When a man's a man

by Harold Bell Wright

Phil Acton was not ignorant of the different opinions that were held by the cattlemen regarding Honorable Patches. Nor, as the responsible foreman of the Cross-Triangle, could he remain indifferent to them. During those first months of Patches' life on the ranch, when the cowboy's heart had so often been moved to pity for the stranger who had come to them apparently from some painful crisis in his life, he had laughed at the suspicions of his old friends and associates. But as the months had passed, and Patches had so rapidly developed into a strong, self-reliant man, with a spirit of bold recklessness that was marked even among those hardy riders of the range, Phil forgot, in a measure, those characteristics that the stranger had shown at the beginning of their acquaintance. At the same time, the persistent suspicions of the cattlemen, together with Patches' curious, and, in a way, secret interest in Yavapai Joe, could not but have a decided influence upon the young man who was responsible for the Dean's property.

It was inevitable, under the circumstances, that Phil's attitude toward Patches should change, even as the character of Patches himself had changed. While the foreman's manner of friendship and kindly regard remained, so far, unaltered, and while Phil still, in his heart, believed in his friend, and—as he would have said—"would continue to back his judgment until the show-down," nevertheless that spirit of intimacy which had so marked those first days of their work together had gradually been lost to them. The cowboy no longer talked to his companion, as he had talked that day when they lay in the shade of the walnut tree at Toohey, and during the following days of their range riding. He no longer admitted his friend into his inner life, as he had done that day when he told Patches the story of the wild stallion. And Patches, feeling the change, and unable to understand the reason for it, waited patiently for the time when the cloud that had fallen between them should lift.

So they rode together that night, homeward bound, at the end of the long, hard weeks of the rodeo, in the deepening gloom of the day's passing, in the hushed stillness of the wild land, under the wide sky where the starry sentinel hosts were gathering for their ever-faithful watch. And as they rode, their stirrups often touching, each was alone with his own thoughts. Phil, still in the depth of his somber mood, brooded over his bitter trouble. Patches, sympathetically wondering, silently questioning, wished that he could help.

There are times when a man's very soul forces him to seek companionship. Alone in the night with this man for whom, even at that first moment of their meeting on the Divide, he had felt a strange sense of kinship, Phil found himself drifting far from the questions that had risen to mar the closeness of their intimacy. The work of the rodeo was over; his cowboy associates, with their suggestive talk, were far away. Under the influence of the long, dark miles of that night, and the silent presence of his companion, the young man, for the time being, was no longer the responsible foreman of the Cross-Triangle Ranch. In all that vast and silent world there was, for Phil Acton, only himself, his trouble, and his friend.

And so it came about that, little by little, the young man told Patches the story of his dream, and of how it was now shattered and broken.

Sometimes bitterly, as though he felt injustice; sometimes harshly, as though in contempt for some weakness of his own; with sentences broken by the pain he strove to subdue, with halting words and long silences, Phil told of his plans for rebuilding the home of his boyhood, and of restoring the business that, through the generosity of his father, had been lost; of how, since his childhood almost, he had worked and saved to that end; and of his love for Kitty, which had been the very light of his dream, and without which for him there was no purpose in dreaming. And the man who rode so close beside him listened with a fuller understanding and a deeper sympathy than Phil knew.

"And now," said Phil hopelessly, "it's all over. I've sure come to the end of my string. Reid has put the outfit on the market. He's going to sell out and quit. Uncle Will told me night before last when I went home to see about the shipping."

"Reid is going to sell!" exclaimed Patches; and there was a curious note of exultation in his voice which Phil did not hear. Neither did Phil see that his companion was smiling to himself under cover of the darkness.

"It's that damned Professor Parkhill that's brought it about," continued the cowboy bitterly. "Ever since Kitty came home from the East she has been discontented and dissatisfied with ranch life. I was all right when she went away, but when she came back she discovered that I was nothing but a cow-puncher. She has been fair, though. She has tried to get back where she was before she left and I thought I would win her again in time. I was so sure of it that it never troubled me. You have seen how it was. And you have seen how she was always wanting the life that she had learned to want while she was away—the life that you came from, Patches. I have been mighty glad for your friendship with her, too, because I thought she would learn from you that a man could have all that is worth having in that life, and still be happy and contented here. And she would have learned, I am sure. She couldn't help seeing it. But now that damned fool who knows no more of real manhood than I do of his profession has spoiled it all."

"But Phil, I don't understand. What has Parkhill to do with Reid's selling out?"