"Get that dawg outdoors, then," he panted, "or I"ll kill him sure."
The Pilgrim, for answer, struck a blow that staggered Billy, and tried to grab the gun. Billy, hooking a foot around a table-leg, threw it between them, swept the blood from his eyes and turned his gun once more on the dog that was watching treacherously for another chance.
"That"s the time I got him," he gritted through the smoke, holding the Pilgrim quiet before him with the gun. "But I"ve got a heap more respect for him than I have for you, yuh d.a.m.n", low-down brute. I"d ought to kill yuh like I would a coyote. Yuh throw your traps together and light out uh here, before I forget and shoot yuh up. There ain"t room in this camp for you and me no more."
The Pilgrim backed, eying Billy malevolently. "I never done nothing,"
he defended sullenly. "The boss"ll have something to say about this--and I"ll kill you first chance I get, for shooting my dog."
"It ain"t what yuh done, it"s what yuh woulda done if you"d had the chance," answered Billy, for the first time finding words for what was surging bitterly in the heart of him. "And I"m willing to take a whirl with yuh any old time; any dawg that"ll lick the boots of a man like you had ought to be shot for not having more sense. I ain"t saying anything about him biting me--which I"d kill him for, anyhow. Now, git! I want my breakfast, and I can"t eat with any relish whilst you"re spoiling the air in here for me."
At heart the Pilgrim was a coward as well as a beast, and he packed his few belongings hurriedly and started for the door.
"Come back here, and drag your dawg outside," commanded Billy, and the Pilgrim obeyed.
"You"ll hear about this later on," he snarled. "The boss won"t stand for anything like this. I never done a thing, and I"m going to tell him so."
"Aw, go on and tell him, yuh--!" snapped Billy. "Only yuh don"t want to get absent-minded enough to come back--not whilst I"m here; things unpleasant might happen." He stood in the doorway and watched while the Pilgrim saddled his horse and rode away. When not even the pluckety-pluck of his horse"s feet came back to offend the ears of him, Charming Billy put away his gun and went in and hoisted the overturned table upon its legs again. A coa.r.s.e, earthenware plate, which the Pilgrim had used for his breakfast, lay unbroken at the feet of him. Billy picked it up, went to the door and cast it violently forth, watching with grim satisfaction the pieces when they scattered over the frozen ground. "No white man"ll ever have to eat after _him_," he muttered. To ease his outraged feelings still farther, he picked up the Pilgrim"s knife and fork, and sent them after the plate--and knives and forks were not numerous in that particular camp, either. After that he felt better and picked up the coffee-pot, lighted a fire and cooked himself some breakfast, which he ate hungrily, his wrath cooling a bit with the cheer of warm food and strong coffee.
The routine work of the line-camp was performed in a hurried, perfunctory manner that day. Charming Billy, riding the high-lines to make sure the cattle had not drifted where they should not, was vaguely ill at ease. He told himself it was the want of a smoke that made him uncomfortable, and he planned a hurried trip to Hardup, if the weather held good for another day, when he would lay in a supply of tobacco and papers that would last till roundup. This running out every two or three weeks, and living in h.e.l.l till you got more, was plumb wearisome and unnecessary.
On the way back, his trail crossed that of a breed wolfer on his way into the Bad Lands. Billy immediately asked for tobacco, and the breed somewhat reluctantly opened his pack and exchanged two small sacks for a two-bit piece. Billy, rolling a cigarette with eager fingers, felt for the moment a deep satisfaction with life. He even felt some compunction about killing the Pilgrim"s dog, when he pa.s.sed the body stiffening on the snow. "Poor devil! Yuh hadn"t ought to expect much from a dawg--and he was a heap more white-acting than what his owner was," was his tribute to the dead.
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, h.e.l.l!" 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 acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 unb.u.t.toned his fur coat before the heat of the stove.
"Well, maybe he did," he a.s.sented 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--"
"_d.a.m.n_ 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 d.a.m.n 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 carca.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l. 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 my 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--"