“I’m afraid you’re right, Phil,” Patches answered quietly.

Helen looked at her husband indignantly but Stanford was grinning with delight.

“To think,” he murmured, “of Larry Knight taking a dressing-down like that from a mere cowboy foreman!”

But Patches was by no means so meek in spirit as he appeared in his outward manner.  He had been driven almost to the verge of desperation by the trying situation, and was fighting for self-control.  To take his foreman’s rebuke in the presence of his friends was not easy.

“I reckon I’d better send you to the home ranch to-night, instead of Bob,” continued Phil, as the two men mounted their horses and sat for a moment facing each other.  “It looks like we could spare you best.  Tell Uncle Will to send the chuck wagon and three more punchers, and that we’ll start for the home ranch Friday.  And be sure that you get back here to-morrow.”

“Shall I go now?”

“Yes, you can go now.”

Patches wheeled his horse and rode away, while Phil disappeared over the ridge in the direction from which he had come.

When the two cowboys were out of sight, Helen went straight to her husband, and to Stanford’s consternation, when he took her in his arms, she was crying.

“Why, girl, what is it?” he asked, holding her close.

But she only answered between sobs as she clung to him, “It—­it’s nothing—­never mind, Stan.  I’m just upset.”

And Stanford quite naturally thought it was only a case of nerves caused by the danger through which she had passed.

For nearly an hour, Patches rode toward the home ranch, taking only such notice of his surroundings as was necessary in order for him to keep his direction.  Through the brush and timber, over the ridges down into valleys and washes, and along the rock-strewn mountain sides he allowed his horse to pick the way, and take his own gait, with scarcely a touch of rein or spur.

The twilight hour was beginning when he reached a point from which he could see, in the distance, the red roofs of the Cross-Triangle buildings.  Checking his horse, he sat for a long time, motionless, looking away over the broad land that had come to mean so much to him, as though watching the passing of the day.

But the man did not note the changing colors in the western sky; he did not see the shadows deepening; he was not thinking of the coming of the night.  The sight of the distant spot that, a year before, had held such possibilities for him, when, on the summit of the Divide, he had chosen between two widely separated ways of life, brought to him, now, a keener realization of the fact that he was again placed where he must choose.  The sun was down upon those hopes and dreams that in the first hard weeks of his testing had inspired and strengthened him.  The night of despairing, reckless abandonment of the very ideals of manhood for which he had so bravely struggled was upon him; while the spirit and strength of that manhood which he had so hardly attained fought against its surrender.