ers cared to question him and the Ramblin' Kid himself
volunteered no information.

Once only, Old Heck mentioned the race.

"That was a pretty good ride you made in the two-mile event," he said,
addressing the Ramblin' Kid; "it looked at first like the filly--"

"You won your money, didn't you?" the Ramblin' Kid interrupted in a tone
that plainly meant there was nothing further to be said.

That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.

After breakfast the Ramblin' Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned
Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter
Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west
half of the Cimarron range.

The week that followed passed quickly.

During the entire period the Kiowa lay under a mantle of sunshine by day
and starlit skies by night.

Carolyn June once more provided the evening dessert of coffee-jelly and
Skinny finished teaching her the art of dipping bread in milk and egg
batter, frying it in hot butter, and calling the result "French toast"

Skinny again put on the white shirt and the shamrock tinted tie. He had
not dared to wear what Chuck called his "love-making rigging" during the
week of the Rodeo. It would have made him entirely too conspicuous among
the hundreds of other cowboys gathered at Eagle Butte for the big
celebration. Situations filled with embarrassment would have been almost
certain to develop.

"It's getting so it needs a washing a little," Skinny remarked to
Carolyn June the first time he reappeared in the once snowy garment.

He was quite right.

Carolyn June herself had noticed that the shirt had lost some of its
immaculateness.

"It doesn't look hardly as white as it did at first!"

"No, it don't," Skinny answered seriously. "I guess I'll wash it
to-morrow. I never did wash one but I reckon it ain't so awful hard to
do--"

"I'll help you," Carolyn June volunteered. "I've never washed one
either, but it will be fun to learn how!"

The next day they washed the shirt.

The ceremony was performed in the kitchen after they had finished doing
the breakfast dishes. Ophelia, after water for a vase of roses, came
into the room while Skinny was rinsing the shirt in the large tin
dishpan.

The garment was a sickly yellow.

"Darned if I know what's wrong with it," Skinny said, a trifle
discouraged, while Carolyn June, her sleeves rolled above dimpled
elbows, stood by and watched t