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.