When at last hackamore and saddle were in place, and the bay stood trembling and sweating, Phil wiped the perspiration from his own forehead and turned to the stranger.

"Your horse is ready, sir."

The man's face was perhaps a shade whiter than its usual color, but his eyes were glowing, and there was a grim set look about his smiling lips that made the hearts of those men go out to him. He seemed to realize so that the joke was on himself, and with it all exhibited such reckless indifference to consequences. Without an instant's hesitation he started toward the horse.

"Great Snakes!" muttered Curly to Bob, "talk about nerve!"

The Dean started forward. "Wait a minute, Mr. Patches," he said.

The stranger faced him.

"Can you ride that horse?" asked the Dean, pointedly.

"I'm going to," returned Patches. "But," he added with his droll humor, "I can't say how far."

"Don't you know that he'll kill you if he can?" questioned the Dean curiously, while his eyes twinkled approval.

"He does seem to have some such notion," admitted Patches.

"You better let him alone," said the Dean. "You don't need to kill yourself to get a job with this outfit."

"That's very kind of you, sir," returned the stranger gratefully. "I'm rather glad you said that. But I'm going to ride him just the same."

They looked at him in amazement, for it was clear to them now that the man really could not ride.

The Dean spoke kindly. "Why?"

"Because," said Patches slowly, "I am curious to see what I will do under such circ.u.mstances, and if I don't try the experiment now I'll never know whether I have the nerve to do it or not." As he finished he turned and walked deliberately toward the horse.

Phil ran to Curly's side, and the cowboy at his foreman's gesture leaped from his saddle. The young man mounted his helper's horse, and with a quick movement caught the riata from the saddle horn and flipped open a ready loop.

The stranger was close to the bay's off, or right, side.

"The other side, Patches," called Phil genially. "You want to start in right, you know."

Not a man laughed--except the stranger.

"Thanks," he said, and came around to the proper side.

"Take your time," called Phil again. "Stand by his shoulder and watch his heels. Take the stirrup with your right hand and turn it to catch your foot. Stay back by his shoulder until you are ready to swing up.

Take your time."

"I won't be long," returned Patches, as he awkwardly gained his seat in the saddle.

Phil moved his horse nearer the center of the corral, and shook out his loop a little.

"When you're ready, lean over and pull up the blindfold," he called.

The man on the horse did not hesitate. With every angry nerve and muscle strained to the utmost, the powerful bay leaped into the air, coming down with legs stiff and head between his knees. For an instant the man miraculously kept his place. With another vicious plunge and a cork-screw twist the maddened brute went up again, and this time the man was flung from the saddle as from a gigantic catapult, to fall upon his shoulders and back in the corral dust, where he lay still. The horse, rid of his enemy, leaped again; then with catlike quickness and devilish cunning whirled, and with wicked teeth bared and vicious, blazing eyes, rushed for the helpless man on the ground.

With a yell Bob spurred to put himself between the bay and his victim, but had there been time the move would have been useless, for no horse could have withstood that mad charge. The vicious brute was within a bound of his victim, and had reared to crush him with the weight of heavy hoofs, when a rawhide rope tightened about those uplifted forefeet and the bay himself crashed to earth. Leaving the cow-horse to hold the riata tight, Phil sprang from his saddle and ran to the fallen man. The Dean came with water in his felt hat from the trough, and presently the stranger opened his eyes. For a moment he lay looking up into their faces as though wondering where he was, and how he happened there.

"Are you hurt bad?" asked the Dean.

That brought him to his senses, and he got to his feet somewhat unsteadily, and began brushing the dust from his clothes. Then he looked curiously toward the horse that Curly was holding down by the simple means of sitting on the animal's head. "I certainly thought my legs were long enough to reach around him," he said reflectively. "How in the world did he manage it? I seemed to be falling for a week."

Phil yelled and the Dean laughed until the tears ran down his red cheeks, while Bob and Curly went wild.

Patches went to the horse, and gravely walked around him. Then, "Let him up," he said to Curly.

The cowboy looked at Phil, who nodded.

As the bay regained his feet, Patches started toward him.

"Here," said the Dean peremptorily. "You come away from there."

"I'm going to see if he can do it again," declared Patches grimly.

"Not to-day, you ain't," returned the Dean. "You're workin' for me now, an' you're too good a man to be killed tryin' any more crazy experiments."

At the Dean's words the look of grat.i.tude in the man's eyes was almost pathetic.

"I wonder if I am," he said, so low that only the Dean and Phil heard.

"If you are what?" asked the Dean, puzzled by his manner.

"Worth anything--as a man--you know," came the strange reply.

The Dean chuckled. "You'll be all right when you get your growth. Come on over here now, out of the way, while Phil takes some of the cussedness out of that fool horse."

Together they watched Phil ride the bay and return him to his mates a very tired and a much wiser pupil. Then, while Patches remained to watch further operations in the corral, the Dean went to the house to tell Stella all about it.

"And what do you think he really is?" she asked, as the last of a long list of questions and comments.

The Dean shook his head. "There's no tellin'. A man like that is liable to be anything." Then he added, with his usual philosophy: "He acts, though, like a genuine thoroughbred that's been badly mishandled an' has just found it out."

When the day's work was finished and supper was over Little Billy found Patches where he stood looking across the valley toward Granite Mountain that loomed so boldly against the soft light of the evening sky. The man greeted the boy awkwardly, as though unaccustomed to children. But Little Billy, very much at ease, signified his readiness to help the stranger to an intimate acquaintance with the world of which he knew so much more than this big man.

He began with no waste of time on mere preliminaries.

"See that mountain over there? That's Granite Mountain. There's wild horses live around there, an' sometimes we catch 'em. Bet you don't know that Phil's name is 'Wild Horse Phil'."

Patches smiled. "That's a good name for him, isn't it?"

"You bet." He turned and pointed eagerly to the west. "There's another mountain over there I bet you don't know the name of."

"Which one do you mean? I see several."