by B. M. Bower
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 tonight? 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 today, 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 tonight—Bridgers, I mean. Drove in after dark from the ranch. They mean to catch the noon train from Tower tomorrow, 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 ris
e 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.