eed at which they were traveling.

"Yonder's the ranch!" Skinny announced suddenly, turning half around in
his seat and pointing ahead and to the left toward the river.

The valley widened till it was a mile or more across. The Cimarron swung
sharply to the north and hugged the foot of the bench as if unwilling
to spoil the meadowlands past which it flowed. In a great
half-crescent--"Quarter Circle," Old Heck called it--the green
basin-like area lay spread out before them. It was a half dozen miles in
length, reaching from the canyon gate at the upper end of the valley
where the river turned abruptly northward, to the narrow gorge at the
south through which it disappeared.

A blue crane lazily flapped across the valley.

"Seven thousand acres in the bottoms," Skinny volunteered.

"Beautiful!" Carolyn breathed.

"Splendid!" Ophelia exclaimed.

Half-way down the valley, a quarter of a mile from the bench, the
buildings of the Quarter Circle KT clustered together in a group--the
low adobe house, bunk shack, stables, graineries. Out in the fields were
hay yards with half-built stacks of alfalfa--over the tops of the stacks
white tarpaulins. In a pasture beyond the house were horses and cattle,
perhaps a hundred head in all. Climbing the hills north of the river
were a number of moving figures, dimly seen through the haze.

"Are those cattle," Carolyn June asked, "those things across the river?"

"Where?" Skinny inquired.

"Over there, on the hills," pointing toward the objects.

Old Heck glancing in the direction she indicated answered for Skinny:

"That's Parker and the boys, going over to the North Springs--they're
checking up on some yearlings we just turned across from this side of
the range." Then, speaking to Skinny: "They've already had their dinner
and won't be in till supper-time--"

"Are they cowboys?" Carolyn June asked.

"I reckon," Old Heck responded.

"Is Skinny one?" she inquired naively.

"Sort of, I suppose," Old Heck chuckled while Skinny felt his face
coloring up with embarrassment, "but not a wild one."

"Oh, who is that?" Carolyn June cried suddenly as a lone rider whirled
out of the corral, around the stables, and his horse sprang into a
gallop straight down the valley toward the harrows at its lower end.

"That," Skinny said after a quick glance, "oh, that's th' Ramblin'
Kid--Where in thunder do you reckon the darned fool's going now?" he
added to Old Heck.

"Can't tell nothing