he other the next--"

"That's reasonable," Bert declared, "she'd probably enjoy a change
herself."

"I tell you I ain't got time," Parker protested.

"Neither have I," Old Heck added.

"All right then, I ain't either!" Skinny declared. "If you two ain't
willing to take turn about with the widow and love her off and on
between you I'll be everlastingly hell-tooted if I'm going to stand for
a whole one by myself all of the time! I'll go on strike first and start
right now!"

"We'll stay with you, Skinny," the Ramblin' Kid exclaimed with a laugh,
"th' whole bunch will quit till Parker an' Old Heck grants our demands."

"We'll all quit!" the cowboys chorused.

"Oh, well, Parker," Old Heck grumbled, "I reckon we'll have to do it!"

"It won't be hard work," the Ramblin' Kid said consolingly, "all you got
to do is set still an' leave it to Ophelia. Widows are expert
love-makers themselves an' know how to keep things goin'!"

It was settled. Skinny Rawlins, at an increase of ten dollars a month on
his wage, protestingly, was elected official love-maker to Carolyn June
Dixon, Old Heck's niece, speeding unsuspectingly toward the Quarter
Circle KT, and Old Heck and Parker between them were to divide the
affections of Ophelia Cobb, widow and chaperon.

In the mind of every cowboy on the ranch there was one thought
unexpressed but very insistent that night, "Wonder what She looks like?"
thinking, of course, of Carolyn June.

Old Heck and Parker also were disturbed by a common worry. As each sank
into fitful sleep, thinking of Ophelia Cobb, the widow, and his own
predestinated affinity he murmured:

"What if she insists on getting married?"

CHAPTER III

WHICH ONE'S WHICH

Eagle Butte sprawled hot and thirsty under the melting sunshine of
mid-forenoon. It was not a prepossessing town. All told, no more than
two hundred buildings were within its corporate limits. A giant mound,
capped by a crown of crumbling, weather-tinted rock, rose abruptly at
the northern edge of the village and gave the place its name. Cimarron
River, sluggish and yellow, bounded the town on the south. The dominant
note of Eagle Butte was a pathetic mixture of regret for glories of
other days and clumsy ambition to assume the ways of a city. Striving
hard to be modern it succeeded only in being grotesque.

The western plains are sprinkled with towns like that. Towns that once,
in the time of the long-horn steer and the forty-four and t