Part 10 (1/2)
I--I'm horribly disappointed in father. A man has no right to a family when he puts everything else first in his mind. He'll be gone three or four years, and will spend all he has, and we--can s.h.i.+ft for ourselves. He only left us a hundred dollars, to use in an emergency!
He was afraid he might need the rest to buy out a claim or get machinery or something. So if we don't like it here we'll have to stay, anyway. We--we're 'up against it,' as you fellows say.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”WE--WE'RE 'UP AGAINST IT,' AS YOU FELLOWS SAY.”]
Charming Billy, fumbling the latigo absently, felt a sudden belligerence toward her father. ”He ought to have his head punched good and plenty!” he blurted sympathetically.
To his amazement Miss Bridger drew herself up and started for the door. ”I'm very sorry you don't like the idea of us being here, Mr.
Boyle,” she replied coldly, ”but we happen to _be_ here, and I'm afraid you'll just have to make the best of it!”
Billy was at that moment pulling off the saddle. By the time he had carried it from the stall, hung it upon its accustomed spike and hurried to the door, Miss Bridger was nowhere to be seen. He said ”h.e.l.l!” under his breath, and took long steps to the house, but she did not appear to be there. It was ”Mama Joy,” yellow-haired, extremely blue-eyed, and full-figured, who made his coffee and gave him delicious things to eat--things which he failed properly to appreciate, because he ate with his ears perked to catch the faintest sound of another woman's steps and with his eyes turning constantly from door to window. He did not even know half the time what Mama Joy was saying, or see her dimples when she smiled; and Mama Joy was rather proud of her dimples and was not accustomed to having them overlooked.
He was too proud to ask, at supper time, where Miss Bridger was. She did not choose to give him sight of her, and so he talked and talked to Dill, and even to Mama Joy, hoping that Miss Bridger could hear him and know that he wasn't worrying a darned bit. He did not consider that he had said anything so terrible. What had she gone on like that about her father for, if she couldn't stand for any one siding in with her? Maybe he had put his sympathy a little too strong, but that is the way men handle each other. She ought to know he wasn't sorry she was there. Why, of _course_ she knew that! The girl wasn't a fool, and she must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around every day. Well, anyway, he wasn't going to begin by letting her lead him around by the nose, and he wasn't going to crumple down on his knees and tell her to please walk all over him.
”Well, anyway,” he summed up at bedtime with a somewhat doubtful satisfaction, ”I guess she's kinda got over the notion that I'm so blame _comfortable_--like I was an old grandpa-setting-in-the-corner.
She's _got_ to get over it, by thunder! I ain't got to that point yet; h.e.l.l, no! I should say I hadn't!”
It is a fact that when he rode away just after sunrise next morning (he would have given much if duty and his pride had permitted him to linger a while) no one could have accused him of being in any degree a comfortable young man. For his last sight of Miss Bridger had been the flutter of her when she disappeared through the stable door.
CHAPTER XIII.
_Billy Meets the Pilgrim._
The weeks that followed did not pa.s.s as quickly as before for Billy Boyle, nor did raking the range with his riders bring quite as keen a satisfaction with life. Always, when he rode apart in the soft haze and watched the sky-line s.h.i.+mmer and dance toward him and then retreat like a teasing maid, his thoughts wandered from the range and the cattle and the men who rode at his bidding and rested with one slim young woman who puzzled and tantalized him and caused him more mental discomfort than he had ever known in his life before that night when she entered so unexpectedly the line-camp and his life. He scarcely knew just how he did feel toward her; sometimes he hungered for her with every physical and mental fibre and was tempted to leave everything and go to her. Times there were when he resented deeply her treatment of him and repeated to himself the resolution not to lie down and let her walk all over him just because he liked her.
When the round-up was over and the last of the beef on the way to Chicago, and the fat Irish cook gathered up the reins of his four-horse team, mounted with a grunt to the high seat of the mess wagon and pointed his leaders thankfully into the trail which led to the Double-Crank, though the sky was a hard gray and the wind blew chill with the bite of winter and though tiny snowflakes drifted aimlessly to earth with a quite deceitful innocence, as if they knew nothing of more to come and were only idling through the air, the blood of Charming Billy rioted warmly through his veins and his voice had a lilt which it had long lacked and he sang again the pitifully foolish thing with which he was wont to voice his joy in living.
”I have been to see my wife, She's the joy of my life, She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!”
”Thought Bill had got too proud t' sing that song uh hisn,” the cook yelled facetiously to the riders who were nearest. ”I was lookin' for him to bust out in grand-opry, or something else that's a heap more stylish than his old come-all-ye.”
Charming Billy turned and rested a hand briefly upon the cantle while he told the cook laughingly to go to the hot place, and then settled himself to the pace that matched the leaping blood of him. That pace soon discouraged the others and left them jogging leisurely a mile or two in the rear, and it also brought him the sooner to his destination.
”Wonder if she's mad yet,” he asked himself, when he dismounted. No one seemed to be about, but he reflected that it was just about noon and they would probably be at dinner--and, besides, the weather was not the sort to invite one outdoors unless driven by necessity.
The smell of roast meat, coffee and some sort of pie a.s.sailed his nostrils pleasantly when he came to the house, and he went in eagerly by the door which would bring him directly to the dining room. As he had guessed, they were seated at the table. ”Why, come in, William,”
Dill greeted, a welcoming note in his voice. ”We weren't looking for you, but you are in good time. We've only just begun.”
”How do you do, Mr. Boyle?” Miss Bridger added demurely.
”h.e.l.lo, Bill! How're yuh coming?” cried another, and it was to him that the eyes of Billy Boyle turned bewilderedly. That the Pilgrim should be seated calmly at the Double-Crank table never once occurred to him. In his thoughts of Miss Bridger he had mentally eliminated the Pilgrim; for had she not been particular to show the Pilgrim that his presence was extremely undesirable, that night at the dance?
”h.e.l.lo, folks!” he answered them all quietly, because there was nothing else that he could do until he had time to think. Miss Bridger had risen and was smiling at him in friendly fas.h.i.+on, exactly as if she had never run away from him and stayed away all the evening because she was angry.
”I'll fix you a place,” she announced briskly. ”Of course you're hungry. And if you want to wash off the dust of travel, there's plenty of warm water out here in the kitchen. I'll get you some.”
She may not have meant that for an invitation, but Billy followed her into the kitchen and calmly shut the door behind him. She dipped warm water out of the reservoir for him and hung a fresh towel on the nail above the washstand in the corner, and seemed about to leave him again.