"How much do you suppose we ought to put in?" Carolyn June asked, pulling the cork from the bottle and holding it poised over the pan of water in which the shirt, a slimy, dingy mass, floated drunkenly.
"Darned if I know," Skinny said, scratching his head. "She said it would make it white—I reckon the more you put in the whiter the blamed thing'll be. Try about half of it at first and see how 'it works!"
"Gee, isn't it pretty?" Carolyn June gurgled as she tipped the bottle and the waves of indigo spread through the water, covering the shirt with a deep crystalline blue.
"You bet!" Skinny exclaimed. "That ought to fix it!"
It did.
The shirt, when finally dried, was a wonderful thing—done in a sort of mottled, streaky, marbled sky and cloud effect.
But Skinny wore it, declaring he liked it better—that it more nearly matched the shamrock tie—than when it was "too darned white and everything!"
To Parker and the boys on the beef hunt everything was business.
The days were filled with hard riding as they gathered the cattle, bunched the fat animals, cut out and turned back those unfit for the market, stood guard at night over the herd, steadily and rapidly cleaned the west half of the Kiowa range of the stuff that was ready to sell.
It was supper-time on one of the last days of the round-up.