"Mebby you're right," admitted "Shorty," "but he sure talks like a schoolmarm, don't he?"

"He sure ain't no puncher," commented Bert.

"No, but I'm gamblin' that he's goin' to be," retorted Curly, ignoring the reference to Patches' culture.

"Me, too," agreed Bob.

"Well, we'll all try him out this fall rodeo"; and "better not let him drift far from the home ranch for a while," laughed the visitors. "So long!" and they were away.

Before breakfast the next morning Phil said to Patches, "Catch up Snip, and give him a feed of grain. You'll ride with me to-day."

At Patches' look of surprise he explained laughingly, "I'm going to give my school a little vacation, and Uncle Will thinks it's time you were out of the kindergarten."

Later, as they were crossing the big pasture toward the country that lies to the south, the foreman volunteered the further information that for the next few weeks they would ride the range.

"May I ask what for?" said Patches, encouraged by the cowboy's manner.

It was one of the man's peculiarities that he rarely entered into the talk of his new friends when their work was the topic of conversation. And he never asked questions except when alone with Phil or the Dean, and then only when led on by them. It was not that he sought to hide his ignorance, for he made no pretenses whatever, but his reticence seemed, rather, the result of a curious feeling of shame that he had so little in common with these men whose lives were so filled with useful labor. And this, if he had known, was one of the things that made them like him. Men who live in such close daily touch with the primitive realities of life, and who thereby acquire a simple directness, with a certain native modesty, have no place in their hearts for—to use their own picturesque vernacular—a "four-flusher."

Phil tactfully did not even smile at the question, but answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "To look out for screw-worms, brand a calf here and there, keep the water holes open, and look out for the stock generally."

"And you mean," questioned Patches doubtfully, "that I am to ride with you?"

"Sure. You see, Uncle Will thinks you are too good a man to waste on the odd jobs around the place, and so I'm going to get you in shape for the rodeo this fall."

The effect of his words was peculiar. A deep red colored Patches' face, and his eyes shone with a glad light, as he faced his companion. "And you—what do you think about it, Phil?" he demanded.

The cowboy laughed at the man's eagerness. "Me? Oh, I think just as I have thought all the time—ever since you asked for a job that day in the corral."

Patches drew a long breath, and, sitting very straight in the saddle, looked away toward Granite Mountain; while Phil, watching him curiously, felt something like kindly pity in his heart for this man who seemed to hunger so for a man's work, and a place among men.

Just outside the Deep Wash gate of the big pasture, a few cattle were grazing in the open flat. As the men rode toward them, Phil took down his riata while Patches watched him questioningly.

"We may as well begin right here," said the cowboy. "Do you see anything peculiar about anything in that bunch?"

Patches studied the cattle in vain.

"What about that calf yonder?" suggested Phil, leisurely opening the loop of his rope. "I mean that six-months youngster with the white face."

Still Patches hesitated.

Phil helped him again. "Look at his ears."

"They're not marked," exclaimed Patches.

"And what should they be marked?" asked the teacher.

"Under-bit right and a split left, if he belongs to the Cross-Triangle," returned the pupil proudly, and in the same breath he exclaimed, "He is not branded either."

Phil smiled approval. "That's right, and we'll just fix him now, before somebody else beats us to him." He moved his horse slowly toward the cattle as he spoke.

"But," exclaimed Patches, "how do you know that he belongs to the Cross-Triangle?"

"He doesn't," returned Phil, laughing. "He belongs to me."

"But I don't see how you can tell."

"I know because I know the stock," Phil explained, "and because I happen to remember that particular calf, in the rodeo last spring. He got away from us, with his mother, in the cedars and brush over near the head of Mint Wash. That's one of the things that you have to learn in this business, you see. But, to be sure we're right, you watch him a minute, and you'll see him go to a Five-Bar cow. The Five-Bar is my iron, you know—I have a few head running with Uncle Will's."

Even as he spoke, the calf, frightened at their closer approach, ran to a cow that was branded as Phil had said, and the cow, with unmistakable maternal interest in her offspring, proved the ownership of the calf.

"You see?" said Phil. "We'll get that fellow now, because before the next rodeo he'll be big enough to leave his mother, and then; if he isn't branded, he'll be a maverick, and will belong to anybody that puts an iron on him."

"But couldn't someone brand him now, with their brand, and drive him away from his mother?" asked Patches.

"Such things have been known to happen, and that not a thousand miles from here, either," returned Phil dryly. "But, really, you know, Mr. Patches, it isn't done among the best people."

Patches laughed aloud at his companion's attempt at a simpering affectation. Then he watched with admiration while the cowboy sent his horse after the calf and, too quickly for an inexperienced eye to see just how it was done, the deft riata stretched the animal by the heels. With a short "hogging" rope, which he carried looped through a hole cut in the edge of his chaps near the belt, Phil tied the feet of his victim, before the animal had recovered from the shock of the fall; and then, with Patches helping, proceeded to build a small fire of dry grass and leaves and sticks from a near-by bush. From his saddle, Phil took a small iron rod, flattened at one end, and only long enough to permit its being held in the gloved hand when the flattened end was hot—a running iron, he called it, and explained to his interested pupil, as he thrust it into the fire, how some of the boys used an iron ring for range branding.

"And is there no way to change or erase a brand?" asked Patches, while the iron was heating.

"Sure there is," replied Phil. And sitting on his heels, cowboy fashion, he marked on the ground with a stick.

"Look! This is the Cross-Triangle brand: ; and this: , the Four-Bar-M, happens to be Nick Cambert's iron, over at Tailholt Mountain. Now, can't you see how, supposing I were Nick, and this calf were branded with the Cross-Triangle, I could work the iron over into my brand?"

Patches nodded. "But is there no way to detect such a fraud?"

"It's a mighty hard thing to prove that an iron has bees worked over," Phil answered slowly. "About the only sure way is to catch the thief in the act."

"But there are the earmarks," said Patches, a few moments later, when Phil had released the branded and marked calf—"the earmarks and the brand wouldn't agree."

"They would if I were Nick," said the cowboy. Then he added quickly, as if regretting his remark, "Our earmark is an under-bit right and a split left, you said. Well, the Four-Bar-M earmark is a crop and an under-bit right and a swallow-fork left." With the point of his iron now he again marked in the dirt. "Here's your Cross-Triangle: ; and here's your Pour-Bar-M: ."

"And if a calf branded with a Tailholt iron were to be found following a Cross-Triangle cow, then what?" came Patches' very natural question.

"Then," returned the foreman of the Cross-Triangle grimly, "there would be a mighty good chance for trouble."

"But it seems to me," said Patches, as they rode on, "that it would be easily possible for a man to brand another man's calf by mistake."

"A man always makes a mistake when he puts his iron on another man's property," returned the cowboy shortly.

"But might it not be done innocently, just the same!" persisted Patches.

"Yes, it might," admitted Phil.

"Well, then, what would you do if you found a calf, that you knew belonged to the Dean, branded with some other man's brand? I mean, how would you proceed?"

"Oh, I see what you are driving at," said Phil in quite a different tone. "If you ever run on to a case, the first thing for you to do is to be dead sure that the misbranded calf belongs to one of our cows. Then, if you are right, and it's not too far, drive the cow and calf into the nearest corral and report it. If you can't get them to a corral without too much trouble, just put the Cross-Triangle on the calf's ribs. When he shows up in the next rodeo, with the right brand on his ribs, and some other brand where the right brand ought to be—you'll take pains to remember his natural markings, of course—you will explain the circumstances, and the owner of the iron that was put on him by mistake will be asked to vent his brand. A brand is vented by putting the same brand on the animal's shoulder. Look! There's one now." He pointed to an animal a short distance away. "See, that steer is branded Diamond-and-a-Half on hip and shoulder, and Cross-Triangle on his ribs. Well, when he was a yearling he belonged to the Diamond-and-a-Half outfit. We picked him up in the rodeo, away over toward Mud Tanks. He was running with our stock, and Stillwell didn't want to go to the trouble of taking him home—about thirty miles it is—so he sold him to Uncle Will, and vented his brand, as you see."

"I see," said Patches, "but that's different from finding a calf misbranded."

"Sure. There was no question of ownership there," agreed Phil.

"But in the case of the calf," the cowboy's pupil persisted, "if it had left its mother when the man owning the iron was asked to vent it, there would be no way of proving the real ownership."

"Nothing but the word of the man who found the calf with its mother, and, perhaps, the knowledge of the men who knew the stock."

"What I am getting at," smiled Patches, "is this: it would come down at last to a question of men, wouldn't it?"

"That's where most things come to in, the end in this country, Patches. But you're right. With owners like Uncle Will, and Jim Reid, and Stillwell, and dozens of others; and with cowboys like Curly and Bob and Bert and 'Shorty,' there would be no trouble at all about the matter."

"But with others," suggested Patches.

"Well," said Phil slowly, "there are men in this country, who, if they refused to vent a brand under such circumstances, would be seeing trouble, and mighty quick, too."

"There's another thing that we've got to watch out for, just now," Phil continued, a few minutes later, "and that is, 'sleepers'. We'll suppose," he explained, "that I want to build up my, bunch of Five-Bars, and that I am not too particular about how I do it. Well, I run on to an unbranded Pot-Hook-S calf that looks good to me, but I don't dare put my iron on him because he's too young to leave his mother. If I let him go until he is older, some of Jim Reid's riders will brand him, and, you see, I never could work over the Pot-Hook-S iron into my Five-Bar. So I earmark the calf with the owner's marks, and don't brand him at all. Then he's a sleeper. If the Pot-Hook-S boys see him, they'll notice that he's earmarked all right, and very likely they'll take it for granted that he's branded, or, perhaps let him go anyway. Before the next rodeo I run on to my sleeper again, and he's big enough now to take away from the cow, so all I have to do is to change the earmarks and brand him with my iron. Of course, I wouldn't get all my sleepers, but—the percentage would be in my favor. If too many sleepers show up in the rodeo, though, folks would get mighty suspicious that someone was too handy with his knife. We got a lot of sleepers in the last rodeo," he concluded quietly.

And Patches, remembering what Little Billy had said about Nick Cambert and Yavapai Joe, and with the talk of the visiting cowboys still fresh in his mind, realized that he was making progress in his education.

Riding leisurely, and turning frequently aside for a nearer view of the cattle they sighted here and there, they reached Toohey a little before noon. Here, in a rocky hollow of the hills, a small stream wells from under the granite walls, only to lose itself a few hundred yards away in the sands and gravel of the wash. But, short as its run in the daylight is, the water never fails. And many cattle come from the open range that lies on every side, to drink, and, in summer time, to spend the heat of the day, standing in the cool, wet sands or lying in the shade of the giant sycamores that line the bank opposite the bluff. There are corrals near-by and a rude cook-shack under the wide-spreading branches of an old walnut tree; and the ground of the flat open space, a little back from the water, is beaten bare and hard by the thousands upon thousands of cattle that have at many a past rodeo-time been gathered there.

The two men found, as the Diamond-and-a-Half riders had said, several animals suffering from those pests of the Arizona ranges, the screwworms. As Phil explained to Patches while they watered their horses, the screwworm is the larva of a blowfly bred in sores on living animals. The unhealed wounds of the branding iron made the calves by far the most numerous among the sufferers, and were the afflicted animals not treated the loss during the season would amount to considerable.

"Look here, Patches," said the cowboy, as his practiced eyes noted the number needing attention. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll just run this hospital bunch into the corral, and you can limber up that riata of yours."

And so Patches learned not only the unpleasant work of cleaning the worm-infested sores with chloroform, but received his first lesson in the use of the cowboy's indispensable tool, the riata.

"What next?" asked Patches, as the last calf escaped through the gate which he had just opened, and ran to find the waiting and anxious mother.

Phil looked at his companion, and laughed. Honorable Patches showed the effect of his strenuous and bungling efforts to learn the rudiments of the apparently simple trick of roping a calf. His face was streaked with sweat and dust, his hair disheveled, and his clothing soiled and stained. But his eyes were bright, and his bearing eager and ready.

"What's the matter?" he demanded, grinning happily at his teacher. "What fool thing have I done now?"

"You're doing fine," Phil returned. "I was only thinking that you don't look much like the man I met up on the Divide that evening."

"I don't feel much like him, either, as far as that goes," returned Patches.

Phil glanced up at the sun. "What do you say to dinner? It must be about that time."

"Dinner?"

"Sure. I brought some jerky—there on my saddle—and some coffee. There ought to be an old pot in the shack yonder. Some of the boys don't bother, but I never like to miss a feed unless it's necessary." He did not explain that the dinner was really a thoughtful concession to his companion.

"Ugh!" ejaculated Patches, with a shrug of disgust, the work they had been doing still fresh in his mind. "I couldn't eat a bite."

"You think that now," retorted Phil, "but you just go down to the creek, drink all you can hold, wash up, and see how quick you'll change your mind when you smell the coffee."

And thus Patches received yet another lesson—a lesson in the art of forgetting promptly the most disagreeable features of his work—an art very necessary to those who aspire to master real work of any sort whatever.

When they had finished their simple meal, and lay stretched full length beneath the overhanging limbs of the age-old tree that had witnessed so many stirring scenes, and listened to so many camp-fire tales of ranch and range, they talked of things other than their work. In low tones, as men who feel a mystic and not-to-be-explained bond of fellowship—with half-closed eyes looking out into the untamed world that lay before them—they spoke of life, of its mystery and meaning. And Phil, usually so silent when any conversation touched himself, and so timid always in expressing his own self thoughts, was strangely moved to permit this man to look upon the carefully hidden and deeper things of his life. But upon his cherished dream—upon his great ambition—he kept the door fast closed. The time for that revelation of himself was not yet.

"By the way, Phil," said Patches, when at last his companion signified that it was time for them to go. "Where were you educated? I don't think that I have heard you say."

"I have no education," returned the young man, with a laugh that, to Patches, sounded a bitter note. "I'm just a common cow-puncher, that's all."

"I beg your pardon," returned the other, "but I thought from the books you mentioned—"

"Oh, the books! Why, you see, some four years ago a real, honest-to-goodness book man came out to this country for his health, and brought his disease along with him."

"His disease?" questioned Patches.

Phil smiled. "His books, I mean. They killed him, and I fell heir to his trouble. He was a good fellow, all right—we all liked him—might have been a man if he hadn't been so much of a scholar. I was curious, at first, just to see what it was that had got such a grip on him; and then I got interested myself. About that time, too, there was a reason why I thought it might be a good thing for me; so I sent for more, and have made a fairly good job of it in the past three years. I don't think that there's any danger, though, of the habit getting the grip on me that it had on him," he reflected with a whimsical grin. "It was our book friend who first called Uncle Will the Dean."

"The title certainly fits him well," remarked Patches. "I don't wonder that it stuck. I suppose you received yours for your riding?"

"Mine?"

"'Wild Horse Phil,' I mean," smiled the other.

Phil laughed. "Haven't you heard that yarn yet? I reckon I may as well tell you. No, wait!" he exclaimed eagerly. "We have lots of time. We'll ride south a little way and perhaps I can show you."

As they rode away up the creek, Patches wondered much at his companion's words and at his manner, but the cowboy shook his head at every question, answering, simply, "Wait."

Soon they had left the creek bed—passing through a rock gateway at the beginning of the little stream—and were riding up a long, gently sloping hollow between two low but rugged ridges. The crest of the rocky wall on their left was somewhat higher than the ridge on their right, but, as the floor of the long, narrow hollow ascended, the sides of the little valley became correspondingly lower. Patches noticed that his companion was now keenly alert and watchful. He sat his horse easily, but there was a certain air of readiness in his poise, as though he anticipated sudden action, while his eyes searched the mountain sides with eager expectancy.

They had nearly reached the upper end of the long slope when Phil abruptly reined his horse to the left and rode straight up that rugged, rock-strewn mountain wall. To Patches it seemed impossible that a horse could climb such a place; but he said nothing, and wisely gave Snip his head. They were nearly at the top—so near, in fact, that Phil could see over the narrow crest—when the cowboy suddenly checked his horse and slipped from the saddle. With a gesture he bade his companion follow his example, and in a moment Patches stood beside him. Leaving their horses, they crept the few remaining feet to the summit. Crouching low, then lying prone, they worked their way to the top of a huge rounded rock, from which they could look over and down upon the country that lies beyond.

Patches uttered a low exclamation, but Phil's instant grip on his arm checked further speech.

From where they lay, they looked down upon a great mountain basin of gently rolling, native grass land. From the foot of that rocky ridge, the beautiful pasture stretches away, several miles, to the bold, gray cliffs and mighty, towering battlements of Granite Mountain. On the south, a range of dark hills, and to the north, a series of sharp peaks, form the natural boundaries.

"Do you see them?" whispered Phil.

Patches looked at him inquiringly. The stranger's interest in that wonderful scene had led him to overlook that which held his companion's attention.

"There," whispered Phil impatiently, "on the side of that hill there—they're not more than four hundred yards away, and they're working toward us."

"Do you mean those horses?" whispered Patches, amazed at his companion's manner.

Phil nodded.

"Do they belong to the Cross-Triangle?" asked Patches, still mystified.

"The Cross-Triangle!" Phil chuckled. Then, with a note of genuine reverence in his voice, he added softly, "They belong to God, Mr. Honorable Patches."

Then Patches understood. "Wild horses!" he ejaculated softly.

There are few men, I think, who can look without admiration upon a beautifully formed, noble spirited horse. The glorious pride and strength and courage of these most kingly of God's creatures—even when they are in harness and subject to their often inferior masters—compel respect and a degree of appreciation. But seen as they roam free in those pastures that, since the creation, have never been marred by plow or fence—pastures that are theirs by divine right, and the sunny slopes and shady groves and rocky nooks of which constitute their kingdom—where, in their lordly strength, they are subject only to the dictates of their own being, and, unmutilated by human cruelty, rule by the power and authority of Nature's laws—they stir the blood of the coldest heart to a quicker flow, and thrill the mind of the dullest with admiring awe.

"There's twenty-eight in that bunch," whispered Phil. "Do you see that big black stallion on guard—the one that throws up his head every minute or two for a look around?"

Patches nodded. There was no mistaking the watchful leader of the band.

"He's the chap that gave me my title, as you call it," chuckled Phil. "Come on, now, and we'll see them in action; then I'll tell you about it."

He slipped from the rock and led the way back to the saddle horses.

Riding along the ridge, just under the crest, they soon reached the point where the chain of low peaks merges into the hills that form the southern boundary of the basin, and so came suddenly into full view of the wild horses that were feeding on the slopes a little below.

As the two horsemen appeared, the leader of the band threw up his head with a warning call to his fellows.

Phil reined in his horse and motioned for Patches to do the same.

For several minutes, the black stallion held his place, as motionless as the very rocks of the mountain side, gazing straight at the mounted men as though challenging their right to cross the boundary of his kingdom, while his retainers stood as still, waiting his leadership. With his long, black mane and tail rippling and waving in the breeze that swept down from Blair Pass and across the Basin, with his raven-black coat glistening in the sunlight with the sheen of richest satin where the swelling muscles curved and rounded from shadow to high light, and with his poise of perfect strength and freedom, he looked, as indeed he was, a prince of his kind—a lord of the untamed life that homes in those God-cultivated fields.

Patches glanced at his companion, as if to speak, but struck by the expression on the cowboy's face, remained silent. Phil was leaning a little forward in his saddle, his body as perfect in its poise of alert and graceful strength as the body of the wild horse at which he was gazing with such fixed interest. The clear, deeply tanned skin of his cheeks glowed warmly with the red of his clean, rich blood, his eyes shone with suppressed excitement, his lips, slightly parted, curved in a smile of appreciation, love and reverence for the unspoiled beauty of the wild creature that he himself, in so many ways, unconsciously resembled.

And Patches—bred and schooled in a world so far from this world of primitive things—looking from Phil to the wild horse, and back again from the stallion to the man, felt the spirit and the power that made them kin—felt it with a, to him, strange new feeling of reverence, as though in the perfect, unspoiled life-strength of man and horse he came in closer touch with the divine than he had ever known before.

Then, without taking his eyes from the object of his almost worship, Phil said, "Now, watch him, Patches, watch him!"

As he spoke, he moved slowly toward the band, while Patches rode close by his side.

At their movement, the wild stallion called another warning to his followers, and went a few graceful paces toward the slowly approaching men. And then, as they continued their slow advance, he wheeled with the smooth grace of a swallow, and, with a movement so light and free that he seemed rather to skim over the surface of the ground than to tread upon it, circled here and there about his band, assembling them in closer order, flying, with ears flat and teeth bared and mane and tail tossing, in lordly fury at the laggards, driving them before him, but keeping always between his charges and the danger until they were at what he evidently judged to be, for their inferior strength, a distance of safety. Then again he halted his company and, moving alone a short way toward the horsemen, stood motionless, watching their slow approach.

Again Phil checked his horse. "God!" he exclaimed under his breath. "What a sight! Oh, you beauty! You beauty!"

But Patches was moved less by the royal beauty of the wild stallion than by the passionate reverence that vibrated in his companion's voice.

Again the two horsemen moved forward; and again the stallion drove his band to a safe distance, and stood waiting between them and their enemies.

Then the cowboy laughed aloud—a hearty laugh of clean enjoyment. "All right, old fellow, I'll just give you a whirl for luck," he said aloud to the wild horse, apparently forgetting his human companion.

And Patches saw him shorten his reins, and rise a little in his stirrups, while his horse, as though understanding, gathered himself for a spring. In a flash Patches was alone, watching as Phil, riding with every ounce of strength that his mount could command, dashed straight toward the band.

For a moment, the black stallion stood watching the now rapidly approaching rider. Then, wheeling, he started his band, driving them imperiously, now, to their utmost speed, and then, as though he understood this new maneuver of the cowboy, he swept past his running companions, with the clean, easy flight of an arrow, and taking his place at the head of his charges led them away toward Granite Mountain.

Phil stopped, and Patches could see him watching, as the wild horses, with streaming manes and tails, following their leader, who seemed to run with less than half his strength, swept away across the rolling hillsides, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, until, as dark, swiftly moving dots, they vanished over the sky line.

"Wasn't that great?" cried Phil, when he had loped back to his companion. "Did you see him go by the bunch like they were standing still?"

"There didn't seem to be much show for you to catch him," said Patches.

"Catch him!" exclaimed Phil. "Did you think I was trying to catch him? I just wanted to see him go. The horse doesn't live that could put a man within roping distance of any one in that bunch on a straightaway run, and the black can run circles around the whole outfit. I had him once, though."

"You caught that black!" exclaimed Patches—incredulously.

Phil grinned. "I sure had him for a little while."

"But what is he doing out here running loose, then?" demanded the other. "Got away, did he?"

"Got away, nothing. Fact is, he belongs to me right now, in a way, and I wouldn't swap him for any string of cow-horses that I ever saw."

Then, as they rode toward the home ranch, Phil told the story that is known throughout all that country.

"It was when the black was a yearling," he said. "I'd had my eye on him all the year, and so had some of the other boys who had sighted the band, for you could see, even when he was a colt, what he was going to be. The wild horses were getting rather too numerous that season, and we planned a chase to thin them out a little, as we do every two or three years. Of course, everybody was after the black; and one day, along toward the end of the chase, when the different bands had been broken up and scattered pretty much, I ran onto him. I was trailing an old gray up that draw—the way we went to-day, you know, and all at once I met him as he was coming over the top of the hill, right where you and I rode onto him. It was all so sudden that for a minute he was rattled as bad as I was; and, believe me, I was shaking like a leaf. I managed to come to, first, though, and hung my rope on him before he could get started. I don't know to this day where the old gray that I was after went. Well, sir; he fought like a devil, and for a spell we had it around and around until I wasn't dead sure whether I had him or he had me. But he was only a yearling then, you see, and I finally got him down."

Phil paused, a peculiar expression on his face. Patches waited silently.

"Do you know," said the cowboy, at last, hesitatingly, "I can't explain it—and I don't talk about it much, for it was the strangest thing that ever happened to me—but when I looked into that black stallion's eyes, and he looked me straight in the face, I never felt so sorry for anything in my life. I was sort of ashamed like—like—well, like I'd been caught holding up a church, you know, or something like that. We were all alone up there, just him and me, and while I was getting my wind, and we were sizing each other up, and I was feeling that way, I got to thinking what it all meant to him—to be broken and educated—and—well—civilized, you know; and I thought what a horse he would be if he was left alone to live as God made him, and so—well—" He paused again with an embarrassed laugh.

"You let him go?" cried Patches.

"It's God's truth, Patches. I couldn't do anything else—I just couldn't. One of the boys came up just in time to catch me turning him loose, and, of course, the whole outfit just naturally raised hell about it. You see, in a chase like that, we always bunch all we get and sell them off to the highest bidder, and every man in the outfit shares alike. The boys figured that the black was worth more than any five others that were caught, and so you couldn't blame them for feeling sore. But I fixed it with them by turning all my share into the pot, so they couldn't kick. That, you see, makes the black belong to me, in a way, and it's pretty generally understood that I propose to take care of him. There was a fellow, riding in the rodeo last fall, that took a shot at him one day, and—well—he left the country right after it happened and hasn't been seen around here since."

The cowboy grinned as his companion's laugh rang out.

"Do you know," Phil continued in a low tone, a few minutes later, "I believe that horse knows me yet. Whenever I am over in this part of the country I always have a look at him, if he happens to be around, and we visit a little, as we did to-day. I've got a funny notion that he likes it as much as I do, and, I can't tell how it is, but it sort of makes me feel good all over just to see him. I reckon you think I'm some fool," he finished with another short laugh of embarrassment, "but that's the way I feel—and that's why they call me 'Wild Horse Phil'."

For a little they rode in silence; then Patches spoke, gravely, "I don't know how to tell you what I think, Phil, but I understand, and from the bottom of my heart I envy you."

And the cowboy, looking at his companion, saw in the man's eyes something that reminded him of that which he had seen in the wild horse's eyes, that day when he had set him free. Had Patches, too, at some time in those days that were gone, been caught by the riata of circumstance or environment, and in some degree robbed of his God-inheritance? Phil smiled at the fancy, but, smiling, felt its truth; and with genuine sympathy felt this also to be true, that the man might yet, by the strength that was deepest within him, regain that which he had lost.

And so that day, as the man from the ranges and the man from the cities rode together, the feeling of kinship that each had instinctively recognized at their first meeting on the Divide was strengthened. They knew that a mutual understanding which could not have been put into words of any tongue or land was drawing them closer together.

A few days later the incident occurred that fixed their friendship—as they thought—for all time to come.



CHAPTER IX.

THE TAILHOLT MOUNTAIN OUTFIT.

Phil and Patches were riding that day in the country about Old Camp. Early in the afternoon, they heard the persistent bawling of a calf, and upon riding toward the sound, found the animal deep in the cedar timber, which in that section thickly covers the ridges. The calf was freshly branded with the Tailholt iron. It was done, Phil said, the day before, probably in the late afternoon. The youngster was calling for his mother.

"It's strange, she is not around somewhere," said Patches.

"It would be more strange if she was," retorted the cowboy shortly, and he looked from the calf to the distant Tailholt Mountain, as though he were considering some problem which he did not, for some reason, care to share with his companion.

"There's not much use to look for her," he added, with grim disappointment. "That's always the way. If we had ridden this range yesterday, instead of away over there in the Mint Wash country—I am always about a day behind."

There was something in the manner and in the quiet speech of the usually sunny-tempered foreman that made his companion hesitate to ask questions, or to offer comment with the freedom that he had learned to feel that first day of their riding together. During the hours that followed Phil said very little, and when he did speak his words were brief and often curt, while, to Patches, he seemed to study the country over which they rode with unusual care. When they had eaten their rather gloomy lunch, he was in the saddle again almost before Patches had finished, with seemingly no inclination for their usual talk.

The afternoon, was nearly gone, and they were making their way homeward when they saw a Cross-Triangle bull that had evidently been hurt in a fight. The animal was one of the Dean's much-prized Herefords, and the wound needed attention.

"We've got to dope that," said Phil, "or the screwworms will be working in it sure." He was taking down his riata and watching the bull, who was rumbling a sullen, deep-voiced challenge, as he spoke.

"Can I help?" asked Patches anxiously, as he viewed the powerful beast, for this was the first full-grown animal needing attention that he had seen in his few days' experience.

"No," returned Phil. "Just keep in the clear, that's all. This chap is no calf, and he's sore over his scrap. He's on the prod right now."

It all happened in a few seconds.

The cowboy's horse, understanding from long experience that this threatening mark for his master's riata was in no gentle frame of mind, fretted uneasily as though dreading his part in the task before them. Patches saw the whirling rope leave Phil's hand, and saw it tighten, as the cowboy threw the weight of his horse against it; and then he caught a confused vision—a fallen, struggling horse with a man pinned to the ground beneath him, and a wickedly lowered head, with sharp horns and angry eyes, charging straight at them.

Patches did not think—there was no time to think. With a yell of horror, he struck deep with both spurs, and his startled, pain-maddened horse leaped forward. Again he spurred cruelly with all his strength, and the next bound of his frenzied mount carried him upon those deadly horns. Patches remembered hearing a sickening rip, and a scream of fear and pain, as he felt the horse under him rise in the air. He never knew how he managed to free himself, as he fell backward with his struggling mount, but he distinctly saw Phil regain his saddle while his horse was in the very act of struggling to its feet, and he watched with anxious interest as the cowboy forced his excited mount in front of the bull to attract the beast's wicked attention. The bull, accepting the tantalizing challenge, charged again, and Patches, with a thrill of admiration for the man's coolness and skill, saw that Phil was coiling his riata, even while his frightened horse, with terrific leaps, avoided those menacing horns. The bull stopped, shook his head in anger over his failure, and looked back toward the man on foot. But again that horse and rider danced temptingly before him, so close that it seemed he could not fail, and again he charged, only to find that his mad rush carried him still further from the helpless Patches. And by now, Phil had recovered his riata, and the loop was whirling in easy circles about his head. The cow-horse, as though feeling the security that was in that familiar motion of his master's arm, steadied himself, and, in the few active moments that followed, obedient to every signal of his rider, did his part with almost human intelligence.

When the bull was safely tied, Phil went to the frightfully injured horse, and with a merciful bullet ended the animal's suffering. Then he looked thoughtfully at Patches, who stood gazing ruefully at the dead animal, as though he felt himself to blame for the loss of his employer's property. A slight smile lightened the cowboy's face, as he noticed his companion's troubled thought.

"I suppose I've done it now," said Patches, as though expecting well-merited censure.

Phil's smile broadened. "You sure have," he returned, as he wiped the sweat from his face. "I'm much obliged to you."

Patches looked at him in confused embarrassment.

"Don't you know that you saved my life?" asked Phil dryly.

"But—but, I killed a good horse for the Dean," stammered Patches.

To which the Dean's foreman returned with a grin, "I reckon Uncle Will can stand the loss—considering."

This relieved the tension, and they laughed together.

"But tell me something, Patches," said Phil, curiously. "Why didn't you shoot the bull when he charged me?"

"I didn't think of it," admitted Patches. "I didn't really think of anything."

The cowboy nodded with understanding approval. "I've noticed that the man to tie to, in sudden trouble, is the man who doesn't have to think; the man, I mean, who just does the right thing instinctively, and waits to think about it afterwards when there's time."

Patches was pleased. "I did the right thing, then?"

"It was the only thing you could do to save my life," returned Phil seriously. "If you had tried to use your gun—even if you could have managed to hit him—you wouldn't have stopped him in time. If you had been where you could have put a bullet between his eyes, it might have worked, but"—he smiled again—"I'm mighty glad you didn't think to try any experiments. Tell me something else," he added. "Did you realize the chance you were taking for yourself?"

Patches shook his head. "I can't say that I realized anything except that you were in a bad fix, and that it was up to me to do something quick. How did it happen, anyway?" He seemed anxious to turn the conversation.

"Diamond stepped in that hole there," explained Phil. "When he turned over I sure thought it was all day for me. Believe me, I won't forget this, Patches."

For another moment there was an embarrassed silence; then Patches said, "What puzzles me is, why you didn't take a shot at him, after you were up, instead of risking your neck again trying to rope him."

"Why, there was no use killing a good bull, as long as there was any other way. It's my business to keep him alive; that's what I started in to do, wasn't it?" And thus the cowboy, in a simple word or two, stated the creed of his profession, a creed that permits no consideration of personal danger or discomfort when the welfare of the employer's property is at stake.

When they had removed saddle and bridle from the dead horse and had cleaned the ugly wound in the bull's side, Phil said, "Now, Mr. Honorable Patches, you'd better move on down the wash a piece, and get out of sight behind one of those cedars. This fellow is going to get busy again when I let him up. I'll come along when I've got rid of him."

A little later, as Phil rode out of the cedars toward Patches, a deep, bellowing challenge came from up the wash.

"He's just telling us what he'll do to us the next chance he gets," chuckled Phil. "Hop up behind me now and we'll go home."

The gloom, that all day had seemed to overshadow Phil, was effectually banished by the excitement of the incident, and he was again his sunny, cheerful self. As they rode, they chatted and laughed merrily. Then, suddenly, as it had happened that morning, the cowboy was again grim and silent.

Patches was wondering what had so quickly changed his companion's mood, when he caught sight of two horsemen, riding along the top of the ridge that forms the western side of the wash, their course paralleling that of the Cross-Triangle men, who were following the bed of the wash.

When Patches directed Phil's attention to the riders, the cowboy said shortly, "I've been watching them for the last ten minutes." Then, as if regretting the manner of his reply, he added more kindly, "If they keep on the way they're going, we'll likely meet them about a mile down the wash where the ridge breaks."

"Do you know them?" asked Patches curiously.

"It's Nick Cambert and that poor, lost dog of a Yavapai Joe," Phil answered.

"The Tailholt Mountain outfit," murmured Patches, watching the riders on the ridge with quickened interest. "Do you know, Phil, I believe I have seen those fellows before."

"You have!" exclaimed Phil. "Where? When?"

"I don't know how to tell you where," Patches replied, "but it was the day I rode the drift fence. They were on a ridge, across a little valley from me."

"That must have been this same Horse Wash that we're following now," replied Phil; "it widens out a bit below here. What makes you think it was Nick and Joe?"

"Why, those fellows up there look like the two that I saw, one big one and one rather lightweight. They were the same distance from me, you know, and—yes—I am sure those are the same horses."

"Pretty good, Patches, but you ought to have reported it when you got home."

"Why, I didn't think it of any importance."

"There are two rules that you must follow, always," said the cowboy, "if you are going to learn to be a top hand in this business. The first is: to see everything that there is to see, and to see everything about everything that you see. And the second is: to remember it all. I don't mind telling you, now, that Jim Reid found a calf, fresh-branded with the Tailholt iron, that same afternoon, in that same neighborhood; and that, on our side of the drift fence, he ran onto a Cross-Triangle cow that had lost her calf. There come our friends now."

The two horsemen were riding down the side of the hill at an angle that would bring about the meeting which Phil had foreseen. And Patches immediately broke the first of the two rules, for, while watching the riders, he did not notice that his companion loosened his gun in its holster.

Nick Cambert was a large man, big-bodied and heavy, with sandy hair, and those peculiar light blue eyes which do not beget confidence. But, as the Tailholt Mountain men halted to greet Phil, Patches gave to Nick little more than a passing glance, so interested was he in the big man's companion.

It is doubtful if blood, training, environment, circumstances, the fates, or whatever it is that gives to men individuality, ever marked a man with less manhood than was given to poor Yavapai Joe. Standing erect, he would have been, perhaps, a little above medium height, but thin and stooped, with a half-starved look, as he slouched listlessly in the saddle, it was almost impossible to think of him as a matured man. The receding chin, and coarse, loosely opened mouth, the pale, lifeless eyes set too closely together under a low forehead, with a ragged thatch of dead, mouse-colored hair, and a furtive, sneaking, lost-dog expression, proclaimed him the outcast that he was.

The big man eyed Patches as he greeted the Cross-Triangle's foreman. "Howdy, Phil!"

"Hello, Nick!" returned Phil coldly. "Howdy, Joe!"

The younger man, who was gazing stupidly at Patches, returned the salutation with an unintelligible mumble, and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

"You folks at the Cross-Triangle short of horses?" asked Nick, with an evident attempt at jocularity, alluding to the situation of the two men, who were riding one horse.

"We got mixed up with a bull back yonder," Phil explained briefly.

"They can sure put a horse out o' the game mighty quick sometimes," commented the other. "I've lost a few that way myself. It's about as far from here to my place as it is to Baldwin's, or I'd help you out. You're welcome, you know."

"Much obliged," returned Phil, "but we'll make it home all right. I reckon we'd better be moving, though. So long!"

"Adios!"

Throughout this brief exchange of courtesies, Yavapai Joe had not moved, except to puff at his cigarette; nor had he ceased to regard Patches with a stupid curiosity. As Phil and Patches moved away, he still sat gazing after the stranger, until he was aroused by a sharp word from Nick, as the latter turned his horse toward Tailholt Mountain. Without changing his slouching position in the saddle, and with a final slinking, sidewise look toward Patches, the poor fellow obediently trailed after his master.

Patches could not resist the impulse to turn for another look at the wretched shadow of manhood that so interested him.

"Well, what do you think of that pair?" asked Phil, breaking in upon his companion's preoccupation.

Patches shrugged his shoulders much as he had done that day of his first experience with the screwworms; then he said quietly, "Do you mind telling me about them, Phil?"

"Why, there's not much to tell," returned the cowboy. "That is, there's not much that anybody knows for certain. Nick was born in Yavapai County. His father, old George Cambert, was one of the kind that seems honest enough, and industrious, too, but somehow always just misses it. They moved away to some place in Southern California when Nick was about grown. He came back six years ago, and located over there at the foot of Tailholt Mountain, and started his Four-Bar-M iron; and, one way or another, he's managed to get together quite a bunch of stock. You see, his expenses don't amount to anything, scarcely. He and Joe bach in an old shack that somebody built years ago, and they do all the riding themselves. Joe's not much force, but he's handier than you'd think, as long as there's somebody around to tell him what to do, and sort of back him up. Nick, though, can do two men's work any day in the year."

"But it's strange that a man like Nick would have anything to do with such a creature as that poor specimen," mused Patches. "Are they related in any way?"

"Nobody knows," answered Phil. "Joe first showed up at Prescott about four years ago with a man by the name of Dryden, who claimed that Joe was his son. They camped just outside of town, in some dirty old tents, and lived by picking up whatever was lying around loose. Dryden wouldn't work, and, naturally, no one would have Joe. Finally Dryden was sent up for robbing a store, and Joe nearly went with him. They let him off, I believe, because it was proved pretty well that he was only Dryden's tool, and didn't have nerve enough to do any real harm by himself. He drifted around for several months, living like a stray cur, until Nick took him in tow. Nick treats him shamefully, abuses him like a beast, and works him like a slave. The poor devil stays on with him because he doesn't know what else to do, I suppose."

"Is he always like we saw him to-day?" asked Patches, who seemed strangely interested in this bit of human drift. "Doesn't he ever talk?"

"Oh, yes, he'll talk all right, when Nick isn't around, or when there are not too many present. Get off somewhere alone with him, after he gets acquainted a little, and he's not half such bad company as he looks. I reckon that's the main reason why Nick keeps him. You see, no decent cow-puncher would dare work at Tailholt Mountain, and a man gets mighty lonesome living so much alone. But Joe never talks about where he came from, or who he is; shuts up like a clam if you so much as mention anything that looks like you were trying to find out about him. He's not such a fool as he looks, either, so far as that goes, but he's always got that sneaking, coyote sort of look, and whatever he does he does in that same way."

"In other words," commented Patches thoughtfully, "poor Joe must have someone to depend on; taken alone he counts no more than a cipher."

"That's it," said Phil. "With somebody to feed him, and think for him, and take care of him, and be responsible for him, in some sort of a way, he makes almost one."

"After all, Phil," said Patches, with bitter sarcasm, "poor Yavapai Joe is not so much different from hundreds of men that I know. By their standards he should be envied."

Phil was amazed at his companion's words, for they seemed to hint at something in the man's past, and Patches, so far as his reticence upon any subject that approached his own history, was always as silent as Yavapai Joe himself.

"What do you mean by that?" Phil demanded. "What sort of men do you mean?"

"I mean the sort that never do anything of their own free wills; the sort that have someone else to think for them, and feed them, and take care of them and take all the responsibility for what they do or do not do. I mean those who are dependents, and those who aspire to be dependent. I can't see that it makes any essential difference whether they have inherited wealth and what we call culture, or whether they are poverty-stricken semi-imbeciles like Joe; the principle is the same."

As they dismounted at the home corral gate, Phil looked at his companion curiously. "You seem mighty interested in Joe," he said, with a smile.

"I am," retorted Patches. "He reminds me of—of some one I know," he finished, with his old, self-mocking smile. "I have a fellow feeling for him, the same as you have for that wild horse, you know. I'd like to take him away from Nick, and see if it would be possible to make a real man of him," he mused, more to himself than to his companion.

"I don't believe I'd try any experiments along that line, Patches," cautioned Phil. "You've got to have something to build on when you start to make a man. The raw material is not in Joe, and, besides," he added significantly, "folks might not understand."

Patches laughed bitterly. "I have my hands full now."

The next morning the foreman said that he would give that day to the horses he was training, and sent Patches, alone, after the saddle and bridle which they had left near the scene of the accident.

"You can't miss finding the place again," he said to Patches; "just follow up the wash. You'll be back by noon—if you don't try any experiments," he added laughing.

Patches had ridden as far as the spot where he and Phil had met the Tailholt Mountain men, and was thirsty. He thought of the distance he had yet to go, and then of the return back to the ranch, in the heat of the day. He remembered that Phil had told him, as they were riding out the morning before, of a spring a little way up the small side canyon that opens into the main wash through that break in the ridge. For a moment he hesitated; then he turned aside, determined to find the water.

Riding perhaps two hundred yards into that narrow gap In the ridge, he found the way suddenly becoming steep and roughly strewn with boulders, and, thinking to make better time, left his horse tied to a bush in the shadow of the rocky wall, while he climbed up the dry watercourse on foot. He found, as Phil had said, that it was not far. Another hundred yards up the boulder-strewn break in the ridge, and he came out into a beautiful glade, where he found the spring, clear and cold, under a moss-grown rock, in the deep shade of an old gnarled and twisted cedar. Gratefully he threw himself down and drank long and deep; then sat for a few moments' rest, before making his way back to his horse. The moist, black earth of the cuplike hollow was roughly trampled by the cattle that knew the spot, and there were well-marked trails leading down through the heavy growth of brush and trees that clothed the hillsides. So dense was this forest growth, and so narrow the glade, that the sunlight only reached the cool retreat through a network of leaves and branches, in ever-shifting spots and bars of brightness. Nor could one see very far through the living screens.

Patches was on the point of going, when he heard voices and the sound of horses' feet somewhere above. For a moment he sat silently listening. Then he realized that the riders were approaching, down one of the cattle trails. A moment more, and he thought he recognized one of the voices. There was a low, murmuring, whining tone, and then a rough, heavy voice, raised seemingly in anger. Patches felt sure, now, that he knew the speakers; and, obeying one of those impulses that so often prompted his actions, he slipped quietly into the dense growth on the side of the glade opposite the approaching riders. He was scarcely hidden—a hundred feet or so from the spring—when Nick Cambert and Yavapai Joe rode into the glade.

If Patches had paused to think, he likely would have disdained to play the part of a hidden spy; but he had acted without thinking, and no sooner was he concealed than he realized that it was too late. So he smiled mockingly at himself, and awaited developments. He had heard and seen enough, since he had been in the Dean's employ, to understand the suspicion in which the owner of the Four-Bar-M iron was held; and from even his few days' work on the range in company with Phil, he had come to understand how difficult it was for the cattlemen to prove anything against the man who they had every reason to believe was stealing their stock. It was the possibility of getting some positive evidence, and of thus protecting his employer's property, that had really prompted him to take advantage of the chance situation.

As the two men appeared, it was clear to the hidden observer that the weakling had in some way incurred his master's displeasure. The big man's face was red with anger, and his eyes were hard and cruel, while Joe had more than aver the look of a lost dog that expects nothing less than a curse and a kick.

Nick drank at the spring, then turned back to his companion, who had not dismounted, but sat on his horse cringing and frightened, trying, with fluttering fingers, to roll a cigarette. A moment the big man surveyed his trembling follower; then, taking a heavy quirt from his saddle, he said with a contemptuous sneer, "Well, why don't you get your drink?"

"I ain't thirsty, Nick," faltered the other.

"You ain't thirsty?" mocked the man with a jeering laugh. "You're lying, an' you know it. Get down!"

"Hones' to God, Nick, I don't want no drink," whimpered Joe, as his master toyed with the quirt suggestively.

"Get down, I tell you!" commanded the big man.

Joe obeyed, his thin form shaking with fear, and stood shrinking against his horse's side, his fearful eyes fixed on the man.

"Now, come here."

"Don't, Nick; for God's sake! don't hit me. I didn't mean no harm. Let me off this time, won't you, Nick?"

"Come here. You got it comin', damn you, an' you know it. Come here, I say!"

As if it were beyond his power to refuse, the wretched creature took a halting step or two toward the man whose brutal will dominated him; then he paused and half turned, as if to attempt escape. But that menacing voice stopped him.

"Come here!"

Whimpering and begging, with disconnected, unintelligible words, the poor fellow again started toward the man with the quirt.

At the critical moment a quiet, well-schooled voice interrupted the scene.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Cambert!"

Nick whirled with an oath of surprise and astonishment, to face Patches, who was coming leisurely toward him from the bushes above the spring.

"What are you doin' here?" demanded Nick, while his victim slunk back to his horse, his eyes fixed upon the intruder with dumb amazement.

"I came for a drink," returned Patches coolly. "Excellent water, isn't it? And the day is really quite warm—makes one appreciate such a delightfully cool retreat, don't you think?"

"Heard us comin' an' thought you'd play the spy, did you?" growled the Tailholt Mountain man.

Patches smiled. "Really, you know, I am afraid I didn't think much about it," he said gently. "I'm troubled that way, you see," he explained, with elaborate politeness. "Often do things upon impulse, don't you know—beastly embarrassing sometimes."

Nick glared at this polite, soft-spoken gentleman, with half-amused anger. "I heard there was a dude tenderfoot hangin' 'round the Cross-Triangle," he said, at last. "You're sure a hell of a fine specimen. You've had your drink; now s'pose you get a-goin'."

"I beg pardon?" drawled Patches, looking at him with innocent inquiry.

"Vamoose! Get out! Go on about your business."

"Really, Mr. Cambert, I understood that this was open range—" Patches looked about, as though carefully assuring himself that he was not mistaken in the spot.

The big man's eyes narrowed wickedly. "It's closed to you, all right." Then, as Patches did not move, "Well, are you goin', or have I got to start you?" He took a threatening step toward the intruder.

"No," returned Patches easily, "I am certainly not going—not just at present—and," he added thoughtfully, "if I were you, I wouldn't try to start anything."

Something in the extraordinary self-possession of this soft-spoken stranger made the big man hesitate. "Oh, you wouldn't, heh?" he returned. "You mean, I s'pose, that you propose to interfere with my business."

"If, by your business, you mean beating a man who is so unable to protect himself, I certainly propose to interfere."

For a moment Nick glared at Patches as though doubting his own ears. Then rage at the tenderfoot's insolence mastered him. With a vile epithet, he caught the loaded quirt in his hand by its small end, and strode toward the intruder.

But even as the big man swung his wicked weapon aloft, a hard fist, with the weight of a well-trained and well-developed shoulder back of it, found the point of his chin with scientific accuracy. The force of the blow, augmented as it was by Nick's weight as he was rushing to meet it, was terrific. The man's head snapped back, and he spun half around as he fell, so that the uplifted arm with its threatening weapon was twisted under the heavy bulk that lay quivering and harmless.

Patches coolly bent over the unconscious man and extracted his gun from the holster. Then, stepping back a few paces, he quietly waited.

Yavapai Joe, who had viewed the proceedings thus far with gaping mouth and frightened wonder, scrambled into his saddle and reined his horse about, as if to ride for his life.

"Wait, Joe!" called Patches sharply.

The weakling paused in pitiful indecision.

"Nick will be all right in a few minutes," continued the stranger, reassuringly. "Stay where you are."

Even as he spoke, the man on the ground opened his eyes. For a moment he gazed about, collecting his shocked and scattered senses. Then, with a mad roar, he got to his feet and reached for his gun, but when his hand touched the empty holster a look of dismay swept over his heavy face, and he looked doubtfully toward Patches, with a degree of respect and a somewhat humbled air.

"Yes, I have your gun," said Patches soothingly. "You see, I thought it would be best to remove the temptation. You don't really want to shoot me, anyway, you know. You only think you do. When you have had time to consider it all, calmly, you'll thank me; because, don't you see, I would make you a lot more trouble dead than I could possibly, alive. I don't think that Mr. Baldwin would like to have me all shot to pieces, particularly if the shooting were done by someone from Tailholt Mountain. And I am quite sure that 'Wild Horse Phil' would be very much put out about it."

"Well, what do you want?" growled Nick. "You've got the drop on me. What are you after, anyway?"

"What peculiar expressions you western people use!" murmured Patches sweetly. "You say that I have got the drop on you; when, to be exact, you should have said that you got the drop from me—do you see? Good, isn't it?"

Nick's effort at self-control was heroic.

Patches watched him with an insolent, taunting smile that goaded the man to reckless speech.

"If you didn't have that gun, I'd—" the big man began, then stopped, for, as he spoke, Patches placed the weapon carefully on a rock and went toward him barehanded.

"You would do what?"

At the crisp, eager question that came in such sharp contrast to Patches' former speech, Nick hesitated and drew back a step.

Patches promptly moved a step nearer; and his words came, now, in answer to the unfinished threat with cutting force. "What would you do, you big, hulking swine? You can bully a weakling not half your size; you can beat a helpless incompetent like a dog; you can bluster, and threaten a tenderfoot when you think he fears you; you can attack a man with a loaded quirt when you think him unable to defend himself;—show me what you can do now."

The Tailholt Mountain man drew back another step.

Patches continued his remarks. "You are a healthy specimen, you are. You have the frame of a bull with the spirit of a coyote and the courage of a sucking dove. Now—in your own vernacular—get a-goin'. Vamoose! Get out! I want to talk to your superior over there."

Sullenly Nick Cambert mounted his horse and turned away toward one of the trails leading out from the little arena.

"Come along, Joe!" he called to his follower.

"No, you don't," Patches cut in with decisive force. "Joe, stay where you are!"

Nick paused. "What do you mean by that?" he growled.

"I mean," returned Patches, "that Joe is free to go with you, or not, as he chooses. Joe," he continued, addressing the cause of the controversy, "you need not go with this man. If you wish, you can come with me. I'll take care of you; and I'll give you a chance to make a man of yourself."

Nick laughed coarsely. "So, that's your game, is it? Well, it won't work. I know now why Bill Baldwin's got you hangin' 'round, pretendin' you're a tenderfoot, you damned spy. Come on, Joe." He turned to ride on; and Joe, with a slinking, sidewise look at Patches, started to follow.

Again Patches called, "Wait, Joe!" and his voice was almost pleading. "Can't you understand, Joe? Come with me. Don't be a dog for any man. Let me give you a chance. Be a man, Joe—for God's sake, be a man! Come with me."

"Well," growled Nick to his follower, as Patches finished, "are you comin' or have I got to go and get you?"

With a sickening, hangdog look Joe mumbled something and rode after his master.

As they disappeared up the trail, Nick called back, "I'll get you yet, you sneakin' spy."

"Not after you've had time to think it over," answered Patches cheerfully. "It would interfere too much with your real business. I'll leave your gun at the gate of that old corral up the wash. Good-by, Joe!"

For a few moments longer the strange man stood in the glade, listening to the vanishing sounds of their going, while that mirthless, self-mocking smile curved his lips.

"Poor devil!" he muttered sadly, as he turned at last to make his way back to his horse. "Poor Joe! I know just how he feels. It's hard—it's beastly hard to break away."

"I'm afraid I have made trouble for you, sir," Patches said ruefully to the Dean, as he briefly related the incident to his employer and to Phil that afternoon. "I'm sorry; I really didn't stop to think."

"Trouble!" retorted the Dean, his eyes twinkling approval, while Phil laughed joyously. "Why, man, we've been prayin' for trouble with that blamed Tailholt Mountain outfit. You're a plumb wonder, young man. But what in thunder was you aimin' to do with that ornery Yavapai Joe, if he'd a' took you up on your fool proposition?"

"Really, to tell the truth," murmured Patches, "I don't exactly know. I fancied the experiment would be interesting; and I was so sorry for the poor chap that I—" he stopped, shamefaced, to join in the laugh.

But, later, the Dean and Phil talked together privately, with the result that during the days that followed, as Patches and his teacher rode the range together, the pupil found revolver practice added to his studies.

The art of drawing and shooting a "six-gun" with quickness and certainty was often a useful part of the cowboy's training, Phil explained cheerfully. "In the case, for instance, of a mixup with a bad steer, when your horse falls, or something like that, you know."



CHAPTER X.

THE RODEO.

As the remaining weeks of the summer passed, Patches spent the days riding the range with Phil, and, under the careful eye of that experienced teacher, made rapid progress in the work he had chosen to master. The man's intense desire to succeed, his quick intelligence, with his instinct for acting without hesitation, and his reckless disregard for personal injury, together with his splendid physical strength, led him to a mastery of the details of a cowboy's work with remarkable readiness.

Occasionally the two Cross-Triangle riders saw the men from Tailholt Mountain, sometimes merely sighting them in the distance, and, again, meeting them face to face at some watering place or on the range. When it happened that Nick Cambert was thus forced to keep up a show of friendly relations with the Cross-Triangle, the few commonplaces of the country were exchanged, but always the Tailholt Mountain man addressed his words to Phil, and, save for surly looks, ignored the foreman's companion. He had evidently—as Patches had said that he would—come to realize that he could not afford to arouse the cattlemen to action against him, as he would certainly have done, had he attempted to carry out his threat to "get" the man who had so humiliated him.

But Patches' strange interest in Yavapai Joe in no way lessened. Always he had a kindly word for the poor unfortunate, and sought persistently to win the weakling's friendship. And Phil seeing this wondered, but held his peace.

Frequently Kitty Reid, sometimes alone, often with the other members of the Reid household, came across the big meadow to spend an evening at the neighboring ranch. Sometimes Phil and Patches, stopping at the Pot-Hook-S home ranch, at the close of the day, for a drink at the windmill pump, would linger a while for a chat with Kitty, who would come from the house to greet them. And now and then Kitty, out for a ride on Midnight, would chance to meet the two Cross-Triangle men on the range, and so would accompany them for an hour or more.

And thus the acquaintance between Patches and the girl grew into friendship; for Kitty loved to talk with this man of the things that play so large a part in that life which so appealed to her; and, with Phil's ever-ready and hearty endorsement of Patches, she felt safe in permitting the friendship to develop. And Patches, quietly observing, with now and then a conversational experiment—at which game he was an adepts—came to understand, almost as well as if he had been told, Phil's love for Kitty and her attitude toward the cowboy—her one-time schoolmate and sweetheart. Many times when the three were together, and the talk, guided by Kitty, led far from Phil's world, the cowboy would sit a silent listener, until Patches would skillfully turn the current back to the land of Granite Mountain and the life in which Phil had so vital a part.

In the home-life at the Cross-Triangle, too, Patches gradually came to hold his own peculiar place. His cheerful helpfulness, and gentle, never-failing courtesy, no less than the secret pain and sadness that sometimes, at some chance remark, drove the light from his face and brought that wistful look into his eyes, won Mrs. Baldwin's heart. Many an evening under his walnut trees, with Stella and Phil and Curly and Bob and Little Billy near, the Dean was led by the rare skill and ready wit of Patches to open the book of his kindly philosophy, as he talked of the years that were past. And sometimes Patches himself, yielding to temptation offered by the Dean, would speak in such vein that the older man came to understand that this boy, as he so often called him, had somewhere, somehow, already experienced that Gethsemane which soon or late—the Dean maintains—leaves its shadow upon us all. The cowboys, for his quick and genuine appreciation of their skill and knowledge, as well as for his unassuming courage, hearty good nature and ready laugh, took him into their fellowship without question or reserve, while Little Billy, loyal ever to his ideal, "Wild Horse Phil," found a large place in his boyish heart for the tenderfoot who was so ready always to recognize superior wisdom and authority.

So the stranger found his place among them, and in finding it, found also, perhaps, that which he most sorely needed.



When rodeo time came Patches was given a "string" of horses and, through the hard, grilling work that followed, took his place among the riders. There was no leisurely roaming over the range now, with only an occasional short dash after some animal that needed the "iron" or the "dope can;" but systematically and thoroughly the thirty or forty cowboys covered the country—mountain and mesa and flat, and wash and timbered ridge and rocky pass—for many miles in every direction.

In this section of the great western cattle country, at the time of my story, the round-ups were cooperative. Each of the several ranchers whose cattle, marked by the owner's legally recorded brand, ranged over a common district that was defined only by natural boundaries, was represented in the rodeo by one or two or more of his cowboys, the number of his riders being relative to the number of cattle marked with his iron. This company of riders, each with from three to five saddle horses in his string, would assemble at one of the ranches participating in the rodeo. From this center they would work until a circle of country within riding distance was covered, the cattle gathered and "worked"—or, in other words, sorted—and the animals belonging to the various owners disposed of as the representatives were instructed by their employers. Then the rodeo would move to another ranch, and would so continue until the entire district of many miles was covered. The owner or the foreman of each ranch was in charge of the rodeo as long as the riders worked in his territory. When the company moved to the next point, this loader took his place in the ranks, and cheerfully received his orders from some comrade, who, the day before, had been as willingly obedient to him. There was little place in the rodeo for weak, incompetent or untrustworthy men. Each owner, from his long experience and knowledge of men, sent as his representatives the most skillful and conscientious riders that he could secure. To make a top hand at a rodeo a man needed to be, in the truest sense, a man.

Before daylight, the horse wrangler had driven in the saddle band, and the men, with nose bags fashioned from grain sacks, were out in the corral to give the hard-working animals their feed of barley. The gray quiet of the early dawn was rudely broken by the sounds of the crowding, jostling, kicking, squealing band, mingled with the merry voices of the men, with now and then a shout of anger or warning as the cowboys moved here and there among their restless four-footed companions; and always, like a deep undertone, came the sound of trampling, iron-shod hoofs.

Before the sky had changed to crimson and gold the call sounded from the ranch house, "Come and get it!" and laughing and joking in friendly rivalry, the boys rushed to breakfast. It was no dainty meal of toast and light cereals that these hardy ones demanded. But huge cuts of fresh-killed beef, with slabs of bread, and piles of potatoes, and stacks of hot cakes, and buckets of coffee, and whatever else the hard-working Chinaman could lay his hands on to satisfy their needs. As soon as each man reached the utmost limit of his capacity, he left the table without formality, and returned to the corral, where, with riata or persuasion, as the case demanded, he selected from his individual string of horses his first mount for the day.

By the time the sun was beginning to gild the summit of old Granite Mountain's castle-like walls, and touch with glorious color the peaks of the neighboring sentinel hills, the last rider had saddled, and the company was mounted and ready for their foreman's word. Then to the music of jingling spurs, tinkling bridle chains, squeaking saddle leather, and the softer swish and rustle and flap of chaps, romals and riatas, they rode forth, laughing and joking, still, with now and then a roaring chorus of shouting comment or wild yells, as some half-broken horse gave an exhibition of his prowess in a mad effort to unseat his grinning rider.

Soon the leader would call the name of a cowboy, known to be particularly familiar with the country which was to be the scene of that day's work, and telling him to take two or three or more men, as the case might be, would direct him to ride over a certain section, indicating the assigned territory by its natural marks of valley or flat or wash or ridge, and designating the point where the cattle would first be brought together. The cowboy named would rein his horse aside from the main company, calling the men of his choice as he did so, and a moment later with his companions would be lost to sight. A little farther, and again the foreman would name a rider, and, telling him to pick his men, would assign to him another section of the district to be covered, and this cowboy, with his chosen mates, would ride away. These smaller groups would, in their turn, separate, and thus the entire company of riders would open out like a huge fan to sweep the countryside.

It was no mere pleasure canter along smoothly graded bridle paths or well-kept country highways that these men rode. From roughest rock-strewn mountain side and tree-clad slope, from boulder-piled watercourse and tangled brush, they must drive in the scattered cattle. At reckless speed, as their quarry ran and turned and dodged, they must hesitate at nothing. Climbing to the tops of the hills, scrambling catlike to the ragged crests of the ridges, sliding down the bluffs, jumping deep arroyos, leaping brush and boulders, twisting, dodging through the timber, they must go as fast as the strength and endurance of their mounts would permit. And so, gradually, as the sun climbed higher above the peaks and crags of Old Granite, the great living fan of men and horses closed, the courses of the widely scattered riders leading them, with the cattle they had found, to the given point.

And now, the cattle, urged by the active horsemen, came streaming from the different sections to form the herd, and the quiet of the great range was broken by the bawling of confused and frightened calves, the lowing of anxious mothers, the shrill, long-drawn call of the steers, and the deep bellowing of the bulls, as the animals, so rudely driven from their peaceful feeding grounds, moved restlessly within the circle of guarding cowboys, while cows found their calves, and the monarchs of the range met in fierce combat.

A number of the men—those whose mounts most needed the rest—were now left to hold the herd, or, perhaps, to move it quietly on to some other point, while the others were again sent out to cover another section of the territory included in that day's riding. As the hours passed, and the great fan of horsemen opened and closed, sweeping the cattle scattered over the range into the steadily growing herd, the rodeo moved gradually toward some chosen open flat or valley that afforded a space large enough for the operations that followed the work of gathering. At this "rodeo ground" a man would be waiting with fresh mounts for the riders, and, sometimes, with lunch. Quickly, those whose names were called by the foreman would change their saddles from dripping, exhausted horses to fresh animals from their individual strings, snatch a hasty lunch—often to be eaten in the saddle—and then, in their turn, would hold the cattle while their companions followed their example.

Then came the fast, hot work of "parting" the cattle. The representatives from one of the ranches interested would ride in among the cattle held by the circle of cowboys, and, following their instructions, would select such animals bearing their employer's brand as were wanted, cutting them out and passing them through the line of guarding riders, to be held in a separate group. When the representatives of one owner had finished, they were followed by the men who rode for some other outfit; and so on, until the task of "parting" was finished.

As the afternoon sun moved steadily toward the skyline of the western hills, the tireless activity of men and horses continued. The cattle, as the mounted men moved among them, drifted about, crowding and jostling, in uneasy discontent, with sometimes an indignant protest, and many attempts at escape by the more restless and venturesome. When an animal was singled out, the parting horses, chosen and prized for their quickness, dashed here and there through the herd with fierce leaps and furious rushes, stopping short in a terrific sprint to whirl, flashlike, and charge in another direction, as the quarry dodged and doubled. And now and then an animal would succeed for the moment in passing the guard line, only to be brought back after a short, sharp chase by the nearest cowboy. From the rodeo ground, where for long years the grass had been trampled out, the dust, lifted by the trampling thousands of hoofs in a dense, choking cloud, and heavy with the pungent odor of warm cattle and the smell of sweating horses, rising high into the clear air, could be seen from miles away, while the mingled voices of the bellowing, bawling herd, with now and then the shrill, piercing yells of the cowboys, could be heard almost as far.

When this part of the work was over, some of the riders set out to drive the cattle selected to the distant home ranch corrals, while others of the company remained to brand the calves and to start the animals that were to have their freedom until the next rodeo time back to the open range. And so, at last—often not until the stars were out—the riders would dismount at the home corrals of the ranch that, at the time, was the center of their operations, or, perhaps, at some rodeo camping ground.

At supper the day's work was reviewed with many a laugh and jest of pointed comment, and then, those whose horses needed attention because of saddle sores or, it might be, because of injuries from some fall on the rocks, busied themselves at the corral, while others met for a friendly game of cards, or talked and yarned over restful pipe or cigarette. And then, bed and blankets, and, all too soon, the reveille sounded by the beating hoofs of the saddle band as the wrangler drove them in, announced the beginning of another day.

Not infrequently there were accidents—from falling horses—from angry bulls—from ill-tempered steers, or excited cows—or, perhaps, from a carelessly handled rope in some critical moment. Horses were killed; men with broken limbs, or with bodies bruised and crushed, were forced to drop out; and many a strong horseman who rode forth in the morning to the day's work, laughing and jesting with his mates, had been borne by his grave and silent comrades to some quiet resting place, to await, in long and dreamless sleep, the morning of that last great rodeo which, we are told, shall gather us all.

Day after day, as Patches rode with these hardy men, Phil watched him finding himself and winning his place among the cowboys. They did not fail, as they said, to "try him out." Nor did Phil, in these trials, attempt in any way to assist his pupil. But the men learned very quickly, as Curly had learned at the time of Patches' introduction, that, while the new man was always ready to laugh with them when a joke was turned against himself, there was a line beyond which it was not well to go. In the work he was, of course, assigned only to such parts as did not require the skill and knowledge of long training and experience. But he did all that was given him to do with such readiness and skill, thanks to Phil's teaching, that the men wondered. And this, together with his evident ability in the art of defending himself, and the story of his strange coming to the Cross-Triangle, caused not a little talk, with many and varied opinions as to who he was, and what it was that had brought him among them. Strangely enough, very few believed that Patches' purpose in working as a cowboy for the Dean was simply to earn an honest livelihood. They felt instinctively—as, in fact, did Phil and the Dean—that there was something more beneath it all than such a commonplace.

Nick Cambert, who, with Yavapai Joe, rode in the rodeo, carefully avoided the stranger. But Patches, by his persistent friendly interest in the Tailholt Mountain man's follower, added greatly to the warmth of the discussions and conjectures regarding himself. The rodeo had reached the Pot-Hook-S Ranch, with Jim Reid in charge, when the incident occurred which still further stimulated the various opinions and suggestions as to the new man's real character and mission.

They were working the cattle that day on the rodeo ground just outside the home ranch corral. Phil and Curly were cutting out some Cross-Triangle steers, when the riders, who were holding the cattle, saw them separate a nine-months-old calf from the herd, and start it, not toward the cattle they had already cut out, but toward the corral.

Instantly everybody knew what had happened.

The cowboy nearest the gate did not need Phil's word to open it for his neighbor next in line to drive the calf inside.

Not a word was said until the calves to be branded were also driven into the corral. Then Phil, after a moment's talk with Jim Reid, rode up to Nick Cambert, who was sitting on his horse a little apart from the group of intensely interested cowboys. The Cross-Triangle foreman's tone was curt. "I reckon I'll have to trouble you to vent your brand on that Cross-Triangle calf, Nick."

The Tailholt Mountain man made no shallow pretense that he did not understand. "Not by a damn sight," he returned roughly. "I ain't raisin' calves for Bill Baldwin, an' I happen to know what I'm talkin' about this trip. That's a Four-Bar-M calf, an' I branded him myself over in Horse Wash before he left the cow. Some of your punchers are too damned handy with their runnin' irons, Mr. Wild Horse Phil."

For a moment Phil looked at the man, while Jim Reid moved his horse nearer, and the cowboys waited, breathlessly. Then, without taking his eyes from the Tailholt Mountain man's face, Phil called sharply:

"Patches, come here!"

There was a sudden movement among the riders, and a subdued murmur, as Patches rode forward.

"Is that calf you told me about in the corral, Patches?" asked Phil, when the man was beside him.

"Yes, sir; that's him over there by that brindle cow." Patches indicated the animal in question.

"And you put our iron on him?" asked Phil, still watching Nick.

"I did," returned Patches, coolly.

"Tell us about it," directed the Dean's foreman.

And Patches obeyed, briefly. "It was that day you sent me to fix the fence on the southwest corner of the big pasture. I saw a bunch of cattle a little way outside the fence, and went to look them over. This calf was following a Cross-Triangle cow."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir. I watched them for half an hour."

"What was in the bunch?"

"Four steers, a Pot-Hook-S bull, five cows and this calf. There were three Five-Bar cows, one Diamond-and-a-Half and one Cross-Triangle. The calf went to the Cross-Triangle cow every time. And, besides, he is marked just like his mother. I saw her again this afternoon while we were working the cattle."

Phil nodded. "I know her."

Jim Reid was watching Patches keenly, with a quiet look now and then at Nick.

The cowboys were murmuring among themselves.

"Pretty good work for a tenderfoot!"

"Tenderfoot, hell!"

"They've got Nick this trip."

"Got nothin'! Can't you see it's a frame-up?"

Phil spoke to Nick. "Well, are satisfied? Will you vent your brand?"

The big man's face was distorted with passion. "Vent nothin'," he roared. "On the word of a damned sneakin' tenderfoot! I—"

He stopped, as Patches, before Phil could check the movement, pushed close to his side.

In the sudden stillness the new man's cool, deliberate voice sounded clearly. "I am positive that you made a mistake when you put your iron on that calf, Mr. Cambert. And," he added slowly, as though with the kindest possible intention, "I am sure that you can safely take my word for it without further question."

For a moment Nick glared at Patches, speechless. Then, to the amazement of every cowboy in the corral, the big man mumbled a surly something, and took down his riata to rope the calf and disclaim his ownership of the animal.

Jim Reid shook his head in puzzled doubt.

The cowboys were clearly divided.

"He's too good a hand for a tenderfoot," argued one; "carried that off like an old-timer."

"'Tain't like Nick to lay down so easy for anybody," added another.

"Nick's on to something about Mr. Patches that we ain't next to," insisted a third.

"Or else we're all bein' strung for a bunch of suckers," offered still another.

"You boys just hold your horses, an' ride easy," said Curly. "My money's still on Honorable Patches."

And Bob added his loyal support with his cheerful "Me, too!"

"It all looked straight enough," Jim Reid admitted to the Dean that evening, "but I can't get away from the notion that there was some sort of an understanding between your man an' that damned Tailholt Mountain thief. It looked like it was all too quiet an' easy somehow; like it had been planned beforehand."

The Dean laughingly told his neighbor that he was right; that there was an understanding between Patches and Nick, and then explained by relating how Patches had met the Tailholt Mountain men that day at the spring.

When the Dean had finished the big cowman asked several very suggestive questions. How did the Dean know that Patches' story was anything more than a cleverly arranged tale, invented for the express purpose of allaying any suspicion as to his true relationship with Nick? If Patches' character was so far above suspicion, why did he always dodge any talk that might touch his past? Was it necessary or usual for men to keep so close-mouthed about themselves? What did the Dean, or anyone else, for that matter, really know about this man who had appeared so strangely from nowhere, and had given a name even that was so plainly a ridiculous invention? The Dean must remember that the suspicion as to the source of Nick's too rapidly increasing herds had, so far, been directed wholly against Nick himself, and that the owner of the Four-Bar-M iron was not altogether a fool. It was quite time, Reid argued, for Nick to cease his personal activities, and to trust the actual work of branding to some confederate whose movements would not be so closely questioned. In short, Reid had been expecting some stranger to seek a job with some of the ranches that were in a position to contribute to the Tailholt Mountain outfit, and, for his part, he would await developments before becoming too enthusiastic over Honorable Patches.

All of which the good Dean found very hard to answer.

"But look here, Jim," he protested, "don't you go makin' it unpleasant for the boy. Whatever you think, you don't know any more than the rest of us. If we're guessin' on one side, you're guessin' on the other. I admit that what you say sounds reasonable; but, hang it, I like Patches. As for his name—well—we didn't use to go so much on names, in this country, you know. The boy may have some good reason for not talkin' about himself. Just give him a square chance; don't put no burrs under his saddle blanket—that's all I'm askin'."

Jim laughed. The speech was so characteristic of the Dean, and Jim Reid loved his old friend and neighbor, as all men did, for being, as was commonly said, "so easy."

"Don't worry, Will," he answered. "I'm not goin' to start anything. If I should happen to be right about Mr. Honorable Patches, he's exactly where we want him. I propose to keep my eye on him, that's all. And I think you an' Phil had better do the same."



CHAPTER XI.

AFTER THE RODEO.

As the fall rodeo swept on its way over the wide ranges, the last reluctant bits of summer passed, and hints of the coming winter began to appear The yellow glory of the goldenrod, and the gorgeous banks of color on sunflower flats faded to earthy russet and brown; the white cups of the Jimson weed were broken and lost; the dainty pepper-grass, the thin-leafed grama-grass, and the heavier bladed bear-grass of the great pasture lands were dry and tawny; and the broom-weed that had tufted the rolling hills with brighter green, at the touch of the first frost, turned a dull and somber gray; while the varied beauties of the valley meadows became even as the dead and withered leaves of the Dean's walnut trees that, in falling, left the widespread limbs and branches so bare.

Then the rodeo and the shipping were over; the weeks of the late fall range riding were past—and it was winter.

From skyline to skyline the world was white, save for the dark pines upon the mountain sides, the brighter cedars and junipers upon the hills and ridges, and the living green of the oak brush, that, when all else was covered with snow, gave the cattle their winter feed.

More than ever, now, with the passing of the summer and fall, Kitty longed for the stirring life that, in some measure, had won her from the scenes of her home and from her homeland friends. The young woman's friendship with Patches—made easy by the fact that the Baldwins had taken him so wholly into their hearts—served to keep alive her memories of that world to which she was sure he belonged, and such memories did not tend to make Kitty more contented and happy in Williamson Valley.

Toward Phil, Kitty was unchanged. Many times her heart called for him so insistently that she wished she had never learned to know any life other than that life to which they had both been born. If only she had not spent those years away from home—she often told herself—it would all have been so different. She could have been happy with Phil—very happy—if only she had remained in his world. But now—now she was afraid—afraid for him as well as for herself. Her friendship with Patches had, in so many ways, emphasized the things that stood between her and the man whom, had it not been for her education, she would have accepted so gladly as her mate.