“Wasn’t that great?” cried Phil, when he had loped back to his companion.  “Did you see him go by the bunch like they were standing still?”

“There didn’t seem to be much show for you to catch him,” said Patches.

“Catch him!” exclaimed Phil.  “Did you think I was trying to catch him?  I just wanted to see him go.  The horse doesn’t live that could put a man within roping distance of any one in that bunch on a straightaway run, and the black can run circles around the whole outfit.  I had him once, though.”

“You caught that black!” exclaimed Patches—­incredulously.

Phil grinned.  “I sure had him for a little while.”

“But what is he doing out here running loose, then?” demanded the other.  “Got away, did he?”

“Got away, nothing.  Fact is, he belongs to me right now, in a way, and I wouldn’t swap him for any string of cow-horses that I ever saw.”

Then, as they rode toward the home ranch, Phil told the story that is known throughout all that country.

“It was when the black was a yearling,” he said.  “I’d had my eye on him all the year, and so had some of the other boys who had sighted the band, for you could see, even when he was a colt, what he was going to be.  The wild horses were getting rather too numerous that season, and we planned a chase to thin them out a little, as we do every two or three years.  Of course, everybody was after the black; and one day, along toward the end of the chase, when the different bands had been broken up and scattered pretty much, I ran onto him.  I was trailing an old gray up that draw—­the way we went to-day, you know, and all at once I met him as he was coming over the top of the hill, right where you and I rode onto him.  It was all so sudden that for a minute he was rattled as bad as I was; and, believe me, I was shaking like a leaf.  I managed to come to, first, though, and hung my rope on him before he could get started.  I don’t know to this day where the old gray that I was after went.  Well, sir; he fought like a devil, and for a spell we had it around and around until I wasn’t dead sure whether I had him or he had me.  But he was only a yearling then, you see, and I finally got him down.”

Phil paused, a peculiar expression on his face.  Patches waited silently.

“Do you know,” said the cowboy, at last, hesitatingly, “I can’t explain it—­and I don’t talk about it much, for it was the strangest thing that ever happened to me—­but when I looked into that black stallion’s eyes, and he looked me straight in the face, I never felt so sorry for anything in my life.  I was sort of ashamed like—­like—­well, like I’d been caught holding up a church, you know, or something like that.  We were all alone up there, just him and me, and while I was getting my wind, and we were sizing each other up, and I was feeling that way, I got to thinking what it all meant to him—­to be broken and educated—­and—­well—­civilized, you know; and I thought what a horse he would be if he was left alone to live as God made him, and so—­well—­” He paused again with an embarrassed laugh.