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.

“You’re something of a four-flusher yourself, aren’t you?” he mocked.  “You know I have no gun.  Your brave pose is very effective.  I would congratulate you, only, you see, it doesn’t impress me in the least.”

With an oath Phil snatched his gun from the holster, and threw it aside.

“Have it any way you like,” he retorted, and started toward Patches.

Then a curious thing happened to Honorable Patches.  Angry as he was, he became suddenly dominated by something that was more potent than his rage.

“Stop!” he cried sharply, and with such ringing force that Phil involuntarily obeyed.  “I can’t fight you this way, Phil,” he said; and the other, wondering, saw that whimsical, self-mocking smile on his lips.  “You know as well as I do that you are no match for me barehanded.  You couldn’t even touch me; you have seen Curly and the others try it often enough.  You are as helpless in my power, now, as I was in yours a moment ago.  I am armed now and you are not.  I can’t fight you this way, Phil.”