As the bills came from the Ramblin' Kid's pocket the silver butterfly clasp of the garter caught in the paper currency and the elastic band was drawn out and dropped, at the side of his chair, on the floor next to Sabota.

The Greek and Skinny saw, at the same time, the dainty satin ribbon.

Sabota stepped quickly forward and with the toe of his shoe kicked the garter toward the bar, where all could see it.

"Look what th' Ramblin' Kid's been carrying!" he exclaimed with a coarse laugh. "Some size garter, that!" And guessing at random that it had belonged to Carolyn June, he added: "Old Heck's niece must be—damned convenient and accommodating!"

A laugh started from the lips of the crowd. It was instantly checked and a dead silence followed as the Ramblin' Kid looked around, saw Sabota leering down at the trinket and heard his vulgar insinuation. He slowly pushed his chair back from the table and with eyes half-closed—the lids tightening until there were but narrow slits through which the black pupils burned like drops of jet—he began slowly to straighten up. Not a sound came from his lips save the deep, regular breathing those sitting near could hear and which was like a bellows fanning embers into a white heat. His mouth was drawn back in a smile, almost caressing in its softness, but a thousand times more menacing than the black scowl on the face of the Greek.

The Ramblin' Kid's gun was at his hip, but he made no move to draw it.

Sabota watched the slender young cowboy. A look of contempt and derision was in his eyes. The Greek was no taller, but full eighty pounds heavier than the other. But he forgot that the other's lithe body moving with the calm, undulating grace of a panther preparing to spring was all clean youth, muscle and courage, unbroken by any debauchery!

"That's a hell of a thing for a man to pack," the giant bully cried nastily, "and it's a hell of a lady that gives it to a man to pack!"

With a sneering laugh he raised his foot and brought it down on the garter, grinding the silver clasp and the satin ribbon under the sole of his shoe.

"You damned black cur!" The Rambling' Kid spoke scarcely louder than a whisper, yet his voice echoed throughout the tense silence of the room. "I'll put my heel in your face for that!"

Sabota threw back his head to laugh.

For a second of time the Ramblin' Kid crouched, then shot through the air like a wire spring drawn far back and suddenly released, and with an his hundred and forty pounds of nerve and sinew behind it his right fist smashed the big Greek squarely on the half-open mouth, splitting the thick lip wide and causing a red stream to spurt from the gash. Sabota staggered back and, would have fallen had he not crashed against the hardwood bar.

As the Greek reeled away from the garter the Ramblin' Kid stooped quickly forward, picked up the elastic and dropped it again into his pocket.

With a roar like a mad bull Sabota rushed his slight antagonist. Lunging forward, blind with rage, he aimed a murderous blow at the head of the Ramblin' Kid. The cowboy ducked, but not in time to escape the wide swing of the massive, hairy fist. The Greek's knuckles raked the side of the Kid's face and the blood rained down his cheek from a cruel cut under the eye. The Ramblin' Kid spun around like a top and for the fraction of a second stood swaying uncertainly.

For a moment they faced each other, crouching, watching for an opening. Sabota's great hands worked convulsively, eager to grasp and crush his wiry opponent; the Ramblin' Kid, with lips curled back from white teeth, like a pure-bred terrier circling a mastiff, bent forward, every muscle tense as drawn copper, his eyes cold as a rattler's as he searched for a place to strike!

The crowd in the pool-room instinctively kept far back and gave the unequal combatants ample room.

From Sabota's lips poured a steady torrent of blasphemy. The Ramblin' Kid made no sound as, with body swaying slowly from side to side, his shoulders heaved with the full, heavy breaths that reached to the bottom of his lungs.

Suddenly, like some wild beast, Sabota sprang forward. The Ramblin' Kid met him—in mid-air—right and left jolting, almost at the same instant, into the beefy jaws of the Greek. At the impact a claw-like hand shot out and the gorilla fingers of the left hand of the brute-man the Ramblin' Kid fought, closed over the throat of the cowboy. Sabota threw his right arm around the back of his antagonist, gripping the shoulder on the far side of his body and drew the slender form toward him—pinning the Ramblin' Kid's left arm and hand to his side.

Skinny's hand dropped to the butt of his gun and rested there.

The Ramblin' Kid struggled desperately in the strangling grasp of the crazed Greek. The two reeled back and forth, crashing chairs and tables to the floor, and lunged against the bar. The Ramblin' Kid's gun fell from its scabbard at the side of the brass foot-rail. Sabota's eyes glared down into the face of the man he was choking to death—gleaming with the ferocity of an animal gone mad—Awhile bloody foam spewed from his bleeding lips. The cowboy's face was beginning to flush a terrible purple as the breath was gradually crushed from his body.

As the Greek forced him back, bending him down and over, the Ramblin' Kid, his eyes burning like fire while a million flashes of light seemed to stab the darkness before them and needles darted through every fiber of his flesh, wrenched his right arm free and gripping the back of Sabota's shirt with his left hand to give purchase to the blow, with all the strength left in his body, drove the knuckles of his right fist into the left temple of the Greek.

The blow went home.

A film, like a veil drawn across the fiendish glare in them, spread over the eyes of Sabota, his grip on the throat of the cowboy relaxed and as a bull, struck by the hammer of the butcher, he dropped to the floor.

The Ramblin' Kid crouched, panting, over the massive bulk.

Sabota slowly opened his eyes and started to raise his battered head. With a laugh the cowboy swung terrible right and left blows into the Greek's face. The head dropped back.

Again the Ramblin' Kid stooped low, waiting for another sign of life from the prostrate form.

Red Jackson slipped from behind the bar, half bent forward, moved stealthily up behind the Ramblin' Kid; one hand drawn partly back held, by the neck, a heavy beer bottle. Skinny saw his intention. Instantly the Quarter Circle KT cowboy's forty-four was jerked from its holster and the blue-steel barrel swung against the side of the bartender's head. He pitched over in a limp heap and the bottle crushed against the brass foot-rail, breaking into a thousand fragments. A half-dozen of Sabota's crowd started forward. Skinny's gun whipped around in front of him.

"Keep back, y' sons-of-hell!" he snarled, "Sabota's gettin' what's coming to him!"

The Greek's eyes opened. His fingers touched the butt of the Ramblin' Kid's revolver and began to close slowly over the handle of the weapon.

"Make him quit," one of the pool-room loafers whined; "he's killed him!"

The Ramblin' Kid saw Sabota reach for the gun. He answered the speaker and the Greek's effort to get the forty-four at the same time:

"Not yet—but now!" he cried with a low laugh and leaped with both heels squarely on the bloody face of Sabota! There was a horrible crunching sound as of bones and flesh being ground into pulp. The fingers about to close on the handle of the revolver grew limp, the Greek's head, a hideous, scarcely recognizable mass, slumped to one side and lay perfectly still.

An instant longer the Ramblin' Kid looked at him, then reached over, picked up his gun and slipped it into the holster at his hip.

As he straightened up, Tom Poole, the marshal, rushed into the pool-room. He covered the Ramblin' Kid with his revolver and placed him under arrest.

"You don't need to get excited, Tom!" the Ramblin' Kid laughed. "I didn't do nothin' but kill that damned black cur layin' there! Come on—I want to get out in th' air—I never like to stay around where dead skunks are!"

They moved toward the door.

Poole dropped his gun back in its scabbard and walked at the side of the now apparently peaceful young cowboy.

At the door the marshal looked around:

"Some of you fellers get the doctor or undertaker—whichever he needs—and take care of Sabota!" he called to the group around the body of the Greek.

Like a flash the muzzle of the Ramblin' Kid's gun was pressed against the side of Poole.

"Put 'em up, Tom!" he snapped, "I don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to—I ain't goin' to rot in no jail just for stampin' a dirty snake-to death!"

The marshal's hands shot into the air as if operated by springs.

The Ramblin' Kid, with his left hand, jerked Poole's revolver from its holster. He backed into the street toward where Captain Jack and Old Pie Face were standing, still with his own gun covering the officer.

"Jack!" he cried sharply, "meet me!"

The little stallion moved toward him.

With the thumb of the hand in which he held the marshal's gun the Ramblin' Kid threw open the breech and flipped the shells on the ground. He tossed the empty forty-four to one side, threw the reins over Captain Jack's head and the next instant was in the saddle. The broncho wheeled and was gone, in a dead run, toward the west.

The marshal rushed into the street and picked up his gun, jerked some cartridges from his belt, slipped them into the cylinder and fired quickly at the fleeing horse and rider.

The bullets whistled past the ear of the Ramblin' Kid.

He raised his own weapon, half-turned in the saddle, dropped the muzzle of the gun forward until it pointed at the flashes spitting from the officer's revolver. His finger started to tighten on the trigger.

"Hell," he muttered, "what's the use? Tom's just doin' what he thinks he has to do!" and the Ramblin' Kid slipped the gun, unfired, back into its holster.

A moment later Captain Jack whirled to the right across the Santa Fe tracks and bearing a little to the east, in the direction of Capaline, the dead volcano that rises out of the lavas northwest of the Quarter Circle KT, between the Purgatory and the Cimarron, disappeared in the black starlit night.



CHAPTER XX

MOSTLY SKINNY

It is a week to the day since the fight in the Elite Amusement Parlor in Eagle Butte. Since the Ramblin' Kid, followed by the wicked sing of the bullets from the marshal's gun, disappeared in the darkness no word has come from the fugitive cowboy, who beat to a pulp the burly Greek.

The Gold Dust maverick paces uneasily about in the circular corral and the Quarter Circle KT has settled into the hum-drum routine of ranch life.

Parker, Charley, Chuck and Bert are gone to Chicago with the train-load of beef cattle. Skinny bosses a gang of "picked-up" hay hands Old Heck brought out from Eagle Butte to harvest the second cutting of alfalfa. Pedro rides line daily on the upland pasture and Sing Pete hammers the iron triangle morning, noon and night, announcing the regular arrival of meal-time. The Chinaman is careful when he throws out empty tomato-cans—turning back the tin to make it impossible for the yellow cat again to fasten his head in one of the inviting traps, and the cook would imperil the hope of the return of his soul to the flowery Orient before he would put butter in the bottom of a can to entice the animal into trouble.

Old Heck and Ophelia are like a pair of nesting doves and there is a new vigor to the step of the owner of the Quarter Circle KT, a revived interest in affairs generally; years seem to have fallen from his shoulders.

Carolyn June smiles sweetly as ever at Skinny, spends much time riding alone over the valley and hills; in her eyes there has come a more thoughtful—often a wistful—expression.

Sabota did not die.

After the escape of the Ramblin' Kid the marshal reentered the pool-room and had the big Greek removed to the hotel. A doctor was called and set as well as possible the broken jaws, the crushed nose, picked out the fragments of bone and the loosened teeth, sewed up the terrible gashes on Sabota's face and left the bully groaning and profaning in half-conscious agony.

The night of the fight Skinny took Old Pie Face back to the barn.

The cowboy's heart was heavy with remorse. He blamed himself for all the trouble. Had he not wanted to make a fool of himself and get drunk the Ramblin' Kid would not have come to Eagle Butte, the fight would not have occurred, the friend he had ridden with through storm and sunshine—whom he had stood "night guard" and fought mad stampedes into "the mill"—would not now be an outcast sought by the hand of the law.

News of the beating the Ramblin' Kid gave Sabota traveled fast.

It was flashed over Eagle Butte that the Greek was dead.

"So th' Ramblin' Kid killed old Sabota, did he?" the hostler at the livery barn asked Skinny as he stepped out to care for the cowboy's horse. "What was it over? Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid 'doped' the day of the sweepstakes?"

Skinny looked keenly, searchingly, at the stableman.

"What do you mean—'Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid doped?'" he asked sharply.

"Why, didn't you know?" the hostler replied. "I thought everybody knowed. Gyp Streetor told me about it the day of the race—I used to know Gyp when he was a kid back east. I saw him as he was beating it to get out of town. He borrowed five dollars from me. Said Sabota hired him to put 'knock-out' in some coffee for th' Ramblin' Kid and he reckoned the dose wasn't big enough or something. Anyhow, it didn't hold him under long as they thought it would and when he saw the Gold Dust maverick show up on the track he got scared—was afraid it would leak out or th' Ramblin' Kid would suspect him and try to 'get' him after the race, so he ducked out of town—"

"You ain't lying about that?" Skinny asked.

"What would I want to lie about it for?" the other replied. "Wasn't that what made th' Ramblin' Kid kill the Greek?"

"No, it was something else," Skinny answered; "but Sabota ain't dead. He's just crunched up pretty bad—th' Ramblin' Kid jumped on him, like Captain Jack did on that feller from the Chickasaw that tried to steal him!"

Skinny's mind was in a whirl.

So the Ramblin' Kid was not drunk the day of the race! He was drugged— sick—yet, in spite of everything, rode the Gold Dust maverick and beat the black wonder-horse from the Vermejo! Lord! and they had all thought he was on a tear!

The bottle of whisky was still in the bosom of Skinny's shirt.

He had not touched it. He felt a sudden revulsion for the vile stuff.

"Here," he said, jerking the flask from its hiding-place and handing it to the hostler, "maybe you'd like that bottle of 'rot-gut'—I've swore off!"

"I ain't," the stableman laughed and took it eagerly.

Skinny remained in town that night and the next day, waiting for Parker and the Quarter Circle KT cowboys to come in with the beef cattle. They arrived about noon. Old Heck drove in with the Clagstone "Six." Ophelia and Carolyn June came with him. Skinny met them when Old Heck stopped the in front of the Occidental Hotel. He told them, while they still sat in the automobile, of the fight and the escape of the Ramblin' Kid.

"A drunken brawl!" Carolyn June thought, a wave of disgust sweeping over her.

"Th' Ramblin' Kid hadn't touched a drop," Skinny said, explaining the fight and almost as if he were answering her unspoken thought. "If he'd been drinking, I reckon Sabota would have killed him instead of his beating the Greek blamed near to death. I know now what he used to mean when he'd say, 'A man's a fool to put whisky in him when he's facin' a tight squeeze!' The little devil sure needed everything he had—nerve and head and muscle and all—for the job he tackled last night!"

Skinny didn't tell them that his hand had rested on the handle of his own gun—determined that he, himself, would kill Sabota if the brute succeeded in choking the Ramblin' Kid to death.

"What was the fight about?" Old Heck asked.

"A pink ribbon or something with a little silver do-funny on it—it looked like a sleeve-holder or a garter—dropped out of th' Ramblin' Kid's pocket and Sabota made a nasty remark about it," Skinny said.

Carolyn June caught her breath and her face flushed.

"The Greek said something about Carolyn June, I didn't just hear what," Skinny continued, "and then he smashed the ribbon under his foot. The next instant th' Ramblin' Kid was trying to kill him!

"It's a pity he didn't succeed!" Old Heck exclaimed. "The damned filthy whelp—excuse me, Ophelia, for cussing, but I just had to say It!"

"It's all right," was the laughing rejoinder, "I—I—wanted to say it myself!"

Carolyn June's eyes glowed. Her heart felt as if a weight had been lifted from it So, the Ramblin' Kid had kept the odd souvenir, and he cared—he cared!

"Go ahead," she whispered to Skinny; "what then?"

"I reckon that's about all," Skinny answered. "Th' Ramblin' Kid smashed Sabota and as he staggered back, picked up the ribbon—then he didn't quit till he thought the Greek was dead. Tom Poole arrested him, but th' Ramblin' Kid got the drop on him and got away. He was justified in beating Sabota up anyhow," he added, "on account of the dirty cuss hiring a feller to 'dope' him so he couldn't ride the maverick the day of the big race—"

"'Dope' him?" Old Heck interrupted, puzzled.

"Yes," Skinny explained, "the Greek had a feller named Gyp Streetor put some stuff in th' Ramblin? Kid's coffee. He wasn't drunk at all—he was just poisoned with 'knock-out!'"

"Good lord!" Old Heck exclaimed. "And he rode that race when he was drugged! While we all thought he'd gone to pieces and was drunk!"

Carolyn June's cheeks suddenly turned pale. He cared, but he was gone! Perhaps never to come back! It seemed as if an iron hand was clutching at her throat!

She and Ophelia went into the hotel and Old Heck and Skinny drove the car over to the stock-yards where the cattle were being loaded.

After Parker and the cowboys were on their way east with the steers and before he returned to the ranch Old Heck went into the room in which Sabota lay. The Greek's head was a mass of white bandages. His eyes battered and swollen shut, he could not see the face of his visitor.

For a moment Old Heck looked at him, his lips parted in a smile of contempt lightened with satisfaction.

"Well, Sabota," he said at last, "th' Ramblin' Kid didn't quite do his duty, did he? If he had gone as far as he ought to you wouldn't be laying there—they'd just about now be hiding your dirty carcass under six feet of 'dobe!'"

Sabota mumbled some guttural, unintelligible reply.

"Listen, you infernal skunk," Old Heck went on coldly, "as quick as you're able to travel you'll find Eagle Butte's a right good place to get away from! You understand what I mean. If I catch you around, well, I won't use no fists!" And without waiting for an answer he turned and left the room.

The owner of the Quarter Circle KT then hunted lip the marshal of Eagle Butte.

"Tom," he said, "I reckon you'll be looking some for th' Ramblin' Kid, after what happened last night, won't you?"

The marshal had heard of Sabota's effort to have the young cowboy drugged the day of the race and also the immediate cause for the fight.

"Oh, I don't know as I will," he said, "unless the Greek makes some charge or other. I don't imagine he'll do that"

"I know blamed well he won't!" Old Heck interrupted. "But how about th' Ramblin' Kid putting his gun in your ribs—resisting an officer and so on?"

"Putting his gun in my ribs? Resisting an officer?" the lanky Missourian answered with a sly grin; "who said he put a gun on me—or resisted an officer or anything? I ain't heard nothing about it!"

Two days later Sabota, with the help of "Red" Jackson, managed to get to the Santa Fe station. He was able to travel and he did travel. Jackson said he went to the "Border." Eagle Butte did not know or care—the Cimarron town was through with him.

When Old Heck, Carolyn June and Ophelia returned to the Quarter Circle KT the evening of the day following the fight, the Gold Dust maverick whinnied lonesomely from the circular corral as the Clagstone "Six" stopped in front of the house.

"What are we going to do with that filly?" Old Heck asked, looking at the beautiful creature with her head above the bars of the corral gate.

"I am going to ride her!" Carolyn June said softly. "Until the Ramblin' Kid comes back and claims her she is mine! She loves me and I can handle her!"

"I'm afraid—" Old Heck started to protest.

"You need not be," Carolyn June interrupted, "the Gold Dust maverick and I know each other—she understands me and I understand her—she will be perfectly gentle with me!"

The next day Carolyn June rode the wonderful outlaw mare. It was as she said. The filly was perfectly gentle with her. After that, every day, the girl saddled the Gold Dust maverick and, unafraid, took long rides alone.

* * * * *

The night the cattle were shipped Skinny had supper in Eagle Butte. He sat alone at a small table at one side of the dining-room in the Occidental Hotel. The cowboy was the picture of utter misery. Parker, Charley, Chuck, Bert were gone to Chicago with steers; the Ramblin' Kid was gone—nobody knew where; Skinny's dream about Carolyn June was gone—she didn't love him, she just liked him; even his whisky was gone, he had given it to the hostler at the barn; he didn't have any friends or anything.

"What's the matter, Skinny?" Manilla Endora, the yellow-haired waitress, asked softly, as she stepped up to the table and looked down a moment at the dejected cowboy. There was something in her voice that made Skinny pity himself more than ever. It made him want to cry. "What's wrong?' Manilla repeated almost tenderly.

"Everything!" Skinny blurted out, dropping his head on his arms. "The whole blamed works is shot to pieces!"

A little smile stole over Manilla's rosy lips.

"I know what it is," she said gently, unreproachfully; "it's that girl, Carolyn June. Yes, it is," as Skinny started to interrupt. "Oh, I don't blame you for falling for her!" she went on. "She is nice—but, well, Skinny-boy," her voice was a caress, "Old Heck's niece is not the sort for you. You and her wouldn't fit at all—the way you wanted—and anyhow, there—there—are others," coloring warmly.

Skinny looked up into the honest blue eyes.

"You ain't sore at me or anything are you, Manilla?" he asked.

"Sore?" she answered. "Of course not!"

Hope sprung again into his heart. "I—I—thought maybe you would be," he stammered.

"Forget it!" she laughed. "The old world still wobbles!"

"Manilla, you—you're a peach!" he cried.

She chuckled. "Did you hear about that dance next Saturday night after the picture show?" she asked archly.

"No. Is there one?" with new interest in life.

"Yes," she replied, her lashes drooping demurely; "they say the music is going to be swell."

"If I come in will you—will we—go, Manilla?" he asked eagerly.

They would.

"Poor Skinny," Manilla murmured to herself as she went to the kitchen to get his order, "poor cuss—he can't keep from breaking his heart over every skirt that brushes against him, but"—and she laughed softly—"darn his ugly picture, I like him anyhow!"

After supper Skinny hurried to the Golden Rule store. It was still open.

"Give me a white shirt—number fifteen," he said to the clerk; "and be blamed sure it's the right size—they ain't worth a cuss if they're too big!"



CHAPTER XXI

A GIRL LIKE YOU

A lone rider guided his horse in the early night, among the black lavas, on the desolate desert near Capaline, the dead volcano. He rode to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron. Silently, steadily, like a dark shadow, the broncho picked his way among the fields of fire-blistered rock and held his course, unerringly, through the starlit gloom hanging over the earth before the late moon should flash its silver disk above the sand-hills miles to the east.

The rider was the Ramblin' Kid; the little horse—Captain Jack.

For a week, following the fight in Eagle Butte, the Ramblin' Kid had found shelter in the hut of "Indian Jake"—a hermit Navajo who, long ago, turned his face toward the flood of white civilization rolling over the last pitiful remnants of his tribe and drifted far toward the land of the rising sun. Among the scenes of desolation around the grimly cold volcano, alone, the old Indian made his last stand, and in a rude cabin, beside a tiny spring that seeped from under the black rock on the mountain-side, lived in splendid isolation—silent, brooding, desiring only to be left in peace with his few ponies, his small herd of cattle and the memories and traditions of his people.

The Ramblin' Kid and the lonely Navajo were friends since the Ramblin' Kid could remember.

The aged Indian's face was pitted with horrible scars—marks of the same disease that had cost the wandering cowboy his father and left him, years ago, an orphan, almost worshiped, because of the sacrifice his parent had made fighting the epidemic among the tribes of the Southwest.

Often the "Young Whirlwind"—the name by which the Indians knew the Ramblin' Kid and which old Jake himself always called the cowboy—spent a night, sometimes days, with his stoical friend among the lavas.

To him the cabin door was always open.

As Captain Jack, followed by the bullets from the marshal's revolver, dashed madly down the street of Eagle Butte, instinctively the Ramblin' Kid had turned the stallion toward the hut of the old Navajo.

The fugitive cowboy believed Sabota was dead.

Naturally the law would demand vengeance, even though the brutal Greek had deserved to die. Posses, undoubtedly, would scour the country, searching for his slayer. The Quarter Circle KT would be watched.

There was no regret in the heart of the Ramblin' Kid. Instead he felt a strange elation. With his fists and heels he had beaten the giant Greek into a lifeless mass!

"'Ign'rant—savage—stupid—brute!" he muttered as Captain Jack sped from the scene of fight; "I reckon she was pretty near right!"

At gray dawn he swung down from the back of the little stallion at the door of the Indian's hut.

Old Jake asked no questions.

The Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered:

"Killed a man—Sabota—got to lay low, Jake—some three, four, five days! Then I go—south—Mexico!"

"The Young Whirlwind had cause?" the Navajo grunted sententiously.

"Sure—plenty!" the Ramblin' Kid laughed, slipping his hand to his breast pocket and caressing the pink satin garter.

"It is good," the Indian said. "The Navajo will watch!"

For seven days the Ramblin' Kid rested, securely, in the lonely hut among the lavas and "pot-holes" of the desert. Then he saddled Captain Jack and when the full shadow of night had settled over the desolation about him mounted the little broncho and turned him to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron, toward the Quarter Circle KT, where the Gold Dust maverick waited, alone, in the corral.

Carolyn June could not sleep. The night was more than half gone and still she sat on the front porch and watched the gradual spread of a misty, silvery sheen over the brow of the bench and the distant peaks of the shadowy Costejo range as the pale moon, in its last half, lifted itself above the sand-hills at the gap through which the Cimarron tumbled out of the valley.

Old Heck and Ophelia had retired hours ago.

The Quarter Circle KT was sleeping. From the meadows the heavy odor of wilted alfalfa hung on the night air as the dew sprinkled the windrows of new-cut hay.

A strange restlessness filled the heart of the girl.

Something seemed to be holding her in a tense, relentless grip. She had no desire to seek her room. Indeed, she felt that the air of the house would stifle her. She arose and strolled idly through the gate, past the bunk-house where Skinny, Pedro and the hay hands snored peacefully, as she wandered aimlessly through the slanting moonlight down to the circular corral.

The Gold Dust maverick seemed to reflect the girl's own uneasy mood.

The filly moved with quick nervous strides about the corral. As Carolyn June leaned against the bars and stretched out her hand the mare whinnied softly, tossed her head, nosed an instant the white fingers and trotted in a circle around the enclosure.

"What's the matter, Heart o' Gold?" Carolyn June laughed sympathetically, "can't you either?"

In the shed at the side of the corral, on the spot where, that first morning, the Ramblin' Kid's saddle had rested and the cowboy slept, Carolyn June's own riding gear was lying. She glanced at the outfit For a second she fancied she saw again the slender form stretched in the shadow upon the ground while a pair of black inscrutable eyes looked with unfathomable melancholy up into her own.

"Seein' things!" she laughed jerkily, with a little catch in her throat. "I'll ride it off!"

Quickly she stepped over, picked up the saddle, bridle and blanket, returned to the corral gate, swung it open and entered.

The Gold Dust maverick came to her, as if eager, herself, to get out into the night.

A moment later Carolyn June was in the saddle and the mare, dancing lightly, pranced out of the gate. She turned swiftly toward the grade that led out to the bench and to Eagle Butte. They had almost reached the foot of the grade, when some impulse caused Carolyn June to whirl the filly about and gallop back past the barn and down the lane toward the Cimarron.

As the feet of the outlaw mare splashed into the water at the lower ford the Ramblin' Kid rode past the corner of the upland pasture fence and stopped Captain Jack on the brink of the ridge looking down at the crossing. Below him the river whirled in dark eddies under the overhanging curtains of cottonwoods and willows; the Quarter Circle KT lay in the hollow of the valley, like a faint etching of silent restfulness; through the tops of the trees a white splash of moonlight struck on the smooth level surface of the treacherous quicksand bar that had drawn Old Blue down to an agonizing death and from which, scarcely a month ago, the Ramblin' Kid had dragged Carolyn June.

This, the Ramblin' Kid believed, was his last long look at the Quarter Circle KT.

He would ride down to the circular corral, turn out the Gold Dust maverick—give her again to the range and freedom—and while the unconscious sleepers at the ranch dreamed he would pass on, silently, toward the south and Mexico should throw about him her black arms of mystery!

For a while he sat and gazed down on the shadowy scene while his mind throbbed with memory of the incidents of the last few weeks. He drew the pink satin garter from his pocket, looked at it a long moment—suddenly crushed it tightly in his hand while his eyes closed as if renouncing a vision that had come before them—then carefully, that the dainty thing might not be lost, replaced it in the pocket that was over his heart.

At last he swung to the ground and tightened the front cinch of his saddle.

As he pulled the leather into place the sound of nervous hoofs kicking the gravel on the grade that led to the ridge on which he stood shattered the silence around him. The Ramblin' Kid whirled and faced the direction in which the approaching horse, would appear. His hand dropped to his gun and without raising the weapon from his hip he leveled it to cover the turn in the road a few feet away.

The waxy mane of the outlaw filly rocked into view as she sprang up and around the turn on to the ridge.

On the maverick's back, bareheaded, her brown hair tumbled about her neck, was Carolyn June.

Captain Jack pricked forward his ears at the sound of hoofs and as the beautiful mare leaped around the turn and appeared above the bank of the grade the little roan squealed a nicker of recognition. The filly sprang forward, swerved to the side of the stallion, and with an answering whinny stopped.

"Oh!" Carolyn June gasped, as the horses met and she saw the Ramblin' Kid, his gun still in his hand, standing beside Captain Jack.

There was a brief, questioning silence.

"What th' hell!" he breathed.

"What the—'hell—yourself!" she laughed nervously. "Is—this—is this a hold-up?"

"What are you doin' here—this time of night—an' on that filly?" he asked without heeding her question.

"I'm riding that—this—filly!" Carolyn June shot back independently. "And what are you doing here—at this time of—Oh," she added, before he could answer, "I—I—believe my saddle's slipping!" and she swung lightly from the back of the outlaw mare.

"That filly'll kill you," he began.

"She will not!" Carolyn June interrupted with a pout. "I—I—guess you're not the only one, Mister 'Nighthawk,' that knows the way to the heart of a horse! If you were just as wise about—" but she stopped, her blush hidden as she turned her back to the rising moon.

"They was made for each other!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself. Then he spoke aloud: "I reckon you know," he said slowly, "why I'm ridin' at night—about me killin' Sabota—I'm leavin'—"

"But Sabota isn't dead," she interrupted again. "You don't need to go away!"

"Sabota ain't dead!" the Ramblin' Kid exclaimed. "Then I'll go back to Eagle Butte instead of—Mexico!"

"Why?" Carolyn June asked.

"To finish th' job!" and his voice was dangerously soft.

"You can't finish it," she laughed. "He isn't in Eagle Butte! The Greek has gone away and—well, it—it—was a good 'job'—good enough the way you did it! I—I—don't want you 'teetotally' to kill him—clear, all the way dead," she stammered. "The way it is you—you—won't have to—leave!"

"What's th' difference?" he said dully. "It's time I was ramblin' anyhow!"

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Listen, Ramblin' Kid," she broke in, "I—I—know all about everything—about what started the fight—"

"You do?" looking quickly and keenly at her. "Who told you?"

"Skinny," she answered; "he saw it. Said it was a pale pink ribbon or something with a little silver 'do-funny' on it!" she finished with a laugh.

"I—I—reckon you want it back, then?" the Ramblin' Kid said, reaching to his left breast. "You wouldn't want—"

"Did I say I wanted it?" Carolyn June questioned naively.

"And I know," she hurried on, "about you being drugged the day of the race! Why didn't you say you were sick? We—we—thought you were drunk!"

"Nobody asked me," he answered without interest.

"Does everybody have to—to—ask you everything?" she questioned suggestively. "Don't you ever—ever—'ask' anybody anything yourself?"

"What are you tryin' to do?" he said almost brutally, "play with me like you played with them other blamed idiots th' night of th' dance?"

"You're mean—" she started to say.

"Am I?" he interrupted, and spoke with sudden intenseness. "Maybe you think I am. Maybe you think a lot of things. Maybe you think God put them brown eyes in your face just so you could coax men, with a look out of them, to love you an' then laugh because th' damned fools do it!"

"You're unfair!" she replied. "I was just paying the boys back the night of the dance for—for—'framing' up on Ophelia and me the way they did!"

For a moment they looked squarely into each other's eyes. Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick nosed each other over the shoulders of their dismounted riders.

"Oh, well, it don't matter," the Ramblin' Kid finally said, wearily; "it don't matter, you're what you are an' I reckon you can't help it!"

Carolyn June said nothing.

"I—I—was goin' to turn th' filly back to th' range," he continued in the same emotionless voice, "but—well, you can have her—I'll trade her to you for—for—th' thing that started th' fight. You can ride th' maverick till you go back east—"

"I'm not going back east," she said in a hurt tone, "at least not for a long time. Dad is going to—to—get me a stepmother! He's going to marry some female person and he doesn't need me so I'm going to live—most of the time—with Uncle Josiah and Ophelia! Anyhow I—I—like it out west—or that is—I did like it—"

There was another little period of silence between them.

"Ramblin' Kid," Carolyn June spoke suddenly very softly, "Ramblin' Kid—why—why do you hate me?"

"Me hate you?" he answered slowly. "I don't hate you—I hate myself!"

"Yourself?" with a questioning lift of her voice.

"Yes, myself!" he replied with a short, bitter laugh. "Why shouldn't I—bein' an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!'"

Carolyn June flinched as he repeated the cruel words she herself had spoken, it seemed, now so long ago.

"You are right!" she said, after a pause, while a ripple of quivering, mischievous laughter leaped from her lips and she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Ramblin' Kid, you are indeed an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!' You are 'ign'rant,'" she continued while he looked at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes, "of the ways of a woman's heart; you are 'savage'—in the defense of a woman's honor; you are 'stupid'—not to see that it is the man a woman wants and not the thin social veneer; you are a 'brute'—an utter brute, Ramblin' Kid— to—to—make a girl almost tell you—tell you—that she—she—"

The sentence was not finished.

The Ramblin' Kid caught her by both shoulders. He pushed her back—arm's length—and held her while the clean moonlight poured down on her upturned face and his black eyes searched her own as though to read her very soul.

An instant she was almost frightened by the agony that was in his face.

Then she opened her mouth and laughed—such a laugh as comes only from the throat of a woman when love is having its way!

"By God!" he whispered, his voice hoarse with passion, his hot breath fanning the brown hair on her forehead; "this has gone far enough! I'll tell you what you want me to say—I'll say it! And it's the truth—I love you—love you—love you! Yes!" And he shook her toward him. "Do you hear me? I love you—love you—so much it hurts! Now laugh! Now make fun of me! I know I'm a fool. I know where I stand! I know I don't belong in your crowd—I ain't fit to mix with 'em! I ain't been raised like you was raised. You don't need to tell me that! I know it already! I know there's somethin' a man has to have besides what he gets on th' open range among th' cattle—an' th' bronchos—an' th' rattlesnakes—he's got to be ground in th' mill of schoolin'—of books; he's got to be hammered into shape under th' heels of 'civilization'; he's got to be trained to jump through and roll over an' know which fork to eat with before a girl like you—"

His hands relaxed, but before his fingers loosened their grip on her shoulders Carolyn June's own soft palms reached up and caught the man's sun-tanned cheeks between them. Her eyes burned back into its own. Once more the laugh rippled from the full pulsing throat.

"Ramblin' Kid, oh, Ramblin' Kid," she murmured, while the long lashes lifted over brown pools tenderness, "a man—my man—does not need to be or to know all of those things, any of those things, before a girl like me—"

He crushed her to him and stopped the words on her lips.

"My God—don't fool me—be sure you know!" he cried, his whole body quivering with the intensity of his feelings; "don't tell me you love me—unless you mean it! I can stand to love you—without hope—in silence—alone! But I can't—an' I swear I won't, be lifted up to Paradise just to be dropped again into the depths of hell! Don't say you love me unless you know it is all love! Half love ain't love—it's a lie! An' love ain't to play with! Don't insult God by makin' a joke of th' thing He made an' planted in th' hearts of all Creation to hold th' Universe together."

"Ramblin' Kid," she whispered softly, "God himself is looking down into my heart!"

He smothered her mouth with his own—they drank each other in, their souls mingled in a mad-sense-reeling, time-defying pressure of lips!

It was their hour, as was the next and yet the one that followed that.

When the old-rose of dawn melted the gray above the sand-hills behind them and the white moon was fading in the zenith above the Kiowa; when the cottonwoods beside the Cimarron began to shake their leaves in the morning breeze that tripped across the valley; when the low buildings of the Quarter Circle KT silhouetted against the bench beyond the meadows; when the smooth surface of the beach of quicksand under which the body of Old Blue was hidden began to look smoother yet and still more firm, the Ramblin' Kid and Carolyn June parted.

"I'm goin' away," he said; "I'm goin' away, Carolyn June, but I'm goin' for another reason now. I'm goin' away an' make myself so you'll never have a chance to be ashamed of me! I'm goin' away an' learn how to talk without cussin' 'most every other word—I'm goin' away an' get that polish I know; women love in men th' same as they love their own shoes to be shiny an' their own dresses to be soft an' dainty! When I've got that I'll come back! I ain't goin' to Mexico. I'm going to ride into that world that you come out of an' when I'm so you'll be proud to walk in that world with me—when I'm so you won't need to apologize for me in Hartville or any other place, I'm comin' back an' a preacher can O.K. th' bargain you an' me have made! Will you keep faith an' be true, Carolyn June? Will you keep faith an' be true—? Will you be waitin'?"

"I'll be waiting," she whispered, "—and keep faith and be true!"

And he rode away into the face of the red glow rising above the sand-hills. He rode away—to meet the morning sun—hidden yet behind the eastern horizon—to conquer himself, to master the ways of men, in the world that lay beyond!

Carolyn June watched him go.

Then she guided the outlaw filly down the grade, across the Cimarron and along the lane, in the gently stirring dawn, back to the still sleeping Quarter Circle KT. In her heart was a song; in her eyes a new light; in her soul a great peace—on her lips, a smile. She carried in her bosom their secret—hers and the Ramblin' Kid's—and she knew he would return, for he would not lie.

THE END