on the rim of the rolling hills across
the valley, herald of the moon not yet above the horizon, intensified
the pall beneath the approaching cloud. A sullen roar, throbbing
angrily, rising and falling in volume, could be heard coming out of the
depths of the storm.

"Acts like it's going to be a bad one," Old Heck observed, studying the
cloud they all were watching.

"Wicked," Skinny said, "one of them mutterin' kind until it breaks and
then all hell tears loose."

"If th' Ramblin' Kid is out in the sand-hills to-night he'll--"

A withering stream of fire poured from the cloud almost over their
heads; it was accompanied by a crashing peal of thunder that rocked the
earth under their feet and stopped the words on Old Heck's lips. The
flame lighted the whole valley. They had an instant's glimpse of a
writhing, overhanging curtain of dust and rain sweeping toward them. In
the glare they saw a giant cottonwood that stood alone in the meadow
west of the house reel and sway like a drunken thing and pitch to the
earth.

"It's here! It struck that tree!" Old Heck yelled. "Run for the
bunk-house, Skinny, maybe we can make it! You women go inside and shut
the door!"

Carolyn June and Ophelia sprang--were blown almost--inside the house and
slammed the door as another bolt fell, flooding the room with a blaze
that made the light from the lamp on the reading table seem faint and
dim. Old Heck and Skinny darted around the corner as the tempest pulled
and tugged at the buildings of the Quarter Circle KT.

For an hour Ophelia and Carolyn June sat and listened to the storm and
while it still raged went to bed.

Carolyn June fell asleep watching the incessant glare of the lightning
as flash after flash filled the room with light and illumined the world
outside, while the rain and wind lashed the trees in the garden near
her window. Above the tumult the words of Old Heck: "If the Ramblin' Kid
is out in the sand-hills to-night"--kept repeating themselves over and
over in her mind. Try as she would, she could not shut out the picture
of a slender young rider, alone, far out on the range in the storm-mad
night, unsheltered from the fury and wrath of the elements.

CHAPTER V

A DUEL OF ENDURANCE

When the storm broke over the Quarter Circle KT the Ramblin' Kid was
twenty miles away following the Gold Dust maverick. Old Heck's surmise
that he had gone in search of the outlaw filly was but half correct. It
was not with