"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.