Patches, who had been sent on an errand of some kind to Fair Oaks, was returning home early in the afternoon, and had reached the neighborhood of that spring where he had first encountered Nick Cambert, when he heard a calf bawling lustily somewhere in the cedar timber not far away.  Familiar as he now was with the voices of the range, the cowboy knew that the calf was in trouble.  The call was one of fright and pain.

Turning aside from his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound.  Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding.  Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse.  Then he went on, carefully and silently, on foot.  Soon he heard voices.  Again the calf bawled in fright and pain, and the familiar odor of burning hair was carried to him on the breeze.  Someone was branding a calf.

It might be all right—­it might not.  Patches was unarmed, but, with characteristic disregard of consequences, he crept softly forward, toward a dense growth of trees and brush, from beyond which the noise and the smoke seemed to come.

He had barely gained the cover when he heard someone on the other side ride rapidly away down the ridge.  Hastily parting the bushes, he looked through to catch a glimpse of the horseman, but he was a moment too late; the rider had disappeared from sight in the timber.  But, in a little open space among the cedars, the cowboy saw Yavapai Joe, standing beside a calf, fresh-branded with the Four-Bar-M iron, and earmarked with the Tailholt marks.

Patches knew instantly, as well as though he had witnessed the actual branding, what, had happened.  That part of the range was seldom visited except by the Dean’s cowboys, and the Tailholt Mountain men, knowing that the Cross-Triangle riders were all at Granite Basin, were making good use of their opportunities.  The man who had ridden away so hurriedly, a moment too soon for Patches to see him, was, without doubt, driving the mother of the calf to a distance that would effectually separate her from her offspring.

But while he was so sure in his own mind, the Cross-Triangle man—­as it had so often happened before—­had arrived on the scene too late.  He had no positive evidence that the animal just branded was not the lawful property of Nick Cambert.

As Patches stepped from the bushes, Yavapai Joe faced him for a moment in guilty astonishment and fear; then he ran toward his horse.

“Wait a minute, Joe!” called Patches.  “What good will it do for you to run now?  I’m not going to harm you.”

Joe stopped, and stood hesitating in indecision, watching the intruder with that sneaking, sidewise look.

“Come on, Joe; let’s have a little talk about this business,” the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire.  “You know you can’t get away, so you might as well.”