He needed to think; to grasp this disaster that had come so suddenly upon him.  He looked moodily across to the southern bank, his chin sunken between moist palms, the while the water dried upon his person.  To be set afoot, down here in the Badlands, away from the habitations of men and fifteen miles from the probable location of the Flying U camp, was not nice.  To be set afoot naked—­it was horrible, and unbelievable.  He thought of tramping, barefooted and bare-legged, through fifteen miles of sage-covered Badlands to camp, with the sun beating down on his unprotected back, and groaned in anticipation.  Not even his pessimism had ever pictured a thing so terrible.

He gazed at the gray-blue river which had caused this trouble that he must face, and forgetting the luxury of its coolness, cursed it venomously.  Little waves washed up on the pebbly bank, and glinted in the sun while they whispered mocking things to him.  Happy Jack gave over swearing at the river, and turned his wrath upon Stranger—­Stranger, hurtling along somewhere through the breaks, with all Happy’s clothes tied firmly to the saddle.  Happy Jack sighed lugubriously when he remembered how firmly.  A fleeting hope that, if he followed the trail of Stranger, he might glean a garment or two that had slipped loose, died almost before it lived.  Happy Jack knew too well the kind of knots he always tied.  His favorite boast that nothing ever worked loose on his saddle, came back now to mock him with its absolute truth.

The sun, dropping a bit lower, robbed him inch by inch of the shade to which he clung foolishly.  He hunched himself into as small a space as his big frame would permit, and hung his hat upon his knees where they stuck out into the sunlight.  It was very hot, and his position was cramped, but he would not go yet; he was still thinking—­and the brain of Happy Jack worked ever slowly.  In such an unheard-of predicament he felt dimly that he had need of much thought.

When not even his hat could shield him from the sun glare, he got up and went nipping awkwardly over the hot beach.  He was going into the next river-bottom—­wherever that was—­on the chance of finding a cow-camp, or some cabin where he could, by some means, clothe himself.  He did not like the idea of facing the Happy Family in his present condition; he knew the Happy Family.  Perhaps he might find someone living down here next the river.  He hoped so—­for Happy Jack, when things were so bad they could not well be worse, was forced to give over the prediction of further evil, and pursue blindly the faintest whisper of hope.  He got up on the bank, where the grass was kinder to his unaccustomed feet than were the hot stones below, and hurried away with his back to the sun, that scorched him cruelly.

In the next bottom—­and he was long getting to it—­the sage brush grew dishearteningly thick.  Happy began to be afraid of snakes.  He went slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to himself.  His only hope lay in getting clothes.