I'll run over again in the morning."
"Very well," answered Mr. Reid, who seemed in somewhat of a hurry. "I
know you ought to stay. Tell Stella that mother will be over for a
little while this evening." And the automobile moved away.
That night, while Mrs. Baldwin and Kitty watched by Phil's bedside, and
Patches, in his room, waited, sleepless, alone with his thoughts, men
from the ranch on the other side of the quiet meadow were riding swiftly
through the darkness. Before the new day had driven the stars from the
wide sky, a little company of silent, grim-faced horsemen gathered in
the Pot-Hook-S corral. In the dim, gray light of the early morning they
followed Jim Reid out of the corral, and, riding fast, crossed the
valley above the meadows and approached the Cross-Triangle corrals from
the west. One man in the company led a horse with an empty saddle. Just
beyond the little rise of ground outside the big gate they halted, while
Jim Reid with two others, leaving their horses with the silent riders
behind the hill, went on into the corral, where they seated themselves
on the edge of the long watering trough near the tank, which hid them
from the house.
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