“If you do not object, I would really like to go,” said Patches simply.

“But your horse is as tired as you ought to be,” protested Phil.

“I’m riding Stranger, you know,” the other answered.

To which Phil replied tersely, “Let’s be riding, then.”

The cowboys, who had been watching the two men, looked at each other in amazement as Phil and Patches rode away together.

“Well, what do you make of that?” exclaimed one.

“Looks like Honorable Patches was next,” commented another.

“Us old-timers ain’t in it when it comes to associatin’ with the boss,” offered a third.

“You shut up on that line,” came sharply from Curly.  “Phil ain’t turnin’ us down for nobody.  I reckon if Patches is fool enough to want to ride to the Cross-Triangle to-night Phil ain’t got no reason for stoppin’ him.  If any of you punchers wants to make the ride, the way’s open, ain’t it?”

“Now, don’t you go on the prod, too,” soothed the other.  “We wasn’t meanin’ nothin’ agin Phil.”

“Well, what’s the matter with Patches?” demanded the Cross-Triangle man, whose heart was sorely troubled by the mystery of his foreman’s mood.

“Ain’t nobody said as there was anything the matter.  Fact is, don’t nobody know that there is.”

And for some reason Curly had no answer.

“Don’t it jest naturally beat thunder the way he’s cottoned up to that yellow dog of a Yavapai Joe?” mused another, encouraged by Curly’s silence.  “Three or four of the boys told how they’d seen ’em together off an’ on, but I didn’t think nothin’ of it until I seen ’em myself when we was workin’ over at Tailholt.  It was one evenin’ after supper.  I went down to the corral to fix up that Pedro horse’s back, when I heard voices kind o’ low like.  I stopped a minute, an’ then sort o’ eased along in the dark, an’ run right onto ’em where they was a-settin’ in the door o’ the saddle room, cozy as you please.  Yavapai sneaked away while I was gettin’ the lantern an’ lightin’ it, but Patches, he jest stayed an’ held the light for me while I fixed ol’ Pedro, jest as if nothin’ had happened.”

“Well,” said Curly sarcastically, “what had happened?”

“I don’t know-nothin’—­mebby.”

“If Patches was what some o’ you boys seem to think, do you reckon he’d be a-ridin’ for the Cross-Triangle?” demanded Curly.

“He might, an’ he mightn’t,” retorted two or three at once.

“Nobody can’t say nothin’ in a case like that until the show-down,” added one.  “I don’t reckon the Dean knows any more than the rest of us.”

“Unless Patches is what some of the other boys are guessin’,” said another.

“Which means,” finished Curly, in a tone of disgust, “that we’ve got to millin’ ’round the same old ring again.  Come on, Bob; let’s see what they’ve got for supper.  That engine’ll happen along directly, an’ we’ll be startin’ hungry.”