"Don't it jest naturally beat thunder the way he's cottoned up to that yellow dog of a Yavapai Joe?" mused another, encouraged by Curly's silence. "Three or four of the boys told how they'd seen 'em together off an' on, but I didn't think nothin' of it until I seen 'em myself when we was workin' over at Tailholt. It was one evenin' after supper. I went down to the corral to fix up that Pedro horse's back, when I heard voices kind o' low like. I stopped a minute, an' then sort o' eased along in the dark, an' run right onto 'em where they was a-settin' in the door o' the saddle room, cozy as you please. Yavapai sneaked away while I was gettin' the lantern an' lightin' it, but Patches, he jest stayed an' held the light for me while I fixed ol' Pedro, jest as if nothin' had happened." "Well," said Curly sarcastically, "what _had_ happened?" "I don't know-nothin'--mebby." "If Patches was what some o' you boys seem to think, do you reckon he'd be a-ridin' for the Cross-Triangle?" demanded Curly. "He might, an' he mightn't," retorted two or three at once. "Nobody can't say nothin' in a case like that until the show-down," added one. "I don't reckon the Dean knows any more than the rest of us." "Unless Patches is what some of the other boys are guessin'," said another. "Which means," finished Curly, in a tone of disgust, "that we've got to millin' 'round the same old ring again. Come on, Bob; let's see what they've got for supper. That engine'll happen along directly, an' we'll be startin' hungry." Phil Acton was not ignorant of the different opinions that were held by the cattlemen regarding Honorable Patches. Nor, as the responsible foreman of the Cross-Triangle, could he remain indifferent to them. During those first months of Patches' life on the ranch, when the cowboy's heart had so often been moved to pity for the stranger who had come to them apparently from some painful crisis in his life, he had laughed at the suspicions of his old friends and associates. But as the months had passed, and Patches had so rapidly developed into a strong, self-reliant man, with a spirit of bold recklessness that was marked even among those hardy riders of the range, Phil forgot, in a measure, those characteristics that the stranger had shown at the beginning of their acquaintance. At the same time, the persistent suspicions of the cattlemen, together with Patches' curious, and, in a way, secret interest in Yavapai Joe, could not but have a decided influence upon the young man who was responsible for the Dean's property.