The Long Shadow | Page 9

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 coarse, 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 hell 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 passed 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, hell!" 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 accumulation 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."
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