the direction of Battle Ridge, where the beef hunt was to
begin.

The circular corral was empty.

The Ramblin' Kid was riding the Gold Dust maverick. Captain Jack was
with the saddle horses which Pedro, the Mexican, had wrangled on ahead
of the other riders an hour before.

The filly made no effort to throw the Ramblin' Kid on this her second
riding. She seemed perfectly willing to carry the burden on her back.
Carolyn June watched the beautiful mare as she stepped lightly and
daintily along beside the other horses, and when the group disappeared
among the rolling ridges across the river the ranch someway seemed
deserted and she felt strangely alone, although Ophelia, Old Heck and
Skinny were standing at her side.

Sing Pete followed the riders, jolting along in the grub-wagon,
awkwardly driving, with much clucking and pidgin-English, Old Tom and
Baldy hitched to the heavy, canvas-covered vehicle with its
"box-kitchen" and mess-board protruding gawkily out from the rear.

Old Heck heaved a sigh of relief. There was a feeling of serene peace in
his heart, now that Parker and the cowboys were safely away on the
round-up. In Skinny's heart the feeling was echoed.

For a week or more they would be able to love Ophelia and Carolyn June
without the constant fear of interruption.

Only one thing troubled Old Heck. The widow had not yet exposed her hand
in that suffragette movement or whatever it was. He dreaded the form in
which it might, sooner or later, break out. But at that he would be glad
to have it over. At present he felt as though he were sitting on the
edge of a volcano, or above an unexplored blast of dynamite at the
bottom of a well. Meanwhile he would have to wait and watch--and hope
for the best.

The week that followed was heaven and hell, mixed together, for Old Heck
and Skinny.

The women were lovely and lovable to the last degree, but cautious and
tormentingly self-restrained when it came to loving. At the first
intimation of dangerous sentimentality on the part of Old Heck the widow
would suddenly and without an instant's warning change the subject. When
Skinny had been pensive and silent for half an hour or so and would then
start, in a halting and quivering voice, to say something, Carolyn June
invariably interrupted with a remark about the weather, the Gold Dust
maverick, the Ramblin' Kid, Old Heck, Sing Pete, the yellow cat, the
coming Rodeo, Ophelia or something else.

They paired on the wo