Part 10 (2/2)

”Yuh mad yet?” asked Billy, because he wanted to keep her there.

”Mad? Why?” She opened her eyes at him. ”Not as much as you look,” she retorted then. ”You look as cross as if--”

”What's the Pilgrim doing here?” Billy demanded suddenly and untactfully.

”Who? Mr. Walland?” She went into the pantry and came back with a plate for him. ”Why, nothing; he's just visiting. It's Sunday, you know.”

”Oh--is it?” Billy bent over the basin, hiding his face from her. ”I didn't know; I'd kinda lost count uh the days.” Whereupon he made a great splas.h.i.+ng in his corner and let her go without more words, feeling more than ever that he needed time to think. ”Just visiting--'cause it's _Sunday_, eh? The d.i.c.kens it is!” Meditating deeply, he was very deliberate in combing his hair and settling his blue tie and shaking the dust out of his white silk neckerchief and retying it in a loose knot; so deliberate that Mama Joy was constrained to call out to him: ”Your dinner is getting cold, Mr.

Boyle,” before he went in and took his seat where Miss Bridger had placed him--and he doubted much her innocence in the matter--elbow to elbow with the Pilgrim.

”How's s.h.i.+pping coming on, Billy?” inquired the Pilgrim easily, pa.s.sing to him the platter of roast beef. ”Most through, ain't yuh?”

”The outfit's on the way in,” answered Billy, accepting noncommittally the meat and the overture for peace. ”They'll be here in less than an hour.”

If the Pilgrim wanted peace, he was thinking rapidly, what grounds had he for ignoring the truce? He himself had been the aggressor and he also had been the victor. According to the honor of fighting men, he should be generous. And when all was said and done--and the thought galled Billy more than he could understand--the offense of the Pilgrim had been extremely intangible; it had consisted almost wholly of looks and a tone or two, and he realized quite plainly that his own dislike of the Pilgrim had probably colored his judgment. Anyway, he had thrashed the Pilgrim and driven him away from camp and killed his dog.

Wasn't that enough? And if the Pilgrim chose to forget the unpleasant circ.u.mstances of their parting and be friends, what could he do but forget also? Especially since the girl did not appear to be holding any grudge for what had pa.s.sed between them in the line-camp. Billy, b.u.t.tering a biscuit with much care, wished he knew just what _had_ happened that night before he opened the door, and wondered if he dared ask her.

Under all his thoughts and through all he hated the Pilgrim, his bold blue eyes, his full, smiling lips and smooth cheeks, as he had never hated him before; and he hated himself because, being unable to account even to himself for his feelings toward the Pilgrim, he was obliged to hide his hate and be friends--or else act the fool. And above all the mental turmoil he was somehow talking and listening and laughing now and then, as if there were two of him and each one was occupied with his own affairs. ”I wisht to thunder there was _three_ uh me,” he thought fleetingly during a pause. ”I'd set the third one uh me to figuring out just where the girl stands in this game, and what she's thinking about right now. There's a kinda twinkling in her eyes, now and then when she looks over here, that sure don't line up with her innocent talk. I wisht I could mind-read her--

”Yes, we didn't get through none too soon. Looks a lot like we're going to get our first slice uh winter. We've been playing big luck that we didn't get it before now; and that last bunch uh beef was sure rollicky and hard to handle--we'd uh had a picnic with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs if a blizzard had caught us with them on our hands. As it is, we're all dead on our feet. I expect to sleep about four days without stopping for meals, if you ask _me_.”

One cannot wonder that Charming Billy heard thankfully the clatter of his outfit arriving, or that he left half his piece of pie uneaten and hurried off, on the plea that he must show them what to do--which would have caused a snicker among the men if they had overheard him.

He did not mind Dill following him out, nor did he greatly mind the Pilgrim remaining in the house with Miss Bridger. The relief of being even temporarily free from the perplexities of the situation mastered all else and sent him whistling down the path to the stables.

CHAPTER XIV.

_A Winter at the Double-Crank_.

There are times when, although the months as they pa.s.s seem full, nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the destiny of man. After a year, those months of petty detail might be wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events--and such a time was the winter that saw ”Dill and Bill,” as one alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank. The affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic running than had been employed under Brown's owners.h.i.+p. Dill settled more and more into the new life, so that he was so longer looked upon as a foreign element; he could discuss practical ranch business and be sure of his ground--and it was then that Billy realized more fully how shrewd a brain lay behind those mild, melancholy blue eyes, and how much a part of the man was that integrity which could not stoop to small meanness or deceit. It would have been satisfying merely to know that such a man lived, and if Billy had needed any one to point the way to square living he must certainly have been better for the companions.h.i.+p of Dill.

As to Miss Bridger, he stood upon much the same footing with her as he had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity which comes of daily a.s.sociation; to his secret discomfort she had fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy. Though he liked the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental att.i.tude which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him that. Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the door of the living room and say: ”Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes for me--that's a good kid!”

Billy had no objections to drying the dishes; of a truth, although that had been a duty which he s.h.i.+rked systematically in line-camps until everything in the cabin was in that state which compels action, he would have been willing to stand beside Flora Bridger at the sink and wipe dishes (and watch her bare, white arms, with the dimply elbows) from dark until dawn. What he did object to was the half-patronizing, wholly matter-of-fact tone of her, which seemed to preclude any possibility of sentiment so far as she was concerned.

She always looked at him so frankly, with never a tinge of red in her cheeks to betray that consciousness of s.e.x which goes ever--say what you like--with the love of a man and a maid.

He did not want her to call him ”Billy Boy” in just that tone; it made him feel small and ineffective and young--he who was eight or nine years older than she! It put him down, so that he could not bring himself to making actual love to her--and once or twice when he had tried it, she took it as a great joke.

Still, it was good to have her there and to be friends. The absence of the Pilgrim, who had gone East quite suddenly soon after the round-up was over, and the generosity of the other fellows, who saw quite plainly how it was--with Billy, at least--and forbore making any advances on their own account, made the winter pa.s.s easily and left Charming Billy in the spring not content, perhaps, but hopeful.

It was in the warm days of late April--the days which bring the birds and the tender, young gra.s.s, when the air is soft and all outdoors beckons one to come out and revel. On such a day Billy, stirred to an indefinable elation because the world as he saw it then was altogether good, crooned his pet song while he waited at the porch with Flora's horse and his own. They were going to ride together because it was Sunday and because, if the weather held to its past and present mood of sweet serenity, he might feel impelled to start the wagons out before the week was done; so that this might be their last Sunday ride for n.o.body knew how long.

”Let's ride up the creek,” she suggested when she was in the saddle.

”We haven't been up that way this spring. There's a trail, isn't there?”

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