B. M. Bower

“ If you have ever read history, William, you must know—even if you have not read history you should know from observation—how irresistible is the march of progress; how utterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I should have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the West—the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy who tends them. ”

“ 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. Here, a wide coulée lay yawning languorously in the sunshine with a gossipy trout stream for company; with meadowlarks rippling melodiously from bush and weed or hunting worms and bugs for their nestful of gaping mouths ”

“ A dented lard-pail without a handle did meagre duty as a teakettle, and balanced upon a corner of the stove was a dirty frying pan. The fire had gone dead and the room was chill with the rising of the wind. The table was filled with empty cans and tin plates and cracked, oven-stained bowls and iron-handled knives and forks, and the bunk in the corner was a tumble of gray blankets and unpleasant, red-flowered comforts—corner-wads, Charming Billy was used to calling them—and for pillows there were two square, calico-covered cushions, depressingly ugly in pattern and not over-clean. ”

“ He was range-bred—as purely Western as were the cattle he tended—but he was not altogether ignorant of the ways of the world, past or present. He had that smattering of education which country schools and those of "the county seat" may give a boy who loves a horse better than books, and who, sitting hunched behind his geography, dreams of riding afar, of shooting wild things and of sleeping under the stars.
From the time he was sixteen he had lived chiefly in tents and line-camp cabins, his world the land of far horizons, of big sins, and virtues bigger. ”

“ But with all the perplexities born of his changed condition and the responsibility it brought him, Billy rejoiced in the work and airily planned the years to come—years in which he would lead Alexander P. Dill straight into the ranks of the Western millionaires; years when the sun of prosperity would stand always straight overhead, himself a Joshua who would, by his uplifted hands, keep it there with never a cloud to dim the glory of its light. ”

“ Horses grew lean and ill-fitting saddles worked their wicked will upon backs that shrank to their touch of a morning. Wild range cattle were herded, a scared bunch of restlessness, during long, hot forenoons, or longer, hotter afternoons, while calves that had known no misfortune beyond a wet back or a searching wind learned, panic-stricken, the agony of capture and rough handling and tight-drawn ropes and, last and worst, the terrible, searing iron. ”

“ Charming Billy, sitting his horse and keeping tally of the victims in his shabby little book, began to know the sinking of spirit that comes to a man when he finds that things have, after all, gone less smoothly than he had imagined. There were withered carcasses scattered through the coulée bottoms and upon side hills that had some time made slippery climbing for a poor, weak cow. ”

“ Sympathy is good, but it has a disagreeable way of bringing all one's troubles to the front rather overwhelmingly. Flora suddenly dropped a plate back into the pan, leaned her face against the wall by the sink and began to cry in a tempestuous manner rather frightened Charming Billy Boyle, who had never before seen a grown woman cry real tears and sob like that. ”

“ He picked up his hat from the floor, slapped it twice against his leg to remove the dust, pinched the crown into four dents, set it upon his head at a jaunty angle and went out, singing softly:
"She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."
Dill, looking after him, puckered his face into what passed with him for a smile. "I wonder now," he meditated aloud, "if William is not thinking of some particular young lady who—er—who 'cannot leave her mother'." If he had only known it, William was; he was also wondering whether she would be at the picnic. ”

“ Charming Billy brought himself rigidly to consider the duties of a host; swept his arm across a bench to clear it of sundry man garments, and asked her again to sit down. When she did so, he saw that her fingers were clasped tightly to hold her from shivering, and he raved inwardly at his shiftlessness the while he hurried to light a fire in the stove.
"Too bad your horse fell," he remarked stupidly, gathering up the handful of shavings he had whittled from a piece of pine board. "I always hate to see a horse get hurt." ”

“ It was such a storm as brings an aftermath of sheepherders reported missing with their bands scattered and wandering aimlessly or else frozen, a huddled mass, in some washout; such a storm as sends the range cattle drifting, heads down and bodies hunched together, neither knowing nor caring where their trail may end, so they need not face that bitter drive of wind and snow. ”

“ For the first time in years the Fourth of July saw Billy in camp and in his old clothes. He had not hurried the round-up—on the contrary he had been guilty of dragging it out unnecessarily by all sorts of delays and leisurely methods—simply because he hated to return to the ranch and be near Flora. The Pilgrim he meant to settle with, but he felt that he could wait; he hadn't much enthusiasm even for a fight, these days.
But, after all, he could not consistently keep the wagons forever on the range, so he camped them just outside the pasture fence ”

“ It is hard—no doubt it is extremely hard, but it is as irresistible as—as death itself. Civilization is compelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize the soil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in the life of humans, also.
"I am explaining at length, William, so that you will quite understand why I do not think it wise to follow your suggestion. As I say, it is not Brown, or the fences, or anything of that sort—taken in a large sense—which is forcing us to the wall. It is the press of natural progress, the pushing farther and farther of civilization. ”

“ Billy saw the dawn come, and rose in the perfect silence he had learned from years of sleeping in a tent with tired men, and of having to get up at all hours and take his turn at night-guarding; for tired, sleeping cowboys do not like to be disturbed unnecessarily, and so they one and all learn speedily the Golden Rule and how to apply it. That is why Dill, always a light sleeper, did not hear Billy go out. ”

“ The miles between ranches are too long and too cold and uncertain, so that nothing less alluring than a dance may draw them from home. Billy thought it a shame, and that Flora must be terribly lonesome.
It was a long time before he had more than five minutes at a stretch in which to talk privately with her. Then one morning he came in to breakfast and saw that the chair of Mama Joy was empty; and Flora, when he went into the kitchen afterward, told him with almost a relish in her tone that Mrs. Bridger—she called her that, also with a relish—was in bed with toothache. ”

“ I was culpably careless.
"Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to me. He saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowed with the open range he very wisely changed his business; he became allied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we are being 'broken' on the wheel of evolutionary change, he will make his millions—"
"Damn him!" gritted Billy savagely, under his breath.
"He is to be admired, William. Such a man is bound in the very nature of things to succeed. It is the range and—and you, William, and those like you, that must go. ”

“ It was when the round-up was on its way in that Billy, stopping for an hour in Hardup, met Dill in the post office.
"Why, hello, Dilly!" he cried, really glad to see the tall, lank form come shambling in at the door. "I didn't expect to see yuh off your own ranch. Anybody dead?" It struck him that Dill looked a shade more melancholy than was usual, even for him.
"Why, no, William. Every one is well—very well indeed. I only rode in after the mail and a few other things. I'm always anxious for my papers and magazines, you know. ”

“ Dill was on the floor with Mama Joy, and at a glance he saw how it was; the Pilgrim had "butted in" and come along with them. He supposed Flora really could not help it, but it was pretty hard lines, all the same. For even in the range-land are certain rules of etiquette which must be observed when men and women foregather in the pursuit of pleasure. Billy remembered ruefully how a girl must dance first, last, and oftenest with her partner of the evening, and must eat supper with him besides, whether she likes or not; to tweak this rule means to insult the man beyond forgiveness. ”

“ It was Barney he rode, and Barney could be trusted to pace along decorously with the reins twisted twice around the saddle-horn, so Billy gave no thought to his horse but put his whole mind on the figures. He was not much used to these things; beyond keeping tally of the stock at branding and shipping time and putting down what details of his business he dared not trust to memory, a pencil was strange to his fingers. ”

“ So finely tuned was his sympathy that for one fleeting moment he saw a homely, hilly farm in Michigan, with rail fences and a squat old house with wide porch and hard-beaten path from the kitchen door to the well and on to the stables; and down a long slope that was topped with great old trees, Alexander P. Dill shambling contentedly, driving with a crooked stick three mild-mannered old cows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rider, Billy decided after one sharp glance, he had never seen before in his life—and nothing lost by it, either, he finished mentally when he came closer.
If the riders had not willed it so the horses would mutually have agreed to stop when they met; that being the way of range horses after carrying speech-hungry men for a season or two. If men meet out there in the land of far horizons and do not stop for a word or two, it is generally because there is bad feeling between them; and horses learn quickly the ways of their masters. ”

“ Uh course, I might day-dream about the way I'd start into the cow-business if I was a millionaire—"
"I'm not a millionaire," Mr. Dill hastened to correct. "A couple of hundred thousand or so, is about all—"
"Well, a fellow don't have to pin himself down to just so many dollars and cents—not when he's building himself a pet dream. And if a fellow dreams about starting up an outfit of his own, it don't prove he'd make it stick in reality." The tone of Billy, however, did not express any doubt. ”

“ There was much talk among the men, and several told how they had heard the Swede "cussing" Walland in the saloon that evening. Some remembered threats—the threats which a man will foolishly make when he is pouring whisky down his throat by the glassful. No one seemed to blame Walland in the least, and Billy felt that the Pilgrim was in a fair way to become something of a hero. It is not every man who has the nerve to grab a gun with which he is threatened. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 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 ownership. ”

“ There was no reason why he should feel anything more than a passing amusement at this wandering length of humanity, but Billy felt an unaccountable stirring of pity and a feeling of indulgent responsibility for the man. ”

“ When Dill flopped a six-inch trout against his ear, so steeped was he in bitterness that he merely said, "Aw, hell!" wearily and hunched farther along on the hummock.
"I really beg your pardon, William. From the vicious strike he made, I was convinced that he weighed at least half a pound, and exerted more muscular force than was quite necessary. When one hasn't a reel it is impossible to play them properly, and it is the first quick pull that one must depend upon. ”

“ May I rummage?"
"Sure," assented Billy, dazedly moving aside so that she might reach the corner where three boxes were nailed by their bottoms to the wall, curtained with gayly flowered calico and used for a cupboard. "The Pilgrim," he began for the third time to explain, "went after grub and is taking his time about getting back. He'd oughta been here day before yesterday. We might eat his dawg," he suggested, gathering spirit now that her back was toward him.
Her face appeared at one side of the calico curtain. "I know something better than eating the dog," she announced triumphantly. ”