blin' Kid said, reaching
to his left breast. "You wouldn't want--"

"Did I say I wanted it?" Carolyn June questioned naively.

"And I know," she hurried on, "about you being drugged the day of the
race! Why didn't you say you were sick? We--we--thought you were drunk!"

"Nobody asked me," he answered without interest.

"Does everybody have to--to--ask you everything?" she questioned
suggestively. "Don't you ever--ever--'ask' anybody anything yourself?"

"What are you tryin' to do?" he said almost brutally, "play with me like
you played with them other blamed idiots th' night of th' dance?"

"You're mean--" she started to say.

"Am I?" he interrupted, and spoke with sudden intenseness. "Maybe you
think I am. Maybe you think a lot of things. Maybe you think God put
them brown eyes in your face just so you could coax men, with a look out
of them, to love you an' then laugh because th' damned fools do it!"

"You're unfair!" she replied. "I was just paying the boys back the night
of the dance for--for--'framing' up on Ophelia and me the way they did!"

For a moment they looked squarely into each other's eyes. Captain Jack
and the Gold Dust maverick nosed each other over the shoulders of their
dismounted riders.

"Oh, well, it don't matter," the Ramblin' Kid finally said, wearily; "it
don't matter, you're what you are an' I reckon you can't help it!"

Carolyn June said nothing.

"I--I--was goin' to turn th' filly back to th' range," he continued in
the same emotionless voice, "but--well, you can have her--I'll trade her
to you for--for--th' thing that started th' fight. You can ride th'
maverick till you go back east--"

"I'm not going back east," she said in a hurt tone, "at least not for a
long time. Dad is going to--to--get me a stepmother! He's going to marry
some female person and he doesn't need me so I'm going to live--most of
the time--with Uncle Josiah and Ophelia! Anyhow I--I--like it out
west--or that is--I did like it--"

There was another little period of silence between them.

"Ramblin' Kid," Carolyn June spoke suddenly very softly, "Ramblin'
Kid--why--why do you hate me?"

"Me hate you?" he answered slowly. "I don't hate _you_--I hate myself!"

"Yourself?" with a questioning lift of her voice.

"Yes, myself!" he replied with a short, bitter laugh. "Why shouldn't
I--bein' an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!'"

Carolyn June flinched as he repeated the cruel words she herself had
spoken, it s