The widow and Carolyn June were alone at the house. Old Heck and Parker went immediately from the breakfast table to the garage to get the car out to go to Eagle Butte. The cowboys were at the barn preparing to begin the day's work. Skinny had excused himself, ostensibly to attend to some ranch chores, but in reality to get away to the bunk-house and "fix up" for the day's courtship of Carolyn June. He planned, when the cowboys were gone, to put on the white shirt Parker brought, yesterday, from Eagle Butte. "Ophelia," Carolyn June said mysteriously as they stepped out on the front porch and filled their lungs with the clean air of the morning, "you made a 'discovery' yesterday, I believe?" pausing questioningly. "Yes," the widow smiled, recalling their conversation relative to Parker's abrupt proposal of marriage. "To-day," Carolyn June continued impressively, "it is my turn--I have made one!" "And it is?" "You and I have been 'framed!'" was the answer spoken solemnly yet scarcely louder than a whisper, while the brown eyes of Carolyn June sparkled with a mixture of suppressed anger, merriment and indignation. "Framed?" the widow repeated inquiringly, "just what does 'framed' mean, my dear?" "Framed means," Carolyn June replied wisely, "'tricked,' 'jobbed,' 'jinxed,' 'fixed,' or whatever it is people do to people when they scheme to do something to them without the ones to whom they are doing it knowing how it is done!" "Exceedingly lucid, my love," the widow laughed, "but you are so agonizingly fond of suspense--" "Come inside," Carolyn June said as she led the way into the house, "and in a dark corner--no, that would be too near to the walls and their proverbial 'ears,' in the center of the room is better--I will expose the whole diabolical plot!" At the end of the reading table they stopped and faced each other. "And now?" Ophelia said, expectantly. "And now," Carolyn June repeated, her voice low and carefully guarded. "Listen: Before Ophelia Cobb and Carolyn June Dixon ever arrived at this Quarter Circle KT their 'lovers' were already picked out for them--officially chosen, delegated, appointed, foreordained and everything! The 'arrangements' had all been made--" "I don't understand," the widow said, bewildered by the rapid flow of legal-sounding words. "Nor did I at first," Carolyn June went on, "but I have figured it all out! I have 'discovered' what all this mysterious hinting about 'arrangements,' 'the agreement,' 'Old Heck's day,' 'Parker's time,' 'Skinny's job,' and so forth means! I have studied it out. Why is Skinny Rawlins thrown into my lap as my 'regular' lover? It's his 'job'--that is why! And why the day-and-day-about courting of yourself by Uncle Josiah and Parker? It is the 'agreement'--the one is to have you one day and the other the next! Before we came some such arrangement was fixed up. I am sure of it--" "Impossible," Ophelia protested, "preposterous!"