The Long Shadow | Page 9

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 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