“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 shoulder.  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.