"I crossed Jim-Ned," he was saying to himself, mechanically, for the thousandth time; "I crossed the creek and came into The Rough. I left home Tuesday at sun-up.... That puppy ain't worth shucks; I wish I had brought old Josh!... I killed three jack-rabbits in Buck-Snort Gully. By the big cottonwood—what did I do by the big cottonwood? Oh, I ate my corn pone. Gee! how hungry I am!... Then I followed a deer and got into the prairie. Why, I know this prairie 'most as well as I know Jim-Ned! Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's The Rough.... And before I knew it, it was plumb dark.... I went back into The Rough, and tramped and tramped; and the first thing I knew I was out on the prairie again.... I've been doing the same thing ever since, over and over.... I haven't seen a soul.... If I could just glimpse the sun! But seems like the sun never will shine again.... I reckon I'm lost.... Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's The Rough—"
He got up and staggered a few steps, then sank down again. He was a manly lad, and he had borne with hopeful courage the hunger, cold, and loneliness of the long days and nights. But he was exhausted with fatigue, and weakened by want of food; and finally, overcome by a sense of terror and desolation, he covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud.
The painful throbbing in his ears sounded suddenly like the rhythm of advancing footsteps. Something cold and moist touched his cheek; a warm breath mingled with his own.
"Why, Lady!" he cried, springing to his feet. Weariness and hunger and cold had vanished in a trice. Laughing and crying by turns, he clasped his arms about the neck of the little mustang which he had fed and petted as a colt—the wilful Outlaw who had disappeared into The Rough two years before.
Fearful lest the mare should desert him again, he held her long mane with one hand, while with the other he groped, stooping, for his rifle. But the Outlaw apparently did not dream of flight. She stood quite still until the gun was secured and he had climbed with some difficulty upon her back.
"Now, Lady," he shouted, "take me to Jim-Ned! Carry me home!"
Lady threw up her head, neighed, and moved obediently forward. She went at a swift walk, breaking at intervals into the long, swinging, restful mustang lope.
"But—you are going in the wrong direction," remonstrated her rider, at the end of a few moments. He tugged at her mane, and endeavored to change her course. "You are carrying me through the Gap. Jim-Ned is on this side. Back, Lady—back!"
The mare shook herself impatiently, and pushed on between the pyramidal hills which loomed up on either side of the Gap, emerging into the open prairie beyond just as the moon, scattering the clouds at last, filled earth and sky with a flood of golden light.
"Well," said Jack, with a shiver of disappointment, "you'll take me somewhere, I reckon, Lady. I can't be any more lost than I've been for the last three days!"