[Illustration:  Saddles]

CHAPTER X.

THE RODEO.

As the remaining weeks of the summer passed, Patches spent the days riding the range with Phil, and, under the careful eye of that experienced teacher, made rapid progress in the work he had chosen to master.  The man’s intense desire to succeed, his quick intelligence, with his instinct for acting without hesitation, and his reckless disregard for personal injury, together with his splendid physical strength, led him to a mastery of the details of a cowboy’s work with remarkable readiness.

Occasionally the two Cross-Triangle riders saw the men from Tailholt Mountain, sometimes merely sighting them in the distance, and, again, meeting them face to face at some watering place or on the range.  When it happened that Nick Cambert was thus forced to keep up a show of friendly relations with the Cross-Triangle, the few commonplaces of the country were exchanged, but always the Tailholt Mountain man addressed his words to Phil, and, save for surly looks, ignored the foreman’s companion.  He had evidently—­as Patches had said that he would—­come to realize that he could not afford to arouse the cattlemen to action against him, as he would certainly have done, had he attempted to carry out his threat to “get” the man who had so humiliated him.

But Patches’ strange interest in Yavapai Joe in no way lessened.  Always he had a kindly word for the poor unfortunate, and sought persistently to win the weakling’s friendship.  And Phil seeing this wondered, but held his peace.

Frequently Kitty Reid, sometimes alone, often with the other members of the Reid household, came across the big meadow to spend an evening at the neighboring ranch.  Sometimes Phil and Patches, stopping at the Pot-Hook-S home ranch, at the close of the day, for a drink at the windmill pump, would linger a while for a chat with Kitty, who would come from the house to greet them.  And now and then Kitty, out for a ride on Midnight, would chance to meet the two Cross-Triangle men on the range, and so would accompany them for an hour or more.

And thus the acquaintance between Patches and the girl grew into friendship; for Kitty loved to talk with this man of the things that play so large a part in that life which so appealed to her; and, with Phil’s ever-ready and hearty endorsement of Patches, she felt safe in permitting the friendship to develop.  And Patches, quietly observing, with now and then a conversational experiment—­at which game he was an adepts—­came to understand, almost as well as if he had been told, Phil’s love for Kitty and her attitude toward the cowboy—­her one-time schoolmate and sweetheart.  Many times when the three were together, and the talk, guided by Kitty, led far from Phil’s world, the cowboy would sit a silent listener, until Patches would skillfully turn the current back to the land of Granite Mountain and the life in which Phil had so vital a part.