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As they ran toward the group under the walnut trees, the lads disturbed the peaceful conversation of their elders with wild shouts of "Patches has come back! Patches has come back! Nick Cambert is with him so's Yavapai Joe!" Jim Reid sprang to his feet.
When the riders were almost within speaking distance of the pair under the tree, they stopped; and the watchers saw Joe turn his face toward Patches for a moment, then look in their direction. Nick Cambert did not raise his head. Patches came on toward them alone.
"It's Nick Cambert and that poor, lost dog of a Yavapai Joe," Phil answered. "The Tailholt Mountain outfit," murmured Patches, watching the riders on the ridge with quickened interest. "Do you know, Phil, I believe I have seen those fellows before." "You have!" exclaimed Phil. "Where? When?" "I don't know how to tell you where," Patches replied, "but it was the day I rode the drift fence.
As the little procession moved slowly nearer, Phil and Kitty looked at each other without a word, but as they turned again to watch the approaching horsemen, Kitty impulsively grasped Phil's arm. And sitting so, in such unconscious intimacy, they must have made a pleasing picture; at least the man who rode behind Nick Cambert seemed to think so, for he was trying to smile.
Whimpering and begging, with disconnected, unintelligible words, the poor fellow again started toward the man with the quirt. At the critical moment a quiet, well-schooled voice interrupted the scene. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Cambert!" Nick whirled with an oath of surprise and astonishment, to face Patches, who was coming leisurely toward him from the bushes above the spring.
You have the frame of a bull with the spirit of a coyote and the courage of a sucking dove. Now in your own vernacular get a-goin'. Vamoose! Get out! I want to talk to your superior over there." Sullenly Nick Cambert mounted his horse and turned away toward one of the trails leading out from the little arena. "Come along, Joe!" he called to his follower.
He had no positive evidence that the animal just branded was not the lawful property of Nick Cambert. As Patches stepped from the bushes, Yavapai Joe faced him for a moment in guilty astonishment and fear; then he ran toward his horse. "Wait a minute, Joe!" called Patches. "What good will it do for you to run now? I'm not going to harm you."
Cambert, I understood that this was open range " Patches looked about, as though carefully assuring himself that he was not mistaken in the spot. The big man's eyes narrowed wickedly. "It's closed to you, all right." Then, as Patches did not move, "Well, are you goin', or have I got to start you?" He took a threatening step toward the intruder.
The cowboy nearest the gate did not need Phil's word to open it for his neighbor next in line to drive the calf inside. Not a word was said until the calves to be branded were also driven into the corral. Then Phil, after a moment's talk with Jim Reid, rode up to Nick Cambert, who was sitting on his horse a little apart from the group of intensely interested cowboys.
His father, old George Cambert, was one of the kind that seems honest enough, and industrious, too, but somehow always just misses it. They moved away to some place in Southern California when Nick was about grown.
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