During the long winter months, many an evening at the Cross-Triangle, at
the Reid home, or, perhaps, at some neighborhood party or dance,
afforded Kitty opportunities for a fuller understanding of Phil, but
resulted only in establishing a closer friendship with Patches.
Then came the spring.
The snow melted; the rains fell; the washes and creek channels were
filled with roaring floods; hill and ridge and mountain slope and mesa
awoke to the new life that was swelling in every branch and leaf and
blade; the beauties of the valley meadow appeared again in fresh and
fragrant loveliness; while from fence-post and bush and grassy bank and
new-leaved tree the larks and mocking birds and doves voiced their glad
return.
And, with the spring, came a guest to the Cross-Triangle Ranch--another
stranger.
Patches had been riding the drift fence, and, as he made his way toward
the home ranch, in the late afternoon, he looked a very different man
from the Patches who, several months before, had been rescued by Kitty
from a humiliating experience with that same fence.
The fact that he was now riding Stranger, the big bay with the blazed
face, more than anything else, perhaps, marked the change that had come
to the man whom the horse had so viciously tested, on that day when they
began together their education and work on the Cross-Triangle Ranch.
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