A short silence followed her words, then a chorus of "We'll be there!"

greeted her.

"In an hour," Carolyn June said, smiling sweetly at the cowboys, as they left the kitchen, "everybody be back at the house. We'll fix the room and have it ready--don't any one bother to 'dress up,'" she added as an afterthought.

"Old Heck's niece acts kind of stampedish, don't she?" Bert remarked as Parker and the cowboys filed out of the back-yard gate toward the bunk-house.

"Yes," Charley answered. "I'm going to shave."

"So am I," said Chuck, as they hurried in the direction of their sleeping quarters.

"Me, too," laughed Bert. "Gee, didn't Skinny shine in that shirt?" as they disappeared inside the building and there was a rush to hunt out razors, brushes and other toilet necessities or clean handkerchiefs and ties.

The Ramblin' Kid alone seemed uninterested. He dropped down on his bed and idly watched the others prepare for the evening's diversion.

"Ain't you going?" Chuck asked him, noticing his indifference.

A short, half-cynical laugh with "Oh, maybe I'll go set on the porch an' listen to th' music!" was the answer.

When Parker and the cowboys reappeared at the house it was plain that all had disobeyed Carolyn June's injunction not to "dress up." Each had paid tribute in some way, by a smooth-sc.r.a.ped face, a dean shirt, a tie or something, to the vanity of his own heart and the desire for the good opinion of either Carolyn June or the widow.

Both women noticed it. They exchanged glances while Carolyn June softly whispered to Ophelia: "Stir them up--it's coming to them!"

The widow smiled understandingly.

Old Heck fidgeted uncomfortably. The situation was entirely beyond his control. By right he and Ophelia ought to be sitting there quietly making love, while Skinny and Carolyn June, in another corner of the room or out on the porch, were doing the same thing. He would just have to await developments.

Parker was elated. Carolyn June's proposal had broken up Old Heck's evening alone with the widow. Perhaps--the thought thrilled the foreman --Ophelia herself had planned it!

"Skinny can keep the graphophone working," Carolyn June laughed. "Put on a one-step first," she said as he rather grudgingly went to the corner and started the music. "Come on, Bert, we'll dance this one," she cried merrily, as she stepped up to the blushing cowboy and put her hand, with a tender little pressure, on his arm. "It's 'ladies' night,' you know--Ophelia, pick your pardner!"

"Aw--don't you reckon you ought to choose one of the others first?"

Bert, considerably embarra.s.sed by the sudden attention, mumbled as he moved with pretended reluctance but secret eagerness out on to the floor.

"I know who I want to dance with!" Carolyn June whispered significantly with another squeeze of his arm while her warm breath fanned his cheek.

For a moment Ophelia stood as if undecided while Old Heck and Parker each tried by their looks to register unconcern, their hearts meanwhile leaping with uncertain expectancy and hope. Suddenly turning from both and going up to Charley, she said softly and with well-feigned shyness:

"I--I--please, won't you dance this one with me?"

"With the most exceeding pleasure!" Charley replied gallantly, arising and reaching out his hands.

Parker and Old Heck gulped their astonishment and disappointment--each swallowing as if he had something in his throat that would not go down--and glared savagely at each other.

Skinny next put on a waltz record. Carolyn June and Chuck swung through its dreamy rhythm while her hair brushed the cowboy's neck and her eyes, half closed, looked alluringly into his. "I--I--could do this forever--with you!" she breathed, accenting the last word and making Chuck want to yell for joy.

At the beginning of the waltz Ophelia paused a moment before Old Heck, glanced demurely at Parker, took a step toward the latter, turned quickly to the first and flooding him with a look of tenderness held out her hands while she spoke the simple entreaty:

"Please!"

Old Heck leaped to his feet, hitched nervously at the belt of his trousers, ran his fingers around the inside of his collar, and, with a look of triumph at Parker, led the widow through the dance. She permitted her body to relax and lean against her partner, dancing with an abandon that not only fired the emotions of Old Heck to fever heat, but was as well like dippers of oil on the flame of the foreman's jealousy.

Parker gritted his teeth and followed Old Heck with a look that meant nothing less than the desire to kill!

As Ophelia and Old Heck, and Carolyn June with Chuck circled the room Skinny leaned weakly against the graphophone. He was tortured agonizingly by the strange action of Carolyn June. He was her lover, her official, absolute lover! Why did she want to go and get things all mixed up like this? It wasn't fair. The other boys were not supposed to make love to her! They had elected him to do it and he was getting along all right till she thought of having this blamed fool dance. He began to doubt the efficacy of the white shirt and frequently drew one of the loose, baggy sleeves--rapidly losing their snowy spotlessness--across his face to rid himself of beads of perspiration.

The waltz was followed by another one-step and Ophelia granted this favor to Parker while Old Heck sat and swore steadily under his breath--regretful that he had not sent the foreman and the cowboys out on the beef hunt a week ago!

Outside, the Ramblin' Kid half-reclined on the edge of the porch. With a cigarette between his teeth, a sneering smile on his lips, he watched, through the open door, the group within. He was convinced now that Carolyn June was utterly frivolous. She danced and flirted with Bert, Chuck, Charley--and even Pedro--one after the other and occasionally Parker. Poor Skinny alone was neglected. She seemed to have forgotten that he existed save when, from time to time, she suggested that he put this or that record on the graphophone. To each of the cowboys she whispered tender little sentiments, gave soulful looks and insinuating smiles--all but caressed them openly. Ophelia did like things to Old Heck, Parker and Charley.

In very truth it was a "slaughter."

It was hot. After an hour Carolyn June stepped out on the porch for a breath of air while Skinny sought in the cabinet for a record she had asked him to play. The Ramblin' Kid straightened up as she came out of the door. He was disgusted, angry, heart-sickened. He had seen enough and was starting to leave.

Carolyn June had noticed the absence of the Ramblin' Kid. She had believed, all evening, he was on the porch and that was the real reason she had come outside. She saw him. "Oh, is--is--that you, Ramblin'

Kid?" she exclaimed as if surprised, and went quickly to where, at the sound of her voice, he had paused.

He did not answer. The light shone full on his face and he knew that she knew--and had known before she spoke--that he was there. His eyes were filled with a look queerly blending scorn, loathing, pity and pain.

"Why--why--don't you come in and dance?" she asked lightly, not certain of his mood.

"I don't want to," he replied coldly: "anyhow--" he added with a sneer and a brutal laugh as he slowly moved away in the darkness, "when I decide to _hug_ I'll hug in private!"

Carolyn June started almost as though he had struck her. The taunt was an insult! A flood of anger swept over her. "The brute!" she whispered pa.s.sionately and with utter contempt in her voice. She stood a moment.

Suddenly she remembered the reckless abandon with which she had been dancing and flirting with the cowboys inside the house. Her face flamed scarlet. She looked out into the blackness toward the circular corral.

Her expression changed and a pitying smile crossed her lips: "Poor Ramblin' Kid--he just--does not understand!" she murmured and stepped back into the house.

As the Ramblin' Kid pa.s.sed through the back-yard gate he muttered savagely under his breath: "Playin' with their hearts like marbles--th'

d.a.m.ned fools!" He paused a moment and added, as though tired, "Oh, well, I reckon she thinks she has to do it--it's her breed--she was raised that way I guess!"

The snuffling sound of a horse blowing hay-powder or other dust from its nostrils came from the direction of the circular corral. The Ramblin'

Kid stopped in his walk and turning went thoughtfully through the darkness toward where Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick were quietly feeding. He leaned against the bars of the corral and looked at the shadowy forms of the two horses standing a little distance away.

Captain Jack quit eating and came to the fence.

"G.o.d! Little Horse"--the Ramblin' Kid spoke tensely and without repression--"why can't humans be as decent an' honest as you?"

The black dome of night was studded with innumerable stars that gleamed like points of silver sprinkled over a canopy of somber velvet some infinite hand had flung, in a great arch, from rim to rim of a sleeping world. The call of a night bird shrilled softly from the cottonwood trees along the Cimarron. A hint of a breeze swung idly from the west and rustled the leaves in the tops of the poplars in front of the house.

Faintly as a distant echo came the wailing strains of a waltz, drifting out from the lighted windows and the open door of the room where Carolyn June and Ophelia, in a spirit of sport and for revenge, juggled the hearts of men afraid of nothing in all the world but the look in a Woman's eyes.

The music tortured the soul of the Ramblin' Kid. It breathed the unfathomable strife of life--of love, longing, hope, despair--almost, yet subtly, elusively, would not tell the eternal "Why?" of all things.

Not heeding time, he stood and listened. The crunching sound made by the Gold Dust maverick, munching at the pile of hay on the ground in the corral, blended with and seemed a queer accompaniment to the melody that came from the scene of revelry up at the house.

The orange disk of a late-rising moon showed above the rim of the sand-hills at the lower end of the valley. The Ramblin' Kid watched it--until it grew into a rounded plate of burnished, glistening silver.

The Gold Dust maverick was suddenly flooded with a glare of light as the moonbeams poured over the top of the shed and streamed through the bars of the circular corral. The filly lifted her head.

An impulse to ride--ride--ride, to get away from it all--far out on the wide unpeopled plains where there was nothing above but G.o.d, and the unmeasured depths of His heavens, and nothing beneath but the earth and the rhythmic beat of his horse's feet, came over the Ramblin' Kid. Men, and the works of men--their pa.s.sions, their strifes, their foolishness--and women--women who played with love--he wanted to forget, to leave miles and miles behind.

He started to open the gate, thinking to saddle Captain Jack and obey the impulse of the moment. Carolyn June's words, spoken of the Gold Dust maverick: "It would be fun to see her run!" and uttered lightly and in a spirit of coquetry that morning when she teased him to enter the outlaw filly in the race against the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo, came to his mind. The selfishness of the plea maddened him. She cared nothing for the price in effort--the straining muscles, the panting breath--the agony the beautiful mare must pay to defeat the black wonder from the other part of the range. She wanted only to see the maverick run--to coax him to yield and run the filly merely to please the cheap vanity of her s.e.x! No doubt also she counted on entertainment when, to-morrow, he would ride the outlaw for the first time. It would be a kind of show--the battle for mastery between himself and the high-bred untamed mare. The whole bunch--Old Heck, Parker, Ophelia, Carolyn June, the cowboys--yes, even that d.a.m.ned c.h.i.n.k--unquestionably would be crowded about the corral to watch the fear and pain of the maverick as she learned her first hard lesson of servitude to man! They would laugh at her frenzied efforts to throw him.