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"If you are not feeling quite yourself, William, perhaps we would do better to postpone our conversation until morning," Dill was saying while he rocked awkwardly, his hands folded loosely together, his elbows on the rocker arms and his round, melancholy eyes regarding Billy solemnly. "I wanted to ask how you came out with the Double-Crank." "Go ahead; I'm all right," said Billy.
For Billy Boyle, knowing well his range-lore, could see nothing before the Double-Crank but black failure. "It begins to look, Dilly," he began, "as though I've stuck yuh on this game. Yuh staked the wrong player; yuh should uh backed the man that stacked the deck on me. There's hell to pay on the range, Dilly. Last winter sure put a crimp in the range-stuff that's what I come to tell yuh.
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.
Why was it that, just when it had seemed to him that his dream was miraculously come true; when he found himself complete master of the Double-Crank where for years he had been merely one of the men; when the One Girl was also settled indefinitely in the household he called his home; when he knew she liked him, and had faith to believe he could win her to something better than friendship all these good things should be enmeshed in a tangle of untoward circumstances?
The Shadow Falls Lightly. Over the green uplands, into the coulées and the brushy creek-bottoms swept the sun-browned riders of the Double-Crank; jangling and rattling over untrailed prairie sod, the bed and mess wagons followed after with hasty camping at the places Billy appointed for brief sleeping and briefer eating, a hastier repacking and then the hurry over the prairies to the next stop.
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. A Winter at the Double-Crank. There are times when, although the months as they pass seem full, nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the destiny of man.
He wished vaguely that the wanderings of Dill would bring them back to the Double-Crank country, instead of leading them always farther afield. He did not, however, admit openly to himself that he wanted to see Miss Bridger again; yet he did permit himself to wonder if she ever played coon-can with any one else, or if she had already forgotten the game.
Also, he rode reluctantly to the Double-Crank ranch, wondering, as he had often done in the past few weeks, what would become of Flora and Mama Joy. So far as he knew, they had not heard a word as to whether Bridger was alive or dead, and if they had friends or family to whom they might turn, he had never heard either mention them.
As mile after mile of smiling grass-land was covered by the sweep of the Double-Crank circles, the disaster pressed more painfully upon him. When the wagons had left the range the fall before, Billy had estimated roughly that eight or nine thousand head of Double-Crank stock wandered at will in the open. But with the gathering and the calf-branding he knew that the number had shrunk woefully.
"The blamed chump what did he go and pull out for?" he asked himself fretfully. Then aloud: "I'm going to have a heart-to-heart talk with the cook at the hotel, and if he don't give us a real old round-up beefsteak, flopped over on the bare stovelids, there'll be things happen I'd hate to name over. He can sure do the business, all right; he used to cook for the Double-Crank.
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