hen those days at Prescott were over, and Mr. and Mrs. Manning had left for their camp in Granite Basin, Kitty Reid returned to Williamson Valley reluctantly. She felt that with Phil definitely out of her life the last interest that bound her to the scenes of her girlhood was broken. Before many weeks the ranch would be sold. A Prescott agent had opened negotiations for an eastern client who would soon be out to look over the property; and Mr. Reid felt, from all that the agent had said, that the sale was assured. In the meantime Kitty would wait as patiently as she could. To help her, there would be Helen's visit, and there was her friendship with Professor Parkhill. It was not strange, considering all the circumstances, that the young woman should give her time more generously than ever to the only person in the neighborhood, except Patches, perhaps, who she felt could understand and appreciate her desires for that higher life of which even her own parents were ignorant.

And the professor did understand her fully. He told her so many times each day. Had he not given all the years of his little life to the study of those refining and spiritualizing truths that are so far above the comprehension of the base and ignoble common herd? Indeed, he understood her language; he understood fully, why the sordid, brutal materialism of her crude and uncultured environment so repulsed and disgusted her. He understood, more fully than Kitty herself, in fact, and explained to her clearly, that her desires for the higher intellectual and spiritual life were born of her own rare gifts, and evidenced beyond all question the fineness and delicacy of her nature. He rejoiced with her—with a pure and holy joy—that she was so soon to be set free to live amid the surroundings that would afford her those opportunities for the higher development of her intellectual and spiritual powers which her soul craved. All this he told her from day to day; and then, one afternoon, he told her more.

It was the same afternoon that Patches had so unexpectedly found Helen and Stanford in their Granite Basin camp. Kitty and the professor had driven in the buckboard to Simmons for the mail, and were coming back by the road to the Cross-Triangle, when the man asked, "Must we return to the ranch so soon? It is so delightful out here where there is no one to intrude with vulgar commonplaces, to mar our companionship."

"Why, no," returned Kitty. "There is no need for us to hurry home." She glanced around. "We might sit over there, under those cedars on the hill, where you found me with Mr. Patches that day—the day we saw Yavapai Joe, you remember."

"If you think it quite safe to leave the vehicle," he said, "I should be delighted."

Kitty tied the horses to a convenient bush at the foot of the low hill, and soon they were in the welcome shade of the cedars.

"Miss Reid," the professor began, with portentous gravity, "I must confess that I have been rather puzzled to account for your presence here that day with such a man as that fellow Patches. You will pardon my saying so, I am sure, but you must have observed my very deep interest in you. I also chanced to see you with him one day in Prescott, in the park. You don't mind my speaking of it?"

"Not at all, Professor Parkhill," Kitty returned, smiling as she thought how ignorant the professor was of the cowboy's real character. "I like Patches. He interests me very much; and there is really no reason why I should not be friendly with him. Don't you think that I should be kind to our cowboys?"

"I suppose so," the professor sighed. "But it hurts me to see you have anything whatever in common with such a man. It shocks me to know that you must, in any degree, come in touch with such fellows. I shall be very glad, indeed, when you are free from any such kindly obligations, and safe among those of your own class."

Kitty found it very hard to reply. She did not wish to be disloyal to Patches and her many Williamson Valley friends; nor did she like to explain how Patches had played a part for the professor's benefit, for she felt that by not exposing the deception she had, in a way, been a party to it. So she said nothing, but seemed to be silently weighing the value of her learned companion's observations. At least, it so appeared to the professor, and in her ready acceptance of his implied criticism of her conduct he found the encouragement he needed for that which followed.

"You must understand, Miss Reid, that I have become exceedingly zealous for your welfare. In these months that we have been so much together your companionship—your spiritual and intellectual companionship, I should say—has come to be very dear to me. As our souls have communed, I have felt myself uplifted and inspired. I have been strengthened and encouraged, as never before, to climb on toward the mountain peaks of pure intellectuality. If I am not mistaken, you, too, have felt a degree of uplift as a result of our fellowship, have you not?"

"Yes, indeed, Professor Parkhill," Kitty answered sincerely. "Our talks together have meant much more to me than I can tell. I shall never forget this summer. Your friendship has been a wonderful influence in my life."

The little man moved uneasily and glanced timidly around. "I am truly glad to know that our companionship has not been altogether distasteful to you; I felt sure that it was not, but I—ahem!—I am glad to hear your confirmation of my opinion. It—ah—it enables me to say that which for several weeks past has been weighing heavily on my mind."

Kitty looked at him with the manner of a trusting disciple waiting for the gems of truth that were about to fall from the lips of a venerable teacher.

"Miss Reid—ah—why need our beautiful and mutually profitable companionship cease?"

"I fear that I do not understand, Professor Parkhill," she answered, puzzled by his question.

He looked at her with just a shade of mild—very mild—rebuke, as he returned, "Why, I think that I have stated my thought clearly. I mean that I am very desirous that our relation—the relation which we both have found so helpful—should continue. I am sure that we have, in these months which we have spent together, sufficient evidence that our souls vibrate in perfect harmony. I need you, dear friend; your understanding of my soul's desires is so sympathetic; I feel that you so complement and fill out, as it were, my spiritual self. I need you to encourage, to inspire, to assist me in the noble work to which I am devoting all my strength."

She looked at him, now, with an expression of amazement. "Do you mean—" she faltered in confusion while the red blood colored her cheeks.

"Yes," he answered, confidently. "I am asking you to be my wife. Not, however," he added hastily, "in the common, vulgar understanding of that relation. I am offering you, dear friend, that which is vastly higher than the union of the merely animal, which is based wholly upon the purely physical and material attraction. I am proposing marriage of our souls—a union, if you please, of our higher intellectual and spiritual selves. I feel, indeed, that by those higher laws which the vulgar, beastlike minds are incapable of recognizing, we are already one. I sense, as it were, that oneness which can exist only when two souls are mated by the great over-soul; I feel that you are already mine—that, I am—that we are already united in a spiritual union that is—"

The young woman checked him with a gesture, which, had he interpreted it rightly, was one of repulsion. "Please stop, Professor Parkhill," she gasped in a tone of disgust.

He was surprised, and not a little chagrined. "Am I to understand that you do not reciprocate my sentiment, Miss Reid? Is it possible that I have been so mistaken?"

Kitty turned her head, as though she could not bear even to look at him. "What you ask is so impossible," she said in a low tone. "Impossible!"

Strive as she might, the young woman could not altogether hide her feeling of abhorrence. And yet, she asked herself, why should this man's proposal arouse in her such antagonism and repugnance? He was a scholar, famed for his attainments in the world of the highest culture. As his wife, she would be admitted at once into the very inner circle of that life to which she aspired, and for which she was leaving her old home and friends. He had couched his proposal in the very terms of the spiritually and intellectually elect; he had declared himself in that language which she had so proudly thought she understood, and in which she had so often talked with him; and yet she was humiliated and ashamed. It was, to her, as though, in placing his offer of marriage upon the high, pure ground of a spiritual union, he had insulted her womanhood. Kitty realized wonderingly that she had not felt like this when Phil had confessed his love for her. In her woman heart, she was proud and glad to have won the love of such a man as Phil, even though she could not accept the cowboy as her mate. On that very spot which the professor had chosen for his declaration, Patches had told her that she was leaving the glorious and enduring realities of life for vain and foolish bubbles—that she was throwing aside the good grain and choosing the husks. Was this what Patches meant? she wondered.

"I regret exceedingly, Miss Reid," the professor was saying, "that the pure and lofty sentiments which I have voiced do not seem to find a like response in your soul. I—"

Again she interrupted him with that gesture of repulsion. "Please do not say any more, Professor Parkhill. I—I fear that I am very human, after all. Come, it is time that we were returning to the house."

All through the remaining hours of that afternoon and evening Kitty was disturbed and troubled. At times she wanted to laugh at the professor's ridiculous proposal; and again, her cheeks burned with anger; and she could have cried in her shame and humiliation. And with it all her mind was distraught by the persistent question: Was not the professor's conception of an ideal mating the legitimate and logical conclusion of those very advanced ideas of culture which he represented, and which she had so much admired? If she sincerely believed the life represented by the professor and his kind so superior—so far above the life represented by Phil Acton—why should she not feel honored instead of being so humiliated and shamed by the professor's—she could not call it love? If the life which Phil had asked her to share was so low in the scale of civilization; if it were so far beneath the intellectual and spiritual ideals which she had formed, why did she feel so honored by the strong man's love? Why had she not felt humiliated and ashamed that Phil should want her to mate with him? Could it be, she asked herself again and again, that there was something, after all, superior to that culture which she had so truly thought stood for the highest ideals of the race? Could it be that, in the land of Granite Mountain, there was something, after all, that was as superior to the things she had been taught as Granite Mountain itself was superior in its primeval strength and enduring grandeur to the man-made buildings of her school?

It was not strange that Kitty's troubled thoughts should turn to Helen Manning. Clearly, Helen's education had led to no confusion. On the contrary, she had found an ideal love, and a happiness such as every true, womanly woman must, in her heart of hearts, desire.

It was far into the night when Kitty, wakeful and restless, heard the sound of a horse's feet. She could not know that it was Honorable Patches riding past on his way to the ranch on the other side of the broad valley meadows.

Weary in body, and with mind and spirit exhausted by the trials through which he had passed, Patches crept to his bed. In the morning, when he delivered his message, the Dean, seeing the man's face, urged him to stay for the day at the ranch. But Patches said no; Phil was expecting him, and he must return to the outfit in Granite Basin. As soon as breakfast was over he set out.

He had ridden as far as the head of Mint Wash, and had stopped to water his horse, and to refresh himself with a cool drink and a brief rest beside the fragrant mint-bordered spring, when he heard someone riding rapidly up the wash the way he had come. A moment later, Kitty, riding her favorite Midnight, rounded a jutting corner of the rocky wall of the bluff.

As the girl caught sight of him, there beside the spring, she waved her hand in greeting. And the man, as he waved his answer, and watched her riding toward him, felt a thrill of gladness that she had come. The strong, true friendship that began with their very first meeting, when she had been so frankly interested in the tenderfoot, and so kindly helpful, and which had developed so steadily through the year, gave him, now, a feeling of comfort and relief. Wearied and worn by his disappointment and by his struggle with himself, with the cherished hope that had enabled him to choose and endure the hard life of the range brought to a sudden end, with his life itself made so empty and futile, he welcomed his woman friend with a warmth and gladness that brought a flush of pleasure to Kitty's cheek.

For Kitty, too, had just passed through a humiliating and disappointing experience. In her troubled frame of mind, and in her perplexed and confused questioning, the young woman was as glad for the companionship of Patches as he was glad to welcome her. She felt a curious sense of relief and safety in his presence—somewhat as one, who, walking over uncertain bogs or treacherous quicksands, finds, all at once, the solid ground.

"I saw you go past the house," she said, when she reached the spring where he stood awaiting her, "and I decided right then that I would go along with you to Granite Basin and visit my friends the Mannings. They told me that I might come this week, and I think they have had quite enough honeymooning, anyway. You know where they are camped, do you?"

"Yes," he answered. "I saw them yesterday. But, come! Get down and cool off a bit. You've been riding some, haven't you?"

"I wanted to catch you as soon as I could," she laughed, as she sprang lightly to the ground. "And you see you gained a good start while I was getting Midnight saddled. What a pretty spot! I must have a drink of that water this minute."

"Sorry I have no cup," he said, and then he laughed with the pleasure of good comradeship as she answered:

"You forget that I was born to the customs of this country." And, throwing aside her broad hat, she went down on the ground to drink from the spring, even as he had done.

As the man watched her, a sudden thought flashed into his mind—a thought so startling, so unexpected, that he was for the moment bewildered.

"Talk about the nectar of the gods!" cried Kitty with a deep breath of satisfaction, as she lifted her smiling face from the bright water to look up at him. And then she drank again.

"And now, if you please, sir, you may bring me some of that water-cress; we'll sit over there in the shade, and who cares whether Granite Basin, the Mannings, and your fellow cow-punchers, are fifteen or fifty miles away?"

He brought a generous bunch of the water-cress, and stretched himself full length beside her, as she sat on the ground under a tall sycamore.

"Selah!" he laughed contentedly. "We seem to lack only the book of verses, the loaf and the jug; the wilderness is here, all right, and that's a perfectly good bough up there, and, of course, you could furnish the song; I might recite 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,' but, alas! we haven't even a flask and biscuit."

"What a pity that you should be so near and yet so far from paradise!" she retorted quickly. Then she added, with a mischievous smile, "It just happens that I have a sandwich in my saddle pocket."

"Won't you sing? Please do," he returned, with an eagerness that amused her.

But she shook her head reprovingly. "We would still lack the jug of wine, you know, and, really, I don't think that paradise is for cow-punchers, anyway, do you?"

"Evidently not," he answered. And at her jesting words a queer feeling of rebellion possessed him. Why should he be condemned to years of loneliness? Why must he face a life without the companionship of a mate? If the paradise he had sought so hard to attain were denied him, why should he not still take what happiness he might?

He was lying flat on his back, his hands clasped beneath his head, watching an eagle that wheeled, a tiny black speck, high under the blue arch of the sky. He seemed to have forgotten his companion.

Kitty leaned toward him, and held a sprig of water-cress over his upturned face. "I haven't a penny," she said, "but I'll give you this."

He sat up quickly. "Even at that price, my thoughts might cost you too much. But you haven't told me what you have done with our dear friend the professor? Haven't you a guilty conscience, deserting him like this?"

Kitty held up both hands in a gesture of dismay. "Don't, Patches, please don't. Ugh! if you only knew how good it is to be with a man again!"

He laughed aloud in a spirit of reckless defiance. "And Phil is over in Granite Basin. I neglected to tell you that he knows the location of the Mannings' camp, as well as I."

Kitty was a little puzzled by the tone of his laughter, and by his words. She spoke gravely. "Perhaps I should tell you, Patches—we have been such good friends, you and I—Phil—"

"Yes!" he said.

"Phil is nothing to me, Patches. I mean—"

"You mean in the way he wanted to be?" He helped her with a touch of eager readiness.

"Yes."

"And have you told him, Kitty?" Patches asked gently.

"Yes—I have told him," she replied.

Patches was silent for a moment. Then, "Poor Phil!" he said softly. "I understand now; I thought that was it. He is a man among thousands, Kitty."

"I know—I know," she returned, as though to dismiss the subject. "But it simply couldn't be."

Patches was looking at her intently, with an expression in his dark eyes that Kitty had never before seen. The man's mind was in a whirl of quick excitement. As they had talked and laughed together, the thought that had so startled him, when her manner of familiar comradeship had brought such a feeling of comfort to his troubled spirit, had not left him. From that first moment of their meeting a year before there had been that feeling between them, of companionship, a feeling which had grown as their acquaintance had developed into the intimate friendship that had allowed him to speak to her as he had spoken that day under the cedars on the ridge. What might that friendship not grow into! He thought of her desire for the life that he knew so well, and how he could, while granting every wish of her heart, yet protect her from the shams and falseness. And with these thoughts was that feeling of rebellion against the loneliness of his life.

Kitty's words regarding Phil removed the barrier, as it were, and the man's nature, which prompted him so often to act without pausing to consider, betrayed him into saying, "Would you be greatly shocked, Kitty, if I were to tell you that I am glad? That, while I am sorry for Phil, I am glad that you have said no to him?"

"You are glad?" she said wonderingly. "Why?"

"Because, now, I am free to say what I could not have said had you not told me what you have. I want you, Kitty. I want to fill your life with beauty and happiness and contentment. I want you to go with me to see and know the natural wonders of the world, and the wonders that men have wrought. I want to surround you with the beauties of art and literature, with everything that your heart craves. I want you to know the people whose friendship would be a delight to you. Come with me, girl—be my wife, and together we will find—if not paradise, at least a full and useful and contented and happy life. Will you come, Kitty? Will you come with me?"

As she listened her eyes grew big with wonder and delight. It was as though some good genie had suddenly opened wide the way to an enchanted laud. Then the gladness went swiftly from her face, and she said doubtingly, "You are jesting with me, Patches."

As she spoke his cowboy name, the man laughed aloud. "I forgot that you do not even know me—I mean, that you do not know my name."

"Are you some fairy prince in disguise, Sir Patches?"

"Not a fairy, dear, and certainly not a prince; just a man, that's all. But a man, dear girl, who can offer you a clean life, an honored name, and all of which I have spoken. But I must tell you—I always knew that I would tell you some day, but I did not dream that it would be to-day. My name is Lawrence Knight. My home is in Cleveland, Ohio. Your father can easily satisfy himself as to my family and my own personal life and standing. It is enough for me to assure you now, dear, that I am abundantly able to give you all that I have promised."

At the mention of his name, Kitty's eyes grew bright again. Thanks to her intimate friend and schoolmate, Helen Manning, she knew much more of Lawrence Knight than that gentleman supposed.

"But, tell me," she asked curiously, trembling with suppressed excitement, "why is Mr. Lawrence Knight masquerading here as the cowboy Honorable Patches?"

He answered earnestly. "I know it must seem strange to you, dear, but the simple truth is that I became ashamed of myself and my life of idle uselessness. I determined to see if I could take my place among men, simply as a man. I wanted to be accepted by men for myself, for my manhood, if you like, and not because of my—" he hesitated, then said frankly—"my money and social position. I wanted to depend upon myself—to live as other men live, by my own strength and courage and work. If I had given my real name, when I asked for work at the Cross-Triangle—someone would have found me out before very long, and my little experiment would have failed, don't you see?"

While he spoke, Kitty's excited mind had caught at many thoughts. She believed sincerely that her girlhood love for Phil was dead. This man, even as Patches the cowboy, with a questionable shadow on his life, had compelled her respect and confidence, while in his evident education and social culture he had won her deepest admiration. She felt that he was all that Phil was, and more. There was in her feeling toward him, as he offered himself to her now, no hint of that instinctive repulsion and abhorrence with which she had received Professor Parkhill's declaration of spiritual affinity. Her recent experience with the Master of Aesthetics had so outraged her womanly instincts that the inevitable reaction from her perplexed and troubled mind led her to feel more deeply, and to be drawn more strongly, toward this man with whom any woman might be proud to mate. At the same time, the attractions of the life which she knew he could give her, and for which she longed so passionately, with the relief of the thought that her parents would not need to sacrifice themselves for her, were potent factors in the power of Lawrence Knight's appeal.

"It would be wonderful," she said musingly. "I have dreamed and dreamed about such things."

"You will come with me, dear? You will let me give you your heart's wish—you will go with me into the life for which you are so fitted?"

"Do you really want me, Patches?" she asked timidly, as though in her mind there was still a shadow of doubt.

"More than anything in the world," he urged. "Say yes. Kitty. Say that you will be my wife."

The answer came softly, with a hint of questioning, still.

"Yes."

Kitty did not notice that the man had not spoken of his love for her. There were so many other things for her to consider, so many other things to distract her mind. Nor did the man notice that Kitty herself had failed to speak in any way that little word, which, rightly understood, holds in its fullest, deepest meaning, all of life's happiness—of labor and accomplishment—of success and triumph—of sacrifice and sorrow; holds, in its fullest, deepest meaning, indeed, all of life itself.

itty's friends were very glad to welcome her at their camp in Granite Basin. The incident which had so rudely broken the seclusion of their honeymoon had been too nearly a tragedy to be easily forgotten. The charm of the place was, in some degree, for them, lost, and Kitty's coming helped to dispel the cloud that had a little overshadowed those last days of their outing.

It was not at all difficult for them to persuade Kitty to remain longer than the one night that she had planned, and to accompany them to Prescott. Prom Prescott, Stanford must go to the mines, to take up his work, and to arrange for Helen's coming later, and Helen would go home with Kitty for the visit she had promised. The cowboys, who were returning to the Cross-Triangle Ranch, would take Kitty's horse to her home, and would carry a message explaining the young woman's absence, and asking that someone be sent to Prescott with the clothing she would need in town, and that the Reid automobile might be in Prescott in readiness to take the two young women back to the ranch on the appointed day.

Kitty could not bring herself to tell even Helen about her engagement to Lawrence Knight, or Patches, as she would continue to call him until the time came for the cowboy himself to make his true name and character known. It had all happened so suddenly; the promises of the future were so wonderful—so far beyond the young woman's fondest dreams—that she herself could scarcely realize the truth. There would be time enough to tell Helen when they were together at the ranch. And she was insistent, too, that Patches must not interview her father until she herself had returned home.

Phil and his cowboys with the cattle reached the Cross-Triangle corrals the evening before the day set for Kitty and Helen to arrive at the ranch on the other side of the valley meadows. The Cross-Triangle men were greeted by the news that Professor Parkhill had said good-by to Williamson Valley, and that the Pot-Hook-S Ranch had been sold. The eastern purchaser expected by Reid had arrived on the day that Kitty had gone to Granite Basin, and the deal had been closed without delay. But Reid was not to give possession of the property until after the fall rodeo.

As the men sat under the walnut trees with the Dean that evening, discussing the incidents of the Granite Basin work, and speculating about the new owner of the neighboring ranch, Phil sat with Little Billy apart from the circle, and contributed to the conversation only now and then a word or a brief answer to some question. When Mrs. Baldwin persuaded the child that it was bedtime, Phil slipped quietly away in the darkness, and they did not see him again until breakfast the next morning. When breakfast was over, the foreman gave a few directions to his men, and rode away alone.

The Dean, understanding the lad, whom he loved as one of his own sons, watched him go without a word or a question. To Mrs. Baldwin he said, "Just let him alone, Stella. The boy is all right. He's only gone off somewhere on the range to fight it out alone. Most likely he'll put in the day watching those wild horses over beyond Toohey. He generally goes to them when he's bothered about anything or in trouble of any sort."

Patches, who had been sent on an errand of some kind to Fair Oaks, was returning home early in the afternoon, and had reached the neighborhood of that spring where he had first encountered Nick Cambert, when he heard a calf bawling lustily somewhere in the cedar timber not far away. Familiar as he now was with the voices of the range, the cowboy knew that the calf was in trouble. The call was one of fright and pain.

Turning aside from his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding. Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse. Then he went on, carefully and silently, on foot. Soon he heard voices. Again the calf bawled in fright and pain, and the familiar odor of burning hair was carried to him on the breeze. Someone was branding a calf.

It might be all right—it might not. Patches was unarmed, but, with characteristic disregard of consequences, he crept softly forward, toward a dense growth of trees and brush, from beyond which the noise and the smoke seemed to come.

He had barely gained the cover when he heard someone on the other side ride rapidly away down the ridge. Hastily parting the bushes, he looked through to catch a glimpse of the horseman, but he was a moment too late; the rider had disappeared from sight in the timber. But, in a little open space among the cedars, the cowboy saw Yavapai Joe, standing beside a calf, fresh-branded with the Four-Bar-M iron, and earmarked with the Tailholt marks.

Patches knew instantly, as well as though he had witnessed the actual branding, what, had happened. That part of the range was seldom visited except by the Dean's cowboys, and the Tailholt Mountain men, knowing that the Cross-Triangle riders were all at Granite Basin, were making good use of their opportunities. The man who had ridden away so hurriedly, a moment too soon for Patches to see him, was, without doubt, driving the mother of the calf to a distance that would effectually separate her from her offspring.

But while he was so sure in his own mind, the Cross-Triangle man—as it had so often happened before—had arrived on the scene too late. He had no positive evidence that the animal just branded was not the lawful property of Nick Cambert.

As Patches stepped from the bushes, Yavapai Joe faced him for a moment in guilty astonishment and fear; then he ran toward his horse.

"Wait a minute, Joe!" called Patches. "What good will it do for you to run now? I'm not going to harm you."

Joe stopped, and stood hesitating in indecision, watching the intruder with that sneaking, sidewise look.

"Come on, Joe; let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire. "You know you can't get away, so you might as well."

"I ain't tellin' nothin' to nobody," said Joe sullenly, as he came slowly toward the Dean's cowboy.

"No?" said Patches.

"No, I ain't," asserted the Tailholt Mountain man stoutly. "That there calf is a Four-Bar-M calf, all right."

"I see it is," returned the Cross-Triangle rider calmly. "But I'll just wait until Nick gets back, and ask him what it was before he worked over the iron."

Joe, excited and confused by the cool nerve of this man, fell readily into the verbal trap.

"You better go now, an' not wait to ask Nick no fool questions like that. If he finds you here talkin' with me when he gets back, hell'll be a-poppin' fer sure. Me an' you are friends, Patches, an' that's why I'm a-tellin' you you better pull your freight while the goin's good."

"Much obliged, Joe, but there's no hurry. You don't need to be so rushed. It will be an hour before Nick gets back, if he drives that cow as far as he ought."

Again poor Yavapai Joe told more than he intended. "You don't need to worry none 'bout Nick; he'll sure drive her far enough. He ain't takin' no chances, Nick ain't."

With his convictions so readily confirmed, Patches had good ground upon which to base his following remarks. He had made a long shot when he spoke so confidently of the brand on the calf being worked over. For, of course, the calf might not have been branded at all when the Tailholt Mountain men caught it. But Joe's manner, as well as his warning answer, told that the shot had gone home. The fact that the brand had been worked over established also the fact that it was the Cross-Triangle brand that had been changed, because the Cross-Triangle was the only brand in that part of the country that could be changed into the Four-Bar-M.

Patches, dropping his easy manner, and speaking straight to the point, said, "Look here, Joe, you and I might as well get down to cases. You know I am your friend, and I don't want to see you in trouble, but you can take it from me that you are in mighty serious trouble right now. I was hiding right there in those bushes, close enough to see all that happened, and I know that this is a Cross-Triangle calf, and that Nick and you worked the brand over. You know that it means the penitentiary for you, as well as for Nick, if the boys don't string you both up without any ceremony."

Patches paused to let his words sink in.

Joe's face was ashy white, and he was shaking with fright, as he stole a sneaking look toward his horse.

Patches added sharply, "You can't give me the slip, either; I can kill you before you get half way to your horse."

Trapped and helpless, Joe looked pleadingly at his captor. "You wouldn't send me up, would you, now, Patches?" he whined. "You an' me's good friends, ain't we? Anyway he wouldn't let me go to the pen, an' the boys wouldn't dast do nothin' to me when they knew."

"Whom are you talking about?" demanded Patches. "Nick? Don't be a fool, Joe; Nick will be there right alongside of you."

"I ain't meanin' Nick; I mean him over there at the Cross-Triangle—Professor Parkhill. I'm a-tellin' you that he wouldn't let you do nothin' to me."

"Forget it, Joe," came the reply, without an instant's hesitation. "You know as well as I do how much chance Professor Parkhill, or anyone else, would have, trying to keep the boys from making you and Nick dance on nothing, once they hear of this. Besides, the professor is not in the valley now."

The poor outcast's fright was pitiful. "You ain't meanin' that he—that he's gone?" he gasped.

"Listen, Joe," said Patches quickly. "I can do more for you than he could, even if he were here. You know I am your friend, and I don't want to see a good fellow like you sent to prison for fifteen or twenty years, or, perhaps, hanged. But there's only one way that I can see for me to save you. You must go with me to the Cross-Triangle, and tell Mr. Baldwin all about it, how you were just working for Nick, and how he made you help him do this, and all that you know. If you do that, we can get you off."

"I—I reckon you're right, Patches," returned the frightened weakling sullenly. "Nick has sure treated me like a dog, anyway. You won't let Nick get at me, will you, if I go?"

"Nobody can get at you, Joe, if you go with me, and do the square thing. I'm going to take care of you myself, and help you to get out of this, and brace up and be a man. Come on; let's be moving. I'll turn this calf loose first, though."

He was bending over the calf when a noise in the brush caused him to stand suddenly erect.

Joe was whimpering with terror.

Patches said fiercely, but in a low tone, "Shut up, and follow my lead. Be a man, and I'll get you out of this yet."

"Nick will kill us sure," whined Joe.

"Not if I get my hands on him first, he won't," retorted Patches.

But it was with a feeling of relief that the cowboy saw Phil Acton ride toward them from the shelter of the timber.

Before Patches could speak, Phil's gun covered him, and the foreman's voice rang out sharply.

"Hands up!"

Joe's hands shot above his head. Patches hesitated.

"Quick!" said Phil.

And as Patches saw the man's eyes over the black barrel of the weapon he obeyed. But as he raised his hands, a dull flush of anger colored his tanned face a deeper red, and his eyes grew dark with passion. He realized his situation instantly. The mystery that surrounded his first appearance when he had sought employment at the Cross-Triangle; the persistent suspicion of many of the cowboys because of his friendship for Yavapai Joe; his meeting with Joe which the professor had reported; his refusal to explain to Phil; his return to the ranch when everyone was away and he himself was supposed to be in Prescott—all these and many other incidents had come to their legitimate climax in his presence on that spot with Yavapai Joe, the smouldering fire and the freshly branded calf. He was unarmed, but Phil could not be sure of that, for many a cowboy carries his gun inside the leg of his leather chaps, where it does not so easily catch in the brush.

But while Patches saw it all so clearly, he was enraged that this man with whom he had lived so intimately should believe him capable of such a crime, and treat him without question as a common cattle thief. Phil's coldness toward him, which had grown so gradually during the past three months, in this peremptory humiliation reached a point beyond which Patches' patient and considerate endurance could not go. The man's sense of justice was outraged; his fine feeling of honor was insulted. Trapped and helpless as he was under that menacing gun, he was possessed by a determination to defend himself against the accusation, and to teach Phil Acton that there was a limit to the insult he would endure, even in the name of friendship. To this end his only hope was to trap his foreman with words, as he had caught Yavapai Joe. At a game of words Honorable Patches was no unskilled novice. Controlling his anger, he said coolly, with biting sarcasm, while he looked at the cowboy with a mocking sneer, "You don't propose to take any chances, do you—holding up an unarmed man?"

Patches saw by the flush that swept over Phil's cheeks how his words bit.

"It doesn't pay to take chances with your kind," retorted the foreman hotly.

"No," mocked Patches, "but it will pay big, I suppose, for the great 'Wild Horse Phil' to be branded as a sneak and a coward who is afraid to face an unarmed man unless he can get the drop on him?"

Phil was goaded to madness by the cool, mocking words. With a reckless laugh, he slipped his weapon into the holster and sprang to the ground. At the same moment Patches and Joe lowered their hands, and Joe, unnoticed by either of the angry men, took a few stealthy steps toward his horse.

Phil, deliberately folding his arms, stood looking at Patches.

"I'll just call that bluff, you sneakin' calf stealer," he said coolly. "Now, unlimber that gun of yours, and get busy."

Angry as he was, Patches felt a thrill of admiration for the man, and beneath his determination to force Phil Acton to treat him with respect, he was proud of his friend who had answered his sneering insinuation with such fearlessness. But he could not now hesitate in his plan of provoking Phil into disarming himself.

"You're something of a four-flusher yourself, aren't you?" he mocked. "You know I have no gun. Your brave pose is very effective. I would congratulate you, only, you see, it doesn't impress me in the least."

With an oath Phil snatched his gun from the holster, and threw it aside.

"Have it any way you like," he retorted, and started toward Patches.

Then a curious thing happened to Honorable Patches. Angry as he was, he became suddenly dominated by something that was more potent than his rage.

"Stop!" he cried sharply, and with such ringing force that Phil involuntarily obeyed. "I can't fight you this way, Phil," he said; and the other, wondering, saw that whimsical, self-mocking smile on his lips. "You know as well as I do that you are no match for me barehanded. You couldn't even touch me; you have seen Curly and the others try it often enough. You are as helpless in my power, now, as I was in yours a moment ago. I am armed now and you are not. I can't fight you this way, Phil."

In spite of himself Phil Acton was impressed by the truth and fairness of Patches' words. He recognized that an unequal contest could satisfy neither of them, and that it made no difference which of the contestants had the advantage.

"Well," he said sarcastically, "what are you going to do about it?"

"First," returned Patches calmly, "I am going to tell you how I happened to be here with Yavapai Joe."

"I don't need any explanations from you. It's some more of your personal business, I suppose," retorted Phil.

Patches controlled himself. "You are going to hear the explanation, just the same," he returned. "You can believe it or not, just as you please."

"And what then?" demanded Phil.

"Then I'm going to get a gun, and we'll settle the rest of it, man to man, on equal terms, just as soon as you like," answered Patches deliberately.

Phil replied shortly. "Go ahead with your palaver. I'll have to hand it to you when it comes to talk. I am not educated that way myself."

For a moment Patches hesitated, as though on the point of changing his mind about the explanation. Then his sense of justice—justice both for Phil and himself—conquered.

But in telling Phil how he had come upon the scene too late for positive proof that the freshly branded calf was the Dean's property, and in explaining how, when the foreman arrived, he had just persuaded Joe to go with him and give the necessary evidence against Nick, Patches forgot the possible effect of his words upon Joe himself. The two Cross-Triangle men were so absorbed in their own affair that they had paid no attention to the Tailholt Mountain outcast. And Joe, taking advantage of the opportunity, had by this time gained a position beside his horse. As he heard Patches tell how he had no actual evidence that the calf was not Nick Cambert's property, a look of anger and cunning darkened the face of Nick's follower. He was angry at the way Patches had tricked him into betraying both himself and his evil master, and he saw a way to defeat the two cowboys and at the same time win Nick's approval. Quickly the fellow mounted his horse, and, before they could stop him, was out of sight in the timber.

"I've done it now," exclaimed Patches in dismay. "I forgot all about Joe."

"I don't think he counts for much in this game anyway," returned Phil, gruffly.

As he spoke, the foreman turned his back to Patches and walked toward his gun. He had reached the spot where the weapon lay on the ground, when, from the bushes to the right, and a little back of Patches, who stood watching his companion, a shot rang out with startling suddenness.

Patches saw Phil stumble forward, straighten for an instant, as though by sheer power of his will, and, turning, look back at him. Then, as Phil fell, the unarmed cowboy leaped forward toward that gun on the ground. Even as he moved, a second shot rang out and he felt the wind of the bullet on his cheek. With Phil's gun in his hand, he ran toward a cedar tree on the side of the open space opposite the point from which the shots came, and as he ran another bullet whistled past.

A man moving as Patches moved is not an easy mark. The same man armed, and protected by the trunk of a tree, is still more difficult. A moment after he had gained cover, the cowboy heard the clatter of a horse's feet, near the spot from which the shots had come, and by the sound knew that the unseen marksman had chosen to retire with only half his evident purpose accomplished, rather than take the risk that had arisen with Patches' success in turning the ambush into an open fight.

As the sound of the horse's swift rush down the side of the ridge grew fainter and fainter, Patches ran to Phil.

A quick examination told him that the bullet had entered just under the right shoulder, and that the man, though unconscious and, no doubt, seriously wounded, was living.

With rude bandages made by tearing his shirt into strips Patches checked the flow of blood, and bound up the wound as best he could. Then for a moment he considered. It was between three and four miles to the ranch. He could ride there and back in a few minutes. Someone must start for a doctor without an instant's loss of time. With water, proper bandages and stimulants, the wounded man could be cared for and moved in the buckboard with much greater safety than he could be carried in his present condition on a horse. The risk of leaving him for a few minutes was small, compared to the risk of taking him to the house under the only conditions possible. The next instant Patches was in Phil's saddle and riding as he had never ridden before.