Dorsey flushed a dull red.

"I ain't asking--"

"I know you're not," Old Heck interrupted, "and that's the reason I tore up that bill of sale!"

"Old Heck," Dorsey said, his voice trembling, "you're white! I'd like to shake--"

The rival cattlemen gripped hands and the racing feud between the Quarter Circle KT and the Y-Bar was ended.

A week later Dorsey sent Flip Williams to the Quarter Circle KT. The Vermejo cowboy led the beautiful black stallion that had mastered Quicksilver and had in turn been whipped by the Gold Dust maverick.

"Dorsey said, Tell Old Heck Thunderbolt's a pretty good saddle horse,'"

Flip explained, "'and he'd do to change off with Quicksilver once in a while! So he sent him over as a sort of keepsake!'"

The Ramblin' Kid did not return to the Quarter Circle KT until late Sunday night. After the two-mile sweepstakes he was horribly ill. All Friday night he laid, in a semi-conscious condition, in the stall with Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick.

Parker and some of the cowboys visited the stall after the race, but they thought the Ramblin' Kid was drunk and the best thing was to allow him to sleep it off.

"I can't figure it out," Chuck said as they turned away, "he never did get drunk before that I knew of--"

"You can't tell what he's liable to do," Charley interrupted, "he sure took an awful chance getting on a tear at the time he did!"

"Well, he won the race," Parker said admiringly, "drunk or sober, you've got to give him credit for that!"

Sat.u.r.day the Ramblin' Kid got Pedro to stay with the horses while he went over to the Elite Amus.e.m.e.nt Parlor. He had nothing to say to Sabota or any of the loafers in the place.

He was looking for Gyp Streetor.

Until Sunday afternoon he searched Eagle b.u.t.te, trying to find the tout.

All he wanted was to locate the man who had sold him that cup of coffee--he could remember drinking the coffee; after that until the following morning all was hazy.

But Gyp was gone.

When the Gold Dust maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car--part of a train headed for the West--and Eagle b.u.t.te saw him no more.

It was midnight Sunday when the Ramblin' Kid reached the Quarter Circle KT, turned Captain Jack and the outlaw filly into the circular corral, and without disturbing Old Heck, Parker, or the cowboys, already asleep in the bunk-house, sought his bed.

Monday morning he was at breakfast with the others.

Throughout the meal the Ramblin' Kid was silent. Carolyn June, still shocked by what she thought was his intoxication the day of the race, and believing he had remained in Eagle b.u.t.te over Sat.u.r.day night and Sunday to continue the debauch, ignored him.

None of the others cared to question him and the Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered no information.

Once only, Old Heck mentioned the race.

"That was a pretty good ride you made in the two-mile event," he said, addressing the Ramblin' Kid; "it looked at first like the filly--"

"You won your money, didn't you?" the Ramblin' Kid interrupted in a tone that plainly meant there was nothing further to be said.

That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.

After breakfast the Ramblin' Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west half of the Cimarron range.

The week that followed pa.s.sed quickly.

During the entire period the Kiowa lay under a mantle of sunshine by day and starlit skies by night.

Carolyn June once more provided the evening dessert of coffee-jelly and Skinny finished teaching her the art of dipping bread in milk and egg batter, frying it in hot b.u.t.ter, and calling the result "French toast"

Skinny again put on the white shirt and the shamrock tinted tie. He had not dared to wear what Chuck called his "love-making rigging" during the week of the Rodeo. It would have made him entirely too conspicuous among the hundreds of other cowboys gathered at Eagle b.u.t.te for the big celebration. Situations filled with embarra.s.sment would have been almost certain to develop.

"It's getting so it needs a washing a little," Skinny remarked to Carolyn June the first time he reappeared in the once snowy garment.

He was quite right.

Carolyn June herself had noticed that the shirt had lost some of its immaculateness.

"It doesn't look hardly as white as it did at first!"

"No, it don't," Skinny answered seriously. "I guess I'll wash it to-morrow. I never did wash one but I reckon it ain't so awful hard to do--"

"I'll help you," Carolyn June volunteered. "I've never washed one either, but it will be fun to learn how!"

The next day they washed the shirt.

The ceremony was performed in the kitchen after they had finished doing the breakfast dishes. Ophelia, after water for a vase of roses, came into the room while Skinny was rinsing the shirt in the large tin dishpan.

The garment was a sickly yellow.

"Darned if I know what's wrong with it," Skinny said, a trifle discouraged, while Carolyn June, her sleeves rolled above dimpled elbows, stood by and watched the slushy operation. "Carolyn June and me both have blamed near rubbed our fingers off trying to get it to look right again but somehow or other it don't seem to work."

"Did you put bluing in your rinse water?" Ophelia asked with a laugh.

"Bluing?" Carolyn June and Skinny questioned together. "What does that do to it?"

"Bleaches it--makes it white," the widow replied with another laugh as she returned to the front room.

"By golly, maybe that's what it needs!" Skinny exclaimed hopefully.

"Of course," Carolyn June cried gaily. "How silly we were not to think of it! Any one ought to know you put bluing in the water when you wash things. Wonder if Sing Pete has any around anywhere?"

They searched the kitchen shelves and found a pint bottle, nearly full, of the liquid indigo compound.

"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 ma.s.s, 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.