go ahead and get--get--drunk, 'soused,' all
over--just this once!"

With only a passing 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 Butte 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, hell--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