A lone rider guided his horse in the early night, among the black lavas, on the desolate desert near Capaline, the dead volcano. He rode to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron. Silently, steadily, like a dark shadow, the broncho picked his way among the fields of fire-blistered rock and held his course, unerringly, through the starlit gloom hanging over the earth before the late moon should flash its silver disk above the sand-hills miles to the east.

The rider was the Ramblin' Kid; the little horse—Captain Jack.

For a week, following the fight in Eagle Butte, the Ramblin' Kid had found shelter in the hut of "Indian Jake"—a hermit Navajo who, long ago, turned his face toward the flood of white civilization rolling over the last pitiful remnants of his tribe and drifted far toward the land of the rising sun. Among the scenes of desolation around the grimly cold volcano, alone, the old Indian made his last stand, and in a rude cabin, beside a tiny spring that seeped from under the black rock on the mountain-side, lived in splendid isolation—silent, brooding, desiring only to be left in peace with his few ponies, his small herd of cattle and the memories and traditions of his people.

The Ramblin' Kid and the lonely Navajo were friends since the Ramblin'
Kid could remember.

The aged Indian's face was pitted with horrible scars—marks of the same disease that had cost the wandering cowboy his father and left him, years ago, an orphan, almost worshiped, because of the sacrifice his parent had made fighting the epidemic among the tribes of the Southwest.

Often the "Young Whirlwind"—the name by which the Indians knew the Ramblin' Kid and which old Jake himself always called the cowboy—spent a night, sometimes days, with his stoical friend among the lavas.

To him the cabin door was always open.

As Captain Jack, followed by the bullets from the marshal's revolver, dashed madly down the street of Eagle Butte, instinctively the Ramblin' Kid had turned the stallion toward the hut of the old Navajo.

The fugitive cowboy believed Sabota was dead.

Naturally the law would demand vengeance, even though the brutal Greek had deserved to die. Posses, undoubtedly, would scour the country, searching for his slayer. The Quarter Circle KT would be watched.

There was no regret in the heart of the Ramblin' Kid. Instead he felt a strange elation. With his fists and heels he had beaten the giant Greek into a lifeless mass!

"'Ign'rant—savage—stupid—brute!" he muttered as Captain Jack sped from the scene of fight; "I reckon she was pretty near right!"

At gray dawn he swung down from the back of the little stallion at the door of the Indian's hut.

Old Jake asked no questions.

The Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered:

"Killed a man—Sabota—got to lay low, Jake—some three, four, five days! Then I go—south—Mexico!"

"The Young Whirlwind had cause?" the Navajo grunted sententiously.

"Sure—plenty!" the Ramblin' Kid laughed, slipping his hand to his breast pocket and caressing the pink satin garter.

"It is good," the Indian said. "The Navajo will watch!"

For seven days the Ramblin' Kid rested, securely, in the lonely hut among the lavas and "pot-holes" of the desert. Then he saddled Captain Jack and when the full shadow of night had settled over the desolation about him mounted the little broncho and turned him to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron, toward the Quarter Circle KT, where the Gold Dust maverick waited, alone, in the corral.

Carolyn June could not sleep. The night was more than half gone and still she sat on the front porch and watched the gradual spread of a misty, silvery sheen over the brow of the bench and the distant peaks of the shadowy Costejo range as the pale moon, in its last half, lifted itself above the sand-hills at the gap through which the Cimarron tumbled out of the valley.

Old Heck and Ophelia had retired hours ago.

The Quarter Circle KT was sleeping. From the meadows the heavy odor of wilted alfalfa hung on the night air as the dew sprinkled the windrows of new-cut hay.

A strange restlessness filled the heart of the girl.

Something seemed to be holding her in a tense, relentless grip. She had no desire to seek her room. Indeed, she felt that the air of the house would stifle her. She arose and strolled idly through the gate, past the bunk-house where Skinny, Pedro and the hay hands snored peacefully, as she wandered aimlessly through the slanting moonlight down to the circular corral.

The Gold Dust maverick seemed to reflect the girl's own uneasy mood.

The filly moved with quick nervous strides about the corral. As Carolyn June leaned against the bars and stretched out her hand the mare whinnied softly, tossed her head, nosed an instant the white fingers and trotted in a circle around the enclosure.

"What's the matter, Heart o' Gold?" Carolyn June laughed sympathetically, "can't you either?"

In the shed at the side of the corral, on the spot where, that first morning, the Ramblin' Kid's saddle had rested and the cowboy slept, Carolyn June's own riding gear was lying. She glanced at the outfit For a second she fancied she saw again the slender form stretched in the shadow upon the ground while a pair of black inscrutable eyes looked with unfathomable melancholy up into her own.

"Seein' things!" she laughed jerkily, with a little catch in her throat.
"I'll ride it off!"

Quickly she stepped over, picked up the saddle, bridle and blanket, returned to the corral gate, swung it open and entered.

The Gold Dust maverick came to her, as if eager, herself, to get out into the night.

A moment later Carolyn June was in the saddle and the mare, dancing lightly, pranced out of the gate. She turned swiftly toward the grade that led out to the bench and to Eagle Butte. They had almost reached the foot of the grade, when some impulse caused Carolyn June to whirl the filly about and gallop back past the barn and down the lane toward the Cimarron.

As the feet of the outlaw mare splashed into the water at the lower ford the Ramblin' Kid rode past the corner of the upland pasture fence and stopped Captain Jack on the brink of the ridge looking down at the crossing. Below him the river whirled in dark eddies under the overhanging curtains of cottonwoods and willows; the Quarter Circle KT lay in the hollow of the valley, like a faint etching of silent restfulness; through the tops of the trees a white splash of moonlight struck on the smooth level surface of the treacherous quicksand bar that had drawn Old Blue down to an agonizing death and from which, scarcely a month ago, the Ramblin' Kid had dragged Carolyn June.

This, the Ramblin' Kid believed, was his last long look at the Quarter
Circle KT.

He would ride down to the circular corral, turn out the Gold Dust maverick—give her again to the range and freedom—and while the unconscious sleepers at the ranch dreamed he would pass on, silently, toward the south and Mexico should throw about him her black arms of mystery!

For a while he sat and gazed down on the shadowy scene while his mind throbbed with memory of the incidents of the last few weeks. He drew the pink satin garter from his pocket, looked at it a long moment—suddenly crushed it tightly in his hand while his eyes closed as if renouncing a vision that had come before them—then carefully, that the dainty thing might not be lost, replaced it in the pocket that was over his heart.

At last he swung to the ground and tightened the front cinch of his saddle.

As he pulled the leather into place the sound of nervous hoofs kicking the gravel on the grade that led to the ridge on which he stood shattered the silence around him. The Ramblin' Kid whirled and faced the direction in which the approaching horse, would appear. His hand dropped to his gun and without raising the weapon from his hip he leveled it to cover the turn in the road a few feet away.

The waxy mane of the outlaw filly rocked into view as she sprang up and around the turn on to the ridge.

On the maverick's back, bareheaded, her brown hair tumbled about her neck, was Carolyn June.

Captain Jack pricked forward his ears at the sound of hoofs and as the beautiful mare leaped around the turn and appeared above the bank of the grade the little roan squealed a nicker of recognition. The filly sprang forward, swerved to the side of the stallion, and with an answering whinny stopped.

"Oh!" Carolyn June gasped, as the horses met and she saw the Ramblin'
Kid, his gun still in his hand, standing beside Captain Jack.

There was a brief, questioning silence.

"What th' hell!" he breathed.

"What the—'hell—yourself!" she laughed nervously. "Is—this—is this a hold-up?"

"What are you doin' here—this time of night—an' on that filly?" he asked without heeding her question.

"I'm riding that—this—filly!" Carolyn June shot back independently. "And what are you doing here—at this time of—Oh," she added, before he could answer, "I—I—believe my saddle's slipping!" and she swung lightly from the back of the outlaw mare.

"That filly'll kill you," he began.

"She will not!" Carolyn June interrupted with a pout. "I—I—guess you're not the only one, Mister 'Nighthawk,' that knows the way to the heart of a horse! If you were just as wise about—" but she stopped, her blush hidden as she turned her back to the rising moon.

"They was made for each other!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself. Then he spoke aloud: "I reckon you know," he said slowly, "why I'm ridin' at night—about me killin' Sabota—I'm leavin'—"

"But Sabota isn't dead," she interrupted again. "You don't need to go away!"

"Sabota ain't dead!" the Ramblin' Kid exclaimed. "Then I'll go back to
Eagle Butte instead of—Mexico!"

"Why?" Carolyn June asked.

"To finish th' job!" and his voice was dangerously soft.

"You can't finish it," she laughed. "He isn't in Eagle Butte! The Greek has gone away and—well, it—it—was a good 'job'—good enough the way you did it! I—I—don't want you 'teetotally' to kill him—clear, all the way dead," she stammered. "The way it is you—you—won't have to—leave!"

"What's th' difference?" he said dully. "It's time I was ramblin' anyhow!"

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Listen, Ramblin' Kid," she broke in, "I—I—know all about everything—about what started the fight—"

"You do?" looking quickly and keenly at her. "Who told you?"

"Skinny," she answered; "he saw it. Said it was a pale pink ribbon or something with a little silver 'do-funny' on it!" she finished with a laugh.

"I—I—reckon you want it back, then?" the Ramblin' 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 seemed, now so long ago.

"You are right!" she said, after a pause, while a ripple of quivering, mischievous laughter leaped from her lips and she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Ramblin' Kid, you are indeed an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!' You are 'ign'rant,'" she continued while he looked at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes, "of the ways of a woman's heart; you are 'savage'—in the defense of a woman's honor; you are 'stupid'—not to see that it is the man a woman wants and not the thin social veneer; you are a 'brute'—an utter brute, Ramblin' Kid— to—to—make a girl almost tell you—tell you—that she—she—"

The sentence was not finished.

The Ramblin' Kid caught her by both shoulders. He pushed her back—arm's length—and held her while the clean moonlight poured down on her upturned face and his black eyes searched her own as though to read her very soul.

An instant she was almost frightened by the agony that was in his face.

Then she opened her mouth and laughed—such a laugh as comes only from the throat of a woman when love is having its way!

"By God!" he whispered, his voice hoarse with passion, his hot breath fanning the brown hair on her forehead; "this has gone far enough! I'll tell you what you want me to say—I'll say it! And it's the truth—I love you—love you—love you! Yes!" And he shook her toward him. "Do you hear me? I love you—love you—so much it hurts! Now laugh! Now make fun of me! I know I'm a fool. I know where I stand! I know I don't belong in your crowd—I ain't fit to mix with 'em! I ain't been raised like you was raised. You don't need to tell me that! I know it already! I know there's somethin' a man has to have besides what he gets on th' open range among th' cattle—an' th' bronchos—an' th' rattlesnakes—he's got to be ground in th' mill of schoolin'—of books; he's got to be hammered into shape under th' heels of 'civilization'; he's got to be trained to jump through and roll over an' know which fork to eat with before a girl like you—"

His hands relaxed, but before his fingers loosened their grip on her shoulders Carolyn June's own soft palms reached up and caught the man's sun-tanned cheeks between them. Her eyes burned back into its own. Once more the laugh rippled from the full pulsing throat.

"Ramblin' Kid, oh, Ramblin' Kid," she murmured, while the long lashes lifted over brown pools tenderness, "a man—my man—does not need to be or to know all of those things, any of those things, before a girl like me—"

He crushed her to him and stopped the words on her lips.

"My God—don't fool me—be sure you know!" he cried, his whole body quivering with the intensity of his feelings; "don't tell me you love me—unless you mean it! I can stand to love you—without hope—in silence—alone! But I can't—an' I swear I wont, be lifted up to Paradise just to be dropped again into the depths of hell! Don't say you love me unless you know it is all love! Half love ain't love—it's a lie! An' love ain't to play with! Don't insult God by makin' a joke of th' thing He made an' planted in th' hearts of all Creation to hold th' Universe together."

"Ramblin' Kid," she whispered softly, "God himself is looking down into my heart!"

He smothered her mouth with his own—they drank each other in, their souls mingled in a mad-sense-reeling, time-defying pressure of lips!

It was their hour, as was the next and yet the one that followed that.

When the old-rose of dawn melted the gray above the sand-hills behind them and the white moon was fading in the zenith above the Kiowa; when the cottonwoods beside the Cimarron began to shake their leaves in the morning breeze that tripped across the valley; when the low buildings of the Quarter Circle KT silhouetted against the bench beyond the meadows; when the smooth surface of the beach of quicksand under which the body of Old Blue was hidden began to look smoother yet and still more firm, the Ramblin' Kid and Carolyn June parted.

"I'm goin' away," he said; "I'm goin' away, Carolyn June, but I'm goin' for another reason now. I'm goin' away an' make myself so you'll never have a chance to be ashamed of me! I'm goin' away an' learn how to talk without cussin' 'most every other word—I'm goin' away an' get that polish I know; women love in men th' same as they love their own shoes to be shiny an' their own dresses to be soft an' dainty! When I've got that I'll come back! I ain't goin' to Mexico. I'm going to ride into that world that you come out of an' when I'm so you'll be proud to walk in that world with me—when I'm so you won't need to apologize for me in Hartville or any other place, I'm comin' back an' a preacher can O.K. th' bargain you an' me have made! Will you keep faith an' be true, Carolyn June? Will you keep faith an' be true—? Will you be waitin'?"

"I'll be waiting," she whispered, "—and keep faith and be true!"

And he rode away into the face of the red glow rising above the sand-hills. He rode away—to meet the morning sun—hidden yet behind the eastern horizon—to conquer himself, to master the ways of men, in the world that lay beyond!

Carolyn June watched him go.

Then she guided the outlaw filly down the grade, across the Cimarron and along the lane, in the gently stirring dawn, back to the still sleeping Quarter Circle KT. In her heart was a song; in her eyes a new light; in her soul a great peace—on her lips, a smile. She carried in her bosom their secret—hers and the Ramblin' Kid's—and she knew he would return, for he would not lie.

THE END

*****

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