by B. M. Bower
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 today, 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 tonight or tomorrow,” 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.