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 hors.e.m.e.n 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!

"Mr. Baldwin," said Patches presently, "could you let me have the team and buckboard? I want to get my prisoners to Prescott to-night, and"--he laughed shortly--"well, I certainly would appreciate those cushions."

"Sure, son, you can have the whole Cross-Triangle outfit, if you want it," answered the Dean. "But hold on a minute." He turned with twinkling eyes to his neighbor. "Here's Jim with a perfectly good automobile that don't seem to be busy."

The big man responded cordially. "Why, of course; I'll be glad to take you in."

"Thank you," returned Patches. "I'll be ready in a minute."

"But you're goin' to have something to eat first," cried Mrs. Baldwin.

"I'll bet you're half starved; you sure look it."

Patches shook his head. "Don't tempt me, mother; I can't stop now."

"But you'll come back home to-night, won't you?" she asked anxiously.

"I would like to," he said. "And may I bring a friend?"

"Your friends are our friends, son," she answered.

"Of course he's comin' back," said the Dean. "Where else would he go, I'd like to know?"

They watched him as he went to his prisoner, and as, unlocking the handcuff that held Nick's right wrist, he re-locked it on his own left arm, thus linking his prisoner securely to himself. Then he spoke to Joe, and the young man, dismounting, unfastened the rope that bound Nick's feet. When Nick was on the ground the three came toward the machine.

"I am afraid I must ask you to let someone take care of the horses,"

called Patches to the Dean.

"I'll look after them," the Dean returned. "Don't forget now that you're comin' back to-night; Jim will bring you."

Jim Reid, as the three men reached the automobile, said to Patches, "Will you take both of your prisoners in the back seat with you, or shall I take one of them in front with me?"

Patches looked the big man straight in the eyes, and they heard him answer with significant emphasis, as he placed his free hand on Yavapai Joe's shoulder, "I have only one prisoner, Mr. Reid. This man is my friend. He will take whatever seat he prefers."

Yavapai Joe climbed into the rear seat with the officer and his prisoner.

It was after dark when Mr. Reid returned to the ranch with Patches and Joe.

"You will find your room all ready, son," said Mrs. Baldwin, "and there's plenty of hot water in the bathroom tank for you both. Joe can take the extra bed in Curly's room. You show him. I'll have your supper as soon as you are ready."

Patches almost fell asleep at the table. As soon as they had finished he went to his bed, where he remained, as Phil reported at intervals during the next forenoon, "dead to the world," until dinner time. In the afternoon they gathered under the walnut trees--the Cross-Triangle household and the friends from the neighboring ranch--and Patches told them his story; how, when he had left the ranch that night, he had ridden straight to his old friend Stanford Manning; and how Stanford had gone with him to the sheriff, where, through Manning's influence, together with the letter which Patches had brought from the Dean, he had been made an officer of the law. As he told them briefly of his days and nights alone, they needed no minute details to understand what it had meant to him.

"It wasn't the work of catching Nick in a way to ensure his conviction that I minded," he said, "but the trouble was, that while I was watching Nick day and night, and dodging him all the time, I was afraid some enthusiastic cow-puncher would run on to me and treat himself to a shot just for luck. Not that I would have minded that so much, either, after the first week," he added in his droll way, "but considering all the circ.u.mstances it would have been rather a poor sort of finish."

"And what about Yavapai Joe?" asked Phil.

Patches smiled. "Where is Joe? What's he been doing all day?"

The Dean answered. "He's just been moseyin' around. I tried to get him to talk, but all he would say was that he'd rather let Mr. Knight tell it."

"Billy," said Patches, "will you find Yavapai Joe, and tell him that I would like to see him here?"

When Little Billy, with the a.s.sistance of Jimmy and Conny and Jack, had gone proudly on his mission, Patches said to the others, "Technically, of course, Joe is my prisoner until after the trial, but please don't let him feel it. He will be the princ.i.p.al witness for the state."

When Yavapai Joe appeared, embarra.s.sed and ashamed in their presence, Patches said, as courteously as he would have introduced an equal, "Joe, I want my friends to know your real name. There is no better place in the world than right here to start that job of man-making that we have talked about. You remember that I told you how I started here."

Yavapai Joe lifted his head and stood straighter by his tall friend's side, and there was a new note in his voice as he answered, "Whatever you say goes, Mr. Knight."

Patches smiled. "Friends, this is Mr. Joseph Parkhill, the only son of the distinguished Professor Parkhill, whom you all know so well."

If Patches had planned to enjoy the surprise his words caused, he could not have been disappointed.

Presently, when Joe had slipped away again, Patches told them how, because of his interest in the young man, and because of the lad's strange knowledge of Professor Parkhill, he had written east for the distinguished scholar's history.

"The professor himself was not really so much to blame," said Patches.

"It seems that he was born to an intellectual life. The poor fellow never had a chance. Even as a child he was exhibited as a prodigy--a shining example of the possibilities of the race, you know. His father, who was also a professor of some sort, died when he was a baby. His mother, unfortunately, possessed an income sufficient to make it unnecessary that Everard Charles should ever do a day's real work. At the age of twenty, he was graduated from college; at the age of twenty-one he was married to--or perhaps it would be more accurate to say--he was married _by_--his landlady's daughter. Quite likely the woman was ambitious to break into that higher life to which the professor aspired, and caught her cultured opportunity in an unguarded moment. The details are not clear. But when their only child, Joe, was six years old, the mother ran away with a carpenter who had been at work on the house for some six weeks. A maiden aunt of some fifty years, who was a worshiper of the professor's cult, came to keep his house and to train Joe in the way that good boys should go.

"But the lad proved rather too great a burden, and when he was thirteen they sent him to a school out here in the West, ostensibly for the benefit of the climate. The boy, it was said, being of abnormal mentality, needed to pursue his studies under the most favorable physical conditions. The professor, unhampered by his offspring, continued to climb his aesthetic ladder to intellectual and cultured glory. The boy in due time escaped from the school, and was educated by the man Dryden and Nick Cambert."

"And what will become of him now?" asked the Dean.

Patches smiled. "Why, the lad is twenty-one now, and we have agreed that it is about time that he began to make a man of himself--I can help him a little, perhaps--I have been trying occasionally the past year. But you see the conditions have not been altogether favorable to the experiment. It should be easy from now on."

During the time that intervened before the trial of the Tailholt Mountain man, Phil and Patches re-established that intimate friendship of those first months of their work together. Then came the evening when Phil went across the meadow to ask Jim Reid for his daughter.