A blue crane lazily flapped across the valley.

“Seven thousand acres in the bottoms,” Skinny volunteered.

“Beautiful!” Carolyn breathed.

“Splendid!” Ophelia exclaimed.

Half-way down the valley, a quarter of a mile from the bench, the buildings of the Quarter Circle KT clustered together in a group—­the low adobe house, bunk shack, stables, graineries.  Out in the fields were hay yards with half-built stacks of alfalfa—­over the tops of the stacks white tarpaulins.  In a pasture beyond the house were horses and cattle, perhaps a hundred head in all.  Climbing the hills north of the river were a number of moving figures, dimly seen through the haze.

“Are those cattle,” Carolyn June asked, “those things across the river?”

“Where?” Skinny inquired.

“Over there, on the hills,” pointing toward the objects.

Old Heck glancing in the direction she indicated answered for Skinny: 

“That’s Parker and the boys, going over to the North Springs—­they’re checking up on some yearlings we just turned across from this side of the range.”  Then, speaking to Skinny:  “They’ve already had their dinner and won’t be in till supper-time—­”

“Are they cowboys?” Carolyn June asked.

“I reckon,” Old Heck responded.

“Is Skinny one?” she inquired naively.

“Sort of, I suppose,” Old Heck chuckled while Skinny felt his face coloring up with embarrassment, “but not a wild one.”

“Oh, who is that?” Carolyn June cried suddenly as a lone rider whirled out of the corral, around the stables, and his horse sprang into a gallop straight down the valley toward the harrows at its lower end.

“That,” Skinny said after a quick glance, “oh, that’s th’ Ramblin’ Kid—­Where in thunder do you reckon the darned fool’s going now?” he added to Old Heck.

“Can’t tell nothing about where he’s going,” Old Heck said.  “He’s liable to be heading for anywhere.  What’s he riding?” he asked without looking up.

“Captain Jack,” Skinny replied.  “Wonder if he ain’t going over to Battle Ridge to find out if it’s so about them sheep coming in over there?”

“Maybe,” Old Heck grunted, “either that or else he’s took a notion to hunt that Gold Dust maverick again”—­referring to a strange, wonderfully beautiful, outlaw filly that had appeared on the Kiowa range a year before and tormented the riders by her almost fiendish cunning in dodging corral or rope—­“if he’s riding Captain Jack that’s probably what he’s after.”

“Who is he, what’s his real name?” Carolyn June asked with interest.

“Just th’ Ramblin’ Kid, as far as I know,” Old Heck answered.

“Does he live at the Quarter Circle KT?” Carolyn June continued curiously as she studied the slender form rising and falling with the graceful rhythm of his horse’s motion—­as if man and animal were a single living, pulsing creature.