“How much do you suppose we ought to put in?” Carolyn June asked, pulling the cork from the bottle and holding it poised over the pan of water in which the shirt, a slimy, dingy mass, floated drunkenly.

“Darned if I know,” Skinny said, scratching his head.  “She said it would make it white—­I reckon the more you put in the whiter the blamed thing’ll be.  Try about half of it at first and see how ’it works!”

“Gee, isn’t it pretty?” Carolyn June gurgled as she tipped the bottle and the waves of indigo spread through the water, covering the shirt with a deep crystalline blue.

“You bet!” Skinny exclaimed.  “That ought to fix it!”

It did.

The shirt, when finally dried, was a wonderful thing—­done in a sort of mottled, streaky, marbled sky and cloud effect.

But Skinny wore it, declaring he liked it better—­that it more nearly matched the shamrock tie—­than when it was “too darned white and everything!”

To Parker and the boys on the beef hunt everything was business.

The days were filled with hard riding as they gathered the cattle, bunched the fat animals, cut out and turned back those unfit for the market, stood guard at night over the herd, steadily and rapidly cleaned the west half of the Kiowa range of the stuff that was ready to sell.

It was supper-time on one of the last days of the round-up.

The outfit was camped at Dry Buck.  Bed rolls, wrapped in dingy gray tarpaulins or black rubber ponchos, were scattered about marking the places where each cowboy that night would sleep.  The herd was bunched a quarter of a mile away in a little cove backed by the rim of sand-hills.  Captain Jack and Silver Tip, riderless but with their saddles still on, were nipping the grass near the camp—­the Ramblin’ Kid and Chuck were to take the first watch, until midnight, at “guard mount.”  Parker and the cowboys were squatted, legs doubled under them, their knees forming a table on which to hold the white porcelain plate of “mulligan,” in a circle at the back of the grub-wagon.  Sing Pete trotted around the group and poured black, blistering-hot coffee into the unbreakable cups on the ground at the side of the hungry, dusty riders.

The sun had just dipped into the ragged peaks of the Costejo range and a reddish-purple crown lay on the crest of Sentinel Mountain forty miles to the southeast.

“It looks to me like Parker’s sort of losing out,” Chuck suddenly remarked, as he wiped his lips on the back of his hand after washing down a mouthful of the savory stew with gulps of steaming coffee.  “Ophelia stuck closer than thunder to Old Heck all through the Rodeo.”

Parker reddened and growled:  “Aw, hell—­don’t start that up again!”

“By criminy, she didn’t stick any closer to Old Heck than Skinny stuck to Carolyn June,” Bert complained.  “Nobody else had a look-in!”

“Skinny’s sure earning his money,” Charley muttered half enviously.