When Patches directed Phil's attention to the riders, the cowboy said shortly, "I've been watching them for the last ten minutes." Then, as if regretting the manner of his reply, he added more kindly, "If they keep on the way they're going, we'll likely meet them about a mile down the wash where the ridge breaks." "Do you know them?" asked Patches curiously. "It's Nick Cambert and that poor, lost dog of a Yavapai Joe," Phil answered. "The Tailholt Mountain outfit," murmured Patches, watching the riders on the ridge with quickened interest. "Do you know, Phil, I believe I have seen those fellows before." "You have!" exclaimed Phil. "Where? When?" "I don't know how to tell you where," Patches replied, "but it was the day I rode the drift fence. They were on a ridge, across a little valley from me." "That must have been this same Horse Wash that we're following now," replied Phil; "it widens out a bit below here. What makes you think it was Nick and Joe?" "Why, those fellows up there look like the two that I saw, one big one and one rather lightweight. They were the same distance from me, you know, and--yes--I am sure those are the same horses." "Pretty good, Patches, but you ought to have reported it when you got home." "Why, I didn't think it of any importance." "There are two rules that you must follow, always," said the cowboy, "if you are going to learn to be a top hand in this business. The first is: to see everything that there is to see, and to see everything about everything that you see. And the second is: to remember it all. I don't mind telling you, now, that Jim Reid found a calf, fresh-branded with the Tailholt iron, that same afternoon, in that same neighborhood; and that, on our side of the drift fence, he ran onto a Cross-Triangle cow that had lost her calf. There come our friends now." The two horsemen were riding down the side of the hill at an angle that would bring about the meeting which Phil had foreseen. And Patches immediately broke the first of the two rules, for, while watching the riders, he did not notice that his companion loosened his gun in its holster. Nick Cambert was a large man, big-bodied and heavy, with sandy hair, and those peculiar light blue eyes which do not beget confidence. But, as the Tailholt Mountain men halted to greet Phil, Patches gave to Nick little more than a passing glance, so interested was he in the big man's companion.