position. His hands he could not move from his thighs; he could
wiggle his fingers--which he did, to relieve as much as possible
that unpleasant, prickly sensation which we call a "going to
sleep" of the afflicted members. When it occurred to him that he
could not do anything with his horse if he found it, he gave up
looking for it and started for the ranch, walking awkwardly,
because of his bonds, the sun shining hotly upon his brown head,
because his hat had been knocked off in the scuffle, and he could
not pick it up and put it back where it belonged.

Taking a straight course across the prairie, he struck Flying U
coulee at the point where the sheep had left it. On the way there
he had crossed their trail where they went through the fence
farther along the coulee than before, and therefore with a better
chance of passing undetected; especially since the Happy Family,
believing that he was forcing them steadily to the north, would
not be watching for sheep. The barbed wire barrier bothered him
somewhat. He was compelled to lie down and roll under the fence,
in the most undignified manner, and, when he was through, there
was the problem of getting upon his feet again. But he managed it
somehow, and went on down the coulee, perspiring with the heat
and a bitter realization of his ignominy. What the Happy Family
would have to say when they saw him, even Andy Green's vivid
imagination declined to picture.

He knew by the sun that it was full noon when he came in sight of
the stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of
facing that derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins
and their barbed tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had
reached the limit of prickly sensations and were numb to his