When the Gold Dust maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car—part of a train headed for the West—and Eagle Butte saw him no more.
It was midnight Sunday when the Ramblin' Kid reached the Quarter Circle KT, turned Captain Jack and the outlaw filly into the circular corral, and without disturbing Old Heck, Parker, or the cowboys, already asleep in the bunk-house, sought his bed.
Monday morning he was at breakfast with the others.
Throughout the meal the Ramblin' Kid was silent. Carolyn June, still shocked by what she thought was his intoxication the day of the race, and believing he had remained in Eagle Butte over Saturday night and Sunday to continue the debauch, ignored him.
None of the others cared to question him and the Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered no information.
Once only, Old Heck mentioned the race.
"That was a pretty good ride you made in the two-mile event," he said, addressing the Ramblin' Kid; "it looked at first like the filly—"
"You won your money, didn't you?" the Ramblin' Kid interrupted in a tone that plainly meant there was nothing further to be said.
That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.
After breakfast the Ramblin' Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned
Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter
Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west
half of the Cimarron range.