Riding leisurely, and turning frequently aside for a nearer view of the cattle they sighted here and there, they reached Toohey a little before noon.  Here, in a rocky hollow of the hills, a small stream wells from under the granite walls, only to lose itself a few hundred yards away in the sands and gravel of the wash.  But, short as its run in the daylight is, the water never fails.  And many cattle come from the open range that lies on every side, to drink, and, in summer time, to spend the heat of the day, standing in the cool, wet sands or lying in the shade of the giant sycamores that line the bank opposite the bluff.  There are corrals near-by and a rude cook-shack under the wide-spreading branches of an old walnut tree; and the ground of the flat open space, a little back from the water, is beaten bare and hard by the thousands upon thousands of cattle that have at many a past rodeo-time been gathered there.

The two men found, as the Diamond-and-a-Half riders had said, several animals suffering from those pests of the Arizona ranges, the screwworms.  As Phil explained to Patches while they watered their horses, the screwworm is the larva of a blowfly bred in sores on living animals.  The unhealed wounds of the branding iron made the calves by far the most numerous among the sufferers, and were the afflicted animals not treated the loss during the season would amount to considerable.

“Look here, Patches,” said the cowboy, as his practiced eyes noted the number needing attention.  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.  We’ll just run this hospital bunch into the corral, and you can limber up that riata of yours.”

And so Patches learned not only the unpleasant work of cleaning the worm-infested sores with chloroform, but received his first lesson in the use of the cowboy’s indispensable tool, the riata.

“What next?” asked Patches, as the last calf escaped through the gate which he had just opened, and ran to find the waiting and anxious mother.

Phil looked at his companion, and laughed.  Honorable Patches showed the effect of his strenuous and bungling efforts to learn the rudiments of the apparently simple trick of roping a calf.  His face was streaked with sweat and dust, his hair disheveled, and his clothing soiled and stained.  But his eyes were bright, and his bearing eager and ready.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, grinning happily at his teacher.  “What fool thing have I done now?”

“You’re doing fine,” Phil returned.  “I was only thinking that you don’t look much like the man I met up on the Divide that evening.”

“I don’t feel much like him, either, as far as that goes,” returned Patches.

Phil glanced up at the sun.  “What do you say to dinner?  It must be about that time.”

“Dinner?”

“Sure.  I brought some jerky—­there on my saddle—­and some coffee.  There ought to be an old pot in the shack yonder.  Some of the boys don’t bother, but I never like to miss a feed unless it’s necessary.”  He did not explain that the dinner was really a thoughtful concession to his companion.