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 off the chill of the night, he
could not wonder that the woman at the tent had fainted. Happy Jack
suspected shrewdly that he could, in that rig, startle almost any one.

He watched the coulee wistfully. They were making fires, down there
below him; great, revealing bonfires at intervals that would make it
impossible to pass their line unseen. He could not doubt that some one
was _cached_ in the shadows with a gun. There were more than two men;
Happy Jack thought that there must be at least four or five. He would
have liked to go down, just out of gun range, and shout explanations
and a request for some clothes--only for the women. Happy was always
ill at ease in the presence of strange women, and he felt, just now,
quite unequal to the ordeal of facing those two. He sat huddled in the
shadow of a rock and wished profanely that women would stay at home
and not go camping out in the Badlands, where their presence was
distinctly inappropriate and undesirable. If the men down there were
alone, he felt sure that he could make them understand. Seeing they
were not alone, however, he stayed where he was and watched the fires,
while his teeth chattered with cold and his stomach ached with the
hunger he could not appease.

Till daylight he sat there unhappily and watched the unwinking
challenge of the flames below, and miserably wished himself elsewhere;
even the jibes of the Happy Family would be endurable, so long as he
had the comfort afforded by the Flying U camp. But that was miles
away. And when daylight brought warmth and returning courage, he went