can
get you off."

"I--I reckon you're right, Patches," returned the frightened weakling
sullenly. "Nick has sure treated me like a dog, anyway. You won't let
Nick get at me, will you, if I go?"

"Nobody can get at you, Joe, if you go with me, and do the square thing.
I'm going to take care of you myself, and help you to get out of this,
and brace up and be a man. Come on; let's be moving. I'll turn this calf
loose first, though."

He was bending over the calf when a noise in the brush caused him to
stand suddenly erect.

Joe was whimpering with terror.

Patches said fiercely, but in a low tone, "Shut up, and follow my lead.
Be a man, and I'll get you out of this yet."

"Nick will kill us sure," whined Joe.

"Not if I get my hands on him first, he won't," retorted Patches.

But it was with a feeling of relief that the cowboy saw Phil Acton ride
toward them from the shelter of the timber.

Before Patches could speak, Phil's gun covered him, and the foreman's
voice rang out sharply.

"Hands up!"

Joe's hands shot above his head. Patches hesitated.

"Quick!" said Phil.

And as Patches saw the man's eyes over the black barrel of the weapon he
obeyed. But as he raised his hands, a dull flush of anger colored his
tanned face a deeper red, and his eyes grew dark with passion. He
realized his situation instantly. The mystery that surrounded his first
appearance when he had sought employment at the Cross-Triangle; the
persistent suspicion of many of the cowboys because of his friendship
for Yavapai Joe; his meeting with Joe which the professor had reported;
his refusal to explain to Phil; his return to the ranch when everyone
was away and he himself was supposed to be in Prescott--all these and
many other incidents had come to their legitimate climax in his presence
on that spot with Yavapai Joe, the smouldering fire and the freshly
branded calf. He was unarmed, but Phil could not be sure of that, for
many a cowboy carries his gun inside the leg of his leather chaps, where
it does not so easily catch in the brush.

But while Patches saw it all so clearly, he was enraged that this man
with whom he had lived so intimately should believe him capable of such
a crime, and treat him without question as a common cattle thief. Phil's
coldness toward him, which had grown so gradually during the past three
months, in this peremptory humiliation reached a point beyond which
Patches' patient and considerate endurance coul