It is doubtful if blood, training, environment, circumstances, the fates, or whatever it is that gives to men individuality, ever marked a man with less manhood than was given to poor Yavapai Joe. Standing erect, he would have been, perhaps, a little above medium height, but thin and stooped, with a half-starved look, as he slouched listlessly in the saddle, it was almost impossible to think of him as a matured man. The receding chin, and coarse, loosely opened mouth, the pale, lifeless eyes set too closely together under a low forehead, with a ragged thatch of dead, mouse-colored hair, and a furtive, sneaking, lost-dog expression, proclaimed him the outcast that he was. The big man eyed Patches as he greeted the Cross-Triangle's foreman. "Howdy, Phil!" "Hello, Nick!" returned Phil coldly. "Howdy, Joe!" The younger man, who was gazing stupidly at Patches, returned the salutation with an unintelligible mumble, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. "You folks at the Cross-Triangle short of horses?" asked Nick, with an evident attempt at jocularity, alluding to the situation of the two men, who were riding one horse. "We got mixed up with a bull back yonder," Phil explained briefly. "They can sure put a horse out o' the game mighty quick sometimes," commented the other. "I've lost a few that way myself. It's about as far from here to my place as it is to Baldwin's, or I'd help you out. You're welcome, you know." "Much obliged," returned Phil, "but we'll make it home all right. I reckon we'd better be moving, though. So long!" "Adios!" Throughout this brief exchange of courtesies, Yavapai Joe had not moved, except to puff at his cigarette; nor had he ceased to regard Patches with a stupid curiosity. As Phil and Patches moved away, he still sat gazing after the stranger, until he was aroused by a sharp word from Nick, as the latter turned his horse toward Tailholt Mountain. Without changing his slouching position in the saddle, and with a final slinking, sidewise look toward Patches, the poor fellow obediently trailed after his master. Patches could not resist the impulse to turn for another look at the wretched shadow of manhood that so interested him. "Well, what do you think of that pair?" asked Phil, breaking in upon his companion's preoccupation. Patches shrugged his shoulders much as he had done that day of his first experience with the screwworms; then he said quietly, "Do you mind telling me about them, Phil?"