sultry motionless
night.

Bert looked through the window and saw Skinny lean back in his chair,
his eyes closed and an expression of supreme content stealing over his
face.

"Skinny's gone--he's surrendered," he said to Chuck, lying full length
on the porch at his side; "look at the poor cuss with his eyes shut and
grinning as if he was seeing visions of Paradise!"

"That combination would capture most anybody," Chuck answered. "I'm
starting to feel affectionate myself."

Bert didn't reply, Chuck having expressed too nearly his own swelling
emotions.

"Uncle Josiah!" Carolyn June called, suddenly whirling around on the
piano stool as she finished the last bars of _La Paloma_, "may I have a
horse?"

Old Heck, grown silent under the spell of the music, and, like Skinny,
sitting dreaming dreams that almost frightened him, started quickly.

"A--a what?" he asked.

"A horse--" she answered, "a broncho to ride!"

"Oh, uh--sure! Skinny, go get her one!" he replied confusedly.

"Not now," Carolyn June laughed, "to-morrow--any time, whenever I want
to use it!"

"Can you ride?" Skinny asked eagerly.

"Ever since I can remember," Carolyn June said, "daddy has kept
horses--I love 'em! Ophelia rides, too," she added.

"In automobiles--" Ophelia corrected.

"That's a good arrangement," Skinny said; "it will make everything work
out all right."

"I don't understand," Carolyn June said; "what arrangement?"

"We'd better be going to bed, Skinny," Old Heck interposed anxiously,
"it's getting late!"

"Guess we had," Skinny said reluctantly. "Gosh, it's warm to-night!"

"You can leave the door and windows open," Old Heck said to Ophelia and
Carolyn June as he and Skinny moved toward the door; "we don't have
burglars out here."

Parker and the cowboys straightened up when they heard Skinny and Old
Heck preparing to leave and went around the corner of the building
toward the bunk-house.

Ophelia and Carolyn June stepped out on the porch with Old Heck and
Skinny.

The air was oppressively still and hot. The black cloud bank that had
hung over the Costejo Mountains earlier in the evening now covered the
whole western half of the sky. Night sounds seemed almost stifled by the
suffocating heat. From the pasture below the stables the faint call of a
kill-deer suddenly shrilled out, followed by intense silence. No
lightning flash filled the wall-like blackness slowly creeping over the
earth from the west. A pale glow