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He had heard and seen enough, since he had been in the Dean's employ, to understand the suspicion in which the owner of the Four-Bar-M iron was held; and from even his few days' work on the range in company with Phil, he had come to understand how difficult it was for the cattlemen to prove anything against the man who they had every reason to believe was stealing their stock.
He came back six years ago, and located over there at the foot of Tailholt Mountain, and started his Four-Bar-M iron; and, one way or another, he's managed to get together quite a bunch of stock. You see, his expenses don't amount to anything, scarcely. He and Joe bach in an old shack that somebody built years ago, and they do all the riding themselves.
That's a Four-Bar-M calf, an' I branded him myself over in Horse Wash before he left the cow. Some of your punchers are too damned handy with their runnin' irons, Mr. Wild Horse Phil." For a moment Phil looked at the man, while Jim Reid moved his horse nearer, and the cowboys waited, breathlessly.
"I ain't tellin' nothin' to nobody," said Joe sullenly, as he came slowly toward the Dean's cowboy. "No?" said Patches. "No, I ain't," asserted the Tailholt Mountain man stoutly. "That there calf is a Four-Bar-M calf, all right." "I see it is," returned the Cross-Triangle rider calmly. "But I'll just wait until Nick gets back, and ask him what it was before he worked over the iron."
But, in a little open space among the cedars, the cowboy saw Yavapai Joe, standing beside a calf, fresh-branded with the Four-Bar-M iron, and earmarked with the Tailholt marks. Patches knew instantly, as well as though he had witnessed the actual branding, what, had happened.
"They would if I were Nick," said the cowboy. Then he added quickly, as if regretting his remark, "Our earmark is an under-bit right and a split left, you said. Well, the Four-Bar-M earmark is a crop and an under-bit right and a swallow-fork left." With the point of his iron now he again marked in the dirt.
The fact that the brand had been worked over established also the fact that it was the Cross-Triangle brand that had been changed, because the Cross-Triangle was the only brand in that part of the country that could be changed into the Four-Bar-M. Patches, dropping his easy manner, and speaking straight to the point, said, "Look here, Joe, you and I might as well get down to cases.
The Dean must remember that the suspicion as to the source of Nick's too rapidly increasing herds had, so far, been directed wholly against Nick himself, and that the owner of the Four-Bar-M iron was not altogether a fool.
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