The Runt had the clairvoyance of love.  He knew that Clay was not now happy, though the cattleman gave no visible sign of it except a certain quiet withdrawal into himself.  He ate as well as usual.  His talk was cheerful.  He joked the puncher and made Kitty feel at home by teasing her.  In the evenings he shooed out the pair of them to a moving-picture show and once or twice went along.  But he had a habit of falling into reflection, his deep-set eyes fixed on some object he could not see.  Johnnie worried about him.

The evening of the day the Runt heard of the engagement he told his friend about it while Kitty was in the kitchen.

“Miss Beatrice she’s wearing a new ring,” he said by way of breaking the news gently.

Clay turned his head slowly and looked at Johnnie.  He waited without speaking.

“I heerd it to-day from one of the help.  Then I seen it on her finger,” the little man went on reluctantly.

“Bromfield?” asked Clay.

“Yep.  That’s the story.”

“The ring was on the left hand?”

“Yep.”

Clay made no comment.  His friend knew enough to say no more to him.  Presently the cattleman went out.  It was in the small hours of the morning when he returned.  He had been tramping the streets to get the fever out of his blood.

But Johnnie discussed with Kitty at length this new development, just as he had discussed with her the fact that Clay no longer went to see the Whitfords.  Kitty made a shrewd guess at the cause of division.  She had already long since drawn from the cowpuncher the story of how Miss Beatrice had rejected his proposal that she take an interest in her.

“They must ‘a’ quarreled—­likely about me being here.  I’m sorry you told her.”

“I don’t reckon that’s it.”  Johnnie scratched his head to facilitate the process of thinking.  He wanted to remain loyal to all of his three friends.  “Miss Beatrice she’s got too good judgment for that.”

“I ought to go away.  I’m only bringing Mr. Lindsay trouble.  If he just could hear from his friends in Arizona about that place he’s trying to get me, I’d go right off.”

He looked at her wistfully.  The bow-legged range-rider was in no hurry to have her go.  She was the first girl who had ever looked twice at him, the first one he had ever taken out or talked nonsense with or been ordered about by in the possessive fashion used by the modern young woman.  Hence he was head over heels in love.

Kitty had begun to bloom again.  Her cheeks were taking on their old rounded contour and occasionally dimples of delight flashed into them.  She was a young person who lived in the present.  Already the marks of her six-weeks misery among the submerged derelicts of the city was beginning to be wiped from her mind like the memory of a bad dream from which she had awakened.  Love was a craving of her happy, sensuous nature.