"To be truthful, I was going to Simmons if I met anyone else, or if I had not met you," he answered. Then, at her puzzled look, he explained, "I saw someone leave your house, and guessed that it was you. I guessed, too, that you would be coming this way."

"And you actually rode out to meet me?"

"Actually," he smiled.

They chatted about the rodeo, and the news of the countryside--for it had been several weeks since they had met--and so reached the point of the last ridge before you come to the ranch. Then Patches asked, "May we ride over there on the ridge, and sit for a while in the shade of that old cedar, for a little talk? It's early yet, and it's been ages since we had a pow-wow."

Reaching the point which Patches had chosen, they left their horses and made themselves comfortable on the brow of the hill, overlooking the wide valley meadow and the ranches.

"And now," said Kitty, looking at him curiously, "what's the talk, Mr.

Honorable Patches?"

"Just you," said Patches, gravely.

"Me?"

"Your own charming self," he returned.

"But, please, good sir, what have I done?" she asked. "Or, perhaps, it's what have I not done?"

"Or perhaps," he retorted, "it's what you are going to do."

"Oh!"

"Miss Reid, I am going to ask you a favor--a great favor."

"Yes?"

"You have known me now almost a year."

"Yes."

"And, yet, to be exact, you do not know me at all."

She did not answer, but looked at him steadily.

"And that, in a way," he continued, "makes it easy for me to ask the favor; that is, if you feel that you can trust me ever so little--trust me, I mean, to the extent of believing me sincere."

"I know that you are sincere, Patches," she answered, gravely.

"Thank you," he returned. Then he said gently, "I want you to let me talk to you about what is most emphatically none of my business. I want you to let me ask you impertinent questions. I want you to talk to me about"--he hesitated; then finished with meaning--"about your career."

She felt his earnestness, and was big enough to understand, and be grateful for the spirit that prompted his words.

"Why, Patches," she cried, "after all that your friendship has meant to me, these past months, I could not think any question that you would ask impertinent Surely you know that, don't you?"

"I hoped that you would feel that way. And I know that I would give five years of my life if I knew how to convince you of the truth which I have learned from my own bitter experience, and save you from--from yourself."

She could not mistake his earnestness and in spite of herself the man's intense feeling moved her deeply.

"Save me from myself?" she questioned. "What in the world do you mean, Patches?"

"Is it true," he asked, "that your father is offering the ranch for sale, and that you are going out of the Williamson Valley life?"

"Yes, but it is not such a sudden move as it seems. We have often talked about it at home--father and mother and I."

"But the move is to be made chiefly on your account, is it not?"

She flushed a little at this, but answered stoutly. "Yes. I suppose that is true. You see, being the only one in our family to have the advantages of--well--the advantages that I have had, it was natural that I should--Surely you have seen, Patches, how discontented and dissatisfied I have been with the life here! Why, until you came there was no one to whom I could talk, even--no one, I mean, who could understand."

"But what is it that you want, or expect to find, that you may not have right here?"

Then she told him all that he had expected to hear. Told him earnestly, pa.s.sionately, of the life she craved, and of the sordid, commonplace narrowness and emptiness--as she saw it--of the life from which she sought to escape. And as she talked the man's good heart was heavy with sadness and pity for her.

"Oh, girl, girl," he cried, when she had finished. "Can't you--won't you--understand? All that you seek is right here--everywhere about you--waiting for you to make it your own, and with it you may have here those greater things without which no life can be abundant and joyous.

The culture and the intellectual life that is dependent upon mere environment is a crippled culture and a sickly life. The mind that cannot find its food for thought wherever it may be planed will never hobble very far on crutches of superficial cults and societies. You are leaving the substance, child, for the shadow. You are seeking the fads and fancies of shallow idlers, and turning your back upon eternal facts.

You are following after silly fools who are chasing bubbles over the edge of G.o.d's good world. Believe me, girl, I know--G.o.d! but I do know what that life, stripped of its tinseled and spangled show, means. Take the good grain, child, and let the husks go."

As the man spoke, Kitty watched him as though she were intently interested; but, in truth, her thoughts were more on the speaker than on what he said.

"You are in earnest, aren't you, Patches?" she murmured softly.

"I am," he returned sharply, for he saw that she was not even considering what he had said. "I know how mistaken you are; I know what it will mean to you when you find how much you have lost and how little you have gained."

"And how am I mistaken? Do I not know what I want? Am I not better able than anyone else to say what satisfies me and what does not?"

"No," he retorted, almost harshly, "you are not. You _think_ it is the culture, as you call it, that you want; but if that were really it, you would not go. You would find it here. The greatest minds that the world has ever known you may have right here in your home, on your library table. And you may listen to their thoughts without being disturbed by the magpie chatterings of vain and shallow pretenders. You are attracted by the pretentious forms and manners of that life; you think that because a certain cla.s.s of people, who have nothing else to do, talk a certain jargon, and profess to follow certain teachers--who, nine times out of ten, are charlatans or fools--that they are the intellectual and spiritual leaders of the race. You are mistaking the very things that prevent intellectual and spiritual development for the things you think you want."

She did not answer his thought, but replied to his words. "And supposing I am mistaken, as you say. Still, I do not see why it should matter so to you."

He made a gesture of hopelessness and sat for a moment in silence. Then he said slowly, "I fear you will not understand, but did you ever hear the story of how 'Wild Horse Phil' earned his t.i.tle?"

She laughed. "Why, of course. Everybody knows about that. Dear, foolish old Phil--I shall miss him dreadfully." "Yes," he said significantly, "you will miss him. The life you are going to does not produce Phil Actons."

"It produced an Honorable Patches," she retorted slyly.

"Indeed it did _not_," he answered quickly. "It produced--" He checked himself, as though fearing that he would say too much.

"But what have Phil and his wild horse to do with the question?" she asked.

"Nothing, I fear. Only I feel about your going away as Phil felt when he gave the wild horse its freedom."

"I don't think I understand," she said, genuinely puzzled.

"I said you would not," he retorted bluntly, "and that's why you are leaving all this." His gesture indicated the vast sweep of country with old Granite Mountain in the distance.

Then, with a nod and a look he indicated Professor Parkhill, who was walking toward them along the side of the ridge skirting the scattered cedar timber. "Here comes a product of the sort of culture to which you aspire. Behold the ideal manhood of your higher life! When the intellectual and spiritual life you so desire succeeds in producing racial fruit of that superior quality, it will have justified its existence--and will perish from the earth."