Sam brought his coffee and he drank it as he stood, while the men hurriedly departed for their horses. Patches, the last to go, paused a moment, as though to speak, but Phil prevented him with a gruff order. "Get a move on you, Patches. Those cars will be there long before we are." And Patches, seeing the man's face dark and drawn with pain, moved away without a word. "Great snakes," softly ejaculated Curly a few moments later, as Patches stooped to take his saddle from where it lay on the ground beside Curly's. "What do you reckon's eatin' the boss? Him an' the Dean couldn't 'a' mixed it last night, could they? Do you reckon the Dean crawled him about somethin'?" Patches shook his head with a "Search me, pardner," as he turned to his horse. "Somethin's happened sure," muttered the other, busy with his saddle blanket. "Sufferin' cats! but I felt like he'd poured a bucket of ice water down my neck!" He drew the cinch tight with a vigorous jerk that brought a grunt of protest from his mount. "That's right," he continued, addressing the horse, "hump yourself, an' swell up and grunt, damn you; you ought to be thankin' God that you ain't nothin' but a hoss, nohow, with no feelin' 'cept what's in your belly." He dropped the heavy stirrup with a vicious slap, and swung to his seat. "If Phil's a-goin' to keep up the way he's startin', we'll sure have a pleasant little ol' ride to Skull Valley. Oh, Lord! but I wisht I was a professor of them there exteticks, or somethin' nice and gentle like, jest for to-day, anyhow." Patches laughed. "Think you could qualify, Curly?" The cowboy grinned as they rode off together. "So far as I've noticed the main part of the work, I could. The shade of them walnut trees at the home ranch, or the Pot-Hook-S front porch, an' a nice easy rockin' chair with fat cushions, or mebby the buckboard onct in a while, with Kitty to do the drivin'--Say, this has sure been some little ol' rodeo, ain't it? I ain't got a hoss in my string that can more'n stand up, an' honest to God, Patches, I'm jest corns all over. How's your saddle feel, this mornin'?" "It's got corns, too," admitted Patches. "But there's Phil; we'd better be riding." All that day Phil kept to himself, speaking to his companions only when speech could not be avoided, and then with the fewest possible words. That night, he left the company as soon as he had finished his supper, and went off somewhere alone, and Patches heard him finding his bed, long after the other members of the outfit were sound asleep. And the following day, through the trying work of loading the cattle, the young foreman was so little like himself that, had it not been that his men were nearly all old-time, boyhood friends who had known him all his life, there would surely have been a mutiny.