Gaining the clearing, he decided to try out the other horse with the black. He realized that the aged mare was unfit, even though in the last hour she had appeared greatly to improve, and he must accordingly match up a team. So he unhitched her and swung the mate into place. He met with disagreeable surprise, however. The black would not pull with this horse. Instead, he held himself quietly at rest, gazing about sleepily over the landscape, a trick of his, as Felipe had learned, when quietly rebelling. Felipe looked at him a moment, but did not try to force him with tongue or lash. For he was coming to understand this horse, and, concluding that sooner or later, under proper treatment, he would probably accept duty with any mate, determined to abandon work for the day. Whereupon he unhitched the horses and led them all back into the corral. Then he put up the bars and set out in the direction of the settlement. Which ended Pat's second great lesson at the hand of man. He was sore and somewhat stiff from the struggle, but he did not fret long over his condition, for he soon awoke to the presence of that beside him in the corral which caused him to forget himself completely. It was the worn-out structure of skin and bones who had befriended him in his hour of trial. He gazed at her a moment, then approached and fell to caressing her, showing in this attention his power to forget self--aches, sores, troubles--in his affection and gratitude toward all things warranting affection and gratitude. CHAPTER X THE STRANGER AGAIN Meantime, Helen was becoming desperate over her loss. Unwilling to accept the theory of her household, which was that Pat had been stolen by a band of organized thieves and ere this was well out of the neighborhood and probably the county, she had held firmly to her original idea, _viz._, that the horse was in the possession of his rightful owners, and so could not be far out of the community. Therefore, the morning following his disappearance, having with sober reflection lightened within her the seriousness of it all, she had set out in confident search for him, mounted on her brown saddler. But though she had combed the town and the trails around the town, quietly interviewing all such teamsters and horsemen as might by any chance know something about it, yet in answer to her persistent inquiries all she had received was a blank shake of the head or an earnest expression of willingness to assist her. So, because she had continued her search for three days without success, inquiring and peering into every nook and corner of the community, she finally had come to regard her quest as hopeless, and to become more than ever an image of despair.