“Ugh!” ejaculated Patches, with a shrug of disgust, the work they had been doing still fresh in his mind.  “I couldn’t eat a bite.”

“You think that now,” retorted Phil, “but you just go down to the creek, drink all you can hold, wash up, and see how quick you’ll change your mind when you smell the coffee.”

And thus Patches received yet another lesson—­a lesson in the art of forgetting promptly the most disagreeable features of his work—­an art very necessary to those who aspire to master real work of any sort whatever.

When they had finished their simple meal, and lay stretched full length beneath the overhanging limbs of the age-old tree that had witnessed so many stirring scenes, and listened to so many camp-fire tales of ranch and range, they talked of things other than their work.  In low tones, as men who feel a mystic and not-to-be-explained bond of fellowship—­with half-closed eyes looking out into the untamed world that lay before them—­they spoke of life, of its mystery and meaning.  And Phil, usually so silent when any conversation touched himself, and so timid always in expressing his own self thoughts, was strangely moved to permit this man to look upon the carefully hidden and deeper things of his life.  But upon his cherished dream—­upon his great ambition—­he kept the door fast closed.  The time for that revelation of himself was not yet.

“By the way, Phil,” said Patches, when at last his companion signified that it was time for them to go.  “Where were you educated?  I don’t think that I have heard you say.”

“I have no education,” returned the young man, with a laugh that, to Patches, sounded a bitter note.  “I’m just a common cow-puncher, that’s all.”

“I beg your pardon,” returned the other, “but I thought from the books you mentioned—­”

“Oh, the books!  Why, you see, some four years ago a real, honest-to-goodness book man came out to this country for his health, and brought his disease along with him.”

“His disease?” questioned Patches.

Phil smiled.  “His books, I mean.  They killed him, and I fell heir to his trouble.  He was a good fellow, all right—­we all liked him—­might have been a man if he hadn’t been so much of a scholar.  I was curious, at first, just to see what it was that had got such a grip on him; and then I got interested myself.  About that time, too, there was a reason why I thought it might be a good thing for me; so I sent for more, and have made a fairly good job of it in the past three years.  I don’t think that there’s any danger, though, of the habit getting the grip on me that it had on him,” he reflected with a whimsical grin.  “It was our book friend who first called Uncle Will the Dean.”

“The title certainly fits him well,” remarked Patches.  “I don’t wonder that it stuck.  I suppose you received yours for your riding?”

“Mine?”

“‘Wild Horse Phil,’ I mean,” smiled the other.