When breakfast was over, the foreman gave a few directions to
his men, and rode away alone.
The Dean, understanding the lad, whom he loved as one of his own sons,
watched him go without a word or a question. To Mrs. Baldwin he said,
"Just let him alone, Stella. The boy is all right. He's only gone off
somewhere on the range to fight it out alone. Most likely he'll put in
the day watching those wild horses over beyond Toohey. He generally goes
to them when he's bothered about anything or in trouble of any sort."
Patches, who had been sent on an errand of some kind to Fair Oaks, was
returning home early in the afternoon, and had reached the neighborhood
of that spring where he had first encountered Nick Cambert, when he
heard a calf bawling lustily somewhere in the cedar timber not far away.
Familiar as he now was with the voices of the range, the cowboy knew
that the calf was in trouble. The call was one of fright and pain.
Turning aside from his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more
cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that
came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which
he was riding.
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