When a man's a man

by Harold Bell Wright

"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.