"Good-by, chaperon," she laughed With a half-sob in her throat, "h--h.e.l.lo, 'Aunt.'" Then she strangled Old Heck with a hug that made him gasp.

"What the devil--are you trying to do--choke me?"

"Well, by thunder, Old Heck!" Skinny finally managed to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, "it was the sensiblest thing you ever done! I--I've--been"--with a sidelong look at Carolyn June--"kind of figuring on doing it myself!"

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 G.o.d'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 b.u.t.te, 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--"

"Please, Skinny, don't say it!" she interrupted, her voice trembling.

"I--I know what you mean! It hurts me. Listen, Skinny"--she hurried on, determined to end it quickly--"maybe you will despise me, but--I like you, truly I do--but not _that_ way! I don't want to grieve you--I wish us to be just good friends--that's why I'm telling you! Let's be friends, Skinny--just friends--we can't be any more than that--"

Skinny understood. A dull, throbbing pain tightened about his throat.

His fingers gripped Carolyn June's hand an instant and then relaxed. The whole world seemed suddenly blank.

"Can't you--won't you--ever--ca--care?" he asked in a voice filled with despair.

"I do care, boy," she replied softly, "I do care--but not that way! Oh, Skinny," she exclaimed, wishing to make it as easy as possible for the sentimental cowboy at her side, "maybe I have done wrong to let you go ahead, but, well, I found out--I guessed the 'arrangements'--how you had been chosen to make 'love' to me and how Parker and Uncle Josiah were to divide Ophelia between them. Perhaps that is why I have flirted so--just to punish you all! Truly, Skinny, I'm sorry. Please don't hate me like--like--the Ramblin' Kid does!" she finished with a shaky little laugh.

"He--don't hate you," Skinny answered dully, "at least I don't think th'

Ramblin' Kid hates you--or anybody. And you knowed all the time that I was getting paid to make love to you? Well, I was," he added chokingly, "but I'd have done it for nothing if I'd had the chance!"

"Yes, Skinny," she replied, "I knew--I know--and I don't blame you!"

"I don't blame you, either," he said humbly, "it was a--a--excuse me, Carolyn June--a d.a.m.ned mean trick to frame up on you and Ophelia that way--but we didn't know what to do with you! I reckon," he continued in the same despairing tone, "I was a blamed fool!"

For a long moment they sat silent.

"Carolyn June," Skinny finally said, a sigh of resignation breaking from his lips, "I'll be what you said--just a good friend--I always will be that to you! But before we start in, do you mind if I--if I--go up to Eagle b.u.t.te and get--drunk!"

In spite of herself she laughed. But in it was a tenderness almost mother-like.

"Poor disappointed, big boy," she answered and her eyes filled, "if it will make you happy, go ahead and get--get--drunk, 'soused,' all over--just this once!"

With only a pa.s.sing pang Carolyn June was willing for Skinny to get drunk--to do the thing she had been scarcely able to forgive in the Ramblin' Kid!

For an instant she wondered why.

A half-hour later Skinny and Carolyn June went silently down the grade to the ranch house. They had gone up the hill--lovers; they returned--"good friends"--and such they would always be.

It was nearly ten o'clock when Sing Pete stopped the grub-wagon at the bunk-house; Pedro wrangled the saddle cavallard into the pasture below the barn; Parker and the cowboys jogged their bronchos to the stable door and the Ramblin' Kid, riding the Gold Dust maverick--Captain Jack at her heels--rode to the circular corral, jerked the saddle from the filly's back and turned the little roan stallion and the outlaw mare inside the corral.

Old Heck and Skinny heard the commotion and went out to where Parker and the cowboys were unsaddling their horses.

"Well, you got through, did you?" Old Hack questioned casually.

"Yes," Parker replied, "we've got the beef critters in I guess--they're in the upland pasture. There are seven hundred and ninety, I think it is, that'll do for the market."

"That's pretty good," Old Heck answered with satisfaction. "We'll push them right on into Eagle b.u.t.te to-morrow or next day and ship them. The cars will be in to-night, the agent said. I'm sending them to Chicago this time. I'd like to see you, private, a minute, Parker!" he finished abruptly.

"What do you want?" Parker asked suspiciously, as he followed Old Heck around the corner of the barn.

"It's about Ophelia--" Old Heck began.

Parker's heart leaped and then dropped with a sickening foreboding of something disagreeable. The widow, he thought instantly, had told Old Heck about that darned fool proposal of marriage and was going to insist on him coming across and making good! There was no way out.

"I--I--reckon I'll have to do it if she's determined," Parker stuttered; "but--aw, h.e.l.l--I must have been crazy--"

"Who's determined on what?" Old Heck asked, puzzled by the queer jumble coming from the lips of the Quarter Circle KT foreman, "and how crazy?"

"Ophelia determined on marrying me!" Parker blurted out.

"Ophelia marry _you_?" Old Heck exclaimed. "Marry you! She can't! Her and me have already done it. We got married to-day--that was what I wanted to tell you!"

Momentarily a pang of regret shot through Parker's heart. It was quickly followed by a sense of relief.

"You--you--and Ophelia married?" he stammered.

"We sure are," Old Heck answered positively. "We done it to-day!"

Suddenly Parker determined to "cover up."

"My, lord!" he half-groaned, pretending terrible grief, "this is awful!

It--it--come so sudden--but there ain't no hard feelings, Old Heck!

I--I--wish you both joy and happiness!"

"Darned if that ain't white of you, Parker!" Old Heck exclaimed, immensely relieved. "I won't forget it! When you and the boys take them steers to Chicago, stay over a week or so and have a good time and count it in on expenses!"

Parker turned his head and in the darkness winked solemnly at a yellow star above the peak of Sentinel Mountain.