the rangeland, be the
tent-dweller whom he might, Happy Jack walked boldly through the soft,
spring twilight that lasts long in Montana, and up to the very door of
the tent. A figure--a female figure--slender and topped by thin face
and eyes sheltered behind glasses, rose up, gazed upon him in horror,
shrieked till one could hear her a mile, and fell backward into the
tent. Another female figure appeared, looked, and shrieked also--and
even louder than did the first. Happy Jack, with a squawk of dismay,
turned and flew incontinently afar into the dusk. A man's voice he
heard, shouting inquiry; another, shouting what, from a distance,
sounded like threats. Happy Jack did not wait to make sure; he ran
blindly, until he brought up in a patch of prickly-pear, at which he
yelled, forgetting for the instant that he was pursued. Somehow he
floundered out and away from the torture of the stinging spines, and
took to the hills. A moon, big as the mouth of a barrel, climbed over
a ridge and betrayed him to the men searching below, and they shouted
and fired a gun. Happy Jack did not believe they could shoot very
straight, but he was in no mood to take chances; he sought refuge
among a jumble of great, gray bowlders; sat himself down in the shadow
and caressed gingerly the places where the prickly-pear had punctured
his skin, and gave himself riotously over to blasphemy.

The men below were prowling half-heartedly, it seemed to him--as if
they were afraid of running upon him too suddenly. It came to him that
they were afraid of him--and he grinned feebly at the joke. He had not
before stopped to consider his appearance, being concerned with more
important matters. Now, however, as he pulled the scant covering of
the pelt over his shoulders to keep