"And what do you propose to do when your game of Patches is played out?" Stanford asked curiously.
For an instant they saw him smiling mockingly at himself; then he answered lightly, "Try some other fool experiment, I reckon."
Stanford chuckled; the reply was so like the cowboy Patches, and so unlike his old friend Larry Knight.
"As for that, Stan," Patches continued, "I don't see that the game will ever be played out, as you say. Certainly I can never now go back altogether to what I was. The fellow you used to know in Cleveland is not really I, you see. Fact is, I think that fellow is quite dead—peace be to his ashes! The world is wide and there is always work for a man to do."
The appearance of Phil Acton on the ridge, at the spot where the steer, followed by Patches, had first appeared, put an end to their further conversation with Lawrence Knight.
"My boss!" said that gentleman, in his character of Patches the cowboy, as the Cross-Triangle foreman halted his horse on the brow of the hill, and sat looking down upon the camp.
"Be careful, please, and don't let him suspect that you ever saw me before. I'll sure catch it now for loafing so long."
"I know him," said Stanford. Then he called to the man above, "Come on down, Acton, and be sociable."
Phil rode into camp, shook hands with Stanford cordially, and was presented to Mrs. Manning, to whom he spoke with a touch of embarrassment. Then he said, with a significant look at Patches, "I'm glad to meet you people, Mr. Manning, but we really haven't much time for sociability just now. Mr. Baldwin sent me with an outfit into this Granite Basin country to gather some of these outlaw steers. He expects us to be on the job." Turning to Patches, he continued, "When you didn't come back I thought you must have met with some serious trouble, and so trailed you. We've managed to lose a good deal of time, altogether. That steer you were after got away from you, did he?"
Helen spoke quickly. "Oh, Mr. Acton, you must not blame Mr. Patches for what happened. Really, you must not. No one was to blame; it just happened—" She stopped, unable to finish the explanation, for she was thinking of that part of the incident which was known only to herself and Patches.