by B. M. Bower
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 coulée 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 coulée 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 coulée 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 o
n 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 coulée 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’l
l 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.