all the worry that he might expend on it in advance.
It was the pleasant sensation of the sun feeling through his wet garments that woke Hartwell. He found himself on a knoll close by the creek, but the locality was strange to him. As for that, any locality in that part of the country would have been strange, except the few miles with which he had become familiar as he rode the trail. There were no cattle very near him now, and nobody in sight. He concluded that the Texans had not yet arrived, due, very likely, to having followed some other branch of their stampeding herd. He did not want to meet any of them that morning, either, for they would not be in any amicable mood.
Food was his first thought, for the need of it was insistent above all others. He hadn't a scrap with him, and he didn't know which way to face to find a habitation. He knew it would be a safe undertaking to follow the creek, in either direction. Somebody in that country of ranches would be located on it, and no matter if the cattle had run clear down into the Nation, there would be something for a hungry rider. This course he pursued, turning toward the east, for that direction lay on his right hand, and Hartwell was a right-handed man, morally as well as physically, and it was the direction that suited him best.
Cattle were spread over miles of country, and at
