"Why don't you run the outlaw filly?" Charley asked coaxingly of the
Ramblin' Kid.
"Yes, go on and put her in," Skinny urged, "—you ought to!"
The Ramblin' Kid remained silent, seemingly indifferent to the teasing of the others.
Carolyn June leaned over and said, in a voice audible only to him, while her eyes grew mellow with a look that tested his composure to the uttermost but which wrung no sign from him:
"Please, race the maverick—I—want you to—Ramblin' Kid!"
It was the first time she had used his name in speaking directly to him and the tone in which it was spoken made him tremble in spite of himself. For a moment he returned her gaze. Her words and manner were so different that by their very difference they reminded him of what she had called him yesterday—"an ignorant, savage, stupid brute"—when he had refused to interfere with the cat when its head was caught in the can. He started to make a cynical reply. Then he remembered her sympathy for Old Blue, her apology later for the harsh words—anyhow he knew or felt in his heart they were true—and suddenly he seemed to see the pink satin garter he still carried in his pocket. The look that came into his eyes made Carolyn June lower her own. He smiled a whimsical but hopeless smile, as, replying apparently to the pleading of Charley and Skinny, he said, softly, the single word:
"Maybe!"
Old Heck had forgotten the annual Rodeo held in Eagle Butte, for some days each summer, around the Fourth of July. His sudden determination and eagerness to have the beef round-up begin earlier than usual in order to get Parker away from the widow had driven all else but that one idea from his mind. The protests reminded him of his oversight. He had not intended to deprive the cowboys of the opportunity to enjoy the one big event happening yearly in the Kiowa country and which temporarily turned Eagle Butte, for a few days each summer, into a seething metropolis of care-free humanity.
"I think it's a darned shame to spring the beef hunt so it will interfere with the Rodeo," Bert grumbled, "—and us have to be out on the hills wrangling steers while the celebration is going on!"
"I'm not-goin! to be out on th' hills then," the Ramblin' Kid said quietly but with unchangeable finality.