shamefaced into the presence of the Dean and reporting the loss of the
horse. The animal might be recovered, he supposed, for he was still,
Patches thought, inside the pasture which that fence enclosed. Still
there was a chance that the runaway would escape through some break and
never be found. In any case the vision of the grinning cowboys was not
an attractive one. But at least, thought the amateur cowboy, he would
finish the work entrusted to him. He might lose a horse for the Dean,
but the Dean's fence should be repaired. So he set to work with a will,
and, finishing that particular break, set out on foot to follow the
fence around the field and so back to the lane that would lead him to
the buildings and corrals of the home ranch.

For an hour he trudged along, making hard work of it in his chaps,
boots, and spurs, stopping now and then to drive a staple or brace a
post. The country was growing wilder and more broken, with cedar timber
on the ridges and here and there a pine. Occasionally he could catch a
glimpse of the black, forbidding walls of Tailholt Mountain. But Patches
did not know that it was Tailholt. He only thought that he knew in which
direction the home ranch lay. It seemed to him that it was a long, long
way to the corner of the field--it must be a big pasture, indeed. The
afternoon was well on when he paused on the summit of another ridge to
rest. It, seemed to him that he had never in all his life been quite so
warm. His legs ached. He was tired and thirsty and hungry. It was so
still that the silence hurt, and that fence corner was nowhere in sight.
He could not, now reach home before dark, even should he turn back;
which, he decided grimly, he would not do. He would ride that fence if
he camped three nights on the journey.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, waving his hat, hallooing and yelling
like a madman. Two horsemen were riding on the other side of the fence,