“Why, she could call up the studio and get the dope from Mills, my director,” Gary explained uncomfortably. “But would she? Seems like as if _I_ was a girl and had any spunk, I wouldn’t want to let on that the feller I was engaged to had gone off somewheres without letting me know about it.” “That’s one way to look at it,” Gary admitted. “But Pat’s nobody’s fool. She could find out all right, without letting on.” “Well, it’s none of my put-in--but I don’t reckon yuh-all are pleasing Pat Connolly much by sticking over here.” Gary got up and stretched his arms above his head. “She wanted me to sit in my cabin and listen to a saddle horse champing hay,” he contended lightly. “I think I’ll go down and give Jazz a feed of barley to champ.” Monty understood quite well that Gary meant to end the discussion right there. He said no more about it, therefore. But he promised himself--and mentally he promised Patricia as well--that he would manage somehow to bring about a complete understanding between these two obstinate young people. They slept shoulder to shoulder that night in Monty’s bunk, and the next morning they saddled early and each rode his way, feeling the better for the meeting. CHAPTER TWENTY “THAT CAT AIN’T HUMAN!” Monty rode rather anxiously into Johnnywater Cañon, determined to take whatever means he found necessary to persuade Gary to return to Los Angeles and “make it up with his girl.” With three weeks’ wages in his pocket Monty felt sufficiently affluent to buy the pigs and chickens if Gary used them for a point in his argument against going. Monty had spent a lot of time during those three weeks in mulling over in his mind the peculiar chain of circumstances that had dragged Gary to Johnnywater. What bond it was that held him there, Monty would have given much to know. He was sure that Gary disliked the place, and that he hated to stay there alone. It seemed unreasonable that any normal young man would punish himself like that from sheer stubbornness; yet Gary would have had Monty believe that he was staying to spite Patricia. Monty did not believe it. Gary had shown himself to be too intelligent, too level-headed and safely humorous in his viewpoints to harbor that peculiar form of egotism. Monty was shrewd enough to recognize the fact that “cutting off the nose to spite the face” is a sport indulged in only by weak natures who own an exaggerated ego. Wherefore, Gary failed to convince him that he was of that type of individual.