He might lose a horse for the Dean, but the Dean's fence should be repaired.

So he set to work with a will, and, finishing that particular break, set out on foot to follow the fence around the field and so back to the lane that would lead him to the buildings and corrals of the home ranch.
For an hour he trudged along, making hard work of it in his chaps, boots, and spurs, stopping now and then to drive a staple or brace a post.

The country was growing wilder and more broken, with cedar timber on the ridges and here and there a pine.

Occasionally he could catch a glimpse of the black, forbidding walls of Tailholt Mountain.

But Patches did not know that it was Tailholt.