He continued along the coulee limping painfully across stretches of sharp stones and avoiding the innumerable patches of prickly pears with which the floor of the valley was dotted. Rounding a sharp spur of rock that protruded into the ravine, he halted abruptly and stared at his boots which lay directly in his path. He grinned as he examined the broken thong. "I've be'n cussin' busted pack-strings all my life," he muttered, "but this particular string has wiped out the whole score again' 'em." Removing his leather chaps, he seated himself, drew on his socks, and inserted a foot into a boot. In vain he pulled and tugged at the straps. The wet leather gripped the damp sock like a vise. He stood up and stamped and pulled but the foot stuck fast at the ankle of the boot. Withdrawing the foot, he fished in his hip pocket and withdrew a thin piece of soap from the folds of a red cotton handkerchief. Once again he sat down and proceeded to rub the soap thickly upon the heels and insteps of his socks and inside of his boots, whereupon, after much pulling and stamping, he stood properly shod and drew on his chaps. A short distance farther on, a cattle trail zigzagged down the steep side of the coulee. The Texan paused at the foot of it. "Reckon I'll just climb up onto the bank an' take a look around. With that rope trailin' along from the saddle horn, that damn cayuse might run his fool head off." From the rim of the coulee, the man gazed about him, searching for a familiar landmark. A quarter of a mile away, a conical butte rose to a height of a hundred feet above the level of the broken plain, and the Texan walked over and laboriously climbed its steep side. He sank down upon the topmost pinnacle and studied the country minutely. "Just below the edge of the bad lands," he muttered. "The Little Rockies loom up plain, an' the Bear Paws an' Judiths look kind of dim. I'm way off my range down here. This part of the country don't look like it had none too thick of a population." In vain his eyes swept the vast expanse of plain for the sight of a ranch house. He rose in disgust. "I've got to find that damn cayuse an' get _her_ out of this, somehow." As he was about to begin the descent his eye caught a thin thread of smoke that rose, apparently from a coulee some three or four miles to the eastward. "Maybe some nester's place, or maybe only an' Injun camp, but whatever it is, my best bet is to hit for it. I might be all day trailin' Powder Face. Whoever it is, they'll have a horse or two, an' believe me, they'll part with 'em." He scrambled quickly down to the bench and started in the direction of the smoke, and as he walked, he removed the six-gun from its holster and after wiping it carefully, made sure that it was in working condition.