bright cartridges. The Dean had insisted on this, alleging that the
embryo cowboy might want it to kill a sick cow or something.

Patches wondered if he would know a sick cow if he should meet one, or
how he was to diagnose the case to ascertain if she were sick enough to
kill.

The first thing he did, when the Dean was safely out of sight, was to
dismount and examine his saddle girth. Always your real king of the
cattle range is careful for the foundation of his throne. But there was
no awkwardness, now, when he again swung to his seat. The young man was
in reality a natural athlete. His work had already taken the soreness
and stiffness out of his unaccustomed muscles, and he seemed, as the
Dean had said, a born horseman. And as he rode, he looked about over the
surrounding country with an expression on independence, freedom and
fearlessness very different from the manner of the troubled man who had
faced Phil Acton that night on the Divide. It was as though the spirit
of the land was already working its magic within this man, too. He
patted the holster at his side, felt the handle of the gun, lovingly
fingered the bright cartridges in his shiny belt, leaned sidewise to
look admiringly down at his fringed, leather chaps and spur ornamented
boot heels, and wished for his riata--not forgetting, meanwhile, to scan
the fence for places that might need his attention.

The guardian angel who cares for the "tenderfoot" was good to Patches
that day, and favored him with many sagging wires and leaning or broken
posts, so that he could not ride far. Being painstaking and
conscientious in his work, he had made not more than four miles by the
beginning of the afternoon. Then he found a break that would occupy him
for two hours at least. With rueful eyes he surveyed the long stretch of