Carolyn June saw the expression in Skinny's eyes. A pained look came into her own. She had known, for a long while, that sooner or later there would have to come an understanding between this big, overgrown, juvenile-hearted cowboy and herself. She resolved then that it should come quickly. Further delay would be cruel to him. Besides, she was sick of flirtations. Her disappointment in the character of the Ramblin' Kid, her realization of his weakness, when he had gotten, as she believed, beastly drunk at the moment so much depended on him the day of the two-mile sweepstakes, had hurt deeply. Somehow, even his magnificent ride and the fact that, in spite of his condition, he won the race, had not taken the sting away. She had thought the Ramblin' Kid was real—rough and crude, perhaps, but all man, rugged-hearted and honest. Sometimes she wondered if the queer unexplainable antagonism between herself and the sensitive young cowboy had not, in a measure, been responsible for his sudden moral breaking down. The thought caused her to lose some of that frivolity that inspired the dance and the wild flirtations she carried on that night with all the cowboys of the Quarter Circle KT. After all, these plain, simple-acting men of the range were just boys grown big in God's great out-of-doors where things are taken for what they seem to be. No wonder an artless look from sophisticated brown eyes swept them off their feet!
She made up her mind to disillusion Skinny at once.
After supper the quartette gathered in the front room.
"Come on, Skinny," Carolyn June said with forced gaiety, "let us take a walk. That pair of cooing doves"—with a playfully tender glance at Ophelia and Old Heck—"wish nothing so much as to be permitted to 'goo-goo' at each other all by their little lonelies!"
Bareheaded she and Skinny strolled out the front gate and along the road that led up to the bench. At the top of the grade they sat down, side by side, on a large boulder that hung on the brink of the bench. The Quarter Circle KT lay before them—restful and calm in the shadows of early evening. The poplars along the front-yard fence stood limp in the silent air. Across the valley the sand-hills were mellowing with the coming softness of twilight. Up the river, to the west, beyond Eagle Butte, a summer thunder-cloud was climbing higher and higher into the sky. In the direction of Dry Buck, far toward the northwest, a fog of dust was creeping along the horizon, gradually approaching the upland pasture. Skinny saw it.
"By golly," he cried, "that's either Parker and the boys coming in with the cattle—or else it's a band of sheep! It surely can't be 'woollys'—they never get over in there! If it's our outfit, though, they've got through quicker than they figured!"
A few moments later the dim bulk of the "grub-wagon" appeared, miles away, slowly crawling toward the Quarter Circle KT.
For a time Skinny and Carolyn June were silent.
Skinny's hand crept slyly across the rock and found the pink fingers of
Carolyn June. She did not draw away.
"Carolyn June," he whispered haltingly, "Carolyn June—I—Old Heck and
Ophelia have got married—let's you and—and—"