For an instant they saw him smiling mockingly at himself; then he
answered lightly, "Try some other fool experiment, I reckon."
Stanford chuckled; the reply was so like the cowboy Patches, and so
unlike his old friend Larry Knight.
"As for that, Stan," Patches continued, "I don't see that the game will
ever be played out, as you say. Certainly I can never now go back
altogether to what I was. The fellow you used to know in Cleveland is
not really I, you see. Fact is, I think that fellow is quite dead--peace
be to his ashes! The world is wide and there is always work for a man to
do."
The appearance of Phil Acton on the ridge, at the spot where the steer,
followed by Patches, had first appeared, put an end to their further
conversation with Lawrence Knight.
"My boss!" said that gentleman, in his character of Patches the cowboy,
as the Cross-Triangle foreman halted his horse on the brow of the hill,
and sat looking down upon the camp.
"Be careful, please, and don't let him suspect that you ever saw me
before. I'll sure catch it now for loafing so long."
"I know him," said Stanford. Then he called to the man above, "Come on
down, Acton, and be sociable.
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