I consider it a compliment, and"-- he added, with a touch of his old self-mocking humor--"I think I know what I am saying--better, perhaps, than the he-ghost knows what he talks about." "It may be that you do," returned Phil wearily, "but you can see where it all puts me.

The professor has sure got me down and hog-tied so tight that I can't even think." "Perhaps, and again, perhaps not," returned Patches.

"Reid hasn't found a buyer for the outfit yet, has he ?" "Not yet, but they'll come along fast enough.

The Pot-Hook-S Ranch is too well known for the sale to hang fire long." The next day Phil seemed to slip back again, in his attitude toward Patches, to the temper of those last weeks of the rodeo.

It was as though the young man--with his return to the home ranch and to the Dean and their talks and plans for the work--again put himself, his personal convictions and his peculiar regard for Patches, aside, and became the unprejudiced foreman, careful for his employer's interests.
Patches very quickly, but without offense, found that the door, which his friend had opened in the long dark hours of that lonely night ride, had closed again; and, thinking that he understood, he made no attempt to force his way.