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diff --git a/old/12192.txt b/old/12192.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac5b985 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12192.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6356 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Shadow, by B. M. Bower + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Long Shadow + +Author: B. M. Bower + +Release Date: April 29, 2004 [EBook #12192] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG SHADOW *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Alicia Williams, David King, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + +THE LONG SHADOW + + + + +BY B.M. BOWER + +(B.M. SINCLAIR) + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS BY +CLARENCE ROWE + + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1908 + + + + + TO THOSE + WHO HAVE WATCHED THE SHADOW FALL + UPON THE RANGE. + + + + +CONTENTS + +I Charming Billy Has a Visitor + +II Prune Pie and Coon-can + +III Charming Billy Has a Fight + +IV Canned + +V The Man From Michigan + +VI "That's My Dill Pickle!" + +VII "Till Hell's a Skating-rink" + +VIII Just a Day-dream + +IX The "Double-Crank" + +X The Day We Celebrate + +XI "When I Lift My Eyebrows This Way" + +XII Dilly Hires a Cook + +XIII Billy Meets the Pilgrim + +XIV A Winter at the Double-Crank + +XV The Shadow Falls Lightly + +XVI Self-Defense + +XVII The Shadow Darkens + +XVIII When the North Wind Blows + +XIX "I'm Not Your Wife Yet!" + +XX The Shadow Lies Long + +XXI The End of the Double-Crank + +XXII Settled In Full + +XXIII "Oh, Where Have You Been, Charming Billy?" + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +"I'll leave you this, you'll feel safer if you have a gun" + +"Hands off that long person! That there's _my_ dill pickle" + +"We--we're 'up against it,' as fellows say" + +For every sentence a stinging blow with the flat of his hand + +[Illustration: "I'LL LEAVE YOU THIS, YOU'LL FEEL SAFER IF YOU HAVE +A GUN." _Frontispiece_.] + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +_Charming Billy Has a Visitor._ + + +The wind, rising again as the sun went down, mourned lonesomely at the +northwest corner of the cabin, as if it felt the desolateness of the +barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red +sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land--and would +make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing +the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he, +too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he, too, +longed for some human companionship. + +He sent a glance of half-conscious disapproval around the untidy +cabin. He had been dreaming aimlessly of a place he had seen not so +long ago; a place where the stove was black and shining, with a fire +crackling cheeringly inside and a teakettle with straight, unmarred +spout and dependable handle singing placidly to itself and puffing +steam with an air of lazy comfort, as if it were smoking a cigarette. +The stove had stood in the southwest corner of the room, and the room +was warm with the heat of it; and the floor was white and had a strip +of rag carpet reaching from the table to a corner of the stove. There +was a red cloth with knotted fringe on the table, and a bed in another +corner had a red-and-white patchwork spread and puffy white pillows. +There had been a woman--but Charming Billy shut his eyes, mentally, to +the woman, because he was not accustomed to them and he was not at +all sure that he wanted to be accustomed; they did not fit in with the +life he lived. He felt dimly that, in a way, they were like the +heaven his mother had taught him--altogether perfect and altogether +unattainable and not to be thought of with any degree of familiarity. +So his memory of the woman was indistinct, as of something which did +not properly belong to the picture. He clung instead to the memory of +the warm stove, and the strip of carpet, and the table with the red +cloth, and to the puffy, white pillows on the bed. + +The wind mourned again insistently at the corner. Billy lifted +his head and looked once more around the cabin. The reality was +depressing--doubly depressing in contrast to the memory of that other +room. A stove stood in the southwest corner, but it was not black +and shining; it was rust-red and ash-littered, and the ashes had +overflowed the hearth and spilled to the unswept floor. A dented +lard-pail without a handle did meagre duty as a teakettle, and +balanced upon a corner of the stove was a dirty frying pan. The fire +had gone dead and the room was chill with the rising of the wind. +The table was filled with empty cans and tin plates and cracked, +oven-stained bowls and iron-handled knives and forks, and the bunk in +the corner was a tumble of gray blankets and unpleasant, red-flowered +comforts--corner-wads, Charming Billy was used to calling them--and +for pillows there were two square, calico-covered cushions, +depressingly ugly in pattern and not over-clean. + +Billy sighed again, threaded a needle with coarse, black thread and +attacked petulantly a long rent in his coat. "Darn this bushwhacking +all over God's earth after a horse a man can't stay with, nor even +hold by the bridle reins," he complained dispiritedly. "I could uh +cleaned the blamed shack up so it would look like folks was living +here--and I woulda, if I didn't have to set all day and toggle up the +places in my clothes"--Billy muttered incoherently over a knot in his +thread. "I've been plumb puzzled, all winter, to know whether it's man +or cattle I'm supposed to chappyrone. If it's man, this coat has sure +got the marks uh the trade, all right." He drew the needle spitefully +through the cloth. + +The wind gathered breath and swooped down upon the cabin so that +Billy felt the jar of it. "I don't see what's got the matter of the +weather," he grumbled. "Yuh just get a chinook that starts water +running down the coulees, and then the wind switches and she freezes +up solid--and that means tailing-up poor cows and calves by the +dozen--and for your side-partner yuh get dealt out to yuh a pilgrim +that don't know nothing and can't ride a wagon seat, hardly, and +that's bound to keep a _dawg_! And the Old Man stands for that kind uh +thing and has forbid accidents happening to it--oh, hell!" + +This last was inspired by a wriggling movement under the bunk. A black +dog, of the apologetic drooping sort that always has its tail sagging +and matted with burrs, crawled out and sidled past Billy with a +deprecating wag or two when he caught his unfriendly glance, and +shambled over to the door that he might sniff suspiciously the cold +air coming in through the crack beneath. + +Billy eyed him malevolently. "A dog in a line-camp is a plumb +disgrace! I don't see why the Old Man stands for it--or the Pilgrim, +either; it's a toss-up which is the worst. Yuh smell him coming, do +yuh?" he snarled. "It's about _time_ he was coming--me here eating +dried apricots and tapioca steady diet (nobody but a pilgrim would +fetch tapioca into a line-camp, and if he does it again you'll sure +be missing the only friend yuh got) and him gone four days when he'd +oughta been back the second. Get out and welcome him, darn yuh!" +He gathered the coat under one arm that he might open the door, and +hurried the dog outside with a threatening boot toe. The wind whipped +his brown cheeks so that he closed the door hastily and retired to the +cheerless shelter of the cabin. + +"Another blizzard coming, if I know the signs. And if the Pilgrim +don't show up to-night with the grub and tobacco--But I reckon the +dawg smelt him coming, all right." He fingered uncertainly a very +flabby tobacco sack, grew suddenly reckless and made himself an +exceedingly thin cigarette with the remaining crumbs of tobacco +and what little he could glean from the pockets of the coat he was +mending. Surely, the Pilgrim would remember his tobacco! Incapable +as he was, he could scarcely forget that, after the extreme emphasis +Charming Billy had laid upon the getting, and the penalties attached +to its oversight. + +Outside, the dog was barking spasmodically; but Billy, being a product +of the cattle industry pure and simple, knew not the way of dogs. +He took it for granted that the Pilgrim was arriving with the grub, +though he was too disgusted with his delay to go out and make sure. +Dogs always barked at everything impartially--when they were not +gnawing surreptitiously at bones or snooping in corners for scraps, +or planting themselves deliberately upon your clothes. Even when the +noise subsided to throaty growls he failed to recognize the symptoms; +he was taking long, rapturous mouthfuls of smoke and gazing dreamily +at his coat, for it was his first cigarette since yesterday. + +When some one rapped lightly he jumped, although he was not a man who +owned unsteady nerves. It was very unusual, that light tapping. When +any one wanted to come in he always opened the door without further +ceremony. Still, there was no telling what strange freak might impel +the Pilgrim--he who insisted on keeping a dog in a line-camp!--so +Billy recovered himself and called out impatiently: "Aw, come on in! +Don't be a plumb fool," and never moved from his place. + +The door opened queerly; slowly, and with a timidity not at all in +keeping with the blundering assertiveness of the Pilgrim. When a young +woman showed for a moment against the bleak twilight and then stepped +inside, Charming Billy caught at the table for support, and the coat +he was holding dropped to the floor. He did not say a word: he just +stared. + +The girl closed the door behind her with something of defiance, +that did not in the least impose upon one. "Good evening," she said +briskly, though even in his chaotic state of mind Billy felt the +tremble in her voice. "It's rather late for making calls, but--" She +stopped and caught her breath nervously, as if she found it impossible +to go on being brisk and at ease. "I was riding, and my horse slipped +and hurt himself so he couldn't walk, and I saw this cabin from up on +the hill over there. So I came here, because it was so far home--and I +thought--maybe--" She looked with big, appealing brown eyes at Billy, +who felt himself a brute without in the least knowing why. "I'm Flora +Bridger; you know, my father has taken up a ranch over on Shell Creek, +and--" + +"I'm very glad to meet you," said Charming Billy stammeringly. "Won't +you sit down? I--I wish I'd known company was coming." He smiled +reassuringly, and then glanced frowningly around the cabin. Even for +a line-camp, he told himself disgustedly, it was "pretty sousy." "You +must be cold," he added, seeing her glance toward the stove. "I'll +have a fire going right away; I've been pretty busy and just let +things slide." He threw the un-smoked half of his cigarette into the +ashes and felt not a quiver of regret. He knew who she was, now; she +was the daughter he had heard about, and who belonged to the place +where the stove was black and shining and the table had a red cloth +with knotted fringe. It must have been her mother whom he had seen +there--but she had looked very young to be mother of a young lady. + +Charming Billy brought himself rigidly to consider the duties of a +host; swept his arm across a bench to clear it of sundry man garments, +and asked her again to sit down. When she did so, he saw that her +fingers were clasped tightly to hold her from shivering, and he raved +inwardly at his shiftlessness the while he hurried to light a fire in +the stove. + +"Too bad your horse fell," he remarked stupidly, gathering up the +handful of shavings he had whittled from a piece of pine board. "I +always hate to see a horse get hurt." It was not what he had wanted +to say, but he could not seem to put just the right thing into words. +What he wanted was to make her feel that there was nothing out of the +ordinary in her being there, and that he was helpful and sympathetic +without being in the least surprised. In all his life on the range he +had never had a young woman walk into a line-camp at dusk--a strange +young woman who tried pitifully to be at ease and whose eyes gave the +lie to her manner--and he groped confusedly for just the right way in +which to meet the situation. + +"I know your father," he said, fanning a tiny blaze among the shavings +with his hat, which had been on his head until he remembered and +removed it in deference to her presence. "But I ain't a very good +neighbor, I guess; I never seem to have time to be sociable. It's +lucky your horse fell close enough so yuh could walk in to camp; I've +had that happen to me more than once, and it ain't never pleasant--but +it's worse when there ain't any camp to walk to. I've had that happen, +too." + +The fire was snapping by then, and manlike he swept the ashes to the +floor. The girl watched him, politely disapproving. "I don't want to +be a trouble," she said, with less of constraint; for Charming Billy, +whether he knew it or not, had reassured her immensely. "I know men +hate to cook, so when I get warm, and the water is hot, I'll cook +supper for you," she offered. "And then I won't mind having you help +me to get home." + +"I guess it won't be any trouble--but I don't mind cooking. You--you +better set still and rest," murmured Charming Billy, quite red. Of +course, she would want supper--and there were dried apricots, and a +very little tapioca! He felt viciously that he could kill the Pilgrim +and be glad. The Pilgrim was already two days late with the supplies +he had been sent after because he was not to be trusted with the +duties pertaining to a line-camp--and Billy had not the wide charity +that could conjure excuses for the delinquent. + +"I'll let you wash the dishes," promised Miss Bridger generously. "But +I'll cook the supper--really, I want to, you know. I won't say I'm +not hungry, because I am. This Western air does give one _such_ an +appetite, doesn't it? And then I walked miles, it seems to me; so that +ought to be an excuse, oughtn't it? Now, if you'll show me where the +coffee is--" + +She had risen and was looking at him expectantly, with a half smile +that seemed to invite one to comradeship. Charming Billy looked at her +helplessly, and turned a shade less brown. + +"The--there isn't any," he stammered guiltily. "The Pilgrim--I mean +Walland--Fred Walland--" + +"It doesn't matter in the least," Miss Bridger assured him hastily. +"One can't keep everything in the house all the time, so far from any +town. We're often out of things, at home. Last week, only, I upset the +vanilla bottle, and then we were completely out of vanilla till just +yesterday." She smiled again confidingly, and Billy tried to seem very +sympathetic--though of a truth, to be out of vanilla did not at that +moment seem to him a serious catastrophe. "And really, I like tea +better, you know. I only said coffee because father told me cowboys +drink it a great deal. Tea is so much quicker and easier to make." + +Billy dug his nails into his palms. "There--Miss Bridger," he blurted +desperately, "I've got to tell yuh--there isn't a thing in the shack +except some dried apricots--and maybe a spoonful or two of tapioca. +The Pilgrim--" He stopped to search his brain for words applicable to +the Pilgrim and still mild enough for the ears of a lady. + +"Well, never mind. We can rough it--it will be lots of fun!" the girl +laughed so readily as almost to deceive Billy, standing there in his +misery. That a woman should come to him for help, and he not even able +to give her food, was almost unbearable. It were well for the Pilgrim +that Charming Billy Boyle could not at that moment lay hands upon him. + +"It will be fun," she laughed again in his face. "If the--the +grubstake is down to a whisper (that's the way you say it, isn't it?) +there will be all the more credit coming to the cook when you see all +the things she can do with dried apricots and tapioca. May I rummage?" + +"Sure," assented Billy, dazedly moving aside so that she might reach +the corner where three boxes were nailed by their bottoms to the wall, +curtained with gayly flowered calico and used for a cupboard. "The +Pilgrim," he began for the third time to explain, "went after grub +and is taking his time about getting back. He'd oughta been here day +before yesterday. We might eat his dawg," he suggested, gathering +spirit now that her back was toward him. + +Her face appeared at one side of the calico curtain. "I know something +better than eating the dog," she announced triumphantly. "Down there +in the willows where I crossed the creek--I came down that low, saggy +place in the hill--I saw a lot of chickens or something--partridges, +maybe you call them--roosting in a tree with their feathers all puffed +out. It's nearly dark, but they're worth trying for, don't you think? +That is, if you have a gun," she added, as if she had begun to realize +how meagre were his possessions. "If you don't happen to have one, we +can do all right with what there is here, you know." + +Billy flushed a little, and for answer took down his gun and belt from +where they hung upon the wall, buckled the belt around his slim middle +and picked up his hat. "If they're there yet, I'll get some, sure," +he promised. "You just keep the fire going till I come back, and I'll +wash the dishes. Here, I'll shut the dawg in the house; he's always +plumb crazy with ambition to do just what yuh don't want him to do, +and I don't want him following." He smiled upon her again (he was +finding that rather easy to do) and closed the door lingeringly behind +him. Having never tried to analyze his feelings, he did not wonder why +he stepped so softly along the frozen path that led to the stable, or +why he felt that glow of elation which comes to a man only when he has +found something precious in his sight. + +"I wish I hadn't eat the last uh the flour this morning," he regretted +anxiously. "I coulda made some bread; there's a little yeast powder +left in the can. Darn the Pilgrim!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +_Prune Pie and Coon-can._ + + +Of a truth, Charming Billy Boyle, living his life in the wide land +that is too big and too far removed from the man-made world for any +but the strong of heart, knew little indeed of women--her kind of +women. When he returned with two chickens and found that the floor had +been swept so thoroughly as to look strange to him, and that all his +scattered belongings were laid in a neat pile upon the foot of the +bunk which was unfamiliar under straightened blankets and pitifully +plumped pillows, he was filled with astonishment. Miss Bridger smiled +a little and went on washing the dishes. + +"It's beginning to storm, isn't it?" she remarked. "But we'll eat +chicken stew before we--before I start home. If you have a horse that +I can borrow till morning, father will bring it back." + +Billy scattered a handful of feathers on the floor and gained a little +time by stooping to pick them up one by one. "I've been wondering +about that," he said reluctantly. "It's just my luck not to have a +gentle hoss in camp. I've got two, but they ain't safe for women. The +Pilgrim's got one hoss that might uh done if it was here, which it +ain't." + +She looked disturbed, though she tried to hide it. "I can ride pretty +well," she ventured. + +Without glancing at her, Charming Billy shook his head. "You're all +right here"--he stopped to pick up more feathers--"and it wouldn't be +safe for yuh to try it. One hoss is mean about mounting; yuh couldn't +get within a rod of him. The other one is a holy terror to pitch when +anything strange gets near him. I wouldn't let yuh try it." Charming +Billy was sorry--that showed in his voice--but he was also firm. + +Miss Bridger thoughtfully wiped a tin spoon. Billy gave her a furtive +look and dropped his head at the way the brightness had gone out of +her face. "They'll be worried, at home," she said quietly. + +"A little worry beats a funeral," Billy retorted sententiously, +instinctively mastering the situation because she was a woman and he +must take care of her. "I reckon I could--" He stopped abruptly and +plucked savagely at a stubborn wing feather. + +"Of course! You could ride over and bring back a horse!" She caught +eagerly at his half-spoken offer. "It's a lot of bother for you, but +I--I'll be very much obliged." Her face was bright again. + +"You'd be alone here--" + +"I'm not the least bit afraid to stay alone. I wouldn't mind that at +all." + +Billy hesitated, met a look in her eyes that he did not like to see +there, and yielded. Obviously, from her viewpoint that was the only +thing to do. A cowpuncher who has ridden the range since he was +sixteen should not shirk a night ride in a blizzard, or fear losing +the trail. It was not storming so hard a man might not ride ten +miles--that is, a man like Charming Billy Boyle. + +After that he was in great haste to be gone, and would scarcely wait +until Miss Bridger, proudly occupying the position of cook, told him +that the chicken stew was ready. Indeed, he would have gone without +eating it if she had not protested in a way that made Billy foolishly +glad to submit; as it was, he saddled his horse while he waited, and +reached for his sheepskin-lined, "sour-dough" coat before the last +mouthful was fairly swallowed. At the last minute he unbuckled his gun +belt and held it out to her. + +"I'll leave you this," he remarked, with an awkward attempt to appear +careless. "You'll feel safer if you have a gun, and--and if you're +scared at anything, shoot it." He finished with another smile that +lighted wonderfully his face and his eyes. + +She shook her head. "I've often stayed alone. There's nothing in the +world to be afraid of--and anyway, I'll have the dog. Thank you, all +the same." + +Charming Billy looked at her, opened his mouth and closed it without +speaking. He laid the gun down on the table and turned to go. "If +anything scares yuh," he repeated stubbornly, "shoot it. Yuh don't +want to count too much on that dawg." + +He discovered then that Flora Bridger was an exceedingly willful young +woman. She picked up the gun, overtook him, and fairly forced it into +his hands. "Don't be silly; I don't want it. I'm not such a coward as +all that. You must have a very poor opinion of women. I--I'm deadly +afraid of a gun!" + +Billy was not particularly impressed by the last statement, but he +felt himself at the end of his resources and buckled the belt around +him without more argument. After all, he told himself, it was not +likely that she would have cause for alarm in the few hours that +he would be gone, and those hours he meant to trim down as much as +possible. + +Out of the coulee where the high wall broke the force of the storm, he +faced the snow and wind and pushed on doggedly. It was bitter riding, +that night, but he had seen worse and the discomfort of it troubled +him little; it was not the first time he had bent head to snow and +driving wind and had kept on so for hours. What harassed him most were +the icy hills where the chinook had melted the snow, and the north +wind, sweeping over, had frozen it all solid again. He could not ride +as fast as he had counted upon riding, and he realized that it would +be long hours before he could get back to the cabin with a horse from +Bridger's. + +Billy could not tell when first came the impulse to turn back. It +might have been while he was working his way cautiously up a slippery +coulee side, or it might have come suddenly just when he stopped; for +stop he did (just when he should logically have ridden faster because +the way was smoother) and turned his horse's head downhill. + +"If she'd kept the gun--" he muttered, apologizing to himself for +the impulse, and flayed his horse with his _romal_ because he did not +quite understand himself and so was ill at ease. Afterward, when he +was loping steadily down the coulee bottom with his fresh-made tracks +pointing the way before him, he broke out irrelevantly and viciously: +"A real, old range rider yuh can bank on, one way or the other--but +damn a pilgrim!" + +The wind and the snow troubled him not so much now that his face was +not turned to meet them, but it seemed to him that the way was rougher +and that the icy spots were more dangerous to the bones of himself and +his horse than when he had come that way before. He did not know why +he need rage at the pace he must at times keep, and it did strike him +as being a foolish thing to do--this turning back when he was almost +halfway to his destination; but for every time he thought that, he +urged his horse more. + +The light from the cabin window, twinkling through the storm, cheered +him a little, which was quite as unreasonable as his uneasiness. It +did not, however, cause him to linger at turning his horse into the +stable and shutting the door upon him. When he passed the cabin window +he glanced anxiously in and saw dimly through the half-frosted +glass that Miss Bridger was sitting against the wall by the table, +tight-lipped and watchful. He hurried to the door and pushed it open. + +"Why, hello," greeted the Pilgrim uncertainly, The Pilgrim was +standing in the centre of the room, and he did not look particularly +pleased. Charming Billy, every nerve on edge, took in the situation at +a glance, kicked the Pilgrim's dog and shook the snow from his hat. + +"I lost the trail," he lied briefly and went over to the stove. He did +not look at Miss Bridger directly, but he heard the deep breath which +she took. + +"Well, so did I," the Pilgrim began eagerly, with just the least +slurring of his syllables. "I'd have been here before dark, only one +of the horses slipped and lamed himself. It was much as ever I got +home at all. He come in on three legs, and toward the last them three +like to went back on him." + +"Which hoss?" asked Billy, though he felt pessimistically that he knew +without being told. The Pilgrim's answer confirmed his pessimism. Of +course, it was the only gentle horse they had. + +"Say, Billy, I forgot your tobacco," drawled the Pilgrim, after a very +short silence which Billy used for much rapid thinking. + +Ordinarily, Billy would have considered the over sight as something of +a catastrophe, but he passed it up as an unpleasant detail and turned +to the girl. "It's storming something fierce," he told her in an +exceedingly matter-of-fact way, "but I think it'll let up by daylight +so we can tackle it. Right now it's out of the question; so we'll have +another supper--a regular blowout this time, with coffee and biscuits +and all those luxuries. How are yuh on making biscuits?" + +So he got her out of the corner, where she had looked too much at bay +to please him, and in making the biscuits she lost the watchful look +from her eyes. But she was not the Flora Bridger who had laughed at +their makeshifts and helped cook the chicken, and Charming Billy, +raving inwardly at the change, in his heart damned fervently the +Pilgrim. + +In the hours that followed, Billy showed the stuff he was made of. He +insisted upon cooking the things that would take the longest time to +prepare; boasted volubly of the prune pies he could make, and then +set about demonstrating his skill and did not hurry the prunes in the +stewing. He fished out a package of dried lima beans and cooked some +of them, changing the water three times and always adding cold water. +For all that, supper was eventually ready and eaten and the dishes +washed--with Miss Bridger wiping them and with the Pilgrim eying them +both in a way that set on edge the teeth of Charming Billy. + +When there was absolutely nothing more to keep them busy, Billy got +the cards and asked Miss Bridger if she could play coon-can--which was +the only game he knew that was rigidly "two-handed." She did not +know the game and he insisted upon teaching her, though the Pilgrim +glowered and hinted strongly at seven-up or something else which they +could all play. + +"I don't care for seven-up," Miss Bridger quelled, speaking to him +for the first time since Billy returned. "I want to learn this game +that--er--Billy knows." There was a slight hesitation on the name, +which was the only one she knew to call him by. + +The Pilgrim grunted and retired to the stove, rattled the lids +ill-naturedly and smoked a vile cigar which he had brought from town. +After that he sat and glowered at the two. + +Billy did the best he could to make the time pass quickly. He had +managed to seat Miss Bridger so that her back was toward the stove and +the Pilgrim, and he did it so unobtrusively that neither guessed his +reason. He taught her coon-can, two-handed whist and Chinese solitaire +before a gray lightening outside proclaimed that the night was over. +Miss Bridger, heavy-eyed and languid, turned her face to the window; +Billy swept the cards together and stacked them with an air of +finality. + +"I guess we can hit the trail now without losing ourselves," he +remarked briskly. "Pilgrim, come on out and help me saddle up; we'll +see if that old skate of yours is able to travel." + +The Pilgrim got up sullenly and went out, and Billy followed him +silently. His own horse had stood with the saddle on all night, and +the Pilgrim snorted when he saw it. But Billy only waited till the +Pilgrim had put his saddle on the gentlest mount they had, then took +the reins from him and led both horses to the door. + +"All right," he called to the girl; helped her into the saddle and +started off, with not a word of farewell from Miss Bridger to the +Pilgrim. + +The storm had passed and the air was still and biting cold. The +eastern sky was stained red and purple with the rising sun, and +beneath the feet of their horses the snow creaked frostily. So they +rode down the coulee and then up a long slope to the top, struck the +trail and headed straight north with a low line of hills for their +goal. And in the hour and a half of riding, neither spoke a dozen +words. + +At the door of her own home Billy left her, and gathered up the reins +of the Pilgrim's horse. "Well, good-by. Oh, that's all right--it +wasn't any trouble at all," he said huskily when she tried to thank +him, and galloped away. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +_Charming Billy Has a Fight._ + + +If Billy Boyle had any ideals he did not recognize them as such, and +he would not have known just how to answer you if you had asked him +what was his philosophy of life. He was range-bred--as purely Western +as were the cattle he tended--but he was not altogether ignorant of +the ways of the world, past or present. He had that smattering of +education which country schools and those of "the county seat" may +give a boy who loves a horse better than books, and who, sitting +hunched behind his geography, dreams of riding afar, of shooting wild +things and of sleeping under the stars. + +From the time he was sixteen he had lived chiefly in tents and +line-camp cabins, his world the land of far horizons, of big sins, and +virtues bigger. One creed he owned: to live "square," fight square, +and to be loyal to his friends and his "outfit." Little things did +not count much with him, and for that reason he was the more enraged +against the Pilgrim, because he did not quite know what it was all +about. So far as he had heard or seen, the Pilgrim had offered no +insult to Miss Bridger--"the girl," as he called her simply in +his mind. Still, he had felt all along that the mere presence of the +Pilgrim was an offense to her, no less real because it was intangible +and not to be put into words; and for that offense the Pilgrim must +pay. + +But for the presence of the Pilgrim, he told himself ill-temperedly, +they might have waited for breakfast; but he had been so anxious to +get her away from under the man's leering gaze that he had not thought +of eating. And if the Pilgrim had been a _man_, he might have sent him +over to Bridger's for her father and a horse. But the Pilgrim would +have lost himself, or have refused to go, and the latter possibility +would have caused a scene unfit for the eyes of a young woman. + +So he rode slowly and thought of many things he might have done which +would have been better than what he did do; and wondered what the +girl thought about it and if she blamed him for not doing something +different. And for every mile of the way he cursed the Pilgrim anew. + +In that unfriendly mood he opened the door of the cabin, stood a +minute just inside, then closed it after him with a slam. The cabin, +in contrast with the bright light of sun shining on new-fallen snow, +was dark and so utterly cheerless and chill that he shrugged shoulders +impatiently at its atmosphere, which was as intangibly offensive as +had been the conduct of the Pilgrim. + +The Pilgrim was sprawled upon the bunk with his face in his arms, +snoring in a peculiarly rasping way that Billy, heavy-eyed as he was, +resented most unreasonably. Also, the untidy table showed that the +Pilgrim had eaten unstintedly--and Billy was exceedingly hungry. +He went over and lifted a snowy boot to the ribs of the sleeper and +commanded him bluntly to "Come alive." + +"What-yuh-want?" mumbled the Pilgrim thickly, making one word of the +three and lifting his red-rimmed eyes to the other. He raised to an +elbow with a lazy doubling of his body and stared dully for a space +before he grinned unpleasantly. "Took 'er home all right, did yuh?" he +leered, as if they two were in possession of a huge joke of the kind +which may not be told in mixed company. + +If Charming Billy Boyle had needed anything more to stir him to the +fighting point, that one sentence admirably supplied the lack. "Yuh +low-down skunk!" he cried, and struck him full upon the insulting, +smiling mouth. "If I was as rotten-minded as you are, I'd go drown +myself in the stalest alkali hole I could find. I dunno why I'm +dirtying my hands on yuh--yuh ain't fit to be clubbed to death with a +tent pole!" He was, however, using his hands freely and to very good +purpose, probably feeling that, since the Pilgrim was much bigger than +he, there was need of getting a good start. + +But the Pilgrim was not the sort to lie on his bunk and take a +thrashing. He came up after the second blow, pushing Billy back with +the very weight of his body, and they were fighting all over the +little cabin, surging against the walls and the table and knocking the +coffee-pot off the stove as they lurched this way and that. Not much +was said after the first outburst of Billy's, save a panting curse now +and then between blows, a threat gasped while they wrestled. + +It was the dog, sneaking panther-like behind Billy and setting +treacherous teeth viciously into his leathern chaps, that brought the +crisis. Billy tore loose and snatched his gun from the scabbard at his +hip, held the Pilgrim momentarily at bay with one hand while he took a +shot at the dog, missed, kicked him back from another rush, and turned +again on the Pilgrim. + +"Get that dawg outdoors, then," he panted, "or I'll kill him sure." +The Pilgrim, for answer, struck a blow that staggered Billy, and tried +to grab the gun. Billy, hooking a foot around a table-leg, threw it +between them, swept the blood from his eyes and turned his gun once +more on the dog that was watching treacherously for another chance. + +"That's the time I got him," he gritted through the smoke, holding +the Pilgrim quiet before him with the gun. "But I've got a heap more +respect for him than I have for you, yuh damn', low-down brute. I'd +ought to kill yuh like I would a coyote. Yuh throw your traps together +and light out uh here, before I forget and shoot yuh up. There ain't +room in this camp for you and me no more." + +The Pilgrim backed, eying Billy malevolently. "I never done nothing," +he defended sullenly. "The boss'll have something to say about +this--and I'll kill you first chance I get, for shooting my dog." + +"It ain't what yuh done, it's what yuh woulda done if you'd had the +chance," answered Billy, for the first time finding words for what was +surging bitterly in the heart of him. "And I'm willing to take a whirl +with yuh any old time; any dawg that'll lick the boots of a man like +you had ought to be shot for not having more sense. I ain't saying +anything about him biting me--which I'd kill him for, anyhow. Now, +git! I want my breakfast, and I can't eat with any relish whilst +you're spoiling the air in here for me." + +At heart the Pilgrim was a coward as well as a beast, and he packed +his few belongings hurriedly and started for the door. + +"Come back here, and drag your dawg outside," commanded Billy, and the +Pilgrim obeyed. + +"You'll hear about this later on," he snarled. "The boss won't stand +for anything like this. I never done a thing, and I'm going to tell +him so." + +"Aw, go on and tell him, yuh--!" snapped Billy. "Only yuh don't want +to get absent-minded enough to come back--not whilst I'm here; things +unpleasant might happen." He stood in the doorway and watched while +the Pilgrim saddled his horse and rode away. When not even the +pluckety-pluck of his horse's feet came back to offend the ears of +him, Charming Billy put away his gun and went in and hoisted the +overturned table upon its legs again. A coarse, earthenware plate, +which the Pilgrim had used for his breakfast, lay unbroken at the feet +of him. Billy picked it up, went to the door and cast it violently +forth, watching with grim satisfaction the pieces when they scattered +over the frozen ground. "No white man'll ever have to eat after +_him_," he muttered. To ease his outraged feelings still farther, +he picked up the Pilgrim's knife and fork, and sent them after the +plate--and knives and forks were not numerous in that particular +camp, either. After that he felt better and picked up the coffee-pot, +lighted a fire and cooked himself some breakfast, which he ate +hungrily, his wrath cooling a bit with the cheer of warm food and +strong coffee. + +The routine work of the line-camp was performed in a hurried, +perfunctory manner that day. Charming Billy, riding the high-lines +to make sure the cattle had not drifted where they should not, was +vaguely ill at ease. He told himself it was the want of a smoke that +made him uncomfortable, and he planned a hurried trip to Hardup, if +the weather held good for another day, when he would lay in a supply +of tobacco and papers that would last till roundup. This running out +every two or three weeks, and living in hell till you got more, was +plumb wearisome and unnecessary. + +On the way back, his trail crossed that of a breed wolfer on his way +into the Bad Lands. Billy immediately asked for tobacco, and the breed +somewhat reluctantly opened his pack and exchanged two small sacks for +a two-bit piece. Billy, rolling a cigarette with eager fingers, +felt for the moment a deep satisfaction with life. He even felt some +compunction about killing the Pilgrim's dog, when he passed the body +stiffening on the snow. "Poor devil! Yuh hadn't ought to expect much +from a dawg--and he was a heap more white-acting than what his owner +was," was his tribute to the dead. + +It seemed as though, when he closed the cabin door behind him, he +somehow shut out his newborn satisfaction. "A shack with one window is +sure unpleasant when the sun is shining outside," he said fretfully +to himself. "This joint looks a heap like a cellar. I wonder what the +girl thought of it; I reckon it looked pretty sousy, to her--and them +with everything shining. Oh, hell!" He took off his chaps and his +spurs, rolled another cigarette and smoked it meditatively. When it +had burned down so that it came near scorching his lips, he lighted a +fire, carried water from the creek, filled the dishpan and set it +on the stove to heat. "Darn a dirty shack!" he muttered, half +apologetically, while he was taking the accumulation of ashes out of +the hearth. + +For the rest of that day he was exceedingly busy, and he did not +attempt further explanations to himself. He overhauled the bunk +and spread the blankets out on the wild rose bushes to sun while +he cleaned the floor. Billy's way of cleaning the floor was +characteristic of the man, and calculated to be effectual in the main +without descending to petty details. All superfluous objects that +were small enough, he merely pushed as far as possible under the bunk. +Boxes and benches he piled on top; then he brought buckets of water +and sloshed it upon the worst places, sweeping and spreading it with +a broom. When the water grew quite black, he opened the door, swept +it outside and sloshed fresh water upon the grimy boards. While +he worked, his mind swung slowly back to normal, so that he sang +crooningly in an undertone; and the song was what he had sung for +months and years, until it was a part of him and had earned him his +nickname. + + "Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Oh, where have you been, charming Billy? + I've been to see my wife, + She's the joy of my life, + She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother." + +Certainly it was neither musical nor inspiring, but Billy had somehow +adopted the ditty and made it his own, so far as eternally singing +it could do so, and his comrades had found it not unpleasant; for +the voice of Billy was youthful, and had a melodious smoothness that +atoned for much in the way of imbecile words and monotonous tune. + +He had washed all the dishes and had repeated the ditty fifteen times, +and was for the sixteenth time tunefully inquiring: + + Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy? + +when he opened the door to throw out the dishwater, and narrowly escaped +landing it full upon the fur-coated form of his foreman. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +_Canned._ + + +The foreman came in, blinking at the sudden change from bright light +to half twilight, and Charming Billy took the opportunity to kick a +sardine can of stove-blacking under the stove where it would not be +seen. Some predecessor with domestic instincts had left behind +him half a package of "Rising Sun," and Billy had found it and was +intending to blacken the stove just as soon as he finished the dishes. +That he had left it as a crowning embellishment, rather than making it +the foundation of his house-cleaning, only proved his inexperience in +that line. Billy had "bached" a great deal, but he had never blacked a +stove in his life. + +The foreman passed gloved fingers over his eyes, held them there +a moment, took them away and gazed in amazement; since he had been +foreman of the Double-Crank--and the years were many--Charming +Billy Boyle had been one of its "top-hands," and he had never before +caught him in the throes of "digging out." + +"Fundamental furies!" swore he, in the unorthodox way he had. "Looks +like the Pilgrim was right--there's a lady took charge here." + +Charming Billy turned red with embarrassment, and then quite pale with +rage. "The Pilgrim lied!" he denied sweepingly. + +The foreman picked his way over the wet floor, in deference to its +comparative cleanliness stepping long so that he might leave as few +disfiguring tracks as possible, and unbuttoned his fur coat before the +heat of the stove. + +"Well, maybe he did," he assented generously, gleaning a box from +the pile on the bunk and sitting down, "but it sure looks like +corroborative evidence, in here. How about it, Bill?" + +"How about what?" countered Billy, his teeth close together. + +"The girl, and the dawg, and the fight--but more especially the girl. +The Pilgrim--" + +"_Damn_ the Pilgrim! I wisht I'd a-killed the lying ---- The girl's +a lady, and he ain't fit to speak her name. She come here last night +because her hoss fell and got crippled, and there wasn't a hoss I'd +trust at night with her, it was storming so hard, and slippery--and +at daylight I put her on the gentlest one we had, and took her home. +That's all there is to it. There's nothing to gabble about, and if the +Pilgrim goes around shooting off his face--" Billy clicked his teeth +ominously. + +"Well, that ain't _just_ the way he told it," commented the foreman, +stooping to expectorate into the hearth and stopping to regard +surprisedly its unwonted emptiness. "He said--" + +"I don't give a damn what he said," snapped Billy. "He lied, the +low-down cur." + +"Uh-huh--he said something about you shooting that dawg of his. I saw +the carcass out there in the snow." The foreman spoke with careful +neutrality. + +"I did. I wisht now I'd laid the two of 'em out together. The dawg +tried to feed offa my leg. I shot the blame thing." Charming Billy +sat down upon the edge of the table--sliding the dishpan out of his +way--and folded his arms, and pushed his hat farther back from his +forehead. His whole attitude spoke impenitent scorn. + +"I also licked the Pilgrim and hazed him away from camp and told him +particular not to come back," he informed the other defiantly. He did +not add, "What are you going to do about it?" but his tone carried +unmistakably that sentiment. + +"And the Pilgrim happens to be a stepbrother uh the widow the Old Man +is at present running after, and aiming to marry. I was sent over here +to put the can onto you, Billy. I hate like thunder to do it, but--" +The foreman waved a hand to signify his utter helplessness. + +The face of Billy stiffened perceptibly; otherwise he moved not a +muscle. + +"The Old Man says for you to stay till he can put another man down +here in your place, though. He'll send Jim Bleeker soon as he comes +back from town--which ain't apt to be for two or three days unless +they're short on booze." + +Billy caught his breath, hesitated, and reached for his smoking +material. It was not till he had licked his cigarette into shape and +was feeling in his pocket for a match that he spoke. "I've drawed +wages from the Double-Crank for quite a spell, and I always aimed +to act white with the outfit. It's more than they're doing by me, +but--I'll stay till Jim comes." He smoked moodily, and stared at his +boots. "Yuh ain't going back tonight, are yuh?" + +The foreman said he must, and came back to the subject. "Yuh don't +want to think I'm firing yuh, Billy. If it was my say-so, I'd tell the +Pilgrim to go to hell. But he went straight to headquarters with his +tale uh woe, and the Old Man is kinda uncertain these days, on account +uh not being right sure uh the widow. He feels just about obliged to +keep the Pilgrim smoothed down; he ain't worth his grub, if you ask +me." + +"Oh, I ain't thinking nothing at all about it," Billy lied proudly. +"If the Old Man feels like canning me, that there's his funeral. I +reckon maybe he likes the Pilgrim's breed better for a change. And +I wouldn't be none surprised if I could get a job with some other +outfit, all right. I ain't aiming to starve--nor yet ride grub-line." + +"When you analyze the thing right down to fundamentals," observed the +foreman, whom men called "Jawbreaker" for obvious reasons, "it's a +cussed shame. You're one of the oldest men with the outfit, and the +Pilgrim is the youngest--and the most inadequate. The Old Man oughta +waited till he heard both sides uh the case, and I told him so. But +he couldn't forget how the widow might feel if he canned her +stepbrother--and what's a man, more or less, in a case uh that kind?" + +"Now look here, Jawbreaker," Billy protested cheerfully, "don't yuh go +oozing comfort and sympathy on my account. I don't know but what I'm +tickled to death. As yuh say, I've worked for this outfit a blame long +while--and it's maybe kinda hard on other outfits; they oughta have a +chance to use me for a spell. There's no reason why the Double-Crank +should be a hog and keep a good man forever." + +The foreman studied keenly the face of Charming Billy, saw there an +immobility that somehow belied his cheerful view of the case, and +abruptly changed the subject. + +"You've got things swept and garnished, all right," he remarked, +looking at the nearly clean floor with the tiny pools of dirty water +still standing in the worn places. "When did the fit take yuh? Did it +come on with fever-n'-chills, like most other breaking-outs? Or, did +the girl--" + +"Aw, the darned dawg mussed up the floor, dying in here," Billy +apologized weakly. "I was plumb obliged to clean up after him." He +glanced somewhat shamefacedly at the floor. After all, it did not +look quite like the one where Miss Bridger lived; in his heart Billy +believed that was because he had no strip of carpet to spread before +the table. He permitted his glance to take in the bunk, nakedly +showing the hay it held for a softening influence and piled high with +many things--the things that would not go beneath. + +"Your soogans are gathering frost to beat the band, Bill," the foreman +informed him, following his glance to the bunk. "Your inexperience +is something appalling, for a man that has fried his own bacon and +swabbed out his own frying-pan as many times as you have. Better go +bring 'em in. It was thinking about snowing again when I come." + +Billy grinned a little and went after his bedding, brought it and +threw it with a fine disregard for order upon the accumulation of +boxes and benches in the bunk. "I'll go feed the hosses, and then I'll +cook yuh some supper," he told the foreman still humped comfortably +before the stove with his fur coat thrown open to the heat and his +spurred boots hoisted upon the hearth. "Better make up your mind to +stay till morning; it's getting mighty chilly, outside." + +The foreman, at the critical stage of cigarette lighting, grunted +unintelligibly. Billy was just laying hand to the door-knob when the +foreman looked toward him in the manner of one about to speak. Billy +stood and waited inquiringly. + +"Say, Bill," drawled Jawbreaker, "yuh never told me her name, yet." + +The brows of Charming Billy pinched involuntarily together. "I thought +the Pilgrim had wised yuh up to all the details," he said coldly. + +"The Pilgrim didn't know; he says yuh never introduced him. And seeing +it's serious enough to start yuh on the godly trail uh cleanliness, +I'm naturally taking a friendly interest in her, and--" + +"Aw--go to hell!" snapped Charming Billy, and went out and slammed the +door behind him so that the cabin shook. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +_The Man From Michigan._ + + + "How old is she, Billy boy, Billy boy, + How old is she, charming Billy? + Twice six, twice seven, + Forty-nine and eleven-- + She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother." + +"C'm-awn, yuh lazy old skate! Think I want to sleep out to-night, when +town's so clost?" Charming Billy yanked his pack-pony awake and into +a shuffling trot over the trail, resettled his hat on his head, sagged +his shoulders again and went back to crooning his ditty. + + "Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy boy, + Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy? + She can make a punkin pie + Quick's a cat can wink her eye--" + +Out ahead, where the trail wound aimlessly around a low sand ridge +flecked with scrubby sage half buried in gray snowbanks, a horse +whinnied inquiringly; Barney, his own red-roan, perked his ears toward +the sound and sent shrill answer. In that land and at that season +travelers were never so numerous as to be met with indifference, and +Billy felt a slight thrill of expectation. All day--or as much of it +as was left after his late sleeping and later breakfast--he had ridden +without meeting a soul; now he unconsciously pressed lightly with his +spurs to meet the comer. + +Around the first bend they went, and the trail was blank before them. +"Thought it sounded close," Billy muttered, "but with the wind where +it is and the air like this, sound travels farther. I wonder--" + +Past the point before them poked a black head, followed slowly by +a shambling horse whose dragging hoofs proclaimed his weariness and +utter lack of ambition. The rider, Billy decided after one sharp +glance, he had never seen before in his life--and nothing lost by it, +either, he finished mentally when he came closer. + +If the riders had not willed it so the horses would mutually have +agreed to stop when they met; that being the way of range horses after +carrying speech-hungry men for a season or two. If men meet out there +in the land of far horizons and do not stop for a word or two, it is +generally because there is bad feeling between them; and horses learn +quickly the ways of their masters. + +"Hello," greeted Billy tentatively, eying the other measuringly +because he was a stranger. "Pretty soft going, ain't it?" He referred +to the half-thawed trail. + +"Ye-es," hesitated the other, glancing diffidently down at the trail +and then up at the neighboring line of disconsolate, low hills. +"Ye-es, it is." His eyes came back and met Billy's deprecatingly, +almost like those of a woman who feels that her youth and her charm +have slipped behind her and who does not quite know whether she may +still be worthy your attention. "Are you acquainted with this--this +part of the country?" + +"Well," Billy had got out his smoking material, from force of the +habit with which a range-rider seizes every opportunity for a smoke, +and singled meditatively a leaf. "Well, I kinda know it by sight, all +right." And in his voice lurked a pride of knowledge inexplicable to +one who has not known and loved the range-land. "I guess you'd have +some trouble finding a square foot of it that I ain't been over," he +added, mildly boastful. + +If one might judge anything from a face as blank as that of a china +doll, both the pride and the boastfulness were quite lost upon the +stranger. Only his eyes were wistfully melancholy. + +"My name is Alexander P. Dill," he informed Billy quite unnecessarily. +"I was going to the Murton place. They told me it was only ten miles +from town and it seems as though I must have taken the wrong road, +somehow. Could you tell me about where it would be from here?" + +Charming Billy's cupped hands hid his mouth, but his eyes laughed. +"Roads ain't so plenty around here that you've any call to take one +that don't belong to yuh," he reproved, when his cigarette was going +well. "If Hardup's the place yuh started from, and if they headed yah +right when they turned yuh loose, you've covered about eighteen miles +and bent 'em into a beautiful quarter-circle--and how yuh ever went +and done it undeliberate gets _me_. You are now seven miles from +Hardup and sixteen miles, more or less, from Murton's." He stopped to +watch the effect of his information. + +Alexander P. Dill was a long man--an exceedingly long man, as Billy +had already observed--and now he drooped so that he reminded Billy +of shutting up a telescope. His mouth drooped, also, like that of a +disappointed child, and his eyes took to themselves more melancholy. +"I must have taken the wrong road," he repeated ineffectually. + +"Yes," Billy agreed gravely, "I guess yuh must of; it does kinda look +that way." There was no reason why he should feel anything more than a +passing amusement at this wandering length of humanity, but Billy +felt an unaccountable stirring of pity and a feeling of indulgent +responsibility for the man. + +"Could you--direct me to the right road?" + +"Well, I reckon I could," Billy told him doubtfully, "but it would be +quite a contract under the circumstances. Anyway, your cayuse is too +near played; yuh better cut out your visit this time and come along +back to town with me. You're liable to do a lot more wandering around +till yuh find yourself plumb afoot." He did not know that he came near +using the tone one takes toward a lost child. + +"Perhaps, seeing I've come out of my way, I might as well," Mr. Dill +decided hesitatingly. "That is, if you don't mind." + +"Oh, I don't mind at all," Charming Billy assured him airily. "Uh +course, I own this trail, and the less it's tracked up right now in +its present state the better, but you're welcome to use it--if you're +particular to trod soft and don't step in the middle." + +Alexander P. Dill looked at him uncertainly, as if his sense of humor +were weak and not to be trusted off-hand; turned his tired horse +awkwardly in a way that betrayed an unfamiliarity with "neck-reining," +and began to retrace his steps beside Charming Billy. His stirrups +were too short, so that his knees were drawn up uncomfortably, and +Billy, glancing sidelong down at them, wondered how the man could ride +like that. + +"You wasn't raised right around here, I reckon," Billy began amiably, +when they were well under way. + +"No--oh, no. I am from Michigan. I only came out West two weeks ago. +I--I'm thinking some of raising wild cattle for the Eastern markets." +Alexander P. Dill still had the wistful look in his eyes, which were +unenthusiastically blue--just enough of the blue to make their color +definite. + +Charming Billy came near laughing, but some impulse kept him +quiet-lipped and made his voice merely friendly. "Yes--this is a +pretty good place for that business," he observed quite seriously. "A +lot uh people are doing that same thing." + +Mr. Dill warmed pitifully to the friendliness. "I was told that Mr. +Murton wanted to sell his far---- ranch and cattle, and I was going to +see him about it. I would like to buy a place outright, you see, with +the cattle all branded, and--everything." + +Billy suddenly felt the instinct of the champion. "Well, somebody lied +to yuh a lot, then," he replied warmly. "Don't yuh never go near old +Murton. In the first place, he ain't a cowman--he's a sheepman, on a +small scale so far as sheep go but on a sure-enough big scale when +yuh count his feelin's. He runs about twelve hundred woollies, and is +about as unpolite a cuss as I ever met up with. He'd uh roasted yuh +brown just for saying cattle at him--and if yuh let out inadvertant +that yuh took him for a cowman, the chances is he'd a took a shot at +yuh. If yuh ask me, you was playin' big luck when yuh went and lost +the trail." + +"I can't see what would be their object in misinforming me on the +subject," Mr. Dill complained. "You don't suppose that they had any +grudge against Mr. Murton, do you?" + +Charming Billy eyed him aslant and was merciful. "I can't say, not +knowing who they was that told yuh," he answered. "They're liable to +have a grudge agin' him, though; just about everybody has, that ever +bumped into him." + +It would appear that Mr. Dill needed time to think this over, for he +said nothing more for a long while. Charming Billy half turned once or +twice to importune his pack-pony in language humorously querulous, +but beyond that he kept silence, wondering what freakish impulse drove +Alexander P. Dill to Montana "to raise wild cattle for the Eastern +markets." The very simplicity of his purpose and the unsophistication +of his outlook were irresistible and came near weaning Charming Billy +from considering his own personal grievances. + +For a grievance it was to be turned adrift from the Double-Crank--he, +who had come to look upon the outfit almost with proprietorship; who +for years had said "my outfit" when speaking of it; who had set +the searing iron upon sucking calves and had watched them grow to +yearlings, then to sleek four-year-olds; who had at last helped prod +them up the chutes into the cars at shipping time and had seen them +take the long trail to Chicago--the trail from which, for them, there +was no return; who had thrown his rope on kicking, striking "bronks"; +had worked, with the sweat streaming like tears down his cheeks, to +"gentle" them; had, with much patience, taught them the feel of saddle +and cinch and had ridden them with much stress until they accepted his +mastery and became the dependable, wise old "cow-horses" of the range; +who had followed, spring, summer and fall, the wide wandering of the +Double-Crank wagons, asking nothing better, secure in the knowledge +that he, Charming Billy Boyle, was conceded to be one of the +Double-Crank's "top-hands." It was bitter to be turned adrift--and for +such a cause! Because he had fought a man who was something less than +a man. It was bitter to feel that he had been condemned without a +hearing. He had not dreamed that the Old Man would be capable of such +an action, even with the latest and least-valued comer; he felt the +sting of it, the injustice and the ingratitude for all the years he +had given the Double-Crank. It seemed to him that he could never feel +quite the same toward another outfit, or be content riding horses +which bore some other brand. + +"I suppose you are quite familiar with raising cattle under these +Western conditions," Alexander P. Dill ventured, after a season of +mutual meditation. + +"Kinda," Billy confirmed briefly. + +"There seems to be a certain class-prejudice against strangers, out +here. I can't understand it and I can't seem to get away from it. I +believe those men deliberately misinformed me, for the sole reason +that I am unfortunately a stranger and unfamiliar with the country. +They do not seem to realize that this country must eventually be more +fully developed, and that, in the very nature of things, strangers +are sure to come and take advantage of the natural resources and +aid materially in their development. I don't consider myself an +interloper; I came here with the intention of making this my future +home, and of putting every dollar of capital that I possess into this +country; I wish I had more. I like the country; it isn't as if I came +here to take something away. I came to add my mite; to help build up, +not to tear down. And I can't understand the attitude of men who would +maliciously--" + +"It's kinda got to be part uh the scenery to josh a pilgrim," Billy +took the trouble to explain. "We don't mean any harm. I reckon you'll +get along all right, once yuh get wised up." + +"Do you expect to be in town for any length of time?" Mr. Dill's voice +was wistful, as well as his eyes. "Somehow, you don't seem to adopt +that semi-hostile attitude, and I--I'm very glad for the opportunity +of knowing you." + +Charming Billy made a rapid mental calculation of his present +financial resources and of past experience in the rate of depletion. + +"Well. I may last a week or so, and I might pull out to-morrow," he +decided candidly. "It all depends on the kinda luck I have." + +Mr. Dill looked at him inquiringly, but he made no remark that would +betray curiosity. "I have rented a room in a little house in the +quietest part of town. The hotel isn't very clean and there is too +much noise and drinking going on at night. I couldn't sleep there. +I should be glad to have you share my room with me while you stay in +town, if you will. It is clean and quiet." + +Charming Billy turned his head and looked at him queerly; at his +sloping shoulders, melancholy face and round, wistful eyes, and +finally at the awkward, hunched-up knees of him. Billy did not mind +night noises and drinking--to be truthful, they were two of the +allurements which had brought him townward--and whether a room were +clean or not troubled him little; he would not see much of it. His +usual procedure while in town would, he suspected, seem very loose to +Alexander P. Dill. It consisted chiefly of spending the nights +where the noise clamored loudest and of sleeping during the +day--sometimes--where was the most convenient spot to lay the length +of him. He smiled whimsically at the contrast between them and their +habits of living. + +"Much obliged," he said. "I expect to be some busy, but maybe I'll +drop in and bed down with yuh; once I hit town, it's hard to tell what +I may do." + +"I hope you'll feel perfectly free to come at any time and make +yourself at home," Mr. Dill urged lonesomely. + +"Sure. There's the old burg--I do plumb enjoy seeing the sun making +gold on a lot uh town windows, like that over there. It sure looks +good, when you've been living by your high lonesome and not seeing any +window shine but your own little six-by-eight. Huh?" + +"I--I must admit I like better to see the sunset turn my own windows +to gold," observed Mr. Dill softly. "I haven't any, now; I sold the +old farm when mother died. I was born and raised there. The woods +pasture was west of the house, and every evening when I drove up the +cows, and the sun was setting, the kitchen windows--" + +Alexander P. Dill stopped very abruptly, and Billy, stealing a glance +at his face, turned his own quickly away and gazed studiously at a +bald hilltop off to the left. So finely tuned was his sympathy that +for one fleeting moment he saw a homely, hilly farm in Michigan, with +rail fences and a squat old house with wide porch and hard-beaten path +from the kitchen door to the well and on to the stables; and down a +long slope that was topped with great old trees, Alexander P. +Dill shambling contentedly, driving with a crooked stick three +mild-mannered old cows. "The blamed chump--what did he go and pull +out for?" he asked himself fretfully. Then aloud: "I'm going to have +a heart-to-heart talk with the cook at the hotel, and if he don't give +us a real old round-up beefsteak, flopped over on the bare stovelids, +there'll be things happen I'd hate to name over. He can sure do the +business, all right; he used to cook for the Double-Crank. And you," +he turned, elaborately cheerful, to Mr. Dill, "you are my guest." + +"Thank you," smiled Mr. Dill, recovering himself and never guessing +how strange was the last sentence to the lips of Charming Billy Boyle. +"I shall be very glad to be the guest of somebody--once more." + +"Yuh poor old devil, yuh sure drifted a long ways off your home +range," mused Billy. Out loud he only emphasized the arrangement with: + +"Sure thing!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +"_That's My Dill Pickle!_" + + +Charming Billy Boyle was, to put it mildly, enjoying his enforced +vacation very much. To tell the plain truth and tell it without the +polish of fiction, he was hilariously moistened as to his gullet and +he was not thinking of quitting yet; he had only just begun. + +He was sitting on an end of the bar in the Hardtip Saloon, his hat as +far back on his head as it could possibly be pushed with any hope of +its staying there at all. He had a glass in one hand, a cigarette in +the other, and he was raking his rowels rhythmically up and down the +erstwhile varnished bar in buzzing accompaniment, the while he chanted +with much enthusiasm: + + "How old is she, Billy boy, Billy boy? + How old is she, charming Billy? + Twice six, twice seven, + Forty-nine and eleven--" + +The bartender, wiping the bar after an unsteady sheepherder, was +careful to leave a generous margin around the person of Charming Billy +who was at that moment asserting with much emphasis: + + "She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother." + +"Twice-six's-twelve, 'n' twice-seven's-four-r-teen, 'n' twelve 'n' +fourteen's--er--twelve--'n'--fourteen--" The unsteady sheepherder was +laboring earnestly with the problem. "She ain't no spring chicken, she +ain't!" He laughed tipsily, and winked up at the singer, but Billy was +not observing him and his mathematical struggles. He refreshed himself +from the glass, leaving the contents perceptibly lower--it was a +large, thick glass with a handle, and it had flecks of foam down the +inside--took a pull at the cigarette and inquired plaintively: + + "Can she brew, can she bake, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Can she brew, can she bake, charming Billy?" + +Another long pull at the cigarette, and then the triumphant +declaration: + + "She can brew n' she can bake, + She can sew n' she can make-- + She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother." + +"She ain't s' young!" bawled the sheepherder, who was taking it all +very seriously. "Say them numbers over again, onc't. Twelve-'n'-fourteen--" + +"Aw, go off and lay down!" advised Charming Billy, in a tone of deep +disgust. He was about to pursue still farther his inquiry into the +housewifely qualifications of the mysterious "young thing," and he +hated interruptions. + + "Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy?" + +The door opened timidly and closed again, but he did not see who +entered. He was not looking; he was holding the empty, foam-flecked +glass behind him imperatively, and he was watching over his shoulder +to see that the bartender did not skimp the filling and make it +two-thirds foam. The bartender was punctiliously lavish, so that a +crest of foam threatened to deluge the hand of Charming Billy and +quite occupied him for the moment. When he squared himself again and +buzzed his spurs against the bar, his mind was wholly given to the +proper execution of the musical gem. + + "She can make a punkin pie, + Quick's a cat can wink her eye--" + +Something was going on, over in the dimly lighted corner near the +door. Half a dozen men had grouped themselves there with their backs +to Billy and they were talking and laughing; but the speech of them +was an unintelligible clamor and their laughter a commingling roar. +Billy gravely inspected his cigarette, which had gone cold, set down +the glass and sought diligently for a match. + +"Aw, come on an' have one on me!" bawled a voice peremptorily. "Yuh +can't raise no wild cattle around _this_ joint, lessen yuh wet up good +with whisky. Why, a feller as long as you be needs a good jolt for +every foot of yuh--and that's about fifteen when you're lengthened +out good. Come on--don't be a damn' chubber! Yuh got to sample m' +hospitality. Hey, Tom! set out about a quart uh your _mildest_ for +Daffy-down-Dilly. He's dry, clean down to his hand-made socks." + +Charming Billy, having found a match, held it unlighted in his fingers +and watched the commotion from his perch on the bar. In the very midst +of the clamor towered the melancholy Alexander P. Dill, and he was +endeavoring to explain, in his quiet, grammatical fashion. A lull +that must have been an accident carried the words clearly across to +Charming Billy. + +"Thank you, gentlemen. I really don't care for anything in the way +of refreshment. I merely came in to find a friend who has promised to +spend the night with me. It is getting along toward bedtime. Have your +fun, gentlemen, if you must--but I am really too tired to join you." + +"Make 'im dance!" yelled the sheepherder, giving over the attempt to +find the sum of twelve and fourteen. "By gosh, yuh made _me_ dance +when I struck town. Make 'im dance!" + +"You go off and lay down!" commanded Billy again, and to emphasize his +words leaned and emptied the contents of his glass neatly inside the +collar of the sheepherder. "Cool down, yuh Ba-ba-black-sheep!" + +The herder forgot everything after that--everything but the desire to +tear limb from limb one Charming Billy Boyle, who sat and raked his +spurs up and down the marred front of the bar and grinned maliciously +down at him. "Go-awn off, before I take yuh all to pieces," he urged +wearily, already regretting the unjustifiable waste of good beer. +"Quit your buzzing; I wanta listen over there." + +"Come on 'n' have a drink!" vociferated the hospitable one. "Yuh got +to be sociable, or yuh can't stop in _this_ man's town." So insistent +was he that he laid violent hold of Mr. Dill and tried to pull him +bodily to the bar. + +"Gentlemen, this passes a joke!" protested Mr. Dill, looking around +him in his blankly melancholy way. "I do not drink liquor. I must +insist upon your stopping this horseplay immediately!" + +"Oh, it ain't no _play_," asserted the insistent one darkly. "I mean +it, by thunder." + +It was at this point that Charming Billy decided to have a word. +"Here, break away, there!" he yelled, pushing the belligerent +sheepherder to one side. "Hands off that long person! That there's +_my_ dill pickle!" + +[Illustration: "HANDS OFF THAT LONG PERSON! THAT THERE'S _MY_ DILL +PICKLE."] + +Mr. Dill was released, and Billy fancied hazily that it was because +he so ordered; as a matter of fact, Mr. Dill, catching sight of him +there, had thrown the men and their importunities off as though they +had been rough-mannered boys. He literally plowed his way through them +and stopped deprecatingly before Billy. + +"It is getting late," he observed, mildly reproachful. "I thought I +would show you the way to my room, if you don't mind." + +Billy stared down at him. "Well, I'm going to be busy for a while +yet," he demurred. "I've got to lick this misguided son-of-a-gun +that's blatting around wanting to eat me alive--and I got my eyes on +your friend in the rear, there, that's saying words about you, Dilly. +Looks to me like I'm going to be some occupied for quite a spell. You +run along to bed and don't yuh bother none about _me_." + +"The matter is not so urgent but what I can wait until you are ready," +Mr. Dill told him quietly, but with decision. He folded his long arms +and ranged himself patiently alongside Billy. And Billy, regarding him +uneasily, felt convinced that though he tarried until the sun +returned Mr. Dill would stand right there and wait--like a well-broken +range-horse when the reins are dropped to the ground. Charming Billy +did not know why it made him uncomfortable, but it did and he took +immediate measures to relieve the sensation. + +He turned fretfully and cuffed the clamorous sheepherder, who +seemed to lack the heart for actual hostilities but indulged in much +recrimination and was almost in tears. "Aw, shut up!" growled Billy. +"A little more uh that war-talk and I'll start in and learn yuh some +manners. I don't want any more of it. Yuh hear?" + +It is a fact that trifles sometimes breed large events. Billy, to make +good his threat, jumped off the bar. In doing so he came down upon +the toes of Jack Morgan, the hospitable soul who had insisted upon +treating Mr. Dill and who had just come up to renew the argument. Jack +Morgan was a man of uncertain temper and he also had toes exceedingly +tender. He struck out, missed Billy, who was thinking only of the +herder, and it looked quite as though the blow was meant for Mr. Dill. + +After that, things happened quickly and with some confusion. Others +became active, one way or the other, and the clamor was great, so +that it was easily heard down the street and nearly emptied the other +saloons. + +When the worst of it was over and one could tell for a certainty what +was taking place, Charming Billy was holding a man's face tightly +against the bar and was occasionally beating it with his fist none too +gently. Mr. Dill, an arm's length away, had Jack Morgan and one other +offender clutched by the neck in either hand and he was solemnly and +systematically butting their heads together until they howled. The +bartender had just succeeded in throwing the sheepherder out through +the back door, and he was wiping his hands and feeling very well +satisfied with himself. + +"I'd oughta fired him long ago, when he first commenced building +trouble," he remarked, to no one in particular. "The darned +lamb-licker--he's broke and has been all evening. I don't know what +made me stand for 'im long as I did." + +Billy, moved perhaps by weariness rather than mercy, let go his man +and straightened up, feeling mechanically for his hat. His eyes met +those of the melancholy Mr. Dill. + +"If you're quite through"--bang! went the heads--"perhaps we may as +well"--bang!--"leave this unruly crowd"--bang!!--"and go to our room. +It is after eleven o'clock." Mr. Dill looked as though his present +occupation was unpleasant but necessary and as though, to please +Billy, he could keep it up indefinitely. + +Charming Billy stood quite still, staring at the other and at what he +was doing; and while he stared and wondered, something came into the +heart of him and quite changed his destiny. He did not know what it +was, or why it was so; at the time he realized only a deep amazement +that Mr. Dill, mild of manner, correct of speech and wistful-eyed, +should be standing there banging the heads of two men who were +considered rather hard to handle. Certainly Jack Morgan was reputed a +"bad actor" when it came to giving blows. And while Alexander P. Dill +was a big man--an enormous man, one might say--he had none of the +earmarks of a fighting man. It was, perhaps, his very calmness that +won Billy for good and all. Before, Charming Billy had felt toward him +a certain amused pity; his instinct had been to protect Mr. Dill. He +would never feel just that way again; Mr. Dill, it would seem, was +perfectly well able to protect himself. + +"Shall we go?" Mr. Dill poised the two heads for another bang and held +them so. By this time every one in the room was watching, but he had +eyes only for Billy. + +"Just as you say," Billy assented submissively. + +Mr. Dill shook the two with their faces close together, led them to a +couple of chairs and set them emphatically down. "Now, see if you can +behave yourselves," he advised, in the tone a father would have +used toward two refractory boys. "You have been acting boorishly and +disgracefully all evening. It was you who directed me wrong, to-day. +You have not, at any time since I first met you, acted like gentlemen; +I should be sorry to think this country held many such brainless +louts." He turned inquiringly toward Charming Billy and nodded his +head toward the door. Billy, stooping unsteadily for his hat which he +discovered under his feet, followed him meekly out. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +"_Till Hell's a Skating-rink._" + + +Charming Billy opened his eyes slowly, but with every sense at the +normal degree of alertness; which was a way he had, born of light +sleeping and night-watching. He had slept heavily, from the feel of +his head, and he remembered the unwisdom of drinking four glasses of +whisky and then changing irresponsibly to beer. He had not undressed, +it would seem, and he was lying across the middle of a bed with his +spurred boots hanging over the edge. A red comforter had been thrown +across him, and he wondered why. He looked around the room and +discovered Mr. Dill seated in a large, cane rocker--which was +unquestionably not big enough for his huge person--his feet upon +another chair and his hands folded inertly on his drawn-up knees. He +was asleep, with his head lying against the chair-back and his face +more melancholy than ever and more wistful. His eyes, Billy observed, +were deep-sunk and dark-ringed. He sat up suddenly--did Billy, and +threw off the cover with some vehemence. "Darn me for a drunken +chump!" he exclaimed, and clanked over to the chair. + +"Here, Dilly"--to save the life of him he could not refrain from +addressing him so--"why in thunder didn't yuh kick me awake, and make +me get off your bed? What did yuh let me do it for--and you setting up +all night--oh, this is sure a hell of a note!" + +Mr. Dill opened his eyes, stared blankly and came back from his +dreaming. "You were so--so impatient when I tried to get you up," he +explained in a tired voice. "And you had a way of laying your hands on +your revolver when I insisted. It seems you took me for a shepherd +and were very unfriendly; so I thought it best to let you stay as you +were, but I'm afraid you were not very comfortable. One can rest so +much better between sheets. You would not," he added plaintively, +"even permit me to take your boots off for you." + +Charming Billy sat down upon the edge of the bed, all tousled as he +was, and stared abstractedly at Mr. Dill. Perhaps he had never before +felt so utterly disgusted with himself, or realized so keenly his +shortcomings. Not even the girl had humbled him so completely as had +this long, lank, sinfully grammatical man from Michigan. + +"You've sure got me where I live, Dilly," he said slowly and +haltingly, feeling mechanically for the makings of a smoke. "Charming +Billy Boyle ain't got a word to say for himself. But if yuh ain't +plumb sick and disgusted with the spectacle I've made uh myself, yuh +can count on me till hell's a skating-rink. I ain't always thisaway. I +do have spells when I'm some lucid." + +It was not much, but such as it was it stood for his oath of +allegiance. + +Alexander P. Dill sat up straight, his long, bony fingers--which +Billy could still mentally see gripping the necks of those two in +the saloon--lying loosely upon the chair-arms. "I hope you will +not mention the matter again," he said. "I realize that this is not +Michigan, and that the temptations are--But we will not discuss it. I +shall be very grateful for your friendship, and--" + +"Grateful!" snorted Billy, spilling tobacco on the strip of faded +ingrain carpet before the bed. "Grateful--hell!" + +Mr. Dill looked at him a moment and there was a certain keen +man-measuring behind the wistfulness. But he said no more about the +friendship of Charming Billy Boyle, which was as well. + +That is why the two of them later sat apart on the sunny side of the +hotel "office"--which was also a saloon--and talked of many things, +but chiefly of the cattle industry as Montana knows it and of the +hopes and the aims of Alexander P. Dill. Perhaps, also, that is why +Billy breathed clean of whisky and had the bulk of his winter wages +still unspent in his pocket. + +"Looks to me," he was saying between puffs, "like you'd uh stayed back +where yuh knew the lay uh the land, instead uh drifting out here where +it's all plumb strange to yuh." + +"Well, several incidents influenced my actions," Mr. Dill explained +quietly. "I had always lived within twenty miles of my birthplace. +I owned a general store in a little place near the old farm, and did +well. The farm paid well, also. Then mother died and the place did +not seem quite the same. A railroad was built through the town and the +land I owned there rose enormously in value. I had a splendid location +for a modern store but I could not seem to make up my mind to change. +So I sold out everything--store, land, the home farm and all, and +received a good figure--a _very_ good figure. I was very fortunate in +owning practically the whole townsite--the new townsite, that is. I +do not like these so-called booms, however, and so I left to begin +somewhere else. I did not care to enter the mercantile business again, +and our doctor advised me to live as much as possible in the open air. +Mother died of consumption. So I decided to come West and buy a cattle +ranch. I believed I should like it. I always liked animals." + +"Uh-huh--so do I." It was not just what Charming Billy most wanted to +say, but that much was perfectly safe, and noncommittal to say. + +Mr. Dill was silent a minute, looking speculatively across to +the Hardup Saloon which was practically empty and therefore quite +peaceful. Billy, because long living on the range made silence easy, +smoked and said nothing. + +"Mr. Boyle," began Dill at last, in the hesitating way that he had +used when Billy first met him, "you say you know this country, and +have worked at cattle-raising for a good many years--" + +"Twelve," supplemented Charming Billy. "Turned my first cow when I was +sixteen." + +"So you must be perfectly familiar with the business. I frankly admit +that I am not familiar with it. You say you are at present out of +employment and so I am thinking seriously of offering you a position +myself, as confidential adviser if you like. I really need some +one who can accompany me about the country and keep me from such +deplorable blunders as was yesterday's experience. After I have bought +a place, I shall need some one who is familiar with the business and +will honestly work for my interests and assist me in the details until +I have myself gained a practical working-knowledge of it. I think I +can make such an arrangement to your advantage as well as my own. From +the start the salary would be what is usually paid to a foreman. What +do you say?" + +For an appreciable space Charming Billy Boyle did not say a word. He +was not stupid and he saw in a flash all the possibilities that lay in +the offer. To be next the very top--to have his say in the running of +a model cow-outfit--and it should be a model outfit if he took charge, +for he had ideas of his own about how these things should be +done--to be foreman, with the right to "hire and fire" at his own +discretion--He turned, flushed and bright-eyed, to Dill. + +"God knows why yuh cut _me_ out for the job," he said in a rather +astonished voice. "What you've seen uh me, so far, ain't been what +I'd call a gilt-edge recommend. But if you're fool enough to mean it +serious, it's as I told yuh a while back: Yuh can count on me till +they're cutting figure-eights all over hell." + +"That, according to the scientists who are willing to concede the +existence of such a place, will be quite as long as I shall be likely +to have need of your loyalty," observed Mr. Dill, puckering his long +face into the first smile Billy had seen him attempt. + +He did not intimate the fact that he had inquired very closely into +the record and the general range qualifications of Charming Billy +Boyle, sounding, for that purpose, every responsible man in Hardup. +With the new-born respect for him bred by his peculiarly efficacious +way of handling those who annoyed him beyond the limit, he was told +the truth and recognized it as such. So he was not really as rash and +as given over to his impulses as Billy, in his ignorance of the man, +fancied. + +The modesty of Billy would probably have been shocked if he had heard +the testimony of his fellows concerning him. As it was, he was rather +dazed and a good deal inclined to wonder how Alexander P. Dill had +ever managed to accumulate enough capital to start anything--let +alone a cow-outfit--if he took on trust every man he met. He privately +believed that Dill had taken a long chance, and that he should +consider himself very lucky because he had accidentally picked a man +who would not "steal him blind." + + * * * * * + +After that there were many days of riding to and fro, canvassing all +northern Montana in search of a location and an outfit that suited +them and that could be bought. And in the riding, Mr. Dill became +under the earnest tutelage of Charming Billy a shade less ignorant of +range ways and of the business of "raising wild cattle for the Eastern +markets." + +He even came to speak quite easily of "outfits" in all the nice shades +of meaning which are attached to that hard-worked term. He could lay +the saddle-blanket smooth and unwrinkled, slap the saddle on and cinch +it without fixing it either upon the withers or upon the rump of his +long-suffering mount. He could swing his quirt without damaging his +own person, and he rode with his stirrups where they should be to +accommodate the length of him--all of which speaks eloquently of the +honest intentions of Dill's confidential adviser. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +_Just a Day-dream._ + + +Charming Billy rode humped over the saddle-horn, as rides one whose +mind feels the weight of unpleasant thoughts. Twice he had glanced +uncertainly at his companion, opening his lips for speech; twice he +had closed them silently and turned again to the uneven trail. + +Mr. Dill also was humped forward in the saddle, but if one might judge +from his face it was because he was cold. The wind blew chill from out +the north and they were facing it; the trail they followed was frozen +hard and the gray clouds above promised snow. The cheek-bones of Dill +were purple and the point of his long nose was very red. Tears stood +in his eyes, whipped there by the biting wind. + +"How far are we now from town?" he asked dispiritedly. + +"Only about five miles," Billy cheered. Then, as if trivial speech had +made easier what he had in mind to say, he turned resolutely toward +the other. "Yuh expect to meet old man Robinson there, don't yuh?" + +"That was the arrangement, as I understood it" + +"And you're thinking strong of buying him out?" + +"His place appeals to me more than any of the others, and--yes, it +seems to me that I can't do better." Mr. Dill turned the collar of his +coat up a bit farther--or fancied he did so--and looked questioningly +at Billy. + +"Yuh gave me leave to advise yuh where yuh needed it," Billy said +almost challengingly, "and I'm going to call yuh, right here and now. +If yuh take my advice yuh won't go making medicine with old Robinson +any more. He'll do yuh, sure. He's asking yuh double what the outfit's +worth. They _all_ are. It looks to me like they think you're just out +here to get rid of your pile and the bigger chunk they can pry loose +from yuh the better. I was going to put yuh next before this, only yuh +didn't seem to take to any uh the places real serious, so it wasn't +necessary." + +"I realize that one cannot buy land and cattle for nothing," Dill +chuckled. "It seemed to me that, compared with the prices others have +asked, Mr. Robinson's offer was very reasonable." + +"It may be lower than Jacobs and Wilter, but that don't make it +right." + +"Well, there were the Two Sevens"--he meant the Seventy-Seven, but +that was a mere detail--"I didn't get to see the owner, you know. I +have written East, however, and should hear from him in a few days." + +"Yuh ain't likely to do business with _that_ layout, because I don't +believe they'd sell at any price. Old Robinson is the washout yuh want +to ride around at present; I ain't worrying about the rest, right now. +He's a smooth old devil, and he'll do yuh sure." + +To this Mr. Dill made no reply whatever. He fumbled the fastenings on +his coon-skin coat, tried to pull his cap lower and looked altogether +unhappy. And Charming Billy, not at ail sure that his advice would be +taken or his warning heeded, stuck the spurs into his horse and set a +faster pace reflecting gloomily upon the trials of being confidential +adviser to one who, in a perfectly mild and good-mannered fashion, +goes right along doing pretty much as he pleases. + +It made him think, somehow, of Miss Bridger and the way she had forced +him to take his gun with him when he had meant to leave it. She was +like Dill in that respect: nice and good-natured and smiling--only +Dill smiled but seldom--and yet always managing to make you give up +your own wishes. He wished vaguely that the wanderings of Dill would +bring them back to the Double-Crank country, instead of leading them +always farther afield. He did not, however, admit openly to himself +that he wanted to see Miss Bridger again; yet he did permit himself +to wonder if she ever played coon-can with any one else, or if she had +already forgotten the game. Probably she had, and--well, a good many +other things that he remembered quite distinctly. + +Later, when they had reached town, were warmed and fed and when even +Billy was thinking seriously of sleep, Dill came over and sat down +beside him solemnly, folded his bony hands upon knees quite as bony, +regarded pensively the generously formed foot dangling some distance +before him and smiled his puckered smile. + +"I have been wondering, William, if you had not some plan of your own +concerning this cattle-raising business, which you think is better +than mine but which you hesitate to express. If you have, I hope you +will feel quite free to--er--lay it before the head of the firm. It +may interest you to know that I have, as you would put it, 'failed to +connect' with Mr. Robinson. So, if you have any ideas--" + +"Oh, I'm burning up with 'em," Charming Billy retorted in a way he +meant to be sarcastic, but which Mr. Dill took quite seriously. + +"Then I hope you won't hesitate--" + +"Now look here, Dilly," expostulated he, between puffs. "Recollect, +it's _your_ money that's going to feed the birds--and it's your +privilege to throw it out to suit yourself. Uh course, I might +day-dream about the way I'd start into the cow-business if I was a +millionaire--" + +"I'm not a millionaire," Mr. Dill hastened to correct. "A couple of +hundred thousand or so, is about all--" + +"Well, a fellow don't have to pin himself down to just so many dollars +and cents--not when he's building himself a pet dream. And if a fellow +dreams about starting up an outfit of his own, it don't prove he'd +make it stick in reality." The tone of Billy, however, did not express +any doubt. + +Mr. Dill untangled his legs, crossed them the other way and regarded +the other dangling foot. "I should like very much," he hinted mildly, +"to have you tell me this--er--day-dream, as you call it." + +So Charming Billy, tilted back in his chair and watching with +half-shut eyes the intangible smoke-wreath from his cigarette, found +words for his own particular air-castle which he had builded on sunny +days when the Double-Crank herds grazed peacefully around him; or on +stormy nights when he sat alone in the line-camp and played solitaire +with the mourning wind crooning accompaniment; or on long rides alone, +when the trail was plain before him and the grassland stretched away +and away to a far sky-line, and the white clouds sailed sleepily over +his head and about him the meadowlarks sang. And while he found the +words, he somehow forgot Dill, long and lean and lank, listening +beside him, and spoke more freely than he had meant to do when Dill +first opened the subject a few minutes before. + +"Recollect, this is just a day-dream," he began. "But, if I was a +millionaire, or if I had two hundred thousand dollars--and to me they +don't sound much different--I'd sure start a cow-outfit right away +immediately at once. But I wouldn't buy out nobody; I'd go right back +and start like they did--if they're real old-timers. I'd go down south +into Texas and I'd buy me a bunch uh two-year-olds and bring 'em up +here, and turn 'em loose on the best piece of open range I know--and +I know a peach. In a year or so I'd go back and do the same again, and +I'd keep it up whilst my money held out I'd build me a home ranch back +somewheres in a draw in the hills, where there's lots uh water and +lots uh shelter, and I'd get a bunch uh men that savvied cow-brutes, +put 'em on horses that wouldn't trim down their self-respect every +time they straddled 'em, and then I'd just ride around and watch +myself get rich. And--" He stopped and dreamed silently over his +cigarette. + +"And then?" urged Mr. Dill, after a moment. + +"And then--I'd likely get married, and raise a bunch uh boys to carry +on the business when I got old and fat, and too damn' lazy to ride off +a walk." + +Mr. Dill took three minutes to weigh the matter. Then, musingly: "I'm +not sure about the boys. I'm not a marrying man, myself--but just +giving a snap judgment on the other part of it, I will say it +sounds--well, feasible." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +_The "Double-Crank."_ + + +The weeks that followed immediately after bulged big with the things +which Billy must do or have done. For to lie on one's back in the sun +with one's hat pulled low, dreaming lazily and with minute detail the +perfect supervision of a model cow-outfit from its very inception +up through the buying of stock and the building of corrals and the +breaking of horses to the final shipping of great trainloads of sleek +beef, is one thing; to start out in reality to do all that, with +the hundred little annoyances and hindrances which come not to one's +dreaming in the sun, is something quite different. + +But with all the perplexities born of his changed condition and the +responsibility it brought him, Billy rejoiced in the work and airily +planned the years to come--years in which he would lead Alexander P. +Dill straight into the ranks of the Western millionaires; years when +the sun of prosperity would stand always straight overhead, himself +a Joshua who would, by his uplifted hands, keep it there with never a +cloud to dim the glory of its light. + +For the first time in his life he rode over Texas prairies and lost +thereby some ideals and learned many things, the while he spent +more money than he had ever owned--or ever expected to own--as the +preliminary to making his pet dream come true; truth to tell, it +mattered little to Billy Boyle whether his dream came true for himself +or for another, so long as he himself were the chief magician. + +So it was with a light heart that he swung down from the train +at Tower, after his homing flight, and saw Dill, conspicuous as a +flagstaff, waiting for him on the platform, his face puckered into a +smile of welcome and his bony fingers extended ready to grip painfully +the hand of Charming Billy. + +"I'm very glad to see you back, William," he greeted earnestly. "I +hope you are well, and that you met with no misfortune while you were +away. I have been very anxious for your return, as I need your advice +upon a matter which seems to me of prime importance. I did not wish +to make any decisive move until I had consulted with you, and time is +pressing. Did you--er--buy as many cattle as you expected to get?" It +seemed to Billy that there was an anxious note in his voice. "Your +letters were too few and too brief to keep me perfectly informed of +your movements." + +"Why, everything was lovely at my end uh the trail, Dilly--only I fell +down on them four thousand two-year-olds. Parts uh the country was +quarantined for scab, and I went way around them places. And I was +too late to see the cattlemen in a bunch when they was at the +Association--only you ain't likely to savvy that part uh the +business--and had to chase 'em all over the country. Uh course it was +my luck to have 'em stick their prices up on the end of a pole, where +I didn't feel like climbing after 'em. So I only contracted for a +couple uh thousand to be laid down in Billings somewhere between the +first and the tenth of June, at twenty-one dollars a head. It was +the best I could do this year--but next winter I can go down earlier, +before the other buyers beat me to it, and do a lot better. Don't yuh +worry, Dilly; it ain't serious." + +On the contrary, Dill looked relieved, and Billy could not help +noticing it. His own face clouded a little. Perhaps Dill had lost his +money, or the bulk of it, and they couldn't do all the things they +had meant to do, after all; how else, thought Billy uneasily, could +he look like that over what should ordinarily be something of a +disappointment? He remembered that Dill, after the workings of +the cattle business from the very beginning had been painstakingly +explained to him just before Billy started south, had been anxious +to get at least four thousand head of young stock on the range that +spring. Something must have gone wrong. Maybe a bank had gone +busted or something like that. Billy stole a glance up at the other, +shambling silently along beside him, and decided that something had +certainly happened--and on the heels of that he remembered oddly that +he had felt almost exactly like this when Miss Bridger had asked him +to show her where was the coffee, and there _wasn't_ any coffee. There +was the same heavy feeling in his chest, and the same-- + +"I wrote you a letter three or four days ago--on the third, to be +exact," Dill was saying. "I don't suppose it reached you, however. I +was going to have you meet me in Hardup; but then your telegram was +forwarded to me there and I came on here at once. I only arrived this +morning. I think that after we have something to eat we would better +start out immediately, unless you have other plans. I drove over in +a rig, and as the horses have rested several hours and are none the +worse for the drive, I think we can easily make the return trip this +afternoon." + +"You're the doctor," assented Billy briefly, more uneasy than +before and yet not quite at the point of asking questions. In his +acquaintance with Dill he had learned that it was not always wise to +question too closely; where Dill wished to give his confidence he gave +it freely, but beyond the limit he had fixed for himself was a stone +wall, masked by the flowers, so to speak, of his unfailing courtesy. +Billy had once or twice inadvertently located that wall. + +A great depression seized upon him and made him quite indifferent +to the little pleasures of homecoming; of seeing the grass green and +velvety and hearing the familiar notes of the meadow-larks and the +curlews. The birds had not returned when he went away, and now the air +was musical with them. Driving over the prairies seemed fairly certain +of being anything but pleasant to-day, with Dill doubled awkwardly in +the seat beside him, carrying on an intermittent monologue of trivial +stuff to which Billy scarcely listened. He could feel that there +was something at the back of it all, and that was enough for him at +present. He was not even anxious now to hear just what was the form of +the disaster which had overtaken them. + +"While you were away," Dill began at last in the tone that braces one +instinctively for the worst, "I met accidentally a man of whom I +had heard, but whom I had not seen. In the course of our casual +conversation he discovered that I was about to launch myself and my +capital into the cattle-business, whereupon he himself made me an +offer which I felt should not be lightly brushed aside." + +"They all did!" Billy could not help flinging out half-resentfully, +when he remembered that but for his timely interference Dill would +have been gulled more than once. + +"I admit that in my ignorance some offers advantageous only to those +who made them appealed to me strongly. But I believe you will agree +with me that this is different. In this case I am offered a full +section of land, with water-rights, buildings, corrals, horses, wagons +and all improvements necessary to the running of a good outfit, and +ten thousand head of mixed cattle, just as they are now running loose +on the range, for three hundred thousand dollars. I need only pay +half this amount down, a five-year mortgage at eight per cent. on +the property covering the remainder, to be paid in five yearly +installments, falling due after shipping time. Now that you did not +buy as much young stock as we at first intended, I can readily make +the first payment on this place and have left between ten and twelve +thousand dollars to carry us along until we begin to get some +returns from the investment I am anxious to have you look over the +proposition, and tell me what you think of it. If you are in favor of +buying, we can have immediate possession; ten days after the deal is +closed, I think the man said." + +Billy tilted his hat-brim a bit to keep the sun from his eyes, and +considered gravely the proposition. It was a great relief to discover +that his fears were groundless and that it was only another scheme +of Dilly's; another snare which he, perhaps, would be compelled, in +Dill's interest, to move aside. He put the reins down between his +knees and gripped them tightly while he made a cigarette. It was not +until he was pinching the end shut that he spoke. + +"If it's as you say"--and he meant no offense--"it looks like a good +thing, all right. But yuh can't most always tell. I'd have to see +it--say, yuh might tell me where this bonanza is, and what's the name +uh the brand. If it's anywheres around here I ought to know the place, +all right." + +Alexander P. Dill must, after all, have had some sense of humor; +his eyes lost their melancholy enough almost to twinkle. "Well, the +owner's name is Brown," he said slowly. "I believe they call the brand +the Double-Crank. It is located--" + +"Located--hell!--do yuh think _I_ don't know?" The cigarette, ready +to light as it was, slipped from Billy's fingers and dropped unheeded +over the wheel to the brown trail below. He took the reins carefully +from between his knees, straightened one that had become twisted and +turned out upon the prairie to avoid a rough spot where a mud-puddle +had dried in hard ridges. Beyond, he swung back again, leaned and +flicked an early horse-fly from the ribs of the off-horse, touched the +other one up a bit with his whip and settled back at ease, tilting his +hat at quite another angle. + + "Oh, where have yuh been, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Oh, where have yuh been, charming Billy?" + +He hummed, in a care-free way that would have been perfectly maddening +to any one with nerves. + +"I suppose I am to infer from your silence that you do not take kindly +to the proposition," observed Mr. Dill, in a colorless tone which +betrayed the fact that he did have nerves. + +"I can take a josh, all right," Billy stopped singing long enough to +say. "For a steady-minded cuss, yuh do have surprising streaks, Dilly, +and that's a fact. Yuh sprung it on me mighty smooth, for not having +much practice--I'll say that for yuh." + +Mr. Dill looked hurt. "I hope you do not seriously think that I would +joke upon a matter of business," he protested. + +"Well, I know old Brown pretty tolerable well--and I ain't accusing +him uh ribbing up a big josh on yuh. He ain't that brand." + +"I must confess I fail to get your point of view," said Mr. Dill, with +just a hint of irascibility in his voice. "There is no joke unless you +are forcing one upon me now. Mr. Brown made me a bona-fide offer, +and I have made a small deposit to hold it until you came and I could +consult you. We have three days left in which to decide for or against +it. It is all perfectly straight, I assure you." + +Billy took time to consider this possibility. "Well, in that case, +and all jokes aside, I'd a heap rather have the running uh the +Double-Crank than be President and have all the newspapers hollering +how 'President Billy Boyle got up at eight this morning and had +ham-and-eggs for his breakfast, and then walked around the block with +the Queen uh England hanging onto his left arm,' or anything like that +But what I can't seem to get percolated through me is why, in God's +name, the Double-Crank wants to sell." + +"That," Mr. Dill remarked, his business instincts uppermost, "it seems +to me, need not concern us--seeing that they _will_ sell, and at a +price we can handle." + +"I reckon you're right. Would yuh mind saying over the details uh the +offer again?" + +"Mr. Brown"--Dill cleared his throat--"offered to sell me a full +section of land, extending from the line-fence of the home ranch, +east--" + +"Uh-huh--now what the devil's his idea in that?" Billy cut in +earnestly. "The Double-Crank owns about three or four miles uh bottom +land, up the creek west uh the home ranch. Wonder why he wants to hold +that out?" + +"I'm sure I do not know," answered Dill. "He did not mention that to +me, but confined himself, naturally, to what he was willing to sell." + +"Oh it don't matter. And all the range stuff, yuh said--ten thousand +head, and--" + +"I believe he is reserving some thoroughbred stock which he has bought +in the last year or two. The stock on the range--the regular range +grade-stock--all goes, as well as the saddle-horses." + +"Must be the widow said yes and wants him to settle down and be a +gentle farmer," decided Billy after a moment. + +"We will meet him in Hardup to-night or to-morrow," Dill observed, +as if he were anxious to decide the matter finally. "Do you think we +would better buy?" It was one of his little courteous ways to say "we" +in discussing a business transaction, just as though Billy were one of +the firm. + +"Buy? You bet your life we'll buy! I wisht the papers was all signed +up and in your inside pocket right now, Dilly. I'm going to get heart +failure the worst kind if there's any hitch. Lord, what luck!" + +"Then, we will consider the matter as definitely settled," said Dill, +with a sigh of satisfaction. "Brown cannot rescind now--there is my +deposit to bind the bargain. I will say I should have been sorely +disappointed if you had not shown that you favored the idea. It seems +to me to be just what we want." + +"Oh--that part. But it seems to _me_ that old Brown is sure locoed +to give us a chance at the outfit. He's gone plumb silly. His friends +oughta appoint a guardian over him--only I hope they won't get action +till this deal is cinched tight." With that, Billy relapsed into +crooning his ditty. But there were odd breaks when he stopped short in +the middle of a line and forgot to finish, and there was more than one +cigarette wasted by being permitted to go cold and then being chewed +abstractedly until it nearly fell to pieces. + +Beside him, Alexander P. Dill, folded loosely together in the seat, +caressed his knees and stared unseeingly at the trail ahead of them +and said never a word for more than an hour. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +_The Day We Celebrate._ + + +The days that followed were to Billy much like a delicious dream. +Sometimes he stopped short and wondered uneasily if he would wake up +pretty soon to find that he was still an exile from the Double-Crank, +wandering with Dill over the country in search of a location. +Sometimes he laughed aloud unexpectedly, and said, "Hell!" in a +chuckling undertone when came fresh realization of the miracle. But +mostly he was an exceedingly busy young man, with hands and brain too +full of the stress of business to do much wondering. + +They were in possession of the Double-Crank, now--he in full +charge, walking the path which his own feet, when he was merely +a "forty-dollar puncher," had helped wear deep to the stable and +corrals; giving orders where he had been wont to receive them; riding +horses which he had long completed, but which had heretofore been +kept sacred to the use of Jawbreaker and old Brown himself; eating and +sleeping in the house with Dill instead of making one of the crowd in +the bunk-house; ordering the coming and going of the round-up crew and +tasting to the full the joys--and the sorrows--of being "head push" +where he had for long been content to serve. Truly, the world had +changed amazingly for one Charming Billy Boyle. + +Most of the men he had kept on, for he liked them well and they had +faith to believe that success would not spoil him. The Pilgrim he had +promised himself the pleasure of firing bodily off the ranch within an +hour of his first taking control--but the Pilgrim had not waited. +He had left the ranch with the Old Man and where he had gone did not +concern Billy at the time. For there was the shipment of young stock +from the South to meet and drive up to the home range, and there was +the calf round-up to start on time, and after all the red tape of +buying the outfit and turning over the stock had been properly wound +up, time was precious in the extreme through May and June and well +into July. + +But habit is strong upon a man even after the conditions which bred +the habit have utterly changed. One privilege had been always kept +inviolate at the Double-Crank, until it had come to be looked upon as +an inalienable right. The Glorious Fourth had been celebrated, come +rain, come shine. Usually the celebration was so generous that it +did not stop at midnight; anywhere within a week was considered +permissible, a gradual tapering off--not to say sobering up--being the +custom with the more hilarious souls. + +When Dill with much solemnity tore off June from the calendar in the +dining room--the calendar with Custer's Last Charge rioting redly +above the dates--Billy, home for a day from the roundup, realized +suddenly that time was on the high lope; at least, that is how he put +it to Dill. + +"Say, Dilly, we sure got to jar loose from getting rich long enough +to take in that picnic over to Bluebell Grove. Didn't know there was +a picnic or a Bluebell Grove? Well now, there is. Over on Horned-Toad +Creek--nice, pretty name to go with the grove, ain't it?--they've got +a patch uh shade big over as my hat. Right back up on the hill is the +schoolhouse where they do their dancing, and they've got a table or +two and a swing for the kids to fall outa--and they call it Bluebell +Grove because yuh never saw a bluebell within ten mile uh the place. +That's where the general round-up for the Fourth is pulled off this +year--so Jim Bleeker was telling me this morning. We sure got to be +present, Dilly." + +"I'm afraid I'm not the sort of man to shine in society, William," +dissented the other modestly. "You can go, and--" + +"Don't yuh never _dance_?" Billy eyed him speculatively. A man under +fifty--and Dill might be anywhere between thirty and forty--who had +two sound legs and yet did not dance! + +"Oh, I used to, after a fashion. But my feet are so far off that I +find communication with them necessarily slow, and they have a habit +of embarking in wild ventures of their own. I do not believe they +are really popular with the feminine element, William. And so I'd +rather--" + +"Aw, you'll have to go and try it a whirl, anyhow. We ain't any of us +experts. Yuh see, the boys have been accustomed to having the wheels +of industry stop revolving on the Fourth, and turning kinda wobbly for +four or five days after. I don't feel like trying to break 'em in to +keep on working--do you?" + +"To use your own term," said Dill, suddenly reckless of his diction, +"you're sure the doctor." + +"Well, then, the proper dope for this case is, all hands show up at +the picnic." He picked up his hat from the floor, slapped it twice +against his leg to remove the dust, pinched the crown into four dents, +set it upon his head at a jaunty angle and went out, singing softly: + +"She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother." + +Dill, looking after him, puckered his face into what passed with him +for a smile. "I wonder now," he meditated aloud, "if William is not +thinking of some particular young lady who--er--who 'cannot leave her +mother'." If he had only known it, William was; he was also wondering +whether she would be at the picnic. And if she were at the picnic, +would she remember him? He had only seen her that one night--and to +him it seemed a very long while ago. He thought, however, that +he might be able to recall himself to her mind--supposing she had +forgotten. It was a long time ago, he kept reminding himself, and +the light was poor and he hadn't shaved for a week--he had always +afterward realized that with much mental discomfort--and he really did +look a lot different when he had on his "war-togs," by which he meant +his best clothes. He wouldn't blame her at all if she passed him up +for a stranger, just at first. A great deal more he thought on the +same subject, and quite as foolishly. + +Because of much thinking on the subject, when he and Dill rode down +the trail which much recent passing had made unusually dusty, with the +hot sunlight of the Fourth making the air quiver palpably around them; +with the cloudless blue arching hotly over their heads and with the +four by six cotton flag flying an involuntary signal of distress--on +account of its being hastily raised bottom-side-up and left that +way--and beckoning them from the little clump of shade below, the +heart of Charming Billy Boyle beat unsteadily under the left pocket of +his soft, cream-colored silk shirt, and the cheeks of him glowed red +under the coppery tan. Dill was not the sort of man who loves fast +riding and they ambled along quite decorously--"like we was headed +for prayer-meeting with a singing-book under each elbow," thought +Billy, secretly resentful of the pace. + +"I reckon there'll be quite a crowd," he remarked wistfully. "I see a +good many horses staked out already." + +Dill nodded absently, and Billy took to singing his pet ditty; one +must do something when one is covering the last mile of a journey +toward a place full of all sorts of delightful possibilities--and +covering that mile at a shambling trot which is truly maddening. + + "She can make a punkin pie quick's a cat can wink her eye, + She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!" + +"But, of course," observed Mr. Dill quite unexpectedly, "you know, +William, time will remedy that drawback." + +Billy started, looked suspiciously at the other, grew rather red and +shut up like a clam. He did more; he put the spurs to his horse and +speedily hid himself in a dust-cloud, so that Dill, dutifully keeping +pace with him, made a rather spectacular arrival whether he would or +no. + +Charming Billy, his hat carefully dimpled, his blue tie fastidiously +knotted and pierced with the Klondyke nugget-pin which was his only +ornament, wandered hastily through the assembled groups and +slapped viciously at mosquitoes. Twice he shied at a flutter of +woman-garments, retreated to a respectable distance and reconnoitred +with a fine air of indifference, to find that the flutter accompanied +the movements of some girl for whom he cared not at all. + +In his nostrils was the indefinable, unmistakable picnic odor--the +odor of crushed grasses and damp leaf-mould stirred by the passing of +many feet, the mingling of cheap perfumes and starched muslin and iced +lemonade and sandwiches; in his ears the jumble of laughter and of +holiday speech, the squealing of children in a mob around the swing, +the protesting squeak of the ropes as they swung high, the snorting +of horses tied just outside the enchanted ground. And through the +tree-tops he could glimpse the range-land lying asleep in the hot +sunlight, unchanged, uncaring, with the wild range-cattle feeding +leisurely upon the slopes and lifting heads occasionally to snuff +suspiciously the unwonted sounds and smells that drifted up to them on +vagrant breezes. + +He introduced Dill to four or five men whom he thought might +be congenial, left him talking solemnly with a man who at some +half-forgotten period had come from Michigan, and wandered aimlessly +on through the grove. Fellows there were in plenty whom he knew, but +he passed them with a brief word or two. Truth to tell, for the most +part they were otherwise occupied and had no time for him. + +He loitered over to the swing, saw that the enthusiasts who were +making so much noise were all youngsters under fifteen or so and that +they hailed his coming with a joy tinged with self-interest. He rose +to the bait of one dark-eyed miss who had her hair done in two braids +crossed and tied close to her head with red-white-and-blue ribbon, and +who smiled alluringly and somewhat toothlessly and remarked that she +liked to go 'way, '_way_ up till it most turned over, and that +it didn't scare her a bit. He swung her almost into hysterics +and straightway found himself exceedingly popular with other +braided-and-tied young misses. Charming Billy never could tell +afterward how long or how many he swung 'way, '_way_ up; he knew that +he pushed and pushed until his arms ached and the hair on his forehead +became unpleasantly damp under his hat. + +"That'll just about have to do yuh, kids," he rebelled suddenly and +left them, anxiously patting his hair and generally resettling himself +as he went. Once more in a dispirited fashion he threaded the crowd, +which had grown somewhat larger, side-stepped a group which called +after him, and went on down to the creek. + +"I'm about the limit, I guess," he told himself irritably. "Why the +dickens didn't I have the sense and nerve to ride over and ask her +straight out if she was coming? I coulda drove her over, maybe--if +she'd come with me. I coulda took the bay team and top-buggy, and done +the thing right. I coulda--hell, there's a _heap_ uh things I coulda +done that would uh been a lot more wise than what I did do! Maybe she +ain't coming at all, and--" + +On the heels of that he saw a spring-wagon, come rattling down the +trail across the creek. There were two seats full, and two parasols +were bobbing seductively, and one of them was blue. "I'll bet a dollar +that's them now," murmured Billy, and once more felt anxiously of his +hair where it had gone limp under his hat. "Darned kids--they'd uh kept +me there till I looked like I'd been wrassling calves half a day," +went with the patting. He turned and went briskly through an empty +and untrampled part of the grove to the place where the wagon would be +most likely to stop. "I'm sure going to make good to-day or--" And a +little farther--"What if it ain't _them_?" + +Speedily he discovered that it was "them," and at the same time he +discovered something else which pleased him not at all. Dressed with +much care, so that even Billy must reluctantly own him good-looking +enough, and riding so close to the blue parasol that his horse barely +escaped grazing a wheel, was the Pilgrim. He glared at Billy in +unfriendly fashion and would have shut him off completely from +approach to the wagon; but a shining milk can, left carelessly by a +bush, caught the eye of his horse, and after that the Pilgrim was very +busy riding erratically in circles and trying to keep in touch with +his saddle. + +Billy, grown surprisingly bold, went straight to where the blue +parasol was being closed with dainty deliberation. "A little more, and +you'd have been late for dinner," he announced, smiling up at her, and +held out his eager arms. Diplomacy, perhaps, should have urged him to +assist the other lady first--but Billy Boyle was quite too direct +to be diplomatic and besides, the other lady was on the opposite side +from him. + +Miss Bridger may have been surprised, and she may or may not have been +pleased; Billy could only guess at her emotions--granting she felt +any. But she smiled down at him and permitted the arms to receive her, +and she also permitted--though with some hesitation--Billy to lead her +straight away from the wagon and its occupants and from the gyrating +Pilgrim to the deep delights of the grove. + +"Mr. Walland is a good rider, don't you think?" murmured Miss Bridger, +gazing over her shoulder. + +"He's a bird," said Billy evenly, and was polite enough not to mention +what kind of bird. He was wondering what on earth had brought those +two together and why, after that night, Miss Bridger should be +friendly with the Pilgrim; but of these things he said nothing, though +he did find a good deal to say upon pleasanter subjects. + +So far as any one knew, Charming Billy Boyle, while he had done many +things, had never before walked boldly into a picnic crowd carrying a +blue parasol as if it were a rifle and keeping step as best he might +over the humps and hollows of the grove with a young woman. Many there +were who turned and looked again--and these were the men who knew him +best. As for Billy, his whole attitude was one of determination; he +was not particularly lover-like--had he wanted to be, he would not +have known how. He was resolved to make the most of his opportunities, +because they were likely to be few and because he had an instinct that +he should know the girl better--he had even dreamed foolishly, once or +twice, of some day marrying her. But to clinch all, he had no notion +of letting the Pilgrim offend her by his presence. + +So he somehow got her wedged between two fat women at one of the +tables, and stood behind and passed things impartially and ate ham +sandwiches and other indigestibles during the intervals. He had the +satisfaction of seeing the Pilgrim come within ten feet of them, hover +there scowling for a minute or two and then retreat. "He ain't forgot +the licking I gave him," thought Billy vaingloriously, and hid a smile +in the delectable softness of a wedge of cake with some kind of creamy +filling. + +"_I_ made that cake," announced Miss Bridger over her shoulder when +she saw what he was eating. "Do you like it as well as--chicken stew?" + +Whereupon Billy murmured incoherently and wished the two fat women ten +miles away. He had not dared--he would never have dared--refer to that +night, or mention chicken stew or prune pies or even dried apricots in +her presence; but with her own hand she had brushed aside the veil of +constraint that had hung between them. + +"I wish I'd thought to bring a prune pie," he told her daringly, in +his eagerness half strangling over a crumb of cake. + +"Nobody wants prune pie at a picnic," declared one of the fat women +sententiously. "You might as well bring fried bacon and done with it." + +"Picnics," added the other and fatter woman, "iss for getting +somet'ings t' eat yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the +moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes. + +"I _love_ prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the +snorts which came from either side. + +Billy felt himself four inches taller just then. "Give me stewed +prairie-chicken," he stooped to murmur in her ear--or, to be exact, in +the blue bow on her hat. + +"Ach, you folks didn'd ought to come to a picnic!" grunted the fatter +woman in disgust. + +The two who had the secret between them laughed confidentially, and +Miss Bridger even turned her head away around so that their eyes could +meet and emphasize the joke. + +Billy looked down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly +stuff on her shoulders--stuff that was just thin enough so that one +caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath--and +wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat +before--and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her +chin and--"Thunder! I guess I've sure got 'em, all right!" he brought +himself up angrily, and refrained from carrying the subject farther. + +It was rumored that the dancing would shortly begin in the schoolhouse +up the hill, and Billy realized suddenly with some compunction that he +had forgotten all about Dill. "I want to introduce my new boss to +yuh, Miss Bridger," he said when they had left the table and she was +smoothing down the ruffly blue stuff in an adorably feminine way. "He +isn't much just to look at, but he's the whitest man I ever knew. You +wait here a minute and I'll go find him"--which was a foolish thing +for him to do, as he afterward found out. + +For when he had hunted the whole length of the grove, he found +Dill standing like a blasted pine tree in the middle of a circle of +men--men who were married, and so were not wholly taken up with +the feminine element--and he was discoursing to them earnestly and +grammatically upon the capitalistic tendencies of modern politics. +Billy stood and listened long enough to see that there was no hope of +weaning his interest immediately, and then went back to where he had +left Miss Bridger. She was not there. He looked through the nearest +groups, approached one of the fat women, who was industriously +sorting the remains of the feast and depositing the largest and most +attractive pieces of cake in her own basket, and made bold to inquire +if she knew where Miss Bridger had gone. + +"Gone home after some prune pie, I guess maybe," she retorted +quellingly, and Billy asked no farther. + +Later he caught sight of a blue flutter in the swing; investigated and +saw that it was Miss Bridger, and that the Pilgrim, smiling and with +his hat set jauntily back on his head, was pushing the swing. They did +not catch sight of Billy for he did not linger there. He turned short +around, walked purposefully out to the edge of the grove where his +horse was feeding at the end of his rope, picked up the rope and led +the horse over to where his saddle lay on its side, the neatly folded +saddle-blanket laid across it. "Darn it, stand still!" he growled +unjustly, when the horse merely took the liberty of switching a fly +off his rump. Billy picked up the blanket, shook the wrinkles out +mechanically, held it before him ready to lay across the waiting back +of Barney; shook it again, hesitated and threw it violently back upon +the saddle. + +"Go on off--I don't want nothing of yuh," he admonished the horse, +which turned and looked at him inquiringly. "I ain't through yet--I +got another chip to put up." He made him a cigarette, lighted it and +strolled nonchalantly back to the grove. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +_"When I Lift My Eyebrows This Way."_ + + + "Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?" + +Somewhere behind him a daring young voice was singing. Billy turned +with a real start, and when he saw her coming gayly down a little, +brush-hidden path and knew that she was alone, the heart of him turned +a complete somersault--from the feel of it. + +"My long friend, Dilly, was busy, and so I--I went to look after my +horse," he explained, his mind somewhat in a jumble. How came she to +be there, and why did she sing those lines? How did she know that was +_his_ song, or--did she really care at all? And where was the Pilgrim? + +"Mr. Walland and I tried the swing, but I don't like it; it made me +horribly dizzy," she said, coming up to him. "Then I went to find Mama +Joy--" + +"Who?" Billy had by that time recovered his wits enough to know just +exactly what she said. + +"Mama Joy--my stepmother. I call her that. You see, father wants me to +call her mama--he really wanted it mother, but I couldn't--and she's +so young to have me for a daughter, so she wants me to call her Joy; +that's her name. So I call her both and please them both, I hope. Did +you ever study diplomacy, Mr. Boyle?" + +"I never did, but I'm going to start right in," Billy told her, and +half meant it. + +"A thorough understanding of the subject is indispensable--when you +have a stepmother--a _young_ stepmother. You've met her, haven't you?" + +"No," said Billy. He did not want to talk about her stepmother, but he +hated to tell her so. "Er--yes, I believe I did see her once, come to +think of it," he added honestly when memory prompted him. + +Miss Bridger laughed, stopped, and laughed again. "How Mama Joy would +_hate_ you if she knew that!" she exclaimed relishfully. + +"Why?" + +"Oh, you wait! If ever I tell her that you--that _anybody_ ever met +her and then forgot! Why, she knows the color of your hair and eyes, +and she knows the pattern of that horsehair hat-band and the size of +your boots--she _admires_ a man whose feet haven't two or three inches +for every foot of his height--she says you wear fives, and you don't +lack much of being six feet tall, and--" + +"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" protested Billy, very red and uncomfortable. +"What have I done to yuh that you throw it into me like that? My hands +are up--and they'll stay up if you'll only quit it." + +Miss Bridger looked at him sidelong and laughed to herself. "That's to +pay you for forgetting that you ever met Mama Joy," she asserted. "I +shouldn't be surprised if next week you'll have forgotten that you +ever met _me_. And if you do, after that chicken stew--" + +"You're a josher," said Billy helplessly, not being prepared to say +just all he thought about the possibility of his forgetting her. He +wished that he understood women better, so that he might the better +cope with the vagaries of this one; and so great was his ignorance +that he never dreamed that every man since Adam had wished the same +thing quite as futilely. + +"I'm not going to josh now," she promised, with a quick change of +manner. "You haven't--I _know_ you haven't, but I'll give you a chance +to dissemble--you haven't a partner for the dance, have you?" + +"No. Have you?" Billy did have the courage to say that, though he +dared not say more. + +"Well, I--I could be persuaded," she hinted shamelessly. + +"Persuade nothing! Yuh belong to me, and if anybody tries to throw +his loop over your head, why--" Billy looked dangerous; he meant the +Pilgrim. + +"Thank you." She seemed relieved, and it was plain she did not read +into his words any meaning beyond the dance, though Billy was secretly +hoping that she would. "Do you know, I think you're perfectly lovely. +You're so--so _comfortable_. When I've known you a little longer +I expect I'll be calling you Charming Billy, or else Billy Boy. If +you'll stick close to me all through this dance and come every time I +lift my eyebrows this way"--she came near getting kissed, right then, +but she never knew it--"and say it's _your_ dance and that I promised +it to you before, I'll be--_awfully_ grateful and obliged." + +"I wisht," said Billy pensively, "I had the nerve to take all this for +sudden admiration; but I savvy, all right. Some poor devil's going to +get it handed to him to-night." + +For the first time Miss Bridger blushed consciously. "I--well, you'll +be good and obliging and do just what I want, won't you?" + +"Sure!" said Billy, not trusting himself to say more. Indeed, he had +to set his teeth hard on that word to keep more from tumbling out. +Miss Bridger seemed all at once anxious over something. + +"You waltz and two-step and polka and schottische, don't you?" Her +eyes, as she looked up at him, reminded Billy achingly of that time +in the line-camp when she asked him for a horse to ride home. They had +the same wistful, pleading look. Billy gritted his teeth. + +"Sure," he answered again. + +Miss Bridger sighed contentedly. "I know it's horribly mean and +selfish of me, but you're so good--and I'll make it up to you some +time. Really I will! At some other dance you needn't dance with me +once, or look at me, even--That will even things up, won't it?" + +"Sure," said Billy for the third time. + +They paced slowly, coming into view of the picnic crowd, hearing +the incoherent murmur of many voices. Miss Bridger looked at him +uncertainly, laughed a little and spoke impulsively. "You needn't do +it, Mr. Boyle, unless you like. It's only a joke, anyway; I mean, +my throwing myself at you like that. Just a foolish joke; I'm often +foolish, you know. Of course, I know you wouldn't misunderstand or +anything like that, but it _is_ mean of me to drag you into it by the +hair of the head, almost, just to play a joke on some one--on Mama +Joy. You're too good-natured. You're a direct temptation to people who +haven't any conscience. Really and truly, you needn't do it at all." + +"Yuh haven't heard me raising any howl, have yuh?" inquired Billy, +eying her slantwise. "I'm playing big luck, if yuh ask me." + +"Well--if you _really_ don't mind, and haven't any one else--" + +"I haven't," Billy assured her unsmilingly. "And I really don't mind. +I think I--kinda like the prospect." He was trying to match her mood +and he was not at all sure that he was a success. "There's one +thing. If yuh get tired uh having me under your feet all the time, +why--Dilly's a stranger and an awful fine fellow; I'd like to have +you--well, be kinda nice to him. I want him to have a good time, you +see, and you'll like him. You can't help it. And it will square up +anything yuh may feel yuh might owe me--" + +"I'll be just lovely to Dilly," Miss Bridger promised him with +emphasis. "It will be a fair bargain, then, and I won't feel so--so +small about asking you what I did. You can help me play a little joke, +and I'll dance with Duly. So," she finished in a tone of satisfaction, +"we'll be even. I feel a great deal better now, because I can pay you +back." + +Billy, on that night, was more keenly observant than usual and there +was much that he saw. He saw at once that Miss Bridger lifted her +eyebrows in the way she had demonstrated as _this way_, whenever the +Pilgrim approached her. He saw that the Pilgrim was looking extremely +bloodthirsty and went out frequently--Billy guessed shrewdly that his +steps led to where the drink was not water--and the sight cheered +him considerably. Yet it hurt him a little to observe that, when the +Pilgrim was absent or showed no sign of meaning to intrude upon her, +Miss Bridger did not lift her eyebrows consciously. Still, she was at +all times pleasant and friendly and he tried to be content. + +"Mr. Boyle, you've been awfully good," she rewarded him when it +was over. "And I think Mr. Dill is fine! Do you know, he waltzes +beautifully. I'm sure it was easy to keep _my_ side of the bargain." + +Billy noticed the slight, inquiring emphasis upon the word _my_, and +he smiled down reassuringly into her face. "Uh course mine was pretty +hard," he teased, "but I hope I made good, all right." + +"You," she said, looking steadily up at him, "are just exactly what I +said you were. You are comfortable." + +Billy did a good deal of thinking while he saddled Barney in the gray +of the morning, with Dill at a little distance, looking taller than +ever in the half light. When he gave the saddle its final, little +tentative shake and pulled the stirrup around so that he could stick +in his toe, he gave also a snort of dissatisfaction. + +"Hell!" he said to himself. "I don't know as I care about being too +_blame_ comfortable. There's a limit to that kinda thing--with _her!_" + +"What's that?" called Dill, who had heard his voice. + +"Aw, nothing," lied Billy, swinging up. "I was just cussing my hoss." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +_Dilly Hires a Cook._ + + +It is rather distressful when one cannot recount all sorts of exciting +things as nicely fitted together as if they had been carefully planned +and rehearsed beforehand. It would have been extremely gratifying and +romantic if Charming Billy Boyle had dropped everything in the line of +work and had ridden indefatigably the trail which led to Bridger's; +it would have been exciting if he had sought out the Pilgrim and +precipitated trouble and flying lead. But Billy, though he might have +enjoyed it, did none of those things. He rode straight to the ranch +with Dill--rather silent, to be sure, but bearing none of the marks +of a lovelorn young man--drank three cups of strong coffee with four +heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar to each cup, pulled off his boots, lay +down upon the most convenient bed and slept until noon. When the smell +of dinner assailed his nostrils he sat up yawning and a good deal +tousled, drew on his boots and made him a cigarette. After that he ate +his dinner with relish, saddled and rode away to where the round-up +was camped, his manner utterly practical and lacking the faintest +tinge of romance. As to his thoughts--he kept them jealously to +himself. + +He did not even glimpse Miss Bridger for three months or more. He was +full of the affairs of the Double-Crank; riding in great haste to the +ranch or to town, hurrying back to the round-up and working much as +he used to work, except that now he gave commands instead of receiving +them. For they were short-handed that summer and, as he explained to +Dill, he couldn't afford to ride around and look as important as he +felt. + +"Yuh wait, Dilly, till we get things running the way I want 'em," +he encouraged on one of his brief calls at the ranch. "I was kinda +surprised to find things wasn't going as smooth as I used to think; +when yuh haven't got the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, +yuh don't realize what a lot of things need to be done. There's them +corrals, for instance: I helped mend and fix and toggle 'em, but +it never struck me how rotten they are till I looked 'em over this +spring. There's about a million things to do before snow flies, or we +won't be able to start out fresh in the spring with everything running +smooth. And if I was you, Dilly, I'd go on a still hunt for another +cook here at the ranch. This coffee's something fierce. I had my +doubts about Sandy when we hired him. He always did look to me like he +was built for herding sheep more than he was for cooking." This was in +August. + +"I have been thinking seriously of getting some one else in his +place," Dill answered, in his quiet way. "There isn't very much to do +here; if some one came who would take an interest and cook just what +we wanted--I will own I have no taste for that peculiar mixture which +Sandy calls 'Mulligan,' and I have frequently told him so. Yet he +insists upon serving it twice a day. He says it uses up the scraps; +but since it is never eaten, I cannot see wherein lies the economy." + +"Well, I'd can him and hunt up a fresh one," Billy repeated +emphatically, looking with disapproval into his cup. + +"I will say that I have already taken steps toward getting one on whom +I believe I can depend," said Dill, and turned the subject. + +That was the only warning Billy had of what was to come. Indeed, there +was nothing in the conversation to prepare him even in the slightest +degree for what happened when he galloped up to the corral late one +afternoon in October. It was the season of frosty mornings and of +languorous, smoke-veiled afternoons, when summer has grown weary of +resistance and winter is growing bolder in his advances, and the two +have met in a passion-warmed embrace. Billy had ridden far with +his riders and the trailing wagons, in the zest of his young +responsibility sweeping the range to its farthest boundary of river +or mountain. They were not through yet, but they had swung back within +riding distance of the home ranch and Billy had come in for nearly a +month's accumulation of mail and to see how Dill was getting on. + +He was tired and dusty and hungry enough to eat the fringes off his +chaps. He came to the ground without any spring to his muscles and +walked stiffly to the stable door, leading his horse by the bridle +reins. He meant to turn him loose in the stable, which was likely +to be empty, and shut the door upon him until he himself had eaten +something. The door was open and he went in unthinkingly, seeing +nothing in the gloom. It was his horse which snorted and settled +back on the reins and otherwise professed his reluctance to enter the +place. + +Charming Billy, as was consistent with his hunger and his weariness +and the general mood of him, "cussed" rather fluently and jerked the +horse forward a step or two before he saw some one poised hesitatingly +upon the manger in the nearest stall. + +"I guess he's afraid of _me_," ventured a voice that he felt to his +toes. "I was hunting eggs. They lay them always in the awkwardest +places to get at." She scrambled down and came toward him, bareheaded, +with the sleeves of her blue-and-white striped dress rolled to her +elbows--Flora Bridger, if you please. + +Billy stood still and stared, trying to make the reality of her +presence seem reasonable; and he failed utterly. His most coherent +thought at that moment was a shamed remembrance of the way he had +sworn at his horse. + +Miss Bridger stood aside from the wild-eyed animal and smiled upon his +master. "In the language of the range, 'come alive,' Mr. Boyle," she +told him. "Say how-de-do and be nice about it, or I'll see that +your coffee is muddy and your bread burned and your steak absolutely +impregnable; because I'm here to _stay_, mind you. Mama Joy and I have +possession of your kitchen, and so you'd better--" + +"I'm just trying to let it soak into my brains," said Billy. "You're +just about the last person on earth I'd expect to see here, hunting +eggs like you had a right--" + +"I _have_ a right," she asserted. "Your Dilly--he's a perfect love, +and I told him so--said I was to make myself perfectly at home. So I +have a perfect right to be here, and a perfect right to hunt eggs; +and if I could make that sentence more 'perfect,' I would do it." She +tilted her head to one side and challenged a laugh with her eyes. + +Charming Billy relaxed a bit, yanked the horse into a stall and tied +him fast. "Yuh might tell me how it happened that you're here," he +hinted, looking at her over the saddle. He had apparently forgotten +that he had intended leaving the horse saddled until he had rested +and eaten--and truly it would be a shame to hurry from so unexpected a +tete-a-tete. + +Miss Bridger pulled a spear of blue-joint hay from a crack in the wall +and began breaking it into tiny pieces. "It sounds funny, but Mr. +Dill bought father out to get a cook. The way it was, father has been +simply crazy to try his luck up in Klondyke; it's just like him to +get the fever after everybody else has had it and recovered. When the +whole country was wild to go he turned up his nose at the idea. And +now, mind you, after one or two whom he knew came back with some gold, +he must go and dig up a few million tons of it for himself! Your Dilly +is rather bright, do you know? He met father and heard all about his +complaint--how he'd go to the Klondyke in a minute if he could only +get the ranch and Mama Joy and me off his hands--so what does Dilly do +but buy the old ranch and hire Mama Joy and me to come here and keep +house! Father, I am ashamed to say, was _abjectly_ grateful to get +rid of his incumbrances, and he--he hit the trail immediately." She +stopped and searched absently with her fingers for another spear of +hay. + +"Do you know, Mr. Boyle, I think men are the most irresponsible +creatures! A _woman_ wouldn't turn her family over to a neighbor and +go off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam. +I--I'm horribly disappointed in father. A man has no right to a family +when he puts everything else first in his mind. He'll be gone three +or four years, and will spend all he has, and we--can shift for +ourselves. He only left us a hundred dollars, to use in an emergency! +He was afraid he might need the rest to buy out a claim or get +machinery or something. So if we don't like it here we'll have to +stay, anyway. We--we're 'up against it,' as you fellows say." + +[Illustration: "WE--WE'RE 'UP AGAINST IT,' AS YOU FELLOWS SAY."] + +Charming Billy, fumbling the latigo absently, felt a sudden +belligerence toward her father. "He ought to have his head punched +good and plenty!" he blurted sympathetically. + +To his amazement Miss Bridger drew herself up and started for the +door. "I'm very sorry you don't like the idea of us being here, Mr. +Boyle," she replied coldly, "but we happen to _be_ here, and I'm +afraid you'll just have to make the best of it!" + +Billy was at that moment pulling off the saddle. By the time he had +carried it from the stall, hung it upon its accustomed spike and +hurried to the door, Miss Bridger was nowhere to be seen. He said +"Hell!" under his breath, and took long steps to the house, but +she did not appear to be there. It was "Mama Joy," yellow-haired, +extremely blue-eyed, and full-figured, who made his coffee and gave +him delicious things to eat--things which he failed properly to +appreciate, because he ate with his ears perked to catch the faintest +sound of another woman's steps and with his eyes turning constantly +from door to window. He did not even know half the time what Mama +Joy was saying, or see her dimples when she smiled; and Mama Joy was +rather proud of her dimples and was not accustomed to having them +overlooked. + +He was too proud to ask, at supper time, where Miss Bridger was. She +did not choose to give him sight of her, and so he talked and talked +to Dill, and even to Mama Joy, hoping that Miss Bridger could hear +him and know that he wasn't worrying a darned bit. He did not consider +that he had said anything so terrible. What had she gone on like that +about her father for, if she couldn't stand for any one siding in with +her? Maybe he had put his sympathy a little too strong, but that is +the way men handle each other. She ought to know he wasn't sorry she +was there. Why, of _course_ she knew that! The girl wasn't a fool, and +she must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around every +day. Well, anyway, he wasn't going to begin by letting her lead him +around by the nose, and he wasn't going to crumple down on his knees +and tell her to please walk all over him. + +"Well, anyway," he summed up at bedtime with a somewhat doubtful +satisfaction, "I guess she's kinda got over the notion that I'm so +blame _comfortable_--like I was an old grandpa-setting-in-the-corner. +She's _got_ to get over it, by thunder! I ain't got to that point yet; +hell, no! I should say I hadn't!" + +It is a fact that when he rode away just after sunrise next morning +(he would have given much if duty and his pride had permitted him to +linger a while) no one could have accused him of being in any degree a +comfortable young man. For his last sight of Miss Bridger had been the +flutter of her when she disappeared through the stable door. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +_Billy Meets the Pilgrim._ + + +The weeks that followed did not pass as quickly as before for Billy +Boyle, nor did raking the range with his riders bring quite as keen +a satisfaction with life. Always, when he rode apart in the soft haze +and watched the sky-line shimmer and dance toward him and then retreat +like a teasing maid, his thoughts wandered from the range and the +cattle and the men who rode at his bidding and rested with one slim +young woman who puzzled and tantalized him and caused him more mental +discomfort than he had ever known in his life before that night when +she entered so unexpectedly the line-camp and his life. He scarcely +knew just how he did feel toward her; sometimes he hungered for +her with every physical and mental fibre and was tempted to leave +everything and go to her. Times there were when he resented deeply +her treatment of him and repeated to himself the resolution not to lie +down and let her walk all over him just because he liked her. + +When the round-up was over and the last of the beef on the way +to Chicago, and the fat Irish cook gathered up the reins of his +four-horse team, mounted with a grunt to the high seat of the mess +wagon and pointed his leaders thankfully into the trail which led to +the Double-Crank, though the sky was a hard gray and the wind blew +chill with the bite of winter and though tiny snowflakes drifted +aimlessly to earth with a quite deceitful innocence, as if they knew +nothing of more to come and were only idling through the air, the +blood of Charming Billy rioted warmly through his veins and his voice +had a lilt which it had long lacked and he sang again the pitifully +foolish thing with which he was wont to voice his joy in living. + + "I have been to see my wife, + She's the joy of my life, + She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!" + +"Thought Bill had got too proud t' sing that song uh hisn," the cook +yelled facetiously to the riders who were nearest. "I was lookin' for +him to bust out in grand-opry, or something else that's a heap more +stylish than his old come-all-ye." + +Charming Billy turned and rested a hand briefly upon the cantle while +he told the cook laughingly to go to the hot place, and then settled +himself to the pace that matched the leaping blood of him. That pace +soon discouraged the others and left them jogging leisurely a mile +or two in the rear, and it also brought him the sooner to his +destination. + +"Wonder if she's mad yet," he asked himself, when he dismounted. No +one seemed to be about, but he reflected that it was just about noon +and they would probably be at dinner--and, besides, the weather was +not the sort to invite one outdoors unless driven by necessity. + +The smell of roast meat, coffee and some sort of pie assailed his +nostrils pleasantly when he came to the house, and he went in eagerly +by the door which would bring him directly to the dining room. As he +had guessed, they were seated at the table. "Why, come in, William," +Dill greeted, a welcoming note in his voice. "We weren't looking for +you, but you are in good time. We've only just begun." + +"How do you do, Mr. Boyle?" Miss Bridger added demurely. + +"Hello, Bill! How're yuh coming?" cried another, and it was to him +that the eyes of Billy Boyle turned bewilderedly. That the Pilgrim +should be seated calmly at the Double-Crank table never once occurred +to him. In his thoughts of Miss Bridger he had mentally eliminated the +Pilgrim; for had she not been particular to show the Pilgrim that his +presence was extremely undesirable, that night at the dance? + +"Hello, folks!" he answered them all quietly, because there was +nothing else that he could do until he had time to think. Miss Bridger +had risen and was smiling at him in friendly fashion, exactly as +if she had never run away from him and stayed away all the evening +because she was angry. + +"I'll fix you a place," she announced briskly. "Of course you're +hungry. And if you want to wash off the dust of travel, there's plenty +of warm water out here in the kitchen. I'll get you some." + +She may not have meant that for an invitation, but Billy followed her +into the kitchen and calmly shut the door behind him. She dipped warm +water out of the reservoir for him and hung a fresh towel on the +nail above the washstand in the corner, and seemed about to leave him +again. + +"Yuh mad yet?" asked Billy, because he wanted to keep her there. + +"Mad? Why?" She opened her eyes at him. "Not as much as you look," she +retorted then. "You look as cross as if--" + +"What's the Pilgrim doing here?" Billy demanded suddenly and +untactfully. + +"Who? Mr. Walland?" She went into the pantry and came back with a +plate for him. "Why, nothing; he's just visiting. It's Sunday, you +know." + +"Oh--is it?" Billy bent over the basin, hiding his face from her. "I +didn't know; I'd kinda lost count uh the days." Whereupon he made +a great splashing in his corner and let her go without more +words, feeling more than ever that he needed time to think. "Just +visiting--'cause it's _Sunday_, eh? The dickens it is!" Meditating +deeply, he was very deliberate in combing his hair and settling his +blue tie and shaking the dust out of his white silk neckerchief +and retying it in a loose knot; so deliberate that Mama Joy was +constrained to call out to him: "Your dinner is getting cold, Mr. +Boyle," before he went in and took his seat where Miss Bridger had +placed him--and he doubted much her innocence in the matter--elbow to +elbow with the Pilgrim. + +"How's shipping coming on, Billy?" inquired the Pilgrim easily, +passing to him the platter of roast beef. "Most through, ain't yuh?" + +"The outfit's on the way in," answered Billy, accepting noncommittally +the meat and the overture for peace. "They'll be here in less than an +hour." + +If the Pilgrim wanted peace, he was thinking rapidly, what grounds had +he for ignoring the truce? He himself had been the aggressor and he +also had been the victor. According to the honor of fighting men, he +should be generous. And when all was said and done--and the thought +galled Billy more than he could understand--the offense of the Pilgrim +had been extremely intangible; it had consisted almost wholly of looks +and a tone or two, and he realized quite plainly that his own dislike +of the Pilgrim had probably colored his judgment. Anyway, he had +thrashed the Pilgrim and driven him away from camp and killed his dog. +Wasn't that enough? And if the Pilgrim chose to forget the unpleasant +circumstances of their parting and be friends, what could he do but +forget also? Especially since the girl did not appear to be holding +any grudge for what had passed between them in the line-camp. Billy, +buttering a biscuit with much care, wished he knew just what _had_ +happened that night before he opened the door, and wondered if he +dared ask her. + +Under all his thoughts and through all he hated the Pilgrim, his bold +blue eyes, his full, smiling lips and smooth cheeks, as he had never +hated him before; and he hated himself because, being unable to +account even to himself for his feelings toward the Pilgrim, he was +obliged to hide his hate and be friends--or else act the fool. And +above all the mental turmoil he was somehow talking and listening and +laughing now and then, as if there were two of him and each one was +occupied with his own affairs. "I wisht to thunder there was _three_ +uh me," he thought fleetingly during a pause. "I'd set the third one +uh me to figuring out just where the girl stands in this game, and +what she's thinking about right now. There's a kinda twinkling in her +eyes, now and then when she looks over here, that sure don't line up +with her innocent talk. I wisht I could mind-read her-- + +"Yes, we didn't get through none too soon. Looks a lot like we're +going to get our first slice uh winter. We've been playing big luck +that we didn't get it before now; and that last bunch uh beef was +sure rollicky and hard to handle--we'd uh had a picnic with all the +trimmings if a blizzard had caught us with them on our hands. As it +is, we're all dead on our feet. I expect to sleep about four days +without stopping for meals, if you ask _me_." + +One cannot wonder that Charming Billy heard thankfully the clatter of +his outfit arriving, or that he left half his piece of pie uneaten +and hurried off, on the plea that he must show them what to do--which +would have caused a snicker among the men if they had overheard him. +He did not mind Dill following him out, nor did he greatly mind the +Pilgrim remaining in the house with Miss Bridger. The relief of being +even temporarily free from the perplexities of the situation mastered +all else and sent him whistling down the path to the stables. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +_A Winter at the Double-Crank_. + + +There are times when, although the months as they pass seem full, +nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the +destiny of man. After a year, those months of petty detail might be +wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events--and +such a time was the winter that saw "Dill and Bill," as one +alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank. The +affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic +running than had been employed under Brown's ownership. Dill settled +more and more into the new life, so that he was so longer looked upon +as a foreign element; he could discuss practical ranch business and be +sure of his ground--and it was then that Billy realized more fully how +shrewd a brain lay behind those mild, melancholy blue eyes, and how +much a part of the man was that integrity which could not stoop to +small meanness or deceit. It would have been satisfying merely to know +that such a man lived, and if Billy had needed any one to point +the way to square living he must certainly have been better for the +companionship of Dill. + +As to Miss Bridger, he stood upon much the same footing with her as he +had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity +which comes of daily association; to his secret discomfort she had +fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy. Though he liked +the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental attitude +which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him +that. Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the +door of the living room and say: "Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes +for me--that's a good kid!" + +Billy had no objections to drying the dishes; of a truth, although +that had been a duty which he shirked systematically in line-camps +until everything in the cabin was in that state which compels action, +he would have been willing to stand beside Flora Bridger at the sink +and wipe dishes (and watch her bare, white arms, with the dimply +elbows) from dark until dawn. What he did object to was the +half-patronizing, wholly matter-of-fact tone of her, which seemed to +preclude any possibility of sentiment so far as she was concerned. +She always looked at him so frankly, with never a tinge of red in her +cheeks to betray that consciousness of sex which goes ever--say what +you like--with the love of a man and a maid. + +He did not want her to call him "Billy Boy" in just that tone; it made +him feel small and ineffective and young--he who was eight or nine +years older than she! It put him down, so that he could not bring +himself to making actual love to her--and once or twice when he had +tried it, she took it as a great joke. + +Still, it was good to have her there and to be friends. The absence of +the Pilgrim, who had gone East quite suddenly soon after the round-up +was over, and the generosity of the other fellows, who saw quite +plainly how it was--with Billy, at least--and forbore making any +advances on their own account, made the winter pass easily and left +Charming Billy in the spring not content, perhaps, but hopeful. + +It was in the warm days of late April--the days which bring the birds +and the tender, young grass, when the air is soft and all outdoors +beckons one to come out and revel. On such a day Billy, stirred to an +indefinable elation because the world as he saw it then was altogether +good, crooned his pet song while he waited at the porch with Flora's +horse and his own. They were going to ride together because it was +Sunday and because, if the weather held to its past and present mood +of sweet serenity, he might feel impelled to start the wagons out +before the week was done; so that this might be their last Sunday ride +for nobody knew how long. + +"Let's ride up the creek," she suggested when she was in the saddle. +"We haven't been up that way this spring. There's a trail, isn't +there?" + +"Sure, there's a trail--but I don't know what shape it's in. I haven't +been over it myself for a month or so. We'll try it, but yuh won't +find much to see; it's all level creek-bottom for miles and kinda +monotonous to look at." + +"Well, we'll go, anyway," she decided, and they turned their horses' +heads toward the west. + +They had gone perhaps five or six miles and were thinking of turning +back, when Billy found cause to revise his statement that there was +nothing to see. There had been nothing when he rode this way before, +but now, when they turned to follow a bend in the creek and in the +trail, they came upon a camp which looked more permanent than was +usual in that country. A few men were lounging around in the sun, and +there were scrapers of the wheeled variety, and wagons, and plows, and +divers other implements of toil that were strange to the place. Also +there was a long, reddish-yellow ridge branching out from the creek; +Billy knew it for a ditch--but a ditch larger than he had seen for +many a day. He did not say anything, even when Flora exclaimed over +the surprise of finding a camp there, but headed straight for the +camp. + +When they came within speaking distance, a man showed in the opening +of one of the tents, looked at them a moment, and came forward. + +"Why, that's Fred Walland!" cried Flora, and then caught herself +suddenly. "I didn't know he was back," she added, in a tone much less +eager. + +Billy gave her a quick look that might have told her much had she seen +it. He did not much like the color which had flared into her cheeks +at sight of the Pilgrim, and he liked still less the tone in which +she spoke his name. It was not much, and he had the sense to push the +little devil of jealousy out of sight behind him, but it had come and +changed something in the heart of Billy. + +"Why, hello!" greeted the Pilgrim, and Billy remembered keenly that +the Pilgrim had spoken in just that way when he had opened the door of +the line-camp upon them, that night. "I was going to ride over to the +ranch, after a while. How are yuh, anyhow?" He came and held up his +hand to Flora, and she put her own into it. Billy, with eyebrows +pinched close, thought that they sure took their own time about +letting go again, and that the smile which she gave the Pilgrim was +quite superfluous to the occasion. + +"Yuh seem to be some busy over here," he remarked carelessly, turning +his eyes to the new ditch. + +"Well, yes. Brown's having a ditch put in here. We only started a few +days ago; them da--them no-account Swedes he got to do the rough work +are so slow, we're liable to be at it all summer. How's everybody at +the ranch? How's your mother, Miss Bridger? Has she got any mince pies +baked?" + +"I don't know--you might ride over with us and see," she invited, +smiling at him again. "We were just going to turn back--weren't we, +Billy Boy?" + +"Sure!" he testified, and for the first time found some comfort +in being called Billy Boy; because, if looks went for anything, it +certainly made the Pilgrim very uncomfortable. The spirits of Billy +rose a little. + +"If you'll wait till I saddle up, I'll go along. I guess the Svenskies +won't run off with the camp before I get back," said the Pilgrim, +and so they stayed, and afterward rode back together quite amiably +considering certain explosive elements in the party. + +Perhaps Billy's mildness was due in a great measure to his +preoccupation, which made him deaf at times to what the others were +saying. He knew that they were quite impersonal in their talk, and so +he drifted into certain other channels of thought. + +Was Brown going to start another cow-outfit, or was he merely going to +try his hand at farming? Billy knew that--unless he had sold it--Brown +owned a few hundred acres along the creek there; and as he rode over +it now he observed the soil more closely than was his habit, and saw +that, from a passing survey, it seemed fertile and free from either +adobe or alkali. It must be that Brown was going to try ranching. +Still, he had held out all his best stock, and Billy had not heard +that he had sold it since. Now that he thought of it, he had not heard +much about Brown since Dill bought the Double-Crank. Brown had been +away, and, though he had known in a general way that the Pilgrim +was still in his employ, he did not know in what capacity. In the +absorption of his own affairs he had not given the matter any thought, +though he had wondered at first what crazy impulse caused Brown to +sell the Double-Crank. Even now he did not know, and when he thought +of it the thing irritated him like a puzzle before it is solved. + +So greatly did the matter trouble him that immediately upon reaching +the ranch he left Flora and the Pilgrim and hunted up Dill. He found +him hunched like a half-open jackknife in a cane rocker, with his legs +crossed and one long, lean foot dangling loosely before him; he was +reading "The Essays of Elia," and the melancholy of his face gave +Billy the erroneous impression that the book was extremely sad, and +caused him to dislike it without ever looking inside the dingy blue +covers. + +"Say, Dilly, old Brown's putting in a ditch big enough to carry the +whole Missouri River. Did yuh know it?" + +Dill carefully creased down the corner of the page where he was +reading, untangled his legs and pulled himself up a bit in the chair. +"Why, no, I don't think I have heard of it," he admitted. "If I have +it must have slipped my mind--which isn't likely." Dill was rather +proud of his capacity for keeping a mental grasp on things. + +"Well, he's got a bunch uh men camped up the creek and the Pilgrim to +close-herd 'em--and I'm busy wondering what he's going to do with that +ditch. Brown don't do things just to amuse himself; yuh can gamble he +aims to make that ditch pack dollars into his jeans--and if yuh can +tell me _how_, I'll be a whole lot obliged." Dill shook his head, and +Billy went on. "Did yuh happen to find out, when yuh was bargaining +for the Double-Crank, how much land Brown's got held out?" + +"No-o--I can't say I did. From certain remarks he made, I was under +the impression that he owns quite a tract. I asked about getting all +the land he had, and he said he preferred not to put a price on it, +but that it would add considerably to the sum total. He said I would +not need it, anyhow, as there is plenty of open range for the stock. +He was holding it, he told me, for speculation and had never made any +use of it in running his stock, except as they grazed upon it." + +"Uh-huh. That don't sound to me like any forty-acre field; does it to +you?" + +"As I said," responded Dill, "I arrived at the conclusion that he owns +a good deal of land." + +"And I'll bet yuh the old skunk is going to start up a cow-outfit +right under our noses--though why the dickens the Double-Crank wasn't +good enough for him gets me." + +"If he does," Dill observed calmly, "the man has a perfect right to +do so, William. We must guard against that greed which would crowd +out every one but ourselves--like pigs around a trough of sour milk! I +will own, however--" + +"Say, Dilly! On the dead, are yuh religious?" + +"No, William, I am not, in the sense you mean. I hope, however, that I +am honest. If Mr. Brown intends to raise cattle again I shall be glad +to see him succeed." + +Charming Billy sat down suddenly, as though his legs would no longer +support him, and looked queerly at Dill. "Hell!" he said meditatively, +and sought with his fingers for his smoking material. + +Dill showed symptoms of going back to "The Essays of Elia," so that +Billy was stirred to speech. + +"Now, looky here, Dilly. You're all right, as far as yuh go--but this +range is carrying just about all the stock it needs right at present. +I don't reckon yuh realize that all the good bottoms and big coulees +are getting filled up with nesters; one here and one there, and every +year a few more. It ain't much, uh course, but every man that comes +is cutting down the range just that much. And I know one thing: when +Brown had this outfit himself he was mighty jealous uh the range, and +he didn't take none to the idea of anybody else shoving stock onto it +more than naturally drifted on in the course uh the season. If he's +going to start another cow-outfit, I'll bet yuh he's going to gobble +land--and that's what _we_ better do, and do it sudden." + +"Since I have never had much personal experience in the 'gobbling' +line, I'm afraid you'll have to explain," said Dill dryly. + +"I mean leasing. We got to beat Brown to it. We got to start in and +lease up all the land we can get our claws on. I ain't none desirable +uh trying to make yuh a millionaire, Dilly, whilst we've only got +one lone section uh land and about twelve thousand head uh stock, and +somebody else aiming to throw a big lot uh cattle onto our range. I +kinda shy at any contract the size uh that one. I've got to start the +wagons out, if this weather holds good, and I want to go with 'em--for +a while, anyhow--and see how things stack up on the range. And what +_you've_ got to do is to go and lease every foot uh land you can. Eh? +State land. All the land around here almost is State land--all that's +surveyed and that ain't held by private owners. And State land can be +leased for a term uh years. + +"The way they do it, yuh start in and go over the map all samee flea; +yuh lease a section here and there and skip one and take the next, +and so on, and then if yuh need to yuh throw a fence around the whole +blame chunk--and there yuh are. No, it _ain't_ cheating, because if +anybody don't like it real bad, they can raise the long howl and make +yuh revise your fencing; but in this neck uh the woods folks don't +howl over a little thing like that, because you could lift up your +own voice over something they've done, and there'd be a fine, pretty +chorus! So that's what yuh can do if yuh want to--but anyway, yuh want +to get right after that leasing. It'll cost yuh something, but we're +just plumb obliged to protect ourselves. See?" + +At that point he heard Flora laugh, and got up hastily, remembering +the presence of the Pilgrim on the ranch. + +"I see, and I will think it over and take what precautionary measures +are necessary and possible." + +Billy, not quite sure that he had sufficiently impressed Dill with +the importance of the matter, turned at the door and looked in again, +meaning to add an emphatic word or two; but when he saw that Dill was +staring round-eyed at nothing at all, and that Lamb was lying +sprawled wide open on the floor, his face relaxed from its anxious +determination. + +"I got his think-works going--he'll do the rest," he told himself +satisfiedly, and pushed the subject from him. Just now he wanted to +make sure the Pilgrim wasn't getting more smiles than were coming to +him--and if you had left the decision of that with Billy, the Pilgrim +would have had none at all. + +"I wisht he'd _do_ something I could lay my finger on--damn him," he +reflected. "I can't kick him out on the strength uh my own private +opinion. I'd just simply lay myself wide open to all kinds uh +remarks. I _ain't_ jealous; he ain't got any particular stand-in with +Flora--but if I started action on him, that's what the general verdict +would be. Oh, thunder!" + +Nothing of his thoughts showed in his manner when he went out to where +they were. He found them just putting up a target made of a sheet of +tablet paper marked with a lead pencil into rings and an uncertain +centre, and he went straight into the game with a smile. He loaded +the gun for Flora, showed her exactly how to "draw a fine bead," and +otherwise deported himself in a way not calculated to be pleasing to +the Pilgrim. He called her Flora boldly whenever occasion offered, and +he exulted inwardly at the proprietary way in which she said "Billy +Boy" and ordered him around. Of course, _he_ knew quite well that +there was nothing but frank-eyed friendship back of it all; but the +Pilgrim plainly did not know and was a good deal inclined to sulk over +his interpretation. + +So Billy, when came the time for sleeping, grinned in the dark of his +room and dwelt with much satisfaction upon the manner of the Pilgrim's +departure. He prophesied optimistically that he guessed that would +hold the Pilgrim for a while, and that he himself could go on round-up +and not worry any over what was happening at the ranch. + +For the Pilgrim had come into the kitchen, ostensibly for a drink of +water, and had found Miss Flora fussily adjusting the Klondyke nugget +pin in the tie of Charming Billy, as is the way of women when they +know they may bully a man with impunity--and she was saying: "Now, +Billy Boy, if you don't learn to stick that pin in straight and not +have the point standing out a foot, I'll--" That is where the Pilgrim +came in and interrupted. And he choked over the dipper of water even +as Billy choked over his glee, and left the ranch within fifteen +minutes and rode, as Billy observed to the girl, "with a haughty +spine." + +"Oh, joy!" chuckled Billy when he lived those minutes over again, and +punched the pillow facetiously. "Oh, joy, oh Johnathan! I guess maybe +he didn't get a jolt, huh? And the way--the very _tone_ when I called +her Flora--sounded like the day was set for the wedding and we'd gone +and ordered the furniture!" + +The mood of him was still triumphant three days after when he turned +in his saddle and waved his hand to Flora, who waved wistfully back at +him. "It ain't any cinch right now--but I'll have her yet," he cheered +himself when the twinge of parting was keenest. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +_The Shadow Falls Lightly._ + + +Over the green uplands, into the coulees and the brushy creek-bottoms +swept the sun-browned riders of the Double-Crank; jangling and +rattling over untrailed prairie sod, the bed and mess wagons followed +after with hasty camping at the places Billy appointed for brief +sleeping and briefer eating, a hastier repacking and then the hurry +over the prairies to the next stop. Here, a wide coulee lay yawning +languorously in the sunshine with a gossipy trout stream for company; +with meadowlarks rippling melodiously from bush and weed or hunting +worms and bugs for their nestful of gaping mouths; with gophers +trailing snakily through the tall grasses; and out in the barren +centre where the yellow earth was pimpled with little mounds, +plump-bodied prairie dogs sitting pertly upon their stubby tails the +while they chittered shrewishly at the world; and over all a lazy, +smiling sky with clouds always drifting and trailing shadows across +the prairie-dog towns and the coulee and the creek, and a soft wind +stirring the grasses. + +Then the prairie dogs would stand a-tiptoe to listen. The meadowlarks +would stop their singing--even the trailing shadows would seem to +waver uncertainly--and only the creek would go gurgling on, uncaring. +Around a bend would rattle the wagons of the Double-Crank, with a lone +rider trotting before to point the way; down to the very bank of the +uncaring creek they would go. There would be hurrying to and fro with +much clamor of wood-chopping, tent-raising and all the little man-made +noises of camp life and cooking. There would be the added clamor +of the cavvy, and later, of tired riders galloping heavily into the +coulee, and of many voices upraised in full-toned talk with now and +then a burst of laughter. + +All these things, and the prairie folk huddled trembling in their +homes, a mute agony of fear racking their small bodies. Only the creek +and the lazy, wide-mouthed coulee and the trailing clouds and the soft +wind seemed not to mind. + +Came another sunrise and with it the clamor, the voices, the rattle of +riding gear, the trampling. Then a final burst and rattle, a dying of +sounds in the distance, a silence as the round-up swept on over the +range-land, miles away to the next camping place. Then the little +prairie folk--the gopher, the plump-bodied prairie dogs, the mice and +the rabbits, would listen long before they crept timidly out to sniff +suspiciously the still-tainted air and inspect curiously and with +instinctive aversion the strange marks left on the earth to show that +it was all something more than a horrible nightmare. + +So, under cloud and sun, when the wind blew soft and when it raved +over the shrinking land, when the cold rain drove men into their +yellow slickers and set horses to humping backs and turning tail to +the drive of it and one heard the cook muttering profanity because the +wood was wet and the water ran down the stovepipe and hungry men must +wait because the stove would not "draw," the Double-Crank raked the +range. Horses grew lean and ill-fitting saddles worked their wicked +will upon backs that shrank to their touch of a morning. Wild range +cattle were herded, a scared bunch of restlessness, during long, hot +forenoons, or longer, hotter afternoons, while calves that had +known no misfortune beyond a wet back or a searching wind learned, +panic-stricken, the agony of capture and rough handling and +tight-drawn ropes and, last and worst, the terrible, searing iron. + +There were not so many of them--these reluctant, wild-eyed pupils +in the school of life. Charming Billy, sitting his horse and keeping +tally of the victims in his shabby little book, began to know the +sinking of spirit that comes to a man when he finds that things +have, after all, gone less smoothly than he had imagined. There were +withered carcasses scattered through the coulee bottoms and upon side +hills that had some time made slippery climbing for a poor, weak cow. +The loss was not crippling, but it was greater than he had expected. +He remembered certain biting storms which had hidden deep the grasses, +and certain short-lived chinooks that had served only to soften the +surface of the snow so that the cold, coming after, might freeze it +the harder. + +It had not been a hard winter, as winters go, but the loss of cows had +been above the average and the crop of calves below, and Billy for +the first time faced squarely the fact that, in the cattle business +as well as in others, there are downs to match the ups. In his castle +building, and so far in his realization of his dreams, he had not +taken much account of the downs. + +Thus it was that, when they swung back from the reservation and camped +for a day upon lower Burnt Willow, he felt a great yearning for the +ranch and for sight of the girl who lived there. For excuses he had +the mail and the natural wish to consult with Dill, so that, when +he saddled Barney and told Jim Bleeker to keep things moving till +to-morrow or the day after, he had the comfortable inner assurance +that there were no side-glances or smiles and no lowered lids when he +rode away. For Charming Billy, while he would have faced the ridicule +of a nation if that were the price he must pay to win his deep desire, +was yet well pleased to go on his way unwatched and unneeded. + +Since the Double-Crank ranch lay with Burnt Willow Creek loitering +through the willows within easy gunshot of the corrals, Billy's trail +followed the creek except in its most irresponsible windings, when he +would simplify his journey by taking straight as might be across the +prairie. It was after he had done this for the second time and had +come down to the creek through a narrow, yellow-clay coulee that he +came out quite suddenly upon a thing he had not before seen. + +Across the creek, which at that point was so narrow that a horse could +all but clear it in a running jump, lay the hills, a far-reaching +ocean of fertile green. Good grazing it was, as Billy well knew. +In another day the Double-Crank riders would be sweeping over it, +gathering the cattle; at least, that had been his intent. He looked +across and his eyes settled immediately upon a long, dotted line drawn +straight away to the south; at the far end a tiny huddle of figures +moved indeterminately, the details of their business blunted by the +distance. But Charming Billy, though he liked them little, knew well +when he looked upon a fence in the building. The dotted line he read +for post holes and the distant figures for the diggers. + +While his horse drank he eyed the line distrustfully until he +remembered his parting advice to Dill. "Dilly's sure getting a move on +him," he decided, estimating roughly the size of the tract which +that fence, when completed, would inclose. To be sure, it was pure +guesswork, for he was merely looking at one corner. Up the creek he +could not see, save a quarter mile or so to the next bend; even that +distance he could not see the dotted line--for he was looking upon a +level clothed with rank weeds and grass and small brush--but he knew +it must be there. When he turned his horse from the water and went his +way, his mind was no longer given up to idle dreaming of love words +and a girl. This fencing business concerned him intimately, and his +brain was as alert as his eyes. For he had not meant that Dilly should +fence any land just yet. + +Farther up the creek he crossed, meaning to take another short cut and +so avoid a long detour; also, he wanted to see just where and how far +the fence went. Yes, the post holes were there, only here they held +posts leaning loosely this way and that like drunken men. A half mile +farther the wire was already strung, but not a man did he see whom he +might question--and when he glanced and saw that the sun was almost +straight over his head and that Barney's shadow scurried along nearly +beneath his stirrup, he knew that they would be stopping for +dinner. He climbed a hill and came plump upon a fence, wire-strung, +wire-stayed, aggressively barring his way. + +"Dilly's about the most thorough-minded man I ever met up with," +he mused, half annoyed, stopping a moment to survey critically the +barrier. "Yuh never find a job uh hisn left with any loose ends +a-dangling. He's got a fence here like he was guarding a railroad +right-uh-way. I guess I'll go round, this trip." + +At the ranch Charming Billy took the path that led to the kitchen, +because when he glanced that way from the stable he caught a flicker +of pink--a shade of pink which he liked very much, because Flora had +a dress of that color and it matched her cheeks, it seemed to him. She +had evidently not seen him, and he thought he would surprise her. To +that end, he suddenly stopped midway and removed his spurs lest their +clanking betray him. So he went on, with his eyes alight and the blood +of him jumping queerly. + +Just outside the door he stopped, saw the pink flutter in the pantry +and went across the kitchen on his toes; sure, he was going to +surprise her a lot! Maybe, he thought daringly, he'd kiss her--if his +nerve stayed with him long enough. He rather thought it would. She was +stooping a little over the flour barrel, and her back was toward him. + +More daring than he would have believed of himself, he reached out his +arms and caught her to him, and--It was not Flora at all. It was Mama +Joy. + +"Oh, I--I beg your pardon--I--" stammered Billy helplessly. + +"Billy! You're a bad boy; how you frightened me!" she gasped, and +showed an unmistakable inclination to snuggle. + +Charming Billy, looking far more frightened than she, pulled himself +loose and backed away. Mama Joy looked at him, and there was that in +her eyes which sent a qualm of something very like disgust over Billy, +so that in his toes he felt the quiver. + +"It was an accident, Mrs. Bridger," he said laconically, and went out +hastily, leaving her standing there staring after him. + +Outside, he twitched his shoulders as if he would still free himself +of something distasteful. "Hell! What do I want with _her_?" he +muttered indignantly, and did not stop to think where he was going +until he brought up at the stable. He had the reins of Barney in his +hand, and had put his foot in the stirrup before he quite came to +himself. "Hell!" he exploded again, and led Barney back into the +stall. + +Charming Billy sat down on a box and began to build a smoke; his +fingers shook a great deal, so that he sifted out twice as much +tobacco as he needed. He felt utterly bewildered and ashamed and +sorry, and he could not think very clearly. He lighted the cigarette, +smoked it steadily, pinched out the stub and rolled another before he +came back to anything like calm. + +Even when he could bring himself to face what had happened and what it +meant, he winced mentally away from the subject. He could still feel +the clinging pressure of her round, bare arms against his neck, and +he once more gave his shoulders a twitch. Three cigarettes he smoked, +staring at a warped board in the stall partition opposite him. + +When the third was burned down to a very short stub he pinched out the +fire, dropped the stab to the dirt floor and deliberately set his foot +upon it, grinding it into the damp soil. It was as if he also set his +foot upon something else, so grimly intent was the look on his face. + +"Hell!" he said for the third time, and drew a long breath. "Well, +this has got to stop right here!" He got up, took off his hat and +inspected it gravely, redimpled the crown, set it upon his head a +trifle farther back than usual, stuck his hands aggressively into his +pockets and went back to the house. This time he did not go to the +kitchen but around to the front porch, and he whistled shrilly the air +of his own pet ditty that his arrival might be heralded before him. + +Later, when he was sitting at the table eating a hastily prepared +dinner with Mama Joy hovering near and seeming, to the raw nerves of +Billy, surrounded by an atmosphere of reproach and coy invitation, he +kept his eyes turned from her and ate rapidly that he might the sooner +quit her presence. Flora was out riding somewhere, she told him when +he asked. Dill came in and saved Billy from fleeing the place before +his hunger slept, and Billy felt justified in breathing easily and in +looking elsewhere than at his plate. + +"I see you've been getting busy with the barbwire," he remarked, when +he rose from the table and led the way out to the porch. + +"Why, no. I haven't done any fencing at all, William," Dill +disclaimed. + +"Yuh haven't? Who's been fencing up all Montana south uh the creek, +then?" Billy turned, a cigarette paper fluttering in his fingers, and +eyed Dill intently. + +"I believe Mr. Brown is having some fencing done. Mr. Walland stopped +here to-day and said they were going to turn in a few head of cattle +as soon as the field was finished." + +"The dickens they are!" Billy turned away and sought a patch of shade +where he might sit on the edge of the porch and dig his heels into the +soft dirt. He dug industriously while he turned the matter over in his +mind, then looked up a bit anxiously at Dill. + +"Say, Dilly, yuh fixed up that leasing business, didn't yuh?" he +inquired. "How much did yuh get hold of?" + +Dill, towering to the very eaves of the porch, gazed down solemnly +upon the other. "I'm afraid you will think it bad news, William. I did +not lease an acre. I went, and I tried, but I discovered that others +had been there before me. As you would say, they beat me _to_ it. Mr. +Brown leased all the land obtainable, as long ago as last fall." + +Billy did not even say a word. He merely snapped a match short off +between his thumb and forefinger and ground the pieces into the dirt +with his heel. Into the sunlight that had shone placidly upon the +castle he had builded in the air for Dill and for himself--yes, and +for one other--crept a shadow that for the moment dimmed the whole. + +"Say, Dilly, it's hell when things happen yuh haven't been looking for +and can't help," he said at last, smiling a little. "I'd plumb got +my sights raised to having a big chunk uh Montana land under a +Double-Crank lease, but I reckon they can come down a notch. We'll +come out on top--don't yuh worry none about _that_." + +"I'm not worrying at all, William. I did not expect to have everything +come just as we wanted it; that, so far, has not been my experience in +business--or in love." The last two words, if one might judge from the +direction of his glance, were meant as pure sympathy. + +Billy colored a little under the brown. "The calf-crop is running +kinda short," he announced hurriedly. "A lot uh cows died off last +winter, and I noticed a good many uh that young stock we shipped in +laid 'em down. I was hoping we wouldn't have to take any more jolts +this season--but maybe I've got more nerves than sense on this land +business. I sure do hate to see old Brown cutting in the way he's +doing--but if he just runs what cattle he can keep under fence, it +won't hurt us none." + +"He's fencing a large tract, William--a very large tract. It takes +in--" + +"Oh, let up, Dilly! I don't want to know how big it is--not right now. +I'm willing to take my dose uh bad medicine when it's time for it--but +I ain't none greedy about swallowing the whole bottle at once! I feel +as if I'd got enough down me to do for a while." + +"You are wiser than most people," Dill observed dryly. + +"Oh, sure. Say, if I don't see Flora--I'm going to hike back to camp +pretty quick--you tell her I'm going to try and pull in close enough +to take in that dance at Hardup, the Fourth. I heard there was going +to be one. We can't get through by then, and I may not show up at the +ranch, but I'll sure be at the dance. I--I'm in a hurry, and I've +got to go right now." Which he did, and his going savored strongly of +flight. + +Dill, looking after him queerly, turned and saw Mama Joy standing in +the doorway. With eyes that betrayed her secret she, too, was looking +after Billy. + +"There is something more I wanted to say to William," explained Dill +quite unnecessarily, and went striding down the path after him. When +he reached the stable, however, he did not have anything in particular +to say--or if he had, he refrained from disturbing Billy, who was +stretched out upon a pile of hay in one of the stalls. + +"My hoss ain't through eating, yet," said Billy, lifting his head +like a turtle. "I'm going, pretty soon. I sure do love a pile uh fresh +hay." + +Their eyes met understandingly, and Dill shook his head. + +"Too bad--too bad!" he said gravely. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +_Self-defense_. + + +The wagons of the Double-Crank had stopped to tarry over the Fourth +at Fighting Wolf Spring, which bubbles from under a great rock in a +narrow "draw" that runs itself out to a cherry-masked point halfway +up the side of Fighting Wolf Butte. Billy, with wisdom born of much +experience in the ways of a round-up crew when the Fourth of July +draws near, started his riders at day-dawn to rake all Fighting Wolf +on its southern side. "Better catch up your ridge-runners," he had +cautioned, "because I'll set yuh plumb afoot if yuh don't." The boys, +knowing well his meaning and that the circle that day would be a +big one over rough country, saddled their best horses and settled +themselves to a hard day's work. + +Till near noon they rode, and branded after dinner to the tune of much +scurrying and bawling and a great deal of dust and rank smoke, urged +by the ever-present fear that they would not finish in time. But their +leader was fully as anxious as they and had timed the work so that by +four o'clock the herd was turned loose, the fires drenched with water +and the branding irons put away. + +At sundown the long slope from Fighting Wolf Spring was dotted for +a space with men, fresh-shaven, clean-shirted and otherwise +rehabilitated, galloping eagerly toward Hardup fifteen miles away. +That they had been practically in the saddle since dawn was a trifle +not to be considered; they would dance until another dawn to make up +for it. + +Hardup, decked meagrely in the colors that spell patriotism, was +unwontedly alive and full of Fourth of July noises. But even with +the distraction of a holiday and a dance just about to start and the +surrounding country emptied of humans into the town, the clatter +of the Double-Crank outfit--fifteen wiry young fellows hungry for +play--brought men to the doors and into the streets. + +Charming Billy, because his eagerness was spiced with expectancy, did +not stop even for a drink, but made for the hotel. At the hotel he +learned that his "crowd" was over at the hall, and there he hurried so +soon as he had removed the dust and straightened his tie and brushed +his hair and sworn at his upstanding scalp-lock, in the corner of the +hotel office dedicated to public cleanliness. + +It was a pity that such single-hearted effort must go unrewarded, but +the fact remains that he reached the hall just as the couples were +promenading for the first waltz. He was permitted the doubtful +pleasure of a welcoming nod from Flora as she went by with the +Pilgrim. Dill was on the floor with Mama Joy, and at a glance he saw +how it was; the Pilgrim had "butted in" and come along with them. He +supposed Flora really could not help it, but it was pretty hard +lines, all the same. For even in the range-land are certain rules of +etiquette which must be observed when men and women foregather in the +pursuit of pleasure. Billy remembered ruefully how a girl must dance +first, last, and oftenest with her partner of the evening, and must +eat supper with him besides, whether she likes or not; to tweak this +rule means to insult the man beyond forgiveness. + +"Well, it wouldn't hurt me none if Flora _did_ cut him off short," +Billy concluded, his eyes following them resentfully whenever they +whirled down to his end of the room. "The way I've got it framed up, +I'd spoke for her first--if Dilly told her what I said." + +Still, what he thought privately did not seem to have much effect upon +realities. Flora he afterward saw intermittently while they danced a +quadrille together, and she made it plain that she had not considered +Billy as her partner; how could she, when he was trailing around over +the country with the round-up, and nobody knew whether he would come +or not? No, Mr. Walland did not come to the ranch so very often. +She added naively that he was awfully busy. He had ridden in with +them--and why not? Was there any reason-- + +Billy, though he could think of reasons in plenty, turned just then to +balance on the corner and swing, and to do many other senseless things +at the behest of the man on the platform, so that when they stood +together again for a brief space, both were breathless and she was +anxiously feeling her hair and taking out side combs and putting them +back again, and Billy felt diffident about interrupting her and said +no more about who was her partner. + +An hour or so later he was looking about for her, meaning to dance +with her again, when a man pushed him aside hurriedly and went across +the floor and spoke angrily to another. Billy, moving aside so that he +could see, discovered Flora standing up with the Pilgrim for the dance +in another "set" that was forming. The man who had jostled him was +speaking to them angrily, but Billy could not catch the words. + +"He's drunk," called the Pilgrim to the floor manager. "Put him out!" + +Several men left their places and rushed over to them. Because Flora +was there and likely to be involved, Billy reached them first. + +"This was _my_ dance!" the fellow was expostulating. "She promised it +to me." + +"Aw, he's drunk," repeated the Pilgrim, turning to Billy. "It's Gus +Svenstrom. He's got it in for me because I fired him last week. Throw +him out! Miss Bridger isn't going to dance with a drunken stiff like +him." + +"Oh, I'll go--I ain't so drunk I've got to be carried!" retorted the +other, and pushed his way angrily through the crowd. + +Flora had kept her place. Though the color had gone from her cheeks, +she seemed to have no intention of quitting the quadrille, so there +was nothing for Billy to do but get off the floor and leave her to her +partner. He went out after the Swede, and, seeing him headed for the +saloon across from the hotel, followed aimlessly. He was not quite +comfortable in the hall, anyway, for he had caught Mama Joy eying him +strangely, and he thought she was wondering why he had not asked her +to dance. + +Charming Billy was not by nature a diplomat; it never once occurred to +him that he would better treat Mama Joy as if that half minute in the +kitchen had never been. He had said good evening to her when he first +met her that evening, and he considered his duty done. He did not want +to dance with her, and that was, in his opinion, an excellent reason +for not doing so. He did not like to have her watching him with those +big, round, blue eyes of hers, so he stayed in the saloon for a while +and only left it to go to supper when some one said that the dance +crowd was over there. There might be some chance that would permit him +to eat with Flora. + +There are moments in a town when, even with many people coming and +going, one may look and see none. When Billy closed the door of the +saloon behind him and started across to the hotel, not a man did he +see, though there was sound in plenty from the saloons and the hotel +and the hall. He was nearly half across the street when two men came +into sight and met suddenly just outside a window of the hotel. Billy, +in the gloom of starlight and no moon, could not tell who they were; +he heard a sharp sentence or two, saw them close together, heard a +blow. Then they broke apart and there was the flash of a shot. One +man fell and the other whirled about as if he would run, but Billy was +then almost upon them and the man turned back and stood looking down +at the fallen figure. + +"Damn him, he pulled a knife on me!" he cried defensively. Billy saw +that it was the Pilgrim. + +"Who is he?" he asked, and knelt beside the form. The man was lying +just where the lamp-light streamed out from the window, but his face +was in shadow. "Oh, it's that Swede," he added, and rose. "I'll get +somebody; I believe he's dead." He left the Pilgrim standing there and +hurried to the door of the hotel office. + +In any other locality a shot would have brought on the run every man +who heard it; but in a "cow-town," especially on a dance night, +shots are as common as shouts. In Hardup that night there had been +periodical outbursts which no one, not even the women, minded in the +least. + +So it was not until Billy opened the door, put his head in, and cried: +"Come alive! A fellow's been shot, right out here," that there was a +stampede for the door. + +The Pilgrim still stood beside the other, waiting. Three or four +stooped over the man on the ground. Billy was one of them. + +"He pulled a gun on me," explained the Pilgrim. "I was trying to take +it away from him, and it went off." + +Billy stood up, and, as he did so, his foot struck against a revolver +lying beside the Swede. He looked at the Pilgrim queerly, but he did +not say anything. They were lifting the Swede to carry him into the +office; they knew that he was dead, even before they got him into the +light. + +"Somebody better get word to the coroner," said the Pilgrim, fighting +for self-control. "It was self-defense. My God, boys, I couldn't help +it! He pulled a gun on me. Yuh saw it on the ground there, right where +he dropped it." + +Billy turned clear around and looked again at the Pilgrim, and the +Pilgrim met his eyes defiantly before he turned away. + +"I understood yuh to say it was a knife," he remarked slowly. + +The Pilgrim swung back again. "I didn't--or, if I did, I was rattled. +It was a gun--that gun on the ground. He met me there and started a +row and said he'd fix me. He pulled his gun, and I made a grab for it +and it went off. That's all there is to it." He stared hard at Billy. + +There was much talk among the men, and several told how they had +heard the Swede "cussing" Walland in the saloon that evening. Some +remembered threats--the threats which a man will foolishly make when +he is pouring whisky down his throat by the glassful. No one seemed to +blame Walland in the least, and Billy felt that the Pilgrim was in a +fair way to become something of a hero. It is not every man who has +the nerve to grab a gun with which he is threatened. + +They made a cursory search of the Pilgrim and found that he was not +armed, and he was given to understand that he would be expected to +stay around town until the coroner came and "sat" on the case. But +he was treated to drinks right and left, and when Billy went to find +Flora the Pilgrim was leaning heavily upon the bar with a glass in his +hand and his hat far back on his head, declaiming to the crowd that +he was perfectly harmless so long as he was left alone. But he wasn't +safe to monkey with, and any man who came at him hunting trouble would +sure get all he wanted and then some. He said he didn't kill people if +he could help it--but a man was plumb obliged to, sometimes. + +"I'm sure surprised to think I got off with m' life, last winter, when +I hazed him away from line-camp; I guess I must uh had a close call, +all right!" Billy snorted contemptuously and shut the door upon the +wordy revelation of the Pilgrim's deep inner nature which had been +until that night carefully hidden from an admiring world. + +The dance stopped abruptly with the killing; people were already going +home. Billy, with the excuse that he would be wanted at the inquest, +hunted up Jim Bleeker, gave him charge of the round-up for a few days, +and told him what route to take. For himself, he meant to ride home +with Flora or know the reason why. + +"Come along, Dilly, and let's get out uh town," he urged, when he had +found him. "It's a kinda small burg, and at the rate the Pilgrim is +swelling up over what he done, there won't be room for nobody but him +in another hour. He's making me plumb nervous and afraid to be around +him, he's so fatal." + +"We'll go at once, William. Walland is drinking a great deal more +than he should, but I don't think he means to be boastful over so +unfortunate an affair. Do you think you are taking an altogether +unprejudiced view of the matter? Our judgment," he added +deprecatingly, "is so apt to be warped by our likes and dislikes." + +"Well, if that was the case here," Billy told him shortly, "I've got +dislike enough for him to wind my judgment up like a clock spring. +I'll go see if Flora and her mother are ready." In that way he avoided +discussing the Pilgrim, for Dill was not so dull that he failed to +take the hint. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +_The Shadow Darkens_. + + +The inquest resulted to the satisfaction of those who wished well to +the Pilgrim, for it cleared him of all responsibility for the killing. +Gus Svenstrom had been drunk; he had been heard to make threats; he +had been the aggressor in the trouble at the dance; and the Pilgrim, +in the search men had made immediately after the shooting, had been +found unarmed. The case was very plainly one of self-defense. + +Billy, when questioned, repeated the Pilgrim's first words to +him--that the Swede had pulled a knife; and told the jury, on further +questioning, that he had not seen any gun on the ground until after he +had gone for help. + +Walland explained satisfactorily to the jury. He may have said knife +instead of gun. He had heard some one say that the Swede carried a +knife, and he had been expecting him to draw one. He was rattled at +first and hardly knew what he did say. He did not remember saying it +was a knife, but it was possible that he had done so. As to Billy's +not seeing any gun at first--they did not question the Pilgrim about +that, because Billy in his haste and excitement could so easily +overlook an object on the ground. They gave a verdict of self-defense +without any discussion, and the Pilgrim continued to be something of a +hero among his fellows. + +Billy, as soon as the thing was over, mounted in not quite the best +humor and rode away to join his wagons. He had not ridden to the +Double-Crank to hear Flora talk incessantly of Mr. Walland, and +repeat many times the assertion that she did not see how, under the +circumstances, he could avoid killing the man. Nor had he gone to +watch Mama Joy dimple and frown by turns and give him sidelong glances +which made him turn his head quickly away. He hated to admit to +himself how well he understood her. He did not want to be rude, but +he had no desire to flirt with her, and it made him rage inwardly to +realize how young and pretty she really was, and how, if it were not +for Flora, he might so easily be tempted to meet her at least halfway. +She could not be more than four or five years older than Flora, and +in her large, blonde way she was quite as alluring. Billy wished +profanely that she had gone to Klondyke with her husband, or that +Bridger had known enough about women to stay at home with a wife as +young as she. + +He was glad in his heart when came the time to go. Maybe she would get +over her foolishness by the time he came in with the round-up. At any +rate, the combination at the ranch did not tempt him to neglect his +business, and he galloped down the trail without so much as looking +back to see if Flora would wave--possibly because he was afraid he +might catch the flutter of a handkerchief in fingers other than hers. + +It was when the round-up was on its way in that Billy, stopping for an +hour in Hardup, met Dill in the post office. + +"Why, hello, Dilly!" he cried, really glad to see the tall, lank form +come shambling in at the door. "I didn't expect to see yuh off your +own ranch. Anybody dead?" It struck him that Dill looked a shade more +melancholy than was usual, even for him. + +"Why, no, William. Every one is well--very well indeed. I only rode +in after the mail and a few other things. I'm always anxious for my +papers and magazines, you know. If you will wait for half an hour--you +are going home, I take it?" + +"That's where I'm sure headed, and we can ride out together, easy as +not. We're through for a couple uh weeks or so, and I'm hazing the +boys home to bust a few hosses before we strike out again. I guess +I'll just keep the camp running down by the creek. Going to be in town +long enough for me to play a game uh pool?" + +"I was going right out again, but there's no particular hurry," said +Dill, looking over his letters. "Were you going to play with some one +in particular?" + +"No--just the first gazabo I could rope and lead up to the table," +Billy told him, sliding off the counter where he had been perched. + +"I wouldn't mind a game myself," Dill observed, in his hesitating way. + +In the end, however, they gave up the idea and started for home; +because two men were already playing at the only table in Hardup, and +they were in no mind to wait indefinitely. + +Outside the town, Dill turned gravely to the other, "Did you say you +were intending to camp down by the creek, William?" he asked slowly. + +"Why, yes. Anything against it?" Billy's eyes opened a bit wider that +Dill should question so trivial a thing. + +"Oh, no--nothing at all." Dill cleared his throat raspingly. "Nothing +at all--so long as there is any creek to camp beside." + +"I reckon you've got something to back that remark. Has the creek went +and run off somewhere?" Billy said, after a minute of staring. + +"William, I have been feeling extremely ill at ease for the past week, +and I have been very anxious for a talk with you. Eight days ago the +creek suddenly ran dry--so dry that one could not fill a tin dipper +except in the holes. I observed it about noon, when I led my horse +down to water. I immediately saddled him and rode up the creek to +discover the cause." He stopped and looked at Billy steadily. + +"Well, I reckon yuh found it," Billy prompted impatiently. + +"I did. I followed the creek until I came to the ditch Mr. Brown has +been digging. I found that he had it finished and was filling it from +the creek in order to test it. I believe," he added dryly, "he found +the result very satisfying--to himself. The ditch carried the whole +creek without any trouble, and there was plenty of room at the top for +more!" + +"Hell!" said Billy, just as Dill knew he would say. "But he can't take +out any more than his water-right calls for," he added. "Yuh got a +water right along with the ranch, didn't yuh say?" + +"I got three--the third, fourth, and fifth. I have looked into the +matter very closely in the last week. I find that we can have all the +water there is--after Brown gets through. His rights are the first +and second, and will cover all the water the creek will carry, if he +chooses to use them to the limit. I suspect he was looking for some +sort of protest from me, for he had the papers in his pocket and +showed them to me. I afterward investigated, as I said, and found the +case to be exactly as I have stated." + +Billy stared long at his horse's ears. "Well, he can't use the whole +creek," he said at last, "not unless he just turned it loose to be +mean, and I don't believe he can waste water even if he does hold the +rights. We can mighty quick put a stop to that. Do yuh know anything +about injunctions? If yuh don't, yuh better investigate 'em a +lot--because I don't know a damn' thing about the breed, and we're +liable to need 'em bad." + +"I believe I may truthfully say that I understand the uses--and +misuses--of injunctions, William. In the East they largely take the +place of guns as fighting weapons, and I think I may say without +boasting that I can hit the bull's-eye with them as well as most men. +But suppose Mr. Brown _uses_ the water? Suppose there is none left to +turn back into the creek channel when he is through? He has a large +force of men at work running laterals from the main ditch, which +carries the water up and over the high land, and I took the liberty of +following his lines of stakes. As you would put it, William, he seems +about to irrigate the whole of northern Montana; certainly his stakes +cover the whole creek bottom, both above and below the main ditch, and +also the bench land above." + +"Hell! Anything else?" + +"I believe not--except that he has completed his fencing and has +turned in a large number of cattle. I say completed, though strictly +speaking he has not. He has completed the great field south of the +creek and east of us. But Mr. Walland was saying that Brown intends +to fence a tract to the north of us, either this fall or early in the +spring. I know to a certainty that he has a good many sections leased +there. I tried to obtain some of it last spring and could not." Into +the voice of Dill had crept a note of discouragement. + +"Well, don't yuh worry none, Dilly. I'm here to see yuh pull out on +top, and you'll do it, too. You're a crackerjack when it comes to the +fine points uh business, and I sure savvy the range end uh the game, +so between us we ought to make good, don't yuh think? You just +keep your eye on Brown, and if yuh can slap him in the face with an +injunction or anything, don't yuh get a sudden attack uh politeness +and let him slide. I'll look after the cow brutes myself--and if I +ain't good for it, after all these years, I ought to be kicked plumb +off the earth. The time has gone by when we could ride over there and +haze his bunch clear out uh the country on a high lope, with our six +guns backing our argument. I kinda wish," he added pensively, "we +_hadn't_ got so damn' decent and law-abiding. We could get action a +heap more speedy and thorough with a dozen or fifteen buckaroos that +liked to fight and had lots uh shells and good hosses. Why, I could +have the old man's bunch shoveling dirt into that ditch to beat four +aces, in about fifteen minutes, if--" + +"But, as you say," Dill cut in anxiously, "we are decent and +law-abiding, and such a procedure is quite out of the question." + +"Aw, I ain't meditating no moonlight attack, Dilly--but the boys would +sure love to do it if I told 'em to get busy, and I reckon we could +make a better job of it than forty-nine injunctions and all kinds uh +law sharps." + +"Careful, William. I used to be a 'law sharp' myself," protested Dill, +pulling his face into a smile. "And I must own I feel anxious over +this irrigation project of Brown's. He is going to work upon a large +scale--a _very_ large scale--for a private ranch. You have made it +plain to me, William, how vitally important a wide, unsettled country +is to successful cattle raising; and since then I have thought deeply +upon the subject. I feel sure that Mr. Brown is _not_ going to start a +cattle ranch." + +"If he ain't, then what--" + +"I am not prepared at present to make a statement, even to you, +William. I never enjoyed recanting. But one thing I may say. Mr. Brown +has so far kept well within his legal rights, and we have no possible +ground for protest. So you see, perhaps we would better turn our +entire attention to our own affairs." + +"Sure. I got plenty uh troubles uh my own," Billy agreed, more +emphatically than he intended. + +Dill looked at him hesitatingly. "Mrs. Bridger," he observed slowly, +"has received news that her husband is seriously ill. There will +not be another boat going north until spring, so that it will be +impossible for her to go to him. I am extremely sorry." Then, as if +that statement seemed to him too bald, in view of the fact that they +had never discussed Mama Joy, he added, "It is very hard for Flora. +The letter held out little hope of recovery." + +Billy, though he turned a deep red and acquired three distinct creases +between his eyebrows, did not even make use of his favorite expletive. +After a while he said irritably that a man was a damn fool to go off +like that and leave a wife--and family--behind him. He ought either to +stay at home or take them with him. + +He did not mean that he wished her father had taken Flora to Klondyke, +though he openly implied that he wished Mama Joy had gone. He knew he +was inconsistent, but he also knew--and there was comfort as well as +discomfort in the knowledge--that Dill understood him very well. + +It seemed to Billy, in the short time that the round-up crew was +camped by the creek, that no situation could be more intolerable than +the one he must endure. He could not see Flora without having Mama +Joy present also--or if he did find Flora alone, Mama Joy was sure to +appear very shortly. If he went near the house there was no escaping +her. And when he once asked Flora to ride with him he straightway +discovered that Mama Joy had developed a passion for riding and went +along. Flora had only time to murmur a rapid sentence or two while +Mama Joy was hunting her gloves. + +"Mama Joy has been taking the _Ladies' Home Journal_" she said +ironically, "and she has been converted to the idea that a girl must +never be trusted alone with a man. I've acquired a chaperon now! Have +you begun to study diplomacy yet, Billy Boy?" + +"Does she chapyron yuh this fervent when the Pilgrim's the man?" +countered Billy resentfully. + +He did not get an answer, because Mama Joy found her gloves too soon, +but he learned his lesson and did not ask Flora to ride with him +again. Nevertheless, he tried surreptitiously to let her know the +reason and so prevent any misunderstanding. + +He knew that Flora was worrying over her father, and he would like to +have cheered her all he could; but he had no desire to cheer Mama Joy +as well--he would not even give her credit for needing cheer. So +he stayed away from them both and gave his time wholly to the +horse-breaking and to affairs in general, and ate and slept in camp to +make his avoidance of the house complete. + +Sometimes, of a night when he could not sleep, he wondered why it +is that one never day-dreams unpleasant obstacles and disheartening +failures into one's air castles. Why was it that, just when it had +seemed to him that his dream was miraculously come true; when he found +himself complete master of the Double-Crank where for years he +had been merely one of the men; when the One Girl was also settled +indefinitely in the household he called his home; when he knew she +liked him, and had faith to believe he could win her to something +better than friendship--all these good things should be enmeshed in a +tangle of untoward circumstances? + +Why must he be compelled to worry over the Double-Crank, that had +always seemed to him a synonym for success? Why must his first and +only love affair be hampered by an element so disturbing as Mama +Joy? Why, when he had hazed the Pilgrim out of his sight--and as he +supposed, out of his life--must the man hover always in the immediate +background, threating the peace of mind of Billy, who only wanted to +be left alone that he and his friends might live unmolested in the air +castle of his building? + +One night, just before they were to start out again gathering beef +for the shipping season, Billy thought he had solved the +problem--philosophically, if not satisfactorily. "I guess maybe it's +just one uh the laws uh nature that you're always bumping into," he +decided. "It's a lot like draw-poker. Yah can't get dealt out to yuh +the cards yuh want, without getting some along with 'em that yuh don't +want. What gets me is, I don't see how in thunder I'm going to ditch +m' discard. If I could just turn 'em face down on the table and count +'em out uh the game--old Brown and his fences and his darn ditch, and +that dimply blonde person and the Pilgrim--oh, hell! Wouldn't we rake +in the stakes if I could?" + +Straightway Billy found another element added to the list of +disagreeables--or, to follow his simile, another card was dealt him +which he would like to have discarded, but which he must keep in +his hand and play with what skill he might. He was not the care-free +Charming Billy Boyle who had made prune pie for Flora Bridger in the +line-camp. He looked older, and there were chronic creases between his +eyebrows, and it was seldom that he asked tunefully + + "Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy Boy?" + +He had too much on his mind for singing anything. + +It was when he had gathered the first train load of big, rollicky +steers for market and was watching Jim Bleeker close the stockyard +gate on the tail of the herd at Tower, the nearest shipping point, +that the disagreeable element came in the person of Dill and the news +he bore. + +He rode up to where Billy, just inside the wing of the stockyards, +was sitting slouched over with one foot out of the stirrup, making a +cigarette. Dill did not look so much the tenderfoot, these days. He +sat his horse with more assurance, and his face was brown and had that +firm, hard look which outdoor living brings. + +"I looked for you in yesterday or the day before, William," he said, +when Billy had greeted him with a friendly, "Hello, Dilly!" and one of +his illuminating smiles. + +"I'm ready to gamble old Brown has been and gone and run the creek dry +on yuh again," bantered Billy, determined at that moment to turn his +back on trouble. + +"No, William, you would lose. The creek is running almost its normal +volume of water. I dislike very much to interfere with your part of +the business, William, but under present conditions I feel justified +in telling you that you must not ship these cattle just now. I have +been watching the market with some uneasiness for a month. Beef +has been declining steadily until now it ranges from two-ninety to +three-sixty, and you will readily see, William, that we cannot afford +to ship at that figure. For various reasons I have not obtruded +business matters upon you, but I will now state that it is vitally +important that we realize enough from the beef shipments to make our +fall payment on the mortgage and pay the interest on the remainder. It +would be a great advantage if we could also clear enough for the next +year's running expenses. Have you any idea how much beef there will be +to ship this fall?" + +"I figured on sixty or seventy cars," said Billy. Instinctively he had +pulled himself straight in the saddle to meet this fresh emergency. + +Dill, with a pencil and an old letter from his pocket, was doing some +rapid figuring. "With beef so low, I fear I shall be obliged to ask +you to hold this herd for two or three weeks. The price is sure to +rise later. It is merely a juggling operation among the speculators +and is not justified by the condition of the stock, or of the market. +In a couple of weeks the price should be normal again." + +"And in a couple uh weeks this bunch would bring the lowest figure +they name," Billy asserted firmly. "Beef shrinks on the hoof like +thunder when it's held up and close-herded on poor range. What +yuh better do, Dilly, is let me work this herd and ship just the +top-notchers--they're _all_ prime beef," he added regretfully, +glancing through the fence at the milling herd. "I can cut out ten of +twelve cars that'll bring top price, and throw the rest back on the +range till we gather again. Yuh won't lose as much that way as yuh +would by holding up the whole works." + +"Well," Dill hesitated, "perhaps you are right. I don't pretend to +know anything about this side of the business. To put the case to you +plainly, we must clear forty thousand dollars on our beef this fall, +for the mortgage alone--putting it in round numbers. We should also +have ten thousand dollars for expenses, in order to run clear without +adding to our liabilities. I rely upon you to help manage it. If you +would postpone any more gathering of beef until--" + +"It's just about a case uh now or never," Billy cut in. "There's only +about so long to gather beef before they begin to fall off in weight. +Then we've got to round up the calves and wean 'em, before cold +weather sets in. We can't work much after snow falls. We can pull +through the first storm, all right, but when winter sets in we're +done. We've got to wean and feed all the calves you've got hay for, +and I can save some loss by going careful and taking 'em away from the +poorest cows and leaving the fat ones to winter their calves. How much +hay yuh got put up?" + +"A little over five hundred tons on our place," said Dill. "And I sent +a small crew over to the Bridger place; they have nearly a hundred +tons there. You said for me to gather every spear I could," he +reminded humorously, "and I obeyed to the best of my ability." + +"Good shot, Dilly. I'll round up eight or nine hundred calves, then; +that'll help some. Well, shall I cut the top off this bunch uh beef, +or throw the whole business back on the range? You're the doctor." + +Dill rode close to the high fence, stood in his stirrups and looked +down upon the mass of broad, sleek backs moving restlessly in and out +and around, with no aim but to seek some way of escape. The bawling +made speech difficult at any distance, and the dust sent him coughing +away. + +"I think, William," he said, when he was again beside Billy, "I shall +leave this matter to your own judgment. What I want is to get every +cent possible out of the beef we ship; the details I am content to +leave with you, for in my ignorance I should probably botch the job. I +suppose we can arrange it so that, in case the market rises suddenly, +you can rush in a trainload at short notice?" + +"Give me two weeks to get action on the range stuff, and I can have a +trainload on the way to Chicago so quick it'll make your head whirl. +I'll make it a point to be ready on short notice. And before we pull +out I'll give yuh a kinda programme uh the next three or four weeks, +so yuh can send a man out and he'll have some show uh finding us. And +I won't bring in another herd till you send word--only yuh want to +bear in mind that I can't set out there on a pinnacle till snow flies, +waiting for prices to raise in Chicago. Yuh don't want to lose sight +uh them nine hundred calves we've got to gather yet." + +It was all well enough for Billy to promise largely and confidently, +but he failed to take into account one small detail over which he +had no control. So perfect was his system of gathering beef--and he +gathered only the best, so as to catch the top price--that when Dill's +message came, short and hurried but punctiliously worded and perfectly +punctuated, that beef had raised to four-thirty and "Please rush +shipment as per agreement," Billy had his trainload of beef in +Tower, ready to load just three days after receiving notice. But +here interfered the detail over which he had no control. Dill had +remembered to order the cars, but shipping was heavy and cars were not +to be had. + +Two long, heartrending weeks they waited just outside Tower, held +there within easy reach--and upon mighty short feed for the herd--by +the promises of the railroad management and the daily assurance of the +agent that the cars might be along at any time within four hours. (He +always said four hours, which was the schedule time for fast freight +between Tower and the division point.) Two long weeks, while from the +surrounding hills they watched long stock trains winding snakily over +the prairie toward Chicago. During those maddening days and nights +Billy added a fresh crease to the group between his eyebrows and +deepened the old ones, and Dill rode three horses thin galloping back +and forth between the ranch and the herd, in helpless anxiety. + +At last the cars came and the beef, a good deal thinner than it had +been, was loaded and gone, and the two relaxed somewhat from the +strain. The market was lower when that beef reached its destination, +and they did not bring the "top" price which Billy had promised Dill. + +So the shipping season passed and Dill made his payment on the +mortgage by borrowing twelve thousand dollars, using a little over two +thousand to make up the deficit in shipping returns and holding the +remainder for current expenses. Truly, the disagreeable element which +would creep in where Billy had least expected scored a point there, +and once more the castle he had builded for himself and Dill and one +other lay in shadow. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +_When the North Wind Blows._ + + +November came in with a blizzard; one of those sudden, sweeping whirls +of snow, with bitter cold and a wind that drove the fine snow-flour +through shack walls and around window casings, and made one look +speculatively at the supply of fuel. It was such a storm as brings an +aftermath of sheepherders reported missing with their bands scattered +and wandering aimlessly or else frozen, a huddled mass, in some +washout; such a storm as sends the range cattle drifting, heads down +and bodies hunched together, neither knowing nor caring where their +trail may end, so they need not face that bitter drive of wind and +snow. + +It was the first storm of the season, and they told one another it +would be the worst. The Double-Crank wagons were on the way in with a +bunch of bawling calves and cows when it came, and they were forced to +camp hastily in the shelter of a coulee till it was over, and to walk +and lead their horses much of the time on guard that they might not +freeze in the saddle. But they pulled through it, and they got to the +ranch and the corrals with only a few calves left beside the trail +to mark their bitter passing. In the first days of cold and calm that +came after, the ranch was resonant day and night with that monotonous, +indescribable sound, like nothing else on earth unless it be the +beating of surf against a rocky shore--the bawling of nine hundred +calves penned in corrals, their uproar but the nucleus for the +protesting clamor of nine hundred cows circling outside or standing +with noses pressed close against the corral rails. + +Not one day and night it lasted, nor two. For four days the uproar +showed no sign of ever lessening, and on the fifth the eighteen +hundred voices were so hoarse that the calves merely whispered their +plaint, gave over in disgust and began nosing the scattered piles +of hay. The cows, urged by hunger, strayed from the blackened circle +around the corrals and went to burrowing in the snow for the ripened +grass whereby they must live throughout the winter. They were driven +forth to the open range and left there, and the Double-Crank settled +down to comparative quiet and what peace they might attain. Half +the crew rolled their beds and rode elsewhere to spend the winter, +returning, like the meadowlarks, with the first hint of soft skies and +green grass. + +Jim Bleeker and a fellow they called Spikes moved over to the Bridger +place with as many calves as the hay there would feed, and two men +were sent down to the line-camp to winter. Two were kept at the +Double-Crank Ranch to feed the calves and make themselves generally +useful--the quietest, best boys of the lot they were, because they +must eat in the house and Billy was thoughtful of the women. + +So the Double-Crank settled itself for the long winter and what it +might bring of good or ill. + +Billy was troubled over more things than one. He could not help seeing +that Flora was worrying a great deal over her father, and that the +relations between herself and Mama Joy were, to put it mildly and +tritely, strained. With the shadow of what sorrow might be theirs, +hidden away from them in the frost-prisoned North, there was no +dancing to lighten the weeks as they passed, and the women of the +range land are not greatly given to "visiting" in winter. The miles +between ranches are too long and too cold and uncertain, so that +nothing less alluring than a dance may draw them from home. Billy +thought it a shame, and that Flora must be terribly lonesome. + +It was a long time before he had more than five minutes at a stretch +in which to talk privately with her. Then one morning he came in to +breakfast and saw that the chair of Mama Joy was empty; and Flora, +when he went into the kitchen afterward, told him with almost a +relish in her tone that Mrs. Bridger--she called her that, also with a +relish--was in bed with toothache. + +"Her face is swollen on one side till she couldn't raise a dimple to +save her life," she announced, glancing to see that the doors were +discreetly closed. "It's such a relief, when you've had to look +at them for four years. If _I_ had dimples," she added, spitefully +rattling a handful of knives and forks into the dishpan, "I'd plug the +things with beeswax or dough, or anything that I could get my hands +on. Heavens! How I hate them!" + +"Same here," said Billy, with guilty fervor. It was treason to one of +his few principles to speak disparagingly of a woman, but it was in +this case a great relief. He had never before seen Flora in just this +explosive state, and he had never heard her say "Heavens!" Somehow, +it also seemed to him that he had never seen her so wholly lovable. He +went up to her, tilted her head back a little, and put a kiss on the +place where dimples were not. "That's one uh the reasons why I like +yuh so much," he murmured. "Yuh haven't got dimples or yellow hair or +blue eyes--thank the Lord! Some uh these days, girlie, I'm going t' +pick yuh up and run off with yuh." + +Her eyes, as she looked briefly up at him, were a shade less +turbulent. "You'd better watch out or _she_ will be running off with +_you_!" she said, and drew gently away from him. "There! That's a +horrid thing to say, Billy Boy, but it isn't half as horrid as--And +she watches me and wants to know everything we say to each other, and +is--" She stopped abruptly and turned to get hot water. + +"I know it's tough, girlie." Charming Billy, considering his ignorance +of women, showed an instinct for just the sympathy she needed. "I +haven't had a chance to speak to yuh, hardly, for months--anything but +common remarks made in public. How long does the toothache last as a +general thing?" He took down the dish towel from its nail inside the +pantry door and prepared to help her. "She's good for to-day, ain't +she?" + +"Oh, yes--and I suppose it _does_ hurt, and I ought to be sorry. +But I'm not. I'm glad of it. I wish her face would stay that way all +winter! She's so fussy about her looks she won't put her nose out of +her room till she's pretty again. Oh, Billy Boy, I wish I were a man!" + +"Well, _I_ don't!" Billy disagreed. "If yuh was," he added soberly, +"and stayed as pretty as yuh are now, she'd--" But Billy could not +bring himself to finish the sentence. + +"Do you think it's because you're so pretty that she--" + +Flora smiled reluctantly. "If I were a man I could swear and _swear!_" + +"Swear anyhow," suggested Billy encouragingly. "I'll show yuh how." + +"And father away off in Klondyke," she said irrelevantly, passing over +his generous offer, "and--and dead, for all we know! And she doesn't +care--at _all!_ She--" + +Sympathy is good, but it has a disagreeable way of bringing all one's +troubles to the front rather overwhelmingly. Flora suddenly dropped a +plate back into the pan, leaned her face against the wall by the sink +and began to cry in a tempestuous manner rather frightened Charming +Billy Boyle, who had never before seen a grown woman cry real tears +and sob like that. + +He did what he could. He put his arms around her and held her close, +and patted her hair and called her girlie, and laid his brown cheek +against her wet one and told her to never mind and that it would be +all right anyway, and that her father was probably picking away in his +mine right then and wishing she was there to fry his bacon for him. + +"I wish I was, too," she murmured, weaned from her weeping and talking +into his coat. "If I'd known how--_she_--really was, I wouldn't ever +have stayed. I'd have gone with father." + +"And where would _I_ come in?" he demanded selfishly, and so turned +the conversation still farther from her trouble. + +The water went stone cold in the dishpan and the fire died in the +stove so that the frost spread a film over the thawed centre of the +window panes. There is no telling when the dishes would have been +washed that day if Mama Joy had not begun to pound energetically upon +the floor--with the heel of a shoe, judging from the sound. Even that +might not have proved a serious interruption; but Dill put his head +in from the dining room and got as far as "That gray horse, William--" +before he caught the significance of Flora perched on the knee of +"William" and retreated hastily. + +So Flora went to see what Mama Joy wanted, and Billy hurried somewhat +guiltily out to find what was the matter with the gray horse, and +practical affairs once more took control. + +After that, Billy considered himself an engaged young man. He went +back to his ditty and inquired frequently: + + "Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy Boy?" + +and was very nearly the old, care-free Charming Billy of the +line-camp. It is true that Mama Joy recovered disconcertingly that +afternoon, and became once more ubiquitous, but Billy felt that +nothing could cheat him of his joy, and remained cheerful under +difficulties. He could exchange glances of much secret understanding +with Flora, and he could snatch a hasty kiss, now and then, and when +the chaperonage was too unremitting she could slip into his hands a +hurriedly penciled note, filled with important nothings. Which made a +bright spot in his life and kept Flora from thinking altogether of her +father and fretting for some news of him. + +Still, there were other things to worry him and to keep him from +forgetting that the law of nature, which he had before defined to his +own satisfaction, still governed the game. Storm followed storm with +a monotonous regularity that was, to say the least, depressing, though +to be sure there had been other winters like this, and not even Billy +could claim that Nature was especially malignant. + +But with Brown's new fence stretching for miles to the south and east +of the open range near home, the drifting cattle brought up against it +during the blinding blizzards and huddled there, freezing in the open, +or else plodded stolidly along beside it until some washout or coulee +too deep for crossing barred their way, so that the huddling and +freezing was at best merely postponed. Billy, being quite alive to the +exigencies of the matter, rode and rode, and with him rode Dill and +the other two men when they had the leisure--which was not often, +since the storms made much "shoveling" of hay necessary if they would +keep the calves from dying by the dozen. They pushed the cattle away +from the fences--to speak figuratively and colloquially--and drove +them back to the open range until the next storm or cold north wind +came and compelled them to repeat the process. + +If Billy had had unlimited opportunity for lovemaking, he would not +have had the time, for he spent hours in the saddle every day, unless +the storm was too bitter for even him to face. There was the line-camp +with which to keep in touch; he must ride often to the Bridger +place--or he thought he must--to see how they were getting on. It +worried him to see how large the "hospital bunch" was growing, and +to see how many dark little mounds dotted the hollows, except when +a new-fallen blanket of snow made them white--the carcasses of the +calves that had "laid 'em down" already. + +"Yuh ain't feeding heavy enough, boys," he told them once, before he +quite realized how hard the weather was for stock. + +"Yuh better ride around the hill and take a look at the stacks," +suggested Jim Bleeker. "We're feeding heavy as we dare, Bill. If we +don't get a let-up early we're going to be plumb out uh hay. There +ain't been a week all together that the calves could feed away from +the sheds. _That's_ where the trouble lays." + +Billy rode the long half-mile up the coulee to where the hay had +mostly been stacked, and came back looking sober. "There's no use +splitting the bunch and taking some to the Double-Crank," he said. "We +need all the hay we've got over there. Shove 'em out on the hills and +make 'em feed a little every day that's fit, and bank up them +sheds and make 'em warmer. This winter's going to be one of our old +steadies, the way she acts so far. It's sure a fright, the way this +weather eats up the hay." + +It was such incidents as these which weaned him again from his singing +and his light-heartedness as the weeks passed coldly toward spring. +He did not say very much about it to Dill, because he had a +constitutional aversion to piling up agony ahead of him; besides, Dill +could see for himself that the loss would be heavy, though just how +heavy he hadn't the experience with which to estimate. As March came +in with a blizzard and went, a succession of bleak days, into April, +Billy knew more than he cared to admit even to himself. He would lie +awake at night when the wind and snow raved over the land, and picture +the bare open that he knew, with lean, Double-Crank stock drifting +tail to the wind. He could fancy them coming up against this fence and +that fence, which had not been there a year or two ago, and huddling +there, freezing, cut off from the sheltered coulees that would have +saved them. + +"Damn these nesters and their fences!" He would grit his teeth at his +helplessness, and then try to forget it all and think only of Flora. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +_"I'm Not Your Wife Yet!"_ + + +Billy, coming back from the biggest town in the country, where he had +gone to pick up another man or two for the round-up which was at hand, +met the Pilgrim face to face as he was crossing the creek to go to +the corrals. It was nearing sundown and it was Sunday, and those two +details, when used in connection with the Pilgrim, seemed unpleasantly +significant. Besides, Billy was freshly antagonistic because of +something he had heard while he was away; instead of returning the +Pilgrim's brazenly cheerful "Hello," he scowled and rode on without so +much as giving a downward tilt to his chin. For Charming Billy Boyle +was never inclined to diplomacy, or to hiding his feelings in any way +unless driven to it by absolute necessity. + +When he went into the house he saw that Flora had her hair done in a +new way that was extremely pretty, and that she had on a soft, white +silk shirt-waist with lots of lace zigzagged across--a waist hitherto +kept sacred to dances and other glorious occasions--and a soft, pink +bow pinned in her hair; all these things he mentally connected with +the visit of the Pilgrim. When he turned to see a malicious light in +the round, blue eyes of Mama Joy and a spiteful satisfaction in her +very dimples, it suddenly occurred to him that he would certainly have +something to say to Miss Flora. It was no comfort to know that all +winter the Pilgrim had not been near, because all winter he had been +away somewhere--rumor had it that he spent his winters in Iowa. Like +the birds, he always returned with the spring. + +Billy never suspected that Mama Joy read his face and left them +purposely together after supper, though he was surprised when she +arose from the table and said: + +"Flora, you make Billy help you with the dishes. I've got a headache +and I'm going to lie down." + +At any rate, it gave him the opportunity he wanted. + +"Are yuh going to let the Pilgrim hang around here this summer?" he +demanded in his straight-from-the-shoulder fashion while he was drying +the first cup. + +"You mean Mr. Walland? I didn't know he ever 'hung around'." Flora was +not meek, and Billy realized that, as he put it mentally, he had his +work cut out for him to pull through without a quarrel. + +"I mean the Pilgrim. And I call it hanging around when a fellow keeps +running to see a girl that's got a loop on her already. I don't want +to lay down the law to yuh, Girlie, but that blamed Siwash has got to +keep away from here. He ain't fit for yuh to speak to--and I'd a told +yuh before, only I didn't have any right--" + +"Are you sure you have a right now?" The tone of Flora was sweet and +calm and patient. "I'll tell you one thing, Charming Billy Boyle, Mr. +Walland has never spoken one word against _you_. He--he _likes_ you, +and I don't think it's nice for you--" + +"Likes me! Like hell he does!" snorted Billy, not bothering to choose +nice words. "He'd plug me in the back like an Injun if he thought +he could get off with it. I remember him when I hazed him away from +line-camp, the morning after you stayed there, he promised faithful to +kill me. Uh course, he won't, because he's afraid, but--I don't reckon +yuh can call it liking--" + +"_Why_ did you 'haze him away,' as you call it, Billy? And kill his +dog? It was a _nice_ dog; I love dogs, and I don't see how any man--" + +Billy flushed hotly. "I hazed him away because he insulted you," he +said bluntly, not quite believing in her ignorance. + +Flora, her hands buried deep in the soapsuds, looked at him +round-eyed. "I never heard of that before," she said slowly. "When, +Billy? And what did he--say?" + +Billy stared at her. "_I_ don't know what he said! I wouldn't think +you'd need to ask. When I came in the cabin--I lied about getting lost +from the trail--I turned around and came back, because I was afraid +he might come before I could get back, and--when I came in, there was +_something_. I could tell, all right. Yuh sat there behind the table +looking like yuh was--well, kinda cornered. And he was--Flora, he +_did_ say something, or do something! He didn't act right to yuh. I +could tell. _Didn't_ he? Yuh needn't be afraid to tell me, Girlie. I +give him a thrashing for it. What was it? I want to know." He did not +realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her +with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity. +His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, showed white at the +knuckles. + +Flora rattled the dishes in the pan and laughed unsteadily. "Go to +work, Billy Boy, and don't act stagey," she commanded lightly. "I'll +tell you the exact truth--and that isn't anything to get excited over. +Fred Walland came about three minutes before you did, and of course I +didn't know he belonged there. I was afraid. He pushed open the door, +and he was swearing a little at the ice there, where we threw out the +dish water. I knew it wasn't you, and I got back in the corner. He +came in and looked awfully stunned at seeing me and said, 'I beg your +pardon, fair one'." She blushed and did not look up. "He said, 'I +didn't know there was a lady present,' and put down the sack of stuff +and looked at me for a minute or two without saying a word. He was +just going to speak, I think, when you burst in. And that's all there +was to it, Billy Boy. I was frightened because I didn't know who he +was, and he _did_ stare--but, so did you, Billy Boy, when I opened +the door and walked in. You stared every bit as hard and long as Fred +Walland did." + +"But I'll bet I didn't have the same look in my face. Yuh wasn't +scared of _me_," Billy asserted shrewdly. + +"I was too! I was horribly scared--at first. So if you fought Fred +Walland and killed his dog" (the reproach of her tone, then!) "because +you imagined a lot that wasn't true, you ought to go straight and +apologize." + +"I don't _think_ I will! Good Lord! Flora, do yuh think I don't _know_ +the stuff he's made of? He's a low-down, cowardly cur--the kind uh +man that is always bragging about--" (Billy stuck there. With her big, +innocent eyes looking up at him, he could not say "bragging about the +women he's ruined," so he changed weakly) "about all he's done. He's a +murderer that ought by rights t' be in the pen right now--" + +"I think that will do, Billy!" she interrupted indignantly. "You know +he couldn't help killing that man." + +"I kinda believed that, too, till I run onto Jim Johnson up in Tower. +You don't know Jim, but he's a straight man and wouldn't lie. Yuh +remember, Flora, the Pilgrim told me the Swede pulled a knife on +him. I stooped down and looked, and _I_ didn't see no knife--nor gun, +either. And I wasn't so blamed excited I'd be apt to pass up anything +like that; I've seen men shot before, and pass out with their boots +on, in more excitable ways than a little, plain, old killing. So I +didn't see anything in the shape of a weapon. But when I come back, +here lays a Colt forty-five right in plain sight, and the Pilgrim +saying, 'He pulled a _gun_ on me,' right on top uh telling me it was +a _knife_. I thought at the time there was something queer about that, +and about him not having a gun on him when I know he _always_ packed +one--like every other fool Pilgrim that comes West with the idea he's +got to fight his way along from breakfast to supper, and sleep with +his six-gun under his pillow!" + +"And _I_ know you don't like him, and you'd think he had some ulterior +motive if he rolled his cigarette backward once! I don't see anything +but just your dislike trying to twist things--" + +"Well, hold on a minute! I got to talking with Jim, and we're pretty +good friends. So he told me on the quiet that Gus Svenstrom gave him +his gun to keep, that night. Gus was drinking, and said he didn't want +to be packing it around for fear he might get foolish with it. Jim +had it--Jim was tending bar that time in that little log saloon, in +Hardup--when the Swede was killed. So it wasn't _the Swedes_ gun on +the ground--and if he borrowed one, which he wouldn't be apt to do, +why didn't the fellow he got it from claim it?" + +"And if all this is true, why didn't your friend come and testify +at the hearing?" demanded Flora, her eyes glowing. "It sounds to me +exactly like a piece of spiteful old-woman gossip, and I don't believe +a word of it!" + +"Jim ain't a gossip. He kept his mouth shut because he didn't want to +make trouble, and he was under the impression the Swede had borrowed +a gun somewhere. Being half drunk, he could easy forget what he'd done +with his own, and the Pilgrim put up such a straight story--" + +"Fred told the truth. I know he did. I don't _believe_ he had a gun +that night, because--because I had asked him as a favor to please not +carry one to dances and places. There, now! He'd do what I asked him +to. I know he would. And I think you're just mean, to talk like this +about him; and, mind you, if he wants to come here he can. I don't +care if he comes _every day_!" She was so near to tears that her voice +broke and kept her from saying more that was foolish. + +"And I tell yuh, if he comes around here any more I'll chase him off +the ranch with a club!" Billy's voice was not as loud as usual, but +it was harsh and angry. "He ain't going to come here hanging around +you--not while _I_ can help it, and I guess I can, all right!" He +threw down the dish towel, swept a cup off the table with his elbow +when he turned, and otherwise betrayed human, unromantic rage. "Damn +him, I wisht I'd chased him off long ago. Fred, eh? Hell! _I'll_ Fred +him! Yuh think I'm going to stand for him running after my girl? I'll +kick him off the place. He ain't fit to speak to yuh, or look at yuh; +his friendship's an insult to any decent woman. I'll mighty quick put +a stop to--" + +"Will Boyle, you don't _dare_! I'm not your wife yet, remember! I'm +free to choose my own friends without asking leave of any one, and if +I want Fred Walland to come here, he'll _come_, and it will take more +than you to stop him. I--I'll write him a note, and ask him to dinner +next Sunday. I--I'll _marry_ him if I want to, Will Boyle, and you +can't stop me! He--he wants me to, badly enough, and if you--" + +Billy was gone, and the kitchen was rattling with the slam of the door +behind him, before she had time to make any more declarations that +would bring repentance afterward. She stood a minute, listening to see +whether he would come back, and when he did not, she ran to the +door, opened it hastily and looked. She saw Billy just in the act +of swishing his quirt down on the flanks of Barney so that the horse +almost cleared the creek in one bound. Flora caught her breath and +gave a queer little sob. She watched him, wide-eyed and white, till +he was quite out of sight and then went in and shut the door upon the +quiet, early spring twilight. + +As for Billy, he was gone to find the Pilgrim. Just what he would do +when he did find him was not quite plain, because he was promising +himself so many deeds of violence that no man could possibly perform +them all upon one victim. At the creek, he was going to "shoot him +like a coyote." A quarter of a mile farther, he would "beat his damn' +head off," and, as if those were not deaths sufficient, he was after +that determined to "take him by the heels and snap his measly head off +like yuh would a grass snake!" + +Threatened as he was, the Pilgrim nevertheless escaped, because +Billy did not happen to come across him before his rage had cooled to +reason. He rode on to Hardup, spent the night there swallowing more +whisky than he had drunk before in six months, and after that playing +poker with a recklessness that found a bitter satisfaction in losing +and thus proving how vilely the world was using him, and went home +rather unsteadily at sunrise and slept heavily in the bunk-house all +that day. For Billy Boyle was distressingly human in his rages as in +his happier moods, and was not given to gentle, picturesque melancholy +and to wailing at the silent stars. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +_The Shadow Lies Long_. + + +What time he was compelled to be in the house, in the few remaining +days before round-up, he avoided Flora or was punctiliously polite. +Only once did he address her directly by name, and then he called her +Miss Bridger with a stiff formality that made Mama Joy dimple with +spiteful satisfaction. Flora replied by calling him Mr. Boyle, and +would not look at him. + +Then it was all in the past, and Billy was out on the range learning +afresh how sickeningly awry one's plans may go. As mile after mile +of smiling grass-land was covered by the sweep of the Double-Crank +circles, the disaster pressed more painfully upon him. When the wagons +had left the range the fall before, Billy had estimated roughly that +eight or nine thousand head of Double-Crank stock wandered at will in +the open. But with the gathering and the calf-branding he knew that +the number had shrunk woefully. Of the calves he had left with their +mothers in the fall, scarce one remained; of the cows themselves he +could find not half, and the calf-branding was becoming a grim joke +among the men. + +"Eat hearty," they would sometimes banter one another. "We got to +buckle down and _work_ this afternoon. They's three calves milling +around out there waiting to be branded!" + +"Aw, come off! There ain't but two," another would bellow. + +If it were not quite as bad as that, it was in all conscience bad +enough, and when they swung up to the reservation line and found there +a fence in the making, and saw the Indian cowboys at work throwing out +all but reservation stock, Billy mentally threw up his hands and left +the outfit in Jim Bleeker's charge while he rode home to consult Dill. +For Billy Boyle, knowing well his range-lore, could see nothing before +the Double-Crank but black failure. + +"It begins to look, Dilly," he began, "as though I've stuck yuh on +this game. Yuh staked the wrong player; yuh should uh backed the man +that stacked the deck on me. There's hell to pay on the range, Dilly. +Last winter sure put a crimp in the range-stuff--_that's_ what I come +to tell yuh. I knew it would cut into the bunch. I could tell by the +way things was going close around here--but I didn't look for it to +be as bad as it is. And they're fencing in the reservation this +spring--that cuts off a big chunk uh mighty good grazing and winter +shelter along all them creeks. And I see there's quite a bunch uh +grangers come in, since I was along east uh here. They've got cattle +turned on the range, and there's half a dozen shacks scattered--" + +"Mr. Brown is selling off tracts of land with water-rights--under that +big ditch, you understand. He's working a sort of colonization scheme, +as near as I can find out. He is also fencing more land to the north +and west--toward Hardup, in fact. I believe they already have most of +the posts set. We'll soon be surrounded, William. And while we're upon +the subject of our calamities, I might state that we shall not be able +to do any irrigating this season. Mr. Brown is running his ditch half +full and has been for some little time. He kindly leaves enough for +our stock to drink, however!" + +"Charitable old cuss--that same Brown! I was figuring on the hay to +kinda ease through next winter. Do yuh know, Dilly, the range is just +going t' be a death-trap, with all them damn fences for the stock to +drift into. Another winter half as bad as the last one was will sure +put the finishing touches to the Double-Crank--unless we get busy and +_do_ something." Billy, his face worn and his eyes holding that tired +look which comes of nights sleepless and of looking long upon trouble, +turned and began to pull absently at a splintered place in the +gatepost. He had stopped Dill at the corral to have a talk with him, +because to him the house was as desolate as if a dear one lay dead +inside. Flora was at home--trust his eyes to see her face appear +briefly at the window when he rode up!--but he could not yet quite +endure to face her and her cold greeting. + +Dill, looking to Billy longer and lanker and mere melancholy than +ever, caressed his chin meditatively and regarded Billy in his +wistful, half-deprecating way. With the bitter knowledge that his +castle, and with it Dill's fortune, was toppling, Billy could hardly +bear to meet that look. And he had planned such great things, and had +meant to make Dilly a millionaire! + +"What would you advise, William, under the present unfavorable +conditions?" asked Dill hesitatingly. + +"Oh, I dunno. I've laid awake nights tryin' to pick a winning card. If +it was me, and me alone, I'd pull stakes and hunt another range--and +I'd go gunning after the first damn' man that stuck up a post to hang +barb-wire on. But after me making such a rotten-poor job uh running +the Double-Crank, I don't feel called on to lay down the law to +anybody!" + +"If you will permit me to pass judgment, William, I will say that you +have shown an ability for managing men and affairs which I consider +remarkable; _quite_ remarkable. You, perhaps, do not go deep enough in +searching for the cause of our misfortunes. It is not bad management +or the hard winter, or Mr. Brown, even--and I blame myself bitterly +for failing to read aright the 'handwriting on the wall,' to quote +scripture, which I seldom do. If you have ever read history, William, +you must know--even if you have _not_ read history you should know +from observation--how irresistible is the march of progress; how +utterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I should +have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the +West--the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy +who tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpably +careless. + +"Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to +me. _He_ saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowed +with the open range he very wisely changed his business; he became +allied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we are +being 'broken' on the wheel of evolutionary change, he will make his +millions--" + +"Damn him!" gritted Billy savagely, under his breath. + +"He is to be admired, William. Such a man is bound in the very nature +of things to succeed. It is the range and--and you, William, and those +like you, that must go. It is hard--no doubt it is _extremely_ +hard, but it is as irresistible as--as death itself. Civilization is +compelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize the +soil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in the +life of humans, also. + +"I am explaining at length, William, so that you will quite understand +why I do not think it wise to follow your suggestion. As I say, it is +not Brown, or the fences, or anything of that sort--taken in a large +sense--which is forcing us to the wall. It is the press of natural +progress, the pushing farther and farther of civilization. We might +move to a more unsettled portion of the country and delay for a time +the ultimate crushing. We could not avoid it entirely; we might, at +best, merely postpone it. + +"My idea is to gather everything and sell for as high a price as +possible. Then--perhaps it would be well to follow Mr. Brown's +example, and turn this place into a farm; or sell it, also, and try +something else. What do you think, William?" + +But Billy, his very soul sickening under the crushing truth of what +Dill in his prim grammatical way was saying, did not answer at all. He +was picking blindly, mechanically at the splinter, his face shaded by +his worn, gray hat; and he was thinking irrelevantly how a condemned +man must feel when they come to him in his cell and in formal words +read aloud his death-warrant. One sentence was beating monotonously +in his brain: "It is the range--and you, William, and those like +you--that must go." It was not a mere loss of dollars or of cattle or +even of hopes; it was the rending, the tearing from him of a life +he loved; it was the taking of the range--land--the wide, beautiful, +weather-worn land--big and grand in its freedom of all that was +narrow and sordid, and it was cutting and scarring it, harnessing it +to the petty uses of a class he despised with all the frank egotism +of a man who loves his own outlook; giving it over to the "nester" +and the "rube" and burying the sweet-smelling grasses with plows. It +was--he could not, even in the eloquence of his utter despair, find +words for all it meant to him. + +"I should, of course, leave the details to you, so far as getting the +most out of the stock is concerned. I have been thinking of this for +some little time, and your report of range conditions merely confirms +my own judgment. If you think we would better sell at once--" + +"I'd let 'em go till fall," said Billy lifelessly, snapping the +splinter back into place and reaching absently for his tobacco and +papers. "They're bound to pick up a lot--and what's left is mostly +big, husky steers that'll make prime beef. With decent prices yuh +ought to pull clear uh what yuh owe Brown, and have a little left. I +didn't make anything like a count; they was so thin I handled 'em as +light as I could and get the calves branded--what few there was. But I +feel tolerable safe in saying you can round up six--well, between six +and seven thousand head. At a fair price yuh ought to pull clear." + +"Well, after dinner--" + +"I can't stay for dinner, Dilly. I--there's--I've got to ride over +here a piece--I'll catch up a fresh hoss and start right off. I--" He +went rather hurriedly after his rope, as hurriedly caught the horse +that was handiest and rode away at a lope. But he did not go so very +far. He just galloped over the open range to a place where, look where +he might, he could not see a fence or sign of habitation (and it +wrung the heart of him that he must ride into a coulee to find such +a place), got down from his horse and lay a long, long while in the +grass with his hat pulled over his face. + + * * * * * + +For the first time in years the Fourth of July saw Billy in camp and +in his old clothes. He had not hurried the round-up--on the contrary +he had been guilty of dragging it out unnecessarily by all sorts of +delays and leisurely methods--simply because he hated to return to the +ranch and be near Flora. The Pilgrim he meant to settle with, but he +felt that he could wait; he hadn't much enthusiasm even for a fight, +these days. + +But, after all, he could not consistently keep the wagons forever on +the range, so he camped them just outside the pasture fence; which +was far enough from the house to give him some chance of not being +tormented every day by the sight of her, and yet was close enough +for all practical purposes. And here it was that Dill came with fresh +news. + +"Beef is falling again, William," he announced when he had Billy quite +to himself. "Judging from present indications, it will go quite as low +as last fall--even lower, perhaps. If it does, I fail to see how we +can ship with any but disastrous financial results." + +"Well, what yuh going to do, then?" Billy spoke more irritably than +would have been possible a year ago. "Yuh can't winter again and come +out with anything but another big loss. Yuh haven't even got hay to +feed what few calves there is. And, as I told yuh, the way the fences +are strung from hell to breakfast, the stock's bound to die off like +poisoned flies every storm that comes." + +"I have kept that in mind, William. I saw that I should be quite +unable to make a payment this fall, so I went to Mr. Brown to make +what arrangements I could. To be brief, William, Brown has offered to +buy back this place and the stock, on much the same terms he offered +me. I believe he wants to put this section of land under irrigation +from his ditch and exploit it with the rest; the cattle he can +turn into his immense fields until they can be shipped at a profit. +However, that is not our affair and need not concern us. + +"He will take the stock as they run, at twenty-one dollars a head. +If, as you estimate, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of +six thousand, that will dear me of all indebtedness and leave a few +thousands with which to start again--at something more abreast of the +times, I hope. I am rather inclined to take the offer. What do you +think of it, William?" + +"I guess yuh can't do any better. Twenty-one dollars a head as they +run--and everything else thrown in, uh course?" + +"That is the way I bought it, yes," said Dill. + +"Well, we ought to scare up six thousand, if we count close. I know +old Brown fine; he'll hold yuh right down t' what yuh turn over, and +he'll tally so close he'll want to dock yuh if a critter's shy one +horn--damn him. That's why I was wishing you'd bought that way, +instead uh lumping the price and taking chances. Only, uh course, I +knew just about what was on the range." + +"Then I will accept the offer. I have been merely considering it until +I saw you. And perhaps it will be as well to go about it immediately." + +"It's plenty early," objected Billy. "I was going to break some more +hosses for the saddle-bunch--but I reckon I'll leave 'em now for Brown +to bust. And for _God_-sake, Dilly, once yuh get wound up here, go +on back where yuh come from. If the range is going--and they's no use +saying it ain't--this ain't going to be no place for any white man." +Which was merely Billy's prejudice speaking. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +_The End of the Double-Crank._ + + +Dill himself rode on that last round-up. Considering that it was all +new to him, he made a remarkably good record for himself among the +men, who were more than once heard to remark that "Dill-pickle's sure +making a hand!" Wherever Billy went--and in those weeks Billy rode +and worked with a feverish intensity that was merely a fight against +bitter thinking--Dill's stirrup clacked close alongside. He was +silent, for the most part, but sometimes he talked reminiscently +of Michigan and his earlier life there. Seldom did he refer to the +unhappy end of the Double-Crank, or to the reason why they were riding +from dawn to dusk, sweeping together all the cattle within the wide +circle of riders and later cutting out every Double-Crank animal and +holding them under careful herd. + +Even when they went with the first twelve hundred and turned them over +to Brown and watched his careful counting, Dill made no comment upon +the reason for it beyond one sentence. He read the receipt over slowly +before laying it methodically in the proper compartment of his long +red-leather book, and drew his features into his puckered imitation of +a smile. "Mr. Brown has counted just twenty-one dollars more into my +pocket than I expected," he remarked. "He tallied one more than you +did, William. I ought to hold that out of your wages, young man." + +Rare as were Dill's efforts at joking, even this failed to bring more +than a slight smile to the face of Charming Billy Boyle. He was trying +to look upon it all as a mere incident, a business matter, pure and +simple, but he could not. While he rode the wide open reaches, there +rode with him the keen realization that it was the end. For him the +old life on the range was dead--for had not Dill made him see it so? +And did not every raw-red fencepost proclaim anew its death? For +every hill and every coulee he buried something of his past and wept +secretly beside the grave. For every whiff of breakfast that mingled +with the smell of clean air in the morning came a pang of homesickness +for what would soon be only a memory. + +He was at heart a dreamer--was Charming Billy Boyle; perhaps an +idealist--possibly a sentimentalist. He had never tried to find a name +for the side of his life that struck deepest. He knew that the +ripple of a meadow-lark swinging on a weed against the sunrise, with +diamond-sparkles all on the grass around, gripped him and hurt him +vaguely with its very sweetness. He knew that he loved to sit alone +and look away to a far skyline and day-dream. He had always known +that, for it had been as much a part of his life as sleeping. + +So now it was as if a real, tangible shadow lay on the range. He could +see it always lengthening before him, and always he must ride within +its shade. After a while it would grow quite black, and the range and +the cattle and the riding over hills and into coulees untamed would +all be blotted out; dead and buried deep in the past, and with the +careless, plodding feet of the plowman trampling unthinkingly upon +the grave. It was a tragedy to Charming Billy Boyle; it was as if the +range-land were a woman he loved well, and as if civilization were the +despoiler, against whom he had no means of defense. + +All this--and besides, Flora. He had not spoken to her for two months. +He had not seen her even, save for a passing glimpse now and then at +a distance. He had not named her to any man, or asked how she did--and +yet there had not been an hour when he had not longed for her. She +had told him she would marry the Pilgrim (she had _not_ said that, but +Billy in his rage had so understood her) and that he could not stop +her. He wouldn't _try_ to stop her. But he would one day settle with +the Pilgrim--settle to the full. And he wanted her--_wanted_ her! + +They had taken the third herd in to Brown, and were back on the range; +Billy meaning to make a last sweep around the outer edges and gather +in what was left--the stragglers that had been missed before. There +would not be many, he knew from experience; probably not more than a +hundred or two all told, even with Billy anxious to make the count as +large as possible. + +He was thinking about it uneasily and staring out across the wide +coulee to the red tumble of clouds, that had strange purples and grays +and dainty violet shades here and there. Down at the creek Dill was +trying to get a trout or two more before it grew too dark for them +to rise to the raw beef he was swishing through the riffle, and an +impulse to have the worst over at once and be done drove Billy down to +interrupt. + +"Yuh won't get any more there," he said, by way of making speech. + +"I just then had a bite, William," reproved Dill, and swung the bait +in a wide circle for another awkward cast. He was a persistent soul, +was Dill, when once he got started in a given direction. + +Billy, dodging the red morsel of meat, sat down on a grassy hummock. +"Aw, come and set down, Dilly," he urged wearily. "I want to tell yuh +something." + +"If it's about the cook being out of evaporated cream, William, I have +already been informed twice. Ah-h! I almost had one then!" + +"Aw, thunder! yuh think I'm worrying over canned cream? What I want +to say may not be more important, but when yuh get fishing enough I'll +say it anyhow." He watched Dill moodily, and then lifted his eyes to +stare at the gorgeous sky--as though there would be no more sunsets +when the range-life was gone, and he must needs fill well his memory +for the barren years ahead. + +When Dill flopped a six-inch trout against his ear, so steeped was he +in bitterness that he merely said, "Aw, hell!" wearily and hunched +farther along on the hummock. + +"I really beg your pardon, William. From the vicious strike he made, I +was convinced that he weighed at least half a pound, and exerted more +muscular force than was quite necessary. When one hasn't a reel it is +impossible to play them properly, and it is the first quick pull that +one must depend upon. I'm very sorry--" + +"Sure. Don't mention it, Dilly. Say, how many cattle have yuh got +receipts for, to date--if it ain't too much trouble?" + +"No trouble at all, William. I have an excellent memory for figures. +Four thousand, three hundred and fifteen. Ah-h! See how instinct +inspires him to flop always toward the water! Did you ever--" + +"Well, yes, I've saw a fish flop toward the water once or twicet +before now. It sure is a great sight, Dilly!" He did not understand +Dill these days, and wondered a good deal at his manifest indifference +to business cares. It never occurred to him that Dill, knowing quite +well how hard the trouble pressed upon his foreman, was only trying +in his awkward way to lighten it by not seeming to think it worth +worrying over. + +"I hate to mention trifles at such a time, Dilly, but I thought maybe +yuh ought to know that we won't be able to scare up more than a couple +uh hundred more cattle, best we can do. We're bound to fall a lot +short uh what I estimated--and I ain't saying nothing about the +fine job uh guessing I done! If we bring the total up to forty-five +hundred, we'll do well." + +Dill took plenty of time to wind the line around his willow pole. "To +use your own expressive phraseology, William," he said, when he had +quite finished and had laid the pole down on the bank, "that will +leave me in one hell-of-a-hole!" + +"That's what I thought," Billy returned apathetically. + +"Well, I must take these up to the cook." Dill held up the four fish +he had caught. "I'll think the matter over, William, and I thank you +for telling me. Of course you will go on and gather what there are." + +"Sure," agreed Billy tonelessly, and followed Dill back to camp and +went to bed. + +At daybreak it was raining, and Billy after the manner of cowboys +slept late; for there would be no riding until the weather cleared, +and there being no herd to hold, there would be none working save the +horse-wrangler, the night-hawk and cook. It was the cook who handed +him a folded paper and a sealed envelope when he did finally appear +for a cup of coffee. "Dill-pickle left 'em for yuh," he said. + +Billy read the note--just a few lines, with a frown of puzzlement. + + +Dear William: Business compels my absence for a time. I hope you will +go on with your plans exactly as if I were with you. I am leaving a +power-of-attorney which will enable you to turn over the stock and +transact any other business that may demand immediate attention, in +case I am detained. + +Yours truly, + +Alexander P. Dill + + +It was queer, but Billy did not waste much time in wondering. He +rounded up the last of the Double-Cranks, drove them to Brown's +place and turned them over, with the home ranch, the horses, and camp +outfit--"made a clean sweep uh the whole damn', hoodooed works," was +the way he afterward put it. He had expected that Dill would be there +to attend to the last legal forms, but there was no sign of him or +from him. He had been seen to take the eastbound train at Tower, and +the rest was left to guessing. + +"He must uh known them two-hundred odd wouldn't square the deal," +argued Billy loyally to himself. "So uh course he'll come back and fix +it up. But what I'm to do about payin' off the boys gets me." For two +hours he worried, mentally in the dark. Then he hit upon an expedient +that pleased him. He told Brown he would need to keep a few of the +saddle-horses for a few days, and he sent the boys--those of them +who did not transfer their valuable services to Brown upon the +asking--over to the Bridger place to wait there until further orders. + +Also, he rode reluctantly to the Double-Crank ranch, wondering, as he +had often done in the past few weeks, what would become of Flora and +Mama Joy. So far as he knew, they had not heard a word as to whether +Bridger was alive or dead, and if they had friends or family to whom +they might turn, he had never heard either mention them. If Dill had +been there he would have left it to him; but Dill was gone, and there +was no knowing when he would be back, and it devolved upon Billy +to make some arrangements for the women, or at the least offer +his services--and it was, under the circumstances, quite the most +unpleasant duty thus far laid upon him. + +He knew they had been left there at the ranch when round-up started, +because Dill had said something about leaving a gentle horse or two +for them to ride. Whether they were still there he did not know, +although he could easily have asked Spikes, who had been given charge +of the ranch while Dill was away on the range. He supposed the Pilgrim +would be hanging around, as usual--not that it made much difference, +though, except that he hated the thought of a disagreeable scene +before the women. + +He rode slowly up to the corral gate, turned his horse inside and +fastened the chain just as he had done a thousand times before--only +this would be the last time. His tired eyes went from one familiar +object to another, listlessly aware of the regret he should feel but +too utterly wearied of sorrow to feel much of anything. No one seemed +to be about, and the whole place had an atmosphere of desolation that +almost stirred him to a heartache--almost. + +He went on to the house. There were some signs of life there, and some +sound. In the very doorway he met old Bridger himself, but he could +not even feel much surprise at seeing him there. He said hello, and +when he saw the other's hand stretching out to meet him, he clasped it +indifferently. Behind her husband, Mama Joy flashed at him a look he +did not try to interpret--of a truth it was rather complex, with a +little of several emotions--and he lifted his hat a half-inch from his +forehead in deference to her sex. Flora, he thanked God dully, he did +not see at all. + +He stayed perhaps ten minutes listening impersonally to Bridger, who +talked loudly and enthusiastically of his plans. At the time they did +not seem to concern him at all, though they involved taking Flora and +Mama Joy away to Seattle to spend the winter, and in the spring moving +them on to some place in the North--a place that sounded strange in +the ears of Billy, and was straightway forgotten. + +After that he went to his room and packed what few things he wanted; +and they were not many, because in his present mood nothing mattered +and nothing seemed to him of much value--not even life. He was more +careful of Dill's belongings, and packed everything he could find that +was his. They were not scattered, for Dill was a methodical man and +kept things in their places instinctively. + +He paused over but one object--"The Essays of Elia," which had somehow +fallen behind a trunk. Standing there in the middle of Dill's room, he +turned the little blue book absently in his hand. There was dust upon +the other side, and he wiped it off, manlike, with a sweep of his +forearm. He looked at the trunk; he had just locked it with much +straining of muscles and he hated to open it again. He looked at the +book again. He seemed to see Dill slumped loosely down in the old +rocker, a slippered foot dangling before him, reading solemnly from +this same little blue book, the day he came to tell him about the +ditch, and that he must lease all the land he could--the day when the +shadow of passing first touched the range-land. At least, the day when +he had first seen it there. He turned a few leaves thoughtfully, heard +Flora's voice asking a question in the kitchen, and thrust the book +hastily into his pocket. "Dilly'll want it, I expect," he muttered. He +glanced quickly, comprehensively around him to make sure that he +had missed nothing, turned toward the open front door and went out +hurriedly, because he thought he heard a woman's step in the dining +room and he did not want to see anybody, not even Flora--least of all, +Flora! + +"I'll send a rig out from town for the stuff that's ours," he called +back to Bridger, who came to the kitchen door and called after +him that he better wait and have some supper. "You'll be here till +to-morrow or next day; it ain't likely I'll be back; yuh say Dill +settled up with the--women, so--there's nothing left to do." + +If he had known--but how could he know that Flora was watching him +wistfully from the front porch, when he never once looked toward the +house after he reached the stable? + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +_Settled In Full_. + + +On a lonely part of the trail to town--queerly, it was when he was +rounding the low, barren hill where he and Dill had first met--he took +out his brand-book and went over the situation. It was Barney he rode, +and Barney could be trusted to pace along decorously with the reins +twisted twice around the saddle-horn, so Billy gave no thought to his +horse but put his whole mind on the figures. He was not much used +to these things; beyond keeping tally of the stock at branding and +shipping time and putting down what details of his business he dared +not trust to memory, a pencil was strange to his fingers. But the +legal phrases in the paper left by Dill and signed by the cook and +night-hawk as witnesses gave him a heavy sense of responsibility that +everything should be settled exactly right. So now he went over the +figures slowly, adding them from the top down and from the bottom up, +to make sure he had the totals correct. He wished they were wrong; +they might then be not quite so depressing. + +"Lemme see, now. I turned over 4,523 head uh stock, all told (hell +of a fine job uh guessing I done! Me saying there'd be over six +thousand!) That made $94,983. And accordin' to old Brown--and I guess +he had it framed up correct--Dilly owes him $2,217 yet, instead uh +coming out with enough to start some other business. It's sure queer, +the way figures always come out little when yuh want 'em big, and big +when yuh want 'em little! Them debts now--they could stand a lot uh +shavin' down. Twelve thousand dollars and interest, to the bank--I +can't do a darn thing about them twelve thousand. If Dilly hadn't gone +and made a cast-iron agreement I coulda held old Brown up for a few +thousand more, on account uh the increase in saddle-stock. I'd worked +that bunch up till it sure was a dandy lot uh hosses--but what yuh +going to do?" + +He stared dispiritedly out across the brown prairie. "I'd oughta put +Dilly next to that, only I never thought about it at the time, and +I was so dead sure the range-stuff--And there's the men, got to have +their money right away quick, so's they can hurry up and blow it in! +If Dilly ain't back to-night, or I don't hear from him, I reckon +I'll have to draw m' little old wad out uh the bank and pay the +sons-uh-guns. I sure ain't going to need it to buy dishes and rocking +chairs and pictures--and I was going t' git her a piano--oh, hell!" + +He still rode slowly, after that, but he did not bother over +the figures that stood for Dilly's debts. He sat humped over the +saddle-horn like an old man and stared at the trail and at the +forefeet of Barney coming down _pluck, pluck_ with leisurely +regularity in the dust. Just so was Charming Billy Boyle trampling +down the dreams that had been so sweet in the dreaming, and leveling +ruthlessly the very foundations of the fair castle he had builded +in the air for Dill and himself--and one other, with the fairest, +highest, most secret chambers for that Other. And as he rode, the +face of him was worn and the blue eyes of him sombre and dull; and +his mouth, that had lost utterly the humorous, care-free quirk at the +corners, was bitter, and straight, and hard. + +He had started out with such naive assurance to succeed, and--he had +failed so utterly, so hopelessly, with not even a spectacular crash +to make the failing picturesque. He had done the best that was in +him, and even now that it was over he could not quite understand how +everything, _everything_ could go like that; how the Double-Crank and +Flora--how the range, even, had slipped from him. And now Dill was +gone, too, and he did not even know where, or if he would ever come +back. + +He would pay the men; he had, with a surprising thrift, saved nearly +a thousand dollars in the bank at Tower. That, to be sure, was when he +had Flora to save for; since then he had not had time or opportunity +to spend it foolishly. It would take nearly every dollar; the way +he had figured it, he would have just twenty-three dollars left for +himself--and he would have the little bunch of horses he had in his +prosperity acquired for the pure love of owning a good horse. He would +sell the horses, except Barney and one to pack his bed, and he would +drift--drift just as do the range-cattle when a blizzard strikes +them in the open. Billy felt like a stray. His range was gone--gone +utterly. He would roll his bed and drift; and perhaps, somewhere, he +could find a stretch of earth as God had left it, unscarred by fence +and plow, undefiled by cabbages and sugar-beets (Brown's new settlers +were going strong on sugar-beets). + +"Well, it's all over but the shouting," he summed up grimly when +Hardup came in sight. "I'll pay off the men and turn 'em loose--all +but Jim. Somebody's got to stay with the Bridger place till Dilly +shows up, seeing that's all he's got left after the clean-up. The rest +uh the debts can wait. Brown's mortgage ain't due yet" (Billy had his +own way of looking at financial matters) "and the old Siwash ain't got +any kick comin' if he never gets another cent out uh Dilly. The bank +ain't got the cards to call Dilly now, for his note ain't due till +near Christmas. So I reckon all I got to do after I pay the boys is +take m' little old twenty-three plunks, and my hosses--if I can't +sell 'em right off--and pull out for God-knows-where-and-I-don't-care- +a-damn!" + + * * * * * + +Charming Billy Boyle had done all that he had planned to do, +except that he had not yet pulled out for the place he had named +picturesquely for himself. Much as at the beginning, he was leaning +heavily upon the bar in the Hardup Saloon, and his hat was pushed back +on his head; but he was not hilarious to the point of singing about +"the young thing," and he was not, to any appreciable extent, enjoying +himself. He was merely adding what he considered the proper finishing +touch to his calamities. He was spinning silver dollars, one by one, +across the bar to the man with the near-white apron, and he was +endeavoring to get the worth of them down his throat. To be sure, +he was being assisted, now and then, by several acquaintances; but +considering the fact that a man's stomach has certain well-defined +limitations, he was doing very well, indeed. + +When he had spun the twenty-third dollar to the bartender, Billy meant +to quit drinking for the present; after that, he was not quite clear +as to his intentions, farther than "forking his hoss and pulling out" +when there was no more to be done. He felt uneasily that between his +present occupation and the pulling-out process lay a duty unperformed, +but until the door swung open just as he was crying, "Come on, +fellows," he had not been able to name it. + +The Pilgrim it was who entered jauntily; the Pilgrim, who had not +chanced to meet Billy once during the summer, and so was not aware +that the truce between them was ended for good and all. He knew that +Billy had not at any time been what one might call cordial, but +that last stare of displeasure when they met in the creek at +the Double-Crank, he had set down to a peevish mood. Under the +circumstances, it was natural that he should walk up to the bar with +the rest. Under the circumstances, it was also natural that Billy +should object to this unexpected and unwelcome guest, and that the +vague, unperformed duty should suddenly flash into his mind clear, and +well-defined, and urgent. + +"Back up, Pilgrim," was his quiet way of making known his purpose. +"Yuh can't drink on _my_ money, old-timer, nor use a room that I'm +honoring with my presence. Just right now, I'm _here_. It's up to you +to back out--_away_ out--clean outside and across the street." + +The Pilgrim did not move. + +Billy had been drinking, but his brain was not of the stuff that +fuddles easily, and he was not, as the Pilgrim believed, drunk. +His eyes when he stared hard at the Pilgrim were sober eyes, sane +eyes--and something besides. + +"I said it," he reminded softly, when men had quit shuffling their +feet and the room was very still. + +"I don't reckon yuh know what yuh said," the Pilgrim retorted, +laughing uneasily and shifting his gaze a bit. "What they been doping +yuh with, Bill? There ain't any quarrel between you and me no more." +His tone was abominably, condescendingly tolerant, and his look was +the look which a mastiff turns wearily upon a hysterical toy-terrier +yapping foolishly at his knees. For the Pilgrim had changed much in +the past year and more during which men had respected him because +he was not considered quite safe to trifle with. According to the +reputation they gave him, he had killed a man who had tried to kill +him, and he could therefore afford to be pacific upon occasion. + +Billy stared at him while he drew a long breath; a breath which seemed +to press back a tangible weight of hatred and utter contempt for the +Pilgrim; a breath while it seemed that he must kill him there and +stamp out the very semblance of humanity from his mocking face. + +"Yuh don't know of any quarrel between you and me? Yuh say yuh don't?" +Billy's voice trembled a little, because of the murder-lust that +gripped him. "Well, pretty soon, I'll start in and tell yuh all about +it--maybe. Right now, I'm going t' give a new one--one that yuh can +easy name and do what yuh damn' please about." Whereupon he did as +he had done once before when the offender had been a sheepherder. +He stepped quickly to one side of the Pilgrim, emptied a glass down +inside his collar, struck him sharply across his grinning mouth, and +stepped back--back until there were eight or ten feet between them. + +"That's the only way _my_ whisky can go down _your_ neck!" he said. + +Men gasped and moved hastily out of range, never doubting what would +happen next. Billy himself knew--or thought he knew--and his hand was +on his gun, ready to pull it and shoot; hungry--waiting for an excuse +to fire. + +The Pilgrim had given a bellow that was no word at all, and whirled +to come at Billy; met his eyes, wavered and hesitated, his gun in his +hand and half-raised to fire. + +Billy, bent on giving the Pilgrim a fair chance, waited another +second; waited and saw fear creep into the bold eyes of the Pilgrim; +waited and saw the inward cringing of the man. It was like striking a +dog and waiting for the spring at your throat promised by his snarling +defiance, and then seeing the fire go from his eyes as he grovels, +cringingly confessing you his master, himself a cur. + +What had been hate in the eyes of Billy changed slowly to incredulous +contempt. "Ain't that enough?" he cried disgustedly. "My God, ain't +yuh _man_ enough--Have I got to take yuh by the ear and slit your +gullet like they stick pigs--or else let yuh _go_? What _are_ yuh, +anyhow? Shall I give my gun to the bar-keep and go out where it's +dark? Will yuh be scared to tackle me then?" He laughed and watched +the yellow terror creep over the face of the Pilgrim at the taunt. +"What's wrong with your gun? Ain't it working good to-night? Ain't it +loaded? + +"Heavens and earth! What else have I got to do before you'll come +alive? You've been living on your rep as a bad man to monkey with, and +pushing out your wishbone over it for quite a spell, now--why don't +yuh get busy and collect another bunch uh admiration from these +fellows? _I_ ain't no lightning-shot man! Papa Death don't roost on +the end uh my six-gun--or I never suspicioned before that he did; but +from the save-me-quick look on yuh, I believe yuh'd faint plumb away +if I let yuh take a look at the end uh my gun, with the butt-end +toward yuh! + +"Honest t' God, Pilgrim, I won't try to get in ahead uh yuh! I +couldn't if I tried, because mine's at m' belt yet and I ain't so +swift. Come on! Please--_purty_ please!" Billy looked around the room +and laughed. He pointed his finger mockingly "Ain't he a peach of a +Bad Man, boys? Ain't yuh proud uh his acquaintance? I reckon I'll have +to turn my back before he'll cut loose. Yuh know, he's just aching t' +kill me--only he don't want me to know it when he does! He's afraid he +might hurt m' feelings!" + +He swung back to the Pilgrim, went close, and looked at him +impertinently, his head on one side. He reached out deliberately with +his hand, and the Pilgrim ducked and cringed away. "Aw, look here!" he +whined. "_I_ ain't done nothing to yuh, Bill!" + +Billy's hand dropped slowly and hung at his side. +"Yuh--damned--coward!" he gritted. "Yuh know yuh wouldn't get any +more than an even break with me, and that ain't enough for yuh. You're +afraid to take a chance. You're afraid--God!" he cried suddenly, swept +out of his mockery by the rage within. "And I can't kill yuh! Yuh +won't show nerve enough to give me a chance! Yuh won't even _fight_, +will yuh?" + +He leaned and struck the Pilgrim savagely. "Get out uh my sight, +then! Get out uh town! Get clean out uh the country! Get out among the +coyotes--they're nearer your breed than men!" For every sentence there +was a stinging blow--a blow with the flat of his hand, driving the +Pilgrim back, step by step, to the door. The Pilgrim, shielding his +head with an uplifted arm, turned then and bolted out into the night. + +[Illustration: FOR EVERY SENTENCE A STINGING BLOW WITH THE FLAT OF HIS +HAND.] + +Behind him were men who stood ashamed for their manhood, not caring to +look straight at one another with so sickening an example before them +of the craven coward a man may be. In the doorway, Billy stood framed +against the yellow lamplight, a hand pressing hard against the casings +while he leaned and hurled curses in a voice half-sobbing with rage. + +It was so that Dill found him when he came looking. When he reached +out and laid a big-knuckled hand gently on his arm, Billy shivered and +stared at him in a queer, dazed fashion for a minute. + +"Why--hello, Dilly!" he said then, and his voice was hoarse and +broken. "Where the dickens did _you_ come from?" + +Without a word Dill, still holding him by the arm, led him unresisting +away. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +_Oh, Where Have You Been, Charming Billy?_ + + +Presently they were in the little room which Dill had kept for himself +by the simple method of buying the shack that held it, and Billy was +drinking something which Dill poured out for him and which steadied +him wonderfully. + +"If you are not feeling quite yourself, William, perhaps we would do +better to postpone our conversation until morning," Dill was saying +while he rocked awkwardly, his hands folded loosely together, his +elbows on the rocker--arms and his round, melancholy eyes regarding +Billy solemnly. "I wanted to ask how you came out--with the +Double-Crank." + +"Go ahead; I'm all right," said Billy. "I aim to hit the trail by +sun-up, so we'll have our little say now." He made him a cigarette and +looked wistfully at Dill, while he felt for a match. "Go ahead. What +do yuh want to know the worst?" + +"Well, I did not see Brown, and it occurred to me that after I left +you must have gathered more stock than you anticipated. I discovered +from the men that you have paid them off. I rode out there to-day, you +know. I arrived about two hours after you had left." + +"You're still in the hole on the cow-business," Billy stated flatly, +as if there were no use in trying to soften the telling. "Yuh owe +Brown two thousand odd dollars. I turned in a few over two hundred +head--I've got it all down here, and yuh can see the exact figure +yourself. Yuh didn't show up, and I didn't want to hold the men and +let their time run on and nothing doing to make it pay, so I give 'em +their money and let 'em off--all but Jim Bleeker. I didn't pay him, +because I wanted him to look after things at the Bridger place till +yuh got back, and I knew if I give him any money he'd burn the earth +getting to where he could spend it. He's a fine fellow when he's +broke--Jim is." + +"But I owed the men for several months' work. Where did you raise the +amount, William?" Dill cleared his throat raspingly. + +"Me? Oh, I had some uh my wages saved up. I used that." It never +occurred to Billy that he had done anything out of the ordinary. + +"_H-m-m!_" Dill cleared his throat again and rocked, his eyes on +Billy's moody face. "I observe, William, that--er--they are not +shipping any skates to--er--hell, yet!" + +"Huh?" Billy had not been listening. + +"I was saying, William, that I appreciate your fidelity to my +interests, and--" + +"Oh, that's all right," Billy cut in carelessly. + +"--And I should like to have you with me on a new venture I have in +mind. You probably have not heard of it here, but it is an assured +fact that the railroad company are about to build a cut-off that will +shut out Tower completely and put Hardup on the main line. In fact, +they have actually started work at the other end, and though they +are always very secretive about a thing like that, I happen to have a +friend on the inside, so that my information is absolutely authentic. +I have raised fifty thousand dollars among my good friends in +Michigan, and I intend to start a first-class general store here. I +have already bargained for ten acres of land over there on the creek, +where I feel sure the main part of the town will be situated. If you +will come in with me we will form a partnership, equal shares. It +is borrowed capital," he added hastily, "so that I am not giving you +anything, William. You will take the same risk I take, and--" + +"Sorry, Dilly, but I couldn't come through. Fine counter-jumper I'd +make! Thank yuh all the same, Dilly." + +"But there is the Bridger place. I shall keep that and go into +thoroughbred stock--good, middle-weight horses, I think, that will +find a ready sale among the settlers who are going to flock in here. +You could take charge there and--" + +"No, Dilly, I couldn't. I--I'm thinking uh drifting down into New +Mexico. I--I want to see that country, bad." + +Dill crossed his long legs the other way, let his hands drop loosely, +and stared wistfully at Billy. "I really wish I could induce you to +stay, William," he murmured. + +"Well, yuh can't. I hope yuh come through better than yuh did with the +Double-Crank--but I guess it'll be some considerable time before the +towns and the gentle farmer (damn him!) are crowded to the wall by +your damn' Progress." It was the first direct protest against changing +conditions which Billy had so far put into words, and he looked sorry +for having said so much. "Oh, here's your little blue book," he added, +feeling it in his pocket. "I found it behind the trunk when everything +else was packed." + +"You saw--er--you saw Bridger, then? He is going to take his wife and +Flora up North with him in the spring. It seems he has done well." + +"I know--he told me." + +Dill turned the leaves of the book slowly, and consciously refrained +from looking at Billy. "They were about to leave when I was there. It +is a shame. I am very sorry for Flora--she does not want to go. If--" +He cleared his throat again and guiltily pretended to be reading +a bit, here and there, and to be speaking casually. "If I were +a marrying man, I am not sure but I should make love to +Flora--h-m-m!--this 'Bachelor's Complaint' here--have you read it, +William? It is very--here, for instance--'Nothing is to me more +distasteful than the entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in +the countenances of a new-married couple'--and so on. I feel tempted +sometimes when I look at Flora--only she looks upon me as a--er--piece +of furniture--the kind that sticks out in the way and you have to feel +your way around it in the dark--awkward, but necessary. Poor girl, +she cried in the most heartbroken way when I told her we would not be +likely to see her again, and--I wonder what is the trouble between her +and Walland? They used to be quite friendly, in a way, but she has not +spoken to him, to my certain knowledge, since last spring. Whenever +he came to the ranch she would go to her room and refuse to come out +until he had left. H-m-m! Did she ever tell you, William?" + +"No," snapped William huskily, smoking with his head bent and turned +away. + +"I know positively that she cut him dead, as they say, at the last +Fourth-of-July dance. He asked her to dance, and she refused +almost rudely and immediately got up and danced with that boy of +Gunderson's--the one with the hair-lip. She could not have been taken +with the hair-lipped fellow--at least, I should scarcely think so. +Should you, William?" + +This time William did not answer at all. Dill, watching his bent head +tenderly, puckered his face into his peculiar smile. + +"H-m-m! They stopped at the hotel to-night--Bridgers, I mean. Drove +in after dark from the ranch. They mean to catch the noon train from +Tower to-morrow, Bridger told me. It will be an immense benefit, +William, when those big through-trains get to running through Hardup. +There is some talk among the powers-that-be of making this a division +point. It will develop the country wonderfully. I really feel tempted +to cut down my investment in a store for the present, and buy more +land. What do you think, William?" + +"Oh, I dunno," said Billy in a let-me-alone kind of tone. + +"Well, it's very late. Everybody who lays any claim to respectability +should be in his bed," Dill remarked placidly. "You say you start at +sunrise? H-m-m! You will have to call me so that I can go over to the +hotel and get the money to refund what you used of your own. I left +my cash in the hotel safe. But they will be stirring early--they will +have to get the Bridgers off, you know." + +It was Dill who lay and smiled quizzically into the dark and listened +to the wide-awake breathing of the man beside him--breathing which +betrayed deep emotion held rigidly in check so far as outward movement +went. He fell asleep knowing well that the other was lying there +wide-eyed and would probably stay so until day. He had had a hard day +and had done many things, but what he had done last pleased him best. + +Now this is a bald, unpolished record of the morning: Billy saw the +dawn come, and rose in the perfect silence he had learned from years +of sleeping in a tent with tired men, and of having to get up at all +hours and take his turn at night-guarding; for tired, sleeping cowboys +do not like to be disturbed unnecessarily, and so they one and all +learn speedily the Golden Rule and how to apply it. That is why Dill, +always a light sleeper, did not hear Billy go out. + +Billy did not quite know what he was going to do, but habit bade him +first feed and water his horse. After that--well, he did not know. +Dill might not have things straight, or he might just be trying to +jolly him up a little, or he might be a meddlesome old granny-gossip. +What had looked dear and straight, say at three o'clock in the +morning, was at day-dawn hazy with doubt. So he led Barney down to +the creek behind the hotel, where in that primitive little place they +watered their horses. + +The sun was rising redly, and the hurrying ripples were all tipped +with gold, and the sky above a bewildering, tumbled fabric of barbaric +coloring. Would the sun rise like that in New Mexico? Billy wondered, +and watched the coming of his last day here, where he had lived, had +loved, had dreamed dreams and builded castles--and had seen the dreams +change to bitterness, and the castles go toppling to ruins. He would +like to stay with Dill, for he had grown fond of the lank, whimsical +man who was like no one Billy had ever known. He would have stayed +even in the face of the change that had come to the range-land--but he +could not bear to see the familiar line of low hills which marked the +Double-Crank and, farther down, the line-camp, and know that Flora was +gone quite away from him into the North. + +He caught himself back from brooding, and gave a pull at the halter +by way of hinting to Barney that he need not drink the creek entirely +dry--when suddenly he quivered and stood so still that he scarcely +breathed. + + "Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy? + Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?" + +Some one at the top of the creek-bank was singing it; some one with an +exceedingly small, shaky little voice that was trying to be daring and +mocking and indifferent, and that was none of these things--but only +wistful and a bit pathetic. + +Charming Billy, his face quite pale, turned his head cautiously as +though he feared too abrupt a glance would drive her away, and looked +at her standing there with her gray felt hat tilted against the sun, +flipping her gloves nervously against her skirt. She was obviously +trying to seem perfectly at ease, but her eyes were giving the lie to +her manner. + +Billy tried to smile, but instead his lips quivered and his eyes +blinked. + + "I have been to see my wife--" + +he began to sing gamely, and stuck there, because something came up +in his throat and squeezed his voice to a whisper. By main strength +he pulled Barney away from the gold-tipped ripples, and came stumbling +over the loose rocks. + +She watched him warily, half-turned, ready to run away. "We--I--aren't +you going to be nice and say good-by to me?" + +He came on, staring at her and saying nothing. + +"Well, if you still want to sulk--I wouldn't be as nasty as that, +and--and hold a grudge the way you do--and I was going to be nice and +forgiving; but if you don't care, and don't want--" + +By this time he was close--quite close. "Yuh know I care! And yuh know +I want--_you_. Oh, girlie, girlie!" + + * * * * * + +The colors had all left the sky, save blue and silver-gray, and the +sun was a commonplace, dazzling ball of yellow. Charming Billy Boyle, +his hat set back upon his head at a most eloquent angle, led Barney +from the creek up to the stable. His eyes were alight and his brow was +unwrinkled. His lips had quite lost their bitter lines, and once more +had the humorous, care-free quirk at the corners. + +He slammed the stable-door behind him and went off down the street, +singing exultantly: + + "--I have been to see my-wife, + She's the joy of my life--" + +He jerked open the door of the shack, gave a whoop to raise the dead, +and took Dill ungently by the shoulder. + +"Come alive, yuh seven-foot Dill-pickle! What yuh want to lay here +snoring for at this time uh day? Don't yuh know it's morning?" + +Dill sat up and blinked, much like an owl in the sunshine. He puckered +his face into a smile. "Aren't you rather uproarious--for so early +in the day, William? I was under the impression that one usually grew +hilarious--" + +"Oh, there's other things besides whisky to make a man feel good," +grinned Billy, his cheeks showing a tinge of red. "I'm in a hurry, +Dilly. I've got to hit the trail immediate--and if it ain't too much +trouble to let me have that money yuh spoke about--" + +Dill got out of bed, eying him shrewdly. "Have you been gambling, +William?" + +Billy ran the green shade up from the window so energetically that +it slipped from his fingers and buzzed noisily at file top. He craned +his neck, trying to see the hotel. "Maybe yuh'd call it that--an old +bachelor like you! Yuh see, Dilly, I've got business over in Tower. +I've got to be there before noon, and I need--aw, thunder! How's a man +going to get married when he's only got six dollars in his jeans?" + +"I should say that would be scarcely feasible, William." Dill was +smiling down at the lacing of his shoes. "We can soon remedy that, +however. I'm--I'm very glad, William." + +The cheeks of Charming Billy Boyle grew quite red. "And, by the way, +Dilly," he said hurriedly, as if he shied at the subject of his love +and his marriage, "I've changed my mind about going to New Mexico. +I--we'll settle down on the Bridger place, if yuh still want me to. +She says she'd rather stay here in this country." + +Dill settled himself into his clothes, went over, and laid a hand +awkwardly upon Billy's arm, "I am very glad, William," he said simply. + + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Shadow, by B. M. 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