“That’s right!” cried Grandma Brown.  “And your record ain’t so clean, Young Jeff, that you can afford to start anything!”

Judith tossed her head.  “I don’t see why Young Jeff should be allowed to spoil a perfectly good party.”

“If you can’t put him out, Jude, I can!” cried Inez.

Everybody laughed.  Jude seized one of Young Jeff’s big hands, Inez the other.  There was an uproarious scuffle which ended in the three, laughing immoderately, executing a hybrid folk dance to the one-step which Peter began to play.  And Scott danced unmolested during the remainder of the night.

Charleton Falkner had drunk a good deal but was as yet little the worse for it.  He and Douglas met at the pail shortly after midnight.  Charleton gave the young man an amused glance.

“You look sort of bored, Doug!  Come outside and talk a little.”

Douglas gave a quick glance around the hall—­at Judith, swooping in great circles with Scott Parsons, at Inez dancing with his father.  “All right!” he said, and followed Charleton out into the moonlight.  They perched on the buck fence and smoked for a time in silence.

“That’s a good horse of Young Jeff’s, eh?” said Charleton finally.

“Not as good as the dapple gray he gave me will be when I get time to break him,” replied Douglas.  “I don’t know!  I’m not as interested in things as I was.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Charleton, sympathetically.

“I guess Oscar’s killing upset me,” said Douglas vaguely.

“I don’t suppose you ever heard of Weltschmerz,” mused Charleton.  “It’s a kind of mental stomach-ache most young fellows get about the time they begin to fall in love.”

Douglas grunted.

“Though you were pretty young to run into Oscar that way,” Charleton went on thoughtfully.

“It isn’t that; though I was scared stiff, of course.  But it was seeing Oscar laid in the ground to rot and hearing you and Peter and Dad say that was all there was to it.”

Charleton nodded.  “I know!  But you’ll reach my state of don’t give a hoop-la, when you’re a little older.  Wine and women and a good horse.  They help.”

Douglas drew a shuddering breath.  “Is that all you’ve found out?  All?”

“Of course, there’s ambition,” said Charleton.  “I was ambitious, myself, once.  You know my father was a college man and he wanted me to go back East to school.  I almost went.”

“Why didn’t you go?” asked Douglas, immensely flattered at the mark of confidence being shown him.  Charleton Falkner was notoriously reticent about himself.

“O, it’s this easy life of the open!  Why should I have gone into politics as my father wanted me to, when I could be happier with an easy living right here?  And it would all end up there in the cemetery, anyhow.  And what had ambition to offer me in comparison to the sport of running wild horses on Fire Mesa, or riding herd in the Reserve or hunting deer on Falkner’s Peak.  Horses, dogs, guns, women, whiskey, the open country of the Rockies.  Enough for any man.”