The Dean himself was not at all above assisting his new man in those experiments, and so it happened that day when Patches had been set to repairing the meadow pasture fence near the lower corrals.

The Dean, riding out that way to see how his pupil was progressing, noticed a particularly cross-tempered shorthorn bull that had wandered in from the near-by range to water at the house corral.  But Phil and his helpers were in possession of the premises near the watering trough, and his shorthorn majesty was therefore even more than usual out of patience with the whole world.  The corrals were between the bull and Patches, so that the animal had not noticed the man, and the Dean, chuckling to himself, and without attracting Patches’ attention, quietly drove the ill-tempered beast into the enclosure and shut the gate.

Then, riding around the corral, the Dean called to the young man.  When Patches stood beside his employer, the cattleman said, “Here’s a blamed old bull that don’t seem to be feelin’ very well.  I got him into the corral all right, but I’m so fat I can’t reach him from the saddle.  I wish you’d just halter him with this rope, so I can lead him up to the house and let Phil and the boys see what’s wrong with him.”

Patches took the rope and started toward the corral gate.  “Shall I put it around his neck and make a hitch over his nose, like you do a horse?” he asked, glad for the opportunity to exhibit his newly acquired knowledge of ropes and horses and things.

“No, just tie it around his horns,” the Dean answered.  “He’ll come, all right.”

The bull, seeing a man on foot at the entrance to his prison, rumbled a deep-voiced threat, and pawed the earth with angry strength.

For an instant, Patches, with his hand on the latch of the gate, paused to glance from the dangerous-looking animal, that awaited his coming, to the Dean who sat on his horse just outside the fence.  Then he slipped inside the corral and closed the gate behind him.  The bull gazed at him a moment as if amazed at the audacity of this mere human, then lowered his head for the charge.

“Climb that gate, quick,” yelled the Dean at the critical moment.

And Patches climbed—­not a second too soon.

From his position of safety he smiled cheerfully at the Dean.  “He came all right, didn’t he?”

The Dean’s full rounded front and thick shoulders shook with laughter, while Senor Bull dared the man on the gate to come down.

“You crazy fool,” said the Dean admiringly, when he could speak.  “Didn’t you know any better than to go in there on foot?”

“But you said you wanted him,” returned the chagrined Patches.

“What I wanted,” chuckled the Dean, “was to see if you had nerve enough to tackle him.”

“To tell the truth,” returned Patches, with a happy laugh, “that’s exactly what interested me.”