"And have you told him, Kitty?" Patches asked gently.

"Yes--I have told him," she replied.

Patches was silent for a moment. Then, "Poor Phil!" he said softly. "I understand now; I thought that was it. He is a man among thousands, Kitty."

"I know--I know," she returned, as though to dismiss the subject. "But it simply couldn't be."

Patches was looking at her intently, with an expression in his dark eyes that Kitty had never before seen. The man's mind was in a whirl of quick excitement. As they had talked and laughed together, the thought that had so startled him, when her manner of familiar comradeship had brought such a feeling of comfort to his troubled spirit, had not left him. From that first moment of their meeting a year before there had been that feeling between them, of companionship, a feeling which had grown as their acquaintance had developed into the intimate friendship that had allowed him to speak to her as he had spoken that day under the cedars on the ridge. What might that friendship not grow into! He thought of her desire for the life that he knew so well, and how he could, while granting every wish of her heart, yet protect her from the shams and falseness. And with these thoughts was that feeling of rebellion against the loneliness of his life.

Kitty's words regarding Phil removed the barrier, as it were, and the man's nature, which prompted him so often to act without pausing to consider, betrayed him into saying, "Would you be greatly shocked, Kitty, if I were to tell you that I am glad? That, while I am sorry for Phil, I am glad that you have said no to him?"

"You are glad?" she said wonderingly. "Why?"

"Because, now, _I_ am free to say what I could not have said had you not told me what you have. I want you, Kitty. I want to fill your life with beauty and happiness and contentment. I want you to go with me to see and know the natural wonders of the world, and the wonders that men have wrought. I want to surround you with the beauties of art and literature, with everything that your heart craves. I want you to know the people whose friendship would be a delight to you. Come with me, girl--be my wife, and together we will find--if not paradise, at least a full and useful and contented and happy life. Will you come, Kitty? Will you come with me?"

As she listened her eyes grew big with wonder and delight. It was as though some good genie had suddenly opened wide the way to an enchanted laud. Then the gladness went swiftly from her face, and she said doubtingly, "You are jesting with me, Patches."

As she spoke his cowboy name, the man laughed aloud. "I forgot that you do not even know me--I mean, that you do not know my name."

"Are you some fairy prince in disguise, Sir Patches?"

"Not a fairy, dear, and certainly not a prince; just a man, that's all.

But a man, dear girl, who can offer you a clean life, an honored name, and all of which I have spoken. But I must tell you--I always knew that I would tell you some day, but I did not dream that it would be to-day.

My name is Lawrence Knight. My home is in Cleveland, Ohio. Your father can easily satisfy himself as to my family and my own personal life and standing. It is enough for me to a.s.sure you now, dear, that I am abundantly able to give you all that I have promised."

At the mention of his name, Kitty's eyes grew bright again. Thanks to her intimate friend and schoolmate, Helen Manning, she knew much more of Lawrence Knight than that gentleman supposed.

"But, tell me," she asked curiously, trembling with suppressed excitement, "why is Mr. Lawrence Knight masquerading here as the cowboy Honorable Patches?"

He answered earnestly. "I know it must seem strange to you, dear, but the simple truth is that I became ashamed of myself and my life of idle uselessness. I determined to see if I could take my place among men, simply as a man. I wanted to be accepted by men for myself, for my manhood, if you like, and not because of my--" he hesitated, then said frankly--"my money and social position. I wanted to depend upon myself--to live as other men live, by my own strength and courage and work. If I had given my real name, when I asked for work at the Cross-Triangle--someone would have found me out before very long, and my little experiment would have failed, don't you see?"

While he spoke, Kitty's excited mind had caught at many thoughts. She believed sincerely that her girlhood love for Phil was dead. This man, even as Patches the cowboy, with a questionable shadow on his life, had compelled her respect and confidence, while in his evident education and social culture he had won her deepest admiration. She felt that he was all that Phil was, and more. There was in her feeling toward him, as he offered himself to her now, no hint of that instinctive repulsion and abhorrence with which she had received Professor Parkhill's declaration of spiritual affinity. Her recent experience with the Master of Aesthetics had so outraged her womanly instincts that the inevitable reaction from her perplexed and troubled mind led her to feel more deeply, and to be drawn more strongly, toward this man with whom any woman might be proud to mate. At the same time, the attractions of the life which she knew he could give her, and for which she longed so pa.s.sionately, with the relief of the thought that her parents would not need to sacrifice themselves for her, were potent factors in the power of Lawrence Knight's appeal.

"It would be wonderful," she said musingly. "I have dreamed and dreamed about such things."

"You will come with me, dear? You will let me give you your heart's wish--you will go with me into the life for which you are so fitted?"

"Do you really want me, Patches?" she asked timidly, as though in her mind there was still a shadow of doubt.

"More than anything in the world," he urged. "Say yes. Kitty. Say that you will be my wife."

The answer came softly, with a hint of questioning, still.

"Yes."

Kitty did not notice that the man had not spoken of his love for her.

There were so many other things for her to consider, so many other things to distract her mind. Nor did the man notice that Kitty herself had failed to speak in any way that little word, which, rightly understood, holds in its fullest, deepest meaning, all of life's happiness--of labor and accomplishment--of success and triumph--of sacrifice and sorrow; holds, in its fullest, deepest meaning, indeed, all of life itself.

CHAPTER XV.

ON CEDAR RIDGE.

Kitty's friends were very glad to welcome her at their camp in Granite Basin. The incident which had so rudely broken the seclusion of their honeymoon had been too nearly a tragedy to be easily forgotten. The charm of the place was, in some degree, for them, lost, and Kitty's coming helped to dispel the cloud that had a little overshadowed those last days of their outing.

It was not at all difficult for them to persuade Kitty to remain longer than the one night that she had planned, and to accompany them to Prescott. Prom Prescott, Stanford must go to the mines, to take up his work, and to arrange for Helen's coming later, and Helen would go home with Kitty for the visit she had promised. The cowboys, who were returning to the Cross-Triangle Ranch, would take Kitty's horse to her home, and would carry a message explaining the young woman's absence, and asking that someone be sent to Prescott with the clothing she would need in town, and that the Reid automobile might be in Prescott in readiness to take the two young women back to the ranch on the appointed day.

Kitty could not bring herself to tell even Helen about her engagement to Lawrence Knight, or Patches, as she would continue to call him until the time came for the cowboy himself to make his true name and character known. It had all happened so suddenly; the promises of the future were so wonderful--so far beyond the young woman's fondest dreams--that she herself could scarcely realize the truth. There would be time enough to tell Helen when they were together at the ranch. And she was insistent, too, that Patches must not interview her father until she herself had returned home.

Phil and his cowboys with the cattle reached the Cross-Triangle corrals the evening before the day set for Kitty and Helen to arrive at the ranch on the other side of the valley meadows. The Cross-Triangle men were greeted by the news that Professor Parkhill had said good-by to Williamson Valley, and that the Pot-Hook-S Ranch had been sold. The eastern purchaser expected by Reid had arrived on the day that Kitty had gone to Granite Basin, and the deal had been closed without delay. But Reid was not to give possession of the property until after the fall rodeo.

As the men sat under the walnut trees with the Dean that evening, discussing the incidents of the Granite Basin work, and speculating about the new owner of the neighboring ranch, Phil sat with Little Billy apart from the circle, and contributed to the conversation only now and then a word or a brief answer to some question. When Mrs. Baldwin persuaded the child that it was bedtime, Phil slipped quietly away in the darkness, and they did not see him again until breakfast the next morning. When breakfast was over, the foreman gave a few directions to his men, and rode away alone.

The Dean, understanding the lad, whom he loved as one of his own sons, watched him go without a word or a question. To Mrs. Baldwin he said, "Just let him alone, Stella. The boy is all right. He's only gone off somewhere on the range to fight it out alone. Most likely he'll put in the day watching those wild horses over beyond Toohey. He generally goes to them when he's bothered about anything or in trouble of any sort."

Patches, who had been sent on an errand of some kind to Fair Oaks, was returning home early in the afternoon, and had reached the neighborhood of that spring where he had first encountered Nick Cambert, when he heard a calf bawling l.u.s.tily somewhere in the cedar timber not far away.

Familiar as he now was with the voices of the range, the cowboy knew that the calf was in trouble. The call was one of fright and pain.

Turning aside from his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding. Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse. Then he went on, carefully and silently, on foot. Soon he heard voices. Again the calf bawled in fright and pain, and the familiar odor of burning hair was carried to him on the breeze.

Someone was branding a calf.

It might be all right--it might not. Patches was unarmed, but, with characteristic disregard of consequences, he crept softly forward, toward a dense growth of trees and brush, from beyond which the noise and the smoke seemed to come.

He had barely gained the cover when he heard someone on the other side ride rapidly away down the ridge. Hastily parting the bushes, he looked through to catch a glimpse of the horseman, but he was a moment too late; the rider had disappeared from sight in the timber. But, in a little open s.p.a.ce among the cedars, the cowboy saw Yavapai Joe, standing beside a calf, fresh-branded with the Four-Bar-M iron, and earmarked with the Tailholt marks.

Patches knew instantly, as well as though he had witnessed the actual branding, what, had happened. That part of the range was seldom visited except by the Dean's cowboys, and the Tailholt Mountain men, knowing that the Cross-Triangle riders were all at Granite Basin, were making good use of their opportunities. The man who had ridden away so hurriedly, a moment too soon for Patches to see him, was, without doubt, driving the mother of the calf to a distance that would effectually separate her from her offspring.

But while he was so sure in his own mind, the Cross-Triangle man--as it had so often happened before--had arrived on the scene too late. He had no positive evidence that the animal just branded was not the lawful property of Nick Cambert.

As Patches stepped from the bushes, Yavapai Joe faced him for a moment in guilty astonishment and fear; then he ran toward his horse.

"Wait a minute, Joe!" called Patches. "What good will it do for you to run now? I'm not going to harm you."

Joe stopped, and stood hesitating in indecision, watching the intruder with that sneaking, sidewise look.

"Come on, Joe; let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire. "You know you can't get away, so you might as well."

"I ain't tellin' nothin' to n.o.body," said Joe sullenly, as he came slowly toward the Dean's cowboy.

"No?" said Patches.

"No, I ain't," a.s.serted the Tailholt Mountain man stoutly. "That there calf is a Four-Bar-M calf, all right."

"I see it is," returned the Cross-Triangle rider calmly. "But I'll just wait until Nick gets back, and ask him what it was before he worked over the iron."

Joe, excited and confused by the cool nerve of this man, fell readily into the verbal trap.