The Texan's course lay "crossways of the country," that is, in order to reach his objective he must needs cross all the innumerable coulees and branches that found their way to the Missouri. And as he had not travelled far back from the river these coulees were deep and their steep sides taxed his endurance to the utmost. At the bottom of each coulee he drank sparingly of the bitter alkali water, and wet the bandage about his throbbing head. After each climb he was forced to rest. A walk of three or four miles in high-heeled riding boots assumes the proportions of a real journey, even under the most favourable circumstances, but with the precipitous descents, the steep climbs, and the alkali flats between the coulees, which in dry weather are dazzling white, and hard and level as a floor, now merely grey greasy beds of slime into which he sank to the ankles at each step, the trip proved a nightmare of torture. At the end of an hour he figured that he had covered half the distance. He was plodding doggedly, every muscle aching from the unaccustomed strain. His feet, which burned and itched where the irritating soap rubbed into his skin, had swollen until the boots held them in a vise-like grip of torture. At each step he lifted pounds of glue-like mud which clung to the legs of his leather chaps in a thick grey smear. And each step was a separate, conscious, painful effort, that required a concentration of will to consummate. And so he plodded, this Texan, who would have cursed the petty mishap of an ill-thrown loop to the imminent damnation of his soul, enduring the physical torture in stoic silence. Once or twice he smiled grimly, the cynical smile that added years to the boyish face. "When I see her safe at some ranch, I'll beat it," he muttered thickly. "I'll go somewhere an' finish my jamboree an' then I'll hit fer some fresh range." To his surprise he suddenly found that the mere thought of whisky was nauseating to him. His memory took him back to a college town in his native State. "It used to be that way," he grinned, "when I'd get soused, I couldn't look at a drink for a week. I reckon stayin' off of it for a whole year has about set me back where I started." He half-climbed, half-fell down the steep side of a coulee and dipped his aching head in the cool water at the bottom. With a stick he scraped the thick smear of grey mud from his chaps and boots, and washed them in the creek. He rose to his feet and stood looking down into a clear little pool. "By God, I can't go--like that!" he said aloud. "I've got to stay an' face Win! I've got to know that he don't think there's anything--wrong--with her!"