don't make no difference," he laughed, "th'
darn' cat hadn't ought to have yielded to temptation!"

"You're a brute!" she exclaimed passionately, "--an ignorant, savage,
stupid brute--" The harsh words sprang from the lips of Carolyn June
before she thought. The Ramblin' Kid flinched involuntarily as if he had
been struck full in the face. A look came in his eyes that almost made
her regret what she had said.

"I reckon I am," he replied, gazing steadily at her without feeling or
resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid
brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging
phrase, "--but--what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh.
"Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile
efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this time, at least, with that
damned cat!"

Carolyn June knew she had hurt with her unintentionally cruel words. For
an instant there was a humane impulse to temper their severity.

"I--I--didn't--" she started to say, but the Ramblin' Kid had turned
and, ignoring the cat, Skinny and herself, was leaning on the fence with
his back to her, looking off across the valley, apparently lost in
thought. She did not finish the sentence.

The cat bucked its way to the fence. As it went under the wire the can
caught on a barb of the lower strand. Jerking furiously, the animal
freed itself from the can, leaving splotches of hair and hide on the
ragged edges of tin. Still spitting and clawing, with its tail standing
out like an enormous yellow plume, it dashed toward the barn, eager to
put distance between itself and the thing that had been torturing it.

"Gosh a'mighty," Skinny said, sweating with the exertion and the
excitement of trying to catch the cat, "it'll be noon before we get
started for that ride!"

"We'll go now," Carolyn June answered, "--before some other horrible
thing occurs."

"We're going over to the river and maybe out on the sand-hills a ways,"
Skinny casually remarked to the Ramblin' Kid as Carolyn June and he
passed through the gate. "Oh, yes," he added, "Chuck said tell you he
took your rope--there was a weak spot in his and he didn't get it fixed
yesterday!"

The Ramblin' Kid did not answer.

Skinny had been wrong about the Ramblin' Kid not caring what any one
thought of him. He was supersensitive of his roughness, his lack of
education and conscious crudeness, and the words of Carolyn June were
still in h