"Very well," answered Mr. Reid, who seemed in somewhat of a hurry. "I know you ought to stay. Tell Stella that mother will be over for a little while this evening." And the automobile moved away.
That night, while Mrs. Baldwin and Kitty watched by Phil's bedside, and Patches, in his room, waited, sleepless, alone with his thoughts, men from the ranch on the other side of the quiet meadow were riding swiftly through the darkness. Before the new day had driven the stars from the wide sky, a little company of silent, grim-faced horsemen gathered in the Pot-Hook-S corral. In the dim, gray light of the early morning they followed Jim Reid out of the corral, and, riding fast, crossed the valley above the meadows and approached the Cross-Triangle corrals from the west. One man in the company led a horse with an empty saddle. Just beyond the little rise of ground outside the big gate they halted, while Jim Reid with two others, leaving their horses with the silent riders behind the hill, went on into the corral, where they seated themselves on the edge of the long watering trough near the tank, which hid them from the house.
Fifteen minutes later, when the Dean stepped from the kitchen porch, he saw Curly running toward the house. As the older man hurried toward him, the cowboy, pale with excitement and anger, cried, "They've got him, sir—grabbed him when he went out to the corral."
The Dean understood instantly. "My horse, quick, Curly," he said, and hurried on toward the saddle shed. "Which way did they go?" he asked, as he mounted.
"Toward the cedars on the ridge where it happened," came the answer. "Do you want me?"
"No. Don't let them know in the house," came the reply. And the Dean was gone.
The little company of horsemen, with Patches in their midst, had reached the scene of the shooting, and had made their simple preparations. From that moment when they had covered him with their guns as he stepped through the corral gate, he had not spoken.
"Well, sir," said the spokesman, "have you anything to say before we proceed?"
Patches shook his head, and wonderingly they saw that curious mocking smile on his lips.