An impulse to ride—­ride—­ride, to get away from it all—­far out on the wide unpeopled plains where there was nothing above but God, and the unmeasured depths of His heavens, and nothing beneath but the earth and the rhythmic beat of his horse’s feet, came over the Ramblin’ Kid.  Men, and the works of men—­their passions, their strifes, their foolishness—­and women—­women who played with love—­he wanted to forget, to leave miles and miles behind.

He started to open the gate, thinking to saddle Captain Jack and obey the impulse of the moment.  Carolyn June’s words, spoken of the Gold Dust maverick:  “It would be fun to see her run!” and uttered lightly and in a spirit of coquetry that morning when she teased him to enter the outlaw filly in the race against the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo, came to his mind.  The selfishness of the plea maddened him.  She cared nothing for the price in effort—­the straining muscles, the panting breath—­the agony the beautiful mare must pay to defeat the black wonder from the other part of the range.  She wanted only to see the maverick run—­to coax him to yield and run the filly merely to please the cheap vanity of her sex!  No doubt also she counted on entertainment when, to-morrow, he would ride the outlaw for the first time.  It would be a kind of show—­the battle for mastery between himself and the high-bred untamed mare.  The whole bunch—­Old Heck, Parker, Ophelia, Carolyn June, the cowboys—­yes, even that damned Chink—­unquestionably would be crowded about the corral to watch the fear and pain of the maverick as she learned her first hard lesson of servitude to man!  They would laugh at her frenzied efforts to throw him.

He would fool them.  He would ride the filly to-night!

He went to the shed, slipped his legs into the worn leather chaps, took saddle, bridle, blanket and rope and returned to the corral.

Stepping inside he closed the gate behind him.

Captain Jack came to him and nosed at his shoulder.

“No, Little Man,” the Ramblin’ Kid said gently, “this ain’t your turn.  You can go with us though, if you want to!” he laughed.

The Gold Dust maverick stood, half-afraid, at the other side of the corral.  She had not yet wholly conquered her dread of him.  She did not, however, offer to fight as she had done that morning when Skinny entered the enclosure.

The Ramblin’ Kid spoke to the filly and, as she began to move shyly away, with one toss threw the loop over her head.  The instant the mare felt the rope she stopped and stood trembling a moment, then came straight up to him.  She was “rope-wise.”  The experience at the North Springs the night he caught her, and when she had, three separate times, been cruelly thrown by this same rope; had taught the Gold Dust maverick the power that lay in those pliant strands.

She flinched from the touch of the blanket.  The Ramblin’ Kid worked easily, carefully, but in absolute confidence, with her.  As he cautiously saddled the mare he talked in a low, drawling monotone, uttering endearing phrases and occasionally slipping a lump of sugar—­a supply of which he had got that night from the kitchen—­into her mouth.  She ate it ravenously.