Patches shook his head.  “I can’t say that I realized anything except that you were in a bad fix, and that it was up to me to do something quick.  How did it happen, anyway?” He seemed anxious to turn the conversation.

“Diamond stepped in that hole there,” explained Phil.  “When he turned over I sure thought it was all day for me.  Believe me, I won’t forget this, Patches.”

For another moment there was an embarrassed silence; then Patches said, “What puzzles me is, why you didn’t take a shot at him, after you were up, instead of risking your neck again trying to rope him.”

“Why, there was no use killing a good bull, as long as there was any other way.  It’s my business to keep him alive; that’s what I started in to do, wasn’t it?” And thus the cowboy, in a simple word or two, stated the creed of his profession, a creed that permits no consideration of personal danger or discomfort when the welfare of the employer’s property is at stake.

When they had removed saddle and bridle from the dead horse and had cleaned the ugly wound in the bull’s side, Phil said, “Now, Mr. Honorable Patches, you’d better move on down the wash a piece, and get out of sight behind one of those cedars.  This fellow is going to get busy again when I let him up.  I’ll come along when I’ve got rid of him.”

A little later, as Phil rode out of the cedars toward Patches, a deep, bellowing challenge came from up the wash.

“He’s just telling us what he’ll do to us the next chance he gets,” chuckled Phil.  “Hop up behind me now and we’ll go home.”

The gloom, that all day had seemed to overshadow Phil, was effectually banished by the excitement of the incident, and he was again his sunny, cheerful self.  As they rode, they chatted and laughed merrily.  Then, suddenly, as it had happened that morning, the cowboy was again grim and silent.

Patches was wondering what had so quickly changed his companion’s mood, when he caught sight of two horsemen, riding along the top of the ridge that forms the western side of the wash, their course paralleling that of the Cross-Triangle men, who were following the bed of the wash.

When Patches directed Phil’s attention to the riders, the cowboy said shortly, “I’ve been watching them for the last ten minutes.”  Then, as if regretting the manner of his reply, he added more kindly, “If they keep on the way they’re going, we’ll likely meet them about a mile down the wash where the ridge breaks.”

“Do you know them?” asked Patches curiously.

“It’s Nick Cambert and that poor, lost dog of a Yavapai Joe,” Phil answered.

“The Tailholt Mountain outfit,” murmured Patches, watching the riders on the ridge with quickened interest.  “Do you know, Phil, I believe I have seen those fellows before.”

“You have!” exclaimed Phil.  “Where?  When?”

“I don’t know how to tell you where,” Patches replied, “but it was the day I rode the drift fence.  They were on a ridge, across a little valley from me.”