That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.

After breakfast the Ramblin’ Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west half of the Cimarron range.

The week that followed passed quickly.

During the entire period the Kiowa lay under a mantle of sunshine by day and starlit skies by night.

Carolyn June once more provided the evening dessert of coffee-jelly and Skinny finished teaching her the art of dipping bread in milk and egg batter, frying it in hot butter, and calling the result “French toast”

Skinny again put on the white shirt and the shamrock tinted tie.  He had not dared to wear what Chuck called his “love-making rigging” during the week of the Rodeo.  It would have made him entirely too conspicuous among the hundreds of other cowboys gathered at Eagle Butte for the big celebration.  Situations filled with embarrassment would have been almost certain to develop.

“It’s getting so it needs a washing a little,” Skinny remarked to Carolyn June the first time he reappeared in the once snowy garment.

He was quite right.

Carolyn June herself had noticed that the shirt had lost some of its immaculateness.

“It doesn’t look hardly as white as it did at first!”

“No, it don’t,” Skinny answered seriously.  “I guess I’ll wash it to-morrow.  I never did wash one but I reckon it ain’t so awful hard to do—­”

“I’ll help you,” Carolyn June volunteered.  “I’ve never washed one either, but it will be fun to learn how!”

The next day they washed the shirt.

The ceremony was performed in the kitchen after they had finished doing the breakfast dishes.  Ophelia, after water for a vase of roses, came into the room while Skinny was rinsing the shirt in the large tin dishpan.

The garment was a sickly yellow.

“Darned if I know what’s wrong with it,” Skinny said, a trifle discouraged, while Carolyn June, her sleeves rolled above dimpled elbows, stood by and watched the slushy operation.  “Carolyn June and me both have blamed near rubbed our fingers off trying to get it to look right again but somehow or other it don’t seem to work.”

“Did you put bluing in your rinse water?” Ophelia asked with a laugh.

“Bluing?” Carolyn June and Skinny questioned together.  “What does that do to it?”

“Bleaches it—­makes it white,” the widow replied with another laugh as she returned to the front room.

“By golly, maybe that’s what it needs!” Skinny exclaimed hopefully.

“Of course,” Carolyn June cried gaily.  “How silly we were not to think of it!  Any one ought to know you put bluing in the water when you wash things.  Wonder if Sing Pete has any around anywhere?”

They searched the kitchen shelves and found a pint bottle, nearly full, of the liquid indigo compound.