"Yes," she replied, her lashes drooping demurely; "they say the music is going to be swell."
"If I come in will you—will we—go, Manilla?" he asked eagerly.
They would.
"Poor Skinny," Manilla murmured to herself as she went to the kitchen to get his order, "poor cuss—he can't keep from breaking his heart over every skirt that brushes against him, but"—and she laughed softly—"darn his ugly picture, I like him anyhow!"
After supper Skinny hurried to the Golden Rule store. It was still open.
"Give me a white shirt—number fifteen," he said to the clerk; "and be blamed sure it's the right size—they ain't worth a cuss if they're too big!"
CHAPTER XXI
A GIRL LIKE YOU
A lone rider guided his horse in the early night, among the black lavas, on the desolate desert near Capaline, the dead volcano. He rode to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron. Silently, steadily, like a dark shadow, the broncho picked his way among the fields of fire-blistered rock and held his course, unerringly, through the starlit gloom hanging over the earth before the late moon should flash its silver disk above the sand-hills miles to the east.
The rider was the Ramblin' Kid; the little horse—Captain Jack.