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.”