“Got married?” Skinny and Carolyn June cried together.

“Who—­who—­got married?” Skinny repeated incredulously.

“Ophelia and me,” Old Heck answered with a sheepish grin but proudly.  “Who else did you think we meant?  We just thought,” he continued by way of explanation, “we’d go ahead and do it kind of private and save a lot of excitement and everything!”

Carolyn June threw her arms around Ophelia and kissed her.

“Good-by, chaperon,” she laughed With a half-sob in her throat, “h—­hello, ‘Aunt.’” Then she strangled Old Heck with a hug that made him gasp.

“What the devil—­are you trying to do—­choke me?”

“Well, by thunder, Old Heck!” Skinny finally managed to ejaculate, “it was the sensiblest thing you ever done!  I—­I’ve—­been”—­with a sidelong look at Carolyn June—­“kind of figuring on doing it myself!”

Carolyn June saw the expression in Skinny’s eyes.  A pained look came into her own.  She had known, for a long while, that sooner or later there would have to come an understanding between this big, overgrown, juvenile-hearted cowboy and herself.  She resolved then that it should come quickly.  Further delay would be cruel to him.  Besides, she was sick of flirtations.  Her disappointment in the character of the Ramblin’ Kid, her realization of his weakness, when he had gotten, as she believed, beastly drunk at the moment so much depended on him the day of the two-mile sweepstakes, had hurt deeply.  Somehow, even his magnificent ride and the fact that, in spite of his condition, he won the race, had not taken the sting away.  She had thought the Ramblin’ Kid was real—­rough and crude, perhaps, but all man, rugged-hearted and honest.  Sometimes she wondered if the queer unexplainable antagonism between herself and the sensitive young cowboy had not, in a measure, been responsible for his sudden moral breaking down.  The thought caused her to lose some of that frivolity that inspired the dance and the wild flirtations she carried on that night with all the cowboys of the Quarter Circle KT.  After all, these plain, simple-acting men of the range were just boys grown big in God’s great out-of-doors where things are taken for what they seem to be.  No wonder an artless look from sophisticated brown eyes swept them off their feet!

She made up her mind to disillusion Skinny at once.

After supper the quartette gathered in the front room.

“Come on, Skinny,” Carolyn June said with forced gaiety, “let us take a walk.  That pair of cooing doves”—­with a playfully tender glance at Ophelia and Old Heck—­“wish nothing so much as to be permitted to ‘goo-goo’ at each other all by their little lonelies!”