a most becoming
heightening of color, "it is so we will be--will be--better wives!"

"My Gawd!" Old Heck breathed fervently. "My Gawd! The Lord has been good
to me to-day!"

While Old Heck and Ophelia were in Eagle Butte getting married, Skinny
and Carolyn June had been riding line on the upland pasture fence. They
had just returned to the Quarter Circle KT, unsaddled their horses,
turned them into the pasture, gone to the house and stopped a moment on
the front porch to watch the glow in the west--the sun was dipping into
a thundercap over the Costejo Mountains--when the Clagstone "Six" rolled
down the grade and up to the string of poplars before the house.

"Gee, we thought you two had eloped!" Carolyn June laughed as the couple
climbed out of the car and came, rather bashfully, in at the gate. Old
Heck and Ophelia looked at each other guiltily.

"We did come darn near it!" Old Heck chuckled, plunging at once into the
task of breaking the news. "We got married--I reckon you'd call that the
next thing to eloping!"

"Got married?" Skinny and Carolyn June cried together.

"Who--who--got married?" Skinny repeated incredulously.

"Ophelia and me," Old Heck answered with a sheepish grin but proudly.
"Who else did you think we meant? We just thought," he continued by way
of explanation, "we'd go ahead and do it kind of private and save a lot
of excitement and everything!"

Carolyn June threw her arms around Ophelia and kissed her.

"Good-by, chaperon," she laughed With a half-sob in her throat,
"h--hello, '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 ejaculate, "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