t Old Heck is
aiming to get you a saddle. He spoke about it this morning when we were
getting the car out to go to town--"

"Dear old uncle," Carolyn June said warmly, "I love him already--don't
you, Ophelia?"

Parker colored and looked quickly, with a worried expression on his
face, at the widow. She flushed also.

"That's personal, my dear," she answered, "and rather abrupt!"

Parker went out to put the Clagstone "Six" in the garage.

"Carolyn June," Ophelia said when they were alone, "I have made a
discovery--"

"It is?" questioningly.

"That western Texas is the 'quickest' country in the world!" the widow
answered.

"Please explain," Carolyn June said, "although," demurely, with certain
memories fresh in her mind, "I fancy I can almost guess--"

"Yesterday," Ophelia continued rather breathlessly, "we arrived at the
Quarter Circle KT; last night at the supper table I met Mr. Parker for
the first time; ten minutes later he kicked me--accidentally, I
think--on the shins; I saw him again at breakfast this morning; to-day
we drove to Eagle Butte and this afternoon"--she paused and then with a
quick, nervous laugh finished--"he asked me to marry him!"

"Good lord," Carolyn June gasped, "that is--'pronto'--as these cowboys
say! 'Quick' with a vengeance! There must be something in this western
air that makes them do it!"

"It was all I could do this morning to keep Skinny from--" she started
to say, then shifted again to the subject of Parker. "Did he know that
you are--"

"National Organizer for the 'Movement,'" Ophelia filled in. "Yes, I had
already confessed. I told him as we were driving to town--and the
other--the shock--came just after we crossed the bridge when we were
returning home!"

"He is a bold, dangerous man!" Carolyn June exclaimed, in mock
seriousness, "trying to get ahead of Uncle Josiah!"

"I inferred as much," the widow explained; "he told me that to-morrow
would be your uncle's 'day'--whatever he meant by that; the next he, Mr.
Parker himself, would be 'around' again. 'Unless Old Heck took some fool
notion or other;' before long he would be away on the beef hunt and one
can never tell what might happen while one is gone and, well, that's the
way he felt about it, so he just said it--"

"And you?"

"Naturally was completely surprised, entirely non-committal, and made no
definite agreement!" Ophelia laughed softly.

CHAPTER IX

OLD HECK'S STRATEGY

It was late when Old He