The Dean and Mrs. Baldwin, with their friends from the neighboring ranch, were enjoying their Sunday afternoon together as old friends will, when the three Reid boys and Little Billy came running from the corral where they had been holding an amateur bronco riding contest with a calf for the wild and wicked outlaw. As they ran toward the group under the walnut trees, the lads disturbed the peaceful conversation of their elders with wild shouts of "Patches has come back! Patches has come back! Nick Cambert is with him--so's Yavapai Joe!" Jim Reid sprang to his feet. But the Dean calmly kept his seat, and glancing up at his big friend with twinkling eyes, said to the boys, with pretended gruffness, "Aw, what's the matter with you kids? Don't you know that horse thief Patches wouldn't dare show himself in Williamson Valley again? You're havin' bad dreams--that's what's the matter with you. Or else you're tryin' to scare us." "Honest, it's Patches, Uncle Will," cried Littly Billy. "We seen him comin' from over beyond the corral," said Jimmy. "I saw him first," shouted Conny. "I was up in the grand stand--I mean on the fence." "Me, too," chirped Jack. Jim Reid stood looking toward the corral. "The boys are right, Will," he said in a low tone. "There they come now." As the three horsemen rode into the yard, and the watchers noted the peculiarity of their companionship, Jim Reid muttered something under his breath. But the Dean, as he rose leisurely to his feet, was smiling broadly. The little procession halted when the horses evidenced their dislike of the automobile, and Patches came stiffly forward on foot. Lifting his battered hat courteously to the company, he said to the Dean, "I have returned your horse, sir. I'm very much obliged to you. I think you will find him in fairly good condition." Jim Reid repeated whatever it was that he had muttered to himself. The Dean chuckled. "Jim," he said to the big cattleman, "I want to introduce my friend, Mr. Lawrence Knight, one of Sheriff Gordon's deputies. It looks like he had been busy over in the Tailholt Mountain neighborhood." The two men shook hands silently. Mrs. Reid greeted the officer cordially, while Mrs. Baldwin, to the Dean's great delight, demonstrated her welcome in the good old-fashioned mother way. "Will Baldwin, I could shake you," she cried, as Patches stood, a little confused by her impulsive greeting. "Here you knew all the time; and you kept pesterin' me by trying to make me believe that you thought he had run away because he was a thief!" It was, perhaps, the proudest moment of the Dean's life when he admitted that Patches had confided in him that morning when they were so late to breakfast. And how he had understood that the man's disappearance and the pretense of stealing a horse had been only a blind. The good Dean never dreamed that there was so much more in Honorable Patches' strategy than he knew!