When a man's a man

by Harold Bell Wright

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.