by B. M. Bower
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 m
y 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 tonight, 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.”