“Is he always like we saw him to-day?” asked Patches, who seemed strangely interested in this bit of human drift.  “Doesn’t he ever talk?”

“Oh, yes, he’ll talk all right, when Nick isn’t around, or when there are not too many present.  Get off somewhere alone with him, after he gets acquainted a little, and he’s not half such bad company as he looks.  I reckon that’s the main reason why Nick keeps him.  You see, no decent cow-puncher would dare work at Tailholt Mountain, and a man gets mighty lonesome living so much alone.  But Joe never talks about where he came from, or who he is; shuts up like a clam if you so much as mention anything that looks like you were trying to find out about him.  He’s not such a fool as he looks, either, so far as that goes, but he’s always got that sneaking, coyote sort of look, and whatever he does he does in that same way.”

“In other words,” commented Patches thoughtfully, “poor Joe must have someone to depend on; taken alone he counts no more than a cipher.”

“That’s it,” said Phil.  “With somebody to feed him, and think for him, and take care of him, and be responsible for him, in some sort of a way, he makes almost one.”

“After all, Phil,” said Patches, with bitter sarcasm, “poor Yavapai Joe is not so much different from hundreds of men that I know.  By their standards he should be envied.”

Phil was amazed at his companion’s words, for they seemed to hint at something in the man’s past, and Patches, so far as his reticence upon any subject that approached his own history, was always as silent as Yavapai Joe himself.

“What do you mean by that?” Phil demanded.  “What sort of men do you mean?”

“I mean the sort that never do anything of their own free wills; the sort that have someone else to think for them, and feed them, and take care of them and take all the responsibility for what they do or do not do.  I mean those who are dependents, and those who aspire to be dependent.  I can’t see that it makes any essential difference whether they have inherited wealth and what we call culture, or whether they are poverty-stricken semi-imbeciles like Joe; the principle is the same.”

As they dismounted at the home corral gate, Phil looked at his companion curiously.  “You seem mighty interested in Joe,” he said, with a smile.

“I am,” retorted Patches.  “He reminds me of—­of some one I know,” he finished, with his old, self-mocking smile.  “I have a fellow feeling for him, the same as you have for that wild horse, you know.  I’d like to take him away from Nick, and see if it would be possible to make a real man of him,” he mused, more to himself than to his companion.

“I don’t believe I’d try any experiments along that line, Patches,” cautioned Phil.  “You’ve got to have something to build on when you start to make a man.  The raw material is not in Joe, and, besides,” he added significantly, “folks might not understand.”