“Somethin’s happened sure,” muttered the other, busy with his saddle blanket.  “Sufferin’ cats! but I felt like he’d poured a bucket of ice water down my neck!” He drew the cinch tight with a vigorous jerk that brought a grunt of protest from his mount.  “That’s right,” he continued, addressing the horse, “hump yourself, an’ swell up and grunt, damn you; you ought to be thankin’ God that you ain’t nothin’ but a hoss, nohow, with no feelin’ ’cept what’s in your belly.”  He dropped the heavy stirrup with a vicious slap, and swung to his seat.  “If Phil’s a-goin’ to keep up the way he’s startin’, we’ll sure have a pleasant little ol’ ride to Skull Valley.  Oh, Lord! but I wisht I was a professor of them there exteticks, or somethin’ nice and gentle like, jest for to-day, anyhow.”

Patches laughed.  “Think you could qualify, Curly?”

The cowboy grinned as they rode off together.  “So far as I’ve noticed the main part of the work, I could.  The shade of them walnut trees at the home ranch, or the Pot-Hook-S front porch, an’ a nice easy rockin’ chair with fat cushions, or mebby the buckboard onct in a while, with Kitty to do the drivin’—­Say, this has sure been some little ol’ rodeo, ain’t it?  I ain’t got a hoss in my string that can more’n stand up, an’ honest to God, Patches, I’m jest corns all over.  How’s your saddle feel, this mornin’?”

“It’s got corns, too,” admitted Patches.  “But there’s Phil; we’d better be riding.”

All that day Phil kept to himself, speaking to his companions only when speech could not be avoided, and then with the fewest possible words.  That night, he left the company as soon as he had finished his supper, and went off somewhere alone, and Patches heard him finding his bed, long after the other members of the outfit were sound asleep.  And the following day, through the trying work of loading the cattle, the young foreman was so little like himself that, had it not been that his men were nearly all old-time, boyhood friends who had known him all his life, there would surely have been a mutiny.

It was late in the afternoon, when the last reluctant steer was prodded and pushed up the timbered runway from the pens, and crowded into the car.  Curly and Bob were going with the cattle train.  The others would remain at Skull Valley until morning, when they would start for their widely separated homes.  Phil announced that he was going to the home ranch that night.

“You can make it home sometime to-morrow, Patches,” he finished, when he had said good-by to the little group of men with whom he had lived and worked in closest intimacy through the long weeks of the rodeo.  He reined his horse about, even as he spoke, to set out on his long ride.

The Cross-Triangle foreman was beyond hearing of the cowboys when Patches overtook him.  “Do you mind if I go back to the Cross-Triangle with you to-night, Phil?” the cowboy asked quietly.

Phil checked his horse and looked at his friend a moment without answering.  Then, in a kindlier tone than he had used the past two days, he said, “You better stay here with the boys, and get your night’s rest, Patches.  You have had a long hard spell of it in this rodeo, and yesterday and to-day have not been exactly easy.  Shipping is always hell, even when everybody is in a good humor,” he smiled grimly.