did know just what was the matter with her--an' after that it seemed
like John never was the same. He got killed in the rodeo that same
fall--just wasn't himself somehow. I was with him when he died.

"Stella and me raised Phil--we don't know any difference between him and
one of our own boys. The old homestead is his, of course, but Jim Reid's
stock runs on the old range. Phil's got a few head that he works with
mine--a pretty good bunch by now--for he's kept addin' to what his
father left, an' I've paid him wages ever since he was big enough. Phil
don't say much, even to Stella an' me, but I know he's figurin' on
fixin' up the old home place some day."

After a long silence the Dean said again, as if voicing some conclusion
of his unspoken thoughts: "Jim Reid is pretty well fixed, you see, an'
Kitty bein' the only girl, it's natural, I reckon, that they should have
ideas about her future, an' all that. I reckon it's natural, too, that
the girl should find ranch life away out here so far from anywhere, a
little slow after her three years at school in the East. She never says
it, but somehow you can most always tell what Kitty's thinkin' without
her speakin' a word."

"I have known people like that," said Patches, probably because there
was so little that he could say.

"Yes, an' when you know Kitty, you'll say, like I always have, that if
there's a man in Yavapai County that wouldn't ride the hoofs off the
best horse in his outfit, night or day, to win a smile from her, he
ought to be lynched."

That afternoon in Prescott they purchased an outfit for Patches, and the