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.



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.