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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 sturdily over the hills toward the mouth of Suction Creek. The Happy Family would make all kinds of fools of themselves, he supposed, if he showed up like this; but he might not be obliged to appear before them in his present state of undress; he might strike some other camp, first. Happy Jack was still forced to be hopeful. He quite counted on striking another camp before reaching the wagons of the Flying U.

The sun slid farther and farther toward the western rim of tumbled ridges as Happy Jack, in his strange raiment, plodded laboriously to the north. The mantle he was forced to shift constantly into a new position as the sun’s rays burned deep a new place, or the stiff hide galled his blistered shoulders. The sandals did better, except that the rotten strands of rope were continually wearing through on the bottom, so that he must stop and tie fresh knots, or replace the bit from the scant surplus which he had prudently brought along.

Till sundown he climbed toilfully up the steep hills and then scrambled as toilfully into the coulees, taking the straightest course he knew for the mouth of Suction Creek; that, as a last resort, while he watched keenly for the white flake against green which would tell of a tent pitched there in the wilderness. He was hungry–when he forgot other discomforts long enough to think of it. Worst, perhaps, was the way in which the gaunt sage brush scratched his unclothed legs when he was compelled to cross a patch on some coulee bottom. Happy Jack swore a great deal, in those long, heat-laden hours, and never did he so completely belie the name men had in sarcasm given him.

Just when he was given over to the most gloomy forebodings, a white square stood out for a moment sharply against a background of pines, far below him in a coulee where the sun was peering fleetingly before it dove out of sight over a hill. Happy Jack–of a truth, the most unhappy Jack one could find, though he searched far and long–stood still and eyed the white patch critically. There was only the one; but another might be hidden in the trees. Still, there was no herd grazing anywhere in the coulee, and no jingle of cavvy bells came to his ears, though he listened long. He was sure that it was not the camp of the Flying U, where he would be ministered unto faithfully, to be sure, yet where the ministrations would be mingled with much wit-sharpened raillery harder even to bear than was his present condition of sun-blisters and scratches. He thanked the Lord in sincere if unorthodox terms, and went down the hill in long, ungraceful strides.