The Long Shadow Part 4

"It's kinda got to be part uh the scenery to josh a pilgrim," Billy took the trouble to explain. "We don't mean any harm. I reckon you'll get along all right, once yuh get wised up."

"Do you expect to be in town for any length of time?" Mr. Dill's voice was wistful, as well as his eyes. "Somehow, you don't seem to adopt that semi-hostile att.i.tude, and I--I'm very glad for the opportunity of knowing you."

Charming Billy made a rapid mental calculation of his present financial resources and of past experience in the rate of depletion.

"Well. I may last a week or so, and I might pull out to-morrow," he decided candidly. "It all depends on the kinda luck I have."

Mr. Dill looked at him inquiringly, but he made no remark that would betray curiosity. "I have rented a room in a little house in the quietest part of town. The hotel isn't very clean and there is too much noise and drinking going on at night. I couldn't sleep there.

I should be glad to have you share my room with me while you stay in town, if you will. It is clean and quiet."

Charming Billy turned his head and looked at him queerly; at his sloping shoulders, melancholy face and round, wistful eyes, and finally at the awkward, hunched-up knees of him. Billy did not mind night noises and drinking--to be truthful, they were two of the allurements which had brought him townward--and whether a room were clean or not troubled him little; he would not see much of it. His usual procedure while in town would, he suspected, seem very loose to Alexander P. Dill. It consisted chiefly of spending the nights where the noise clamored loudest and of sleeping during the day--sometimes--where was the most convenient spot to lay the length of him. He smiled whimsically at the contrast between them and their habits of living.

"Much obliged," he said. "I expect to be some busy, but maybe I'll drop in and bed down with yuh; once I hit town, it's hard to tell what I may do."

"I hope you'll feel perfectly free to come at any time and make yourself at home," Mr. Dill urged lonesomely.

"Sure. There's the old burg--I do plumb enjoy seeing the sun making gold on a lot uh town windows, like that over there. It sure looks good, when you've been living by your high lonesome and not seeing any window s.h.i.+ne but your own little six-by-eight. Huh?"

"I--I must admit I like better to see the sunset turn my own windows to gold," observed Mr. Dill softly. "I haven't any, now; I sold the old farm when mother died. I was born and raised there. The woods pasture was west of the house, and every evening when I drove up the cows, and the sun was setting, the kitchen windows--"

Alexander P. Dill stopped very abruptly, and Billy, stealing a glance at his face, turned his own quickly away and gazed studiously at a bald hilltop off to the left. 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. "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. And you,"

he turned, elaborately cheerful, to Mr. Dill, "you are my guest."

"Thank you," smiled Mr. Dill, recovering himself and never guessing how strange was the last sentence to the lips of Charming Billy Boyle.

"I shall be very glad to be the guest of somebody--once more."

"Yuh poor old devil, yuh sure drifted a long ways off your home range," mused Billy. Out loud he only emphasized the arrangement with:

"Sure thing!"

CHAPTER VI.

"_That's My Dill Pickle!_"

Charming Billy Boyle was, to put it mildly, enjoying his enforced vacation very much. To tell the plain truth and tell it without the polish of fiction, he was hilariously moistened as to his gullet and he was not thinking of quitting yet; he had only just begun.

He was sitting on an end of the bar in the Hardtip Saloon, his hat as far back on his head as it could possibly be pushed with any hope of its staying there at all. He had a gla.s.s in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and he was raking his rowels rhythmically up and down the erstwhile varnished bar in buzzing accompaniment, the while he chanted with much enthusiasm:

"How old is she, Billy boy, Billy boy?

How old is she, charming Billy?

Twice six, twice seven, Forty-nine and eleven--"

The bartender, wiping the bar after an unsteady sheepherder, was careful to leave a generous margin around the person of Charming Billy who was at that moment a.s.serting with much emphasis:

"She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."

"Twice-six's-twelve, 'n' twice-seven's-four-r-teen, 'n' twelve 'n'

fourteen's--er--twelve--'n'--fourteen--" The unsteady sheepherder was laboring earnestly with the problem. "She ain't no spring chicken, she ain't!" He laughed tipsily, and winked up at the singer, but Billy was not observing him and his mathematical struggles. He refreshed himself from the gla.s.s, leaving the contents perceptibly lower--it was a large, thick gla.s.s with a handle, and it had flecks of foam down the inside--took a pull at the cigarette and inquired plaintively:

"Can she brew, can she bake, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Can she brew, can she bake, charming Billy?"

Another long pull at the cigarette, and then the triumphant declaration:

"She can brew n' she can bake, She can sew n' she can make-- She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."

"She ain't s' young!" bawled the sheepherder, who was taking it all very seriously. "Say them numbers over again, onc't. Twelve-'n'-fourteen--"

"Aw, go off and lay down!" advised Charming Billy, in a tone of deep disgust. He was about to pursue still farther his inquiry into the housewifely qualifications of the mysterious "young thing," and he hated interruptions.

"Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy?"

The door opened timidly and closed again, but he did not see who entered. He was not looking; he was holding the empty, foam-flecked gla.s.s behind him imperatively, and he was watching over his shoulder to see that the bartender did not skimp the filling and make it two-thirds foam. The bartender was punctiliously lavish, so that a crest of foam threatened to deluge the hand of Charming Billy and quite occupied him for the moment. When he squared himself again and buzzed his spurs against the bar, his mind was wholly given to the proper execution of the musical gem.

"She can make a punkin pie, Quick's a cat can wink her eye--"

Something was going on, over in the dimly lighted corner near the door. Half a dozen men had grouped themselves there with their backs to Billy and they were talking and laughing; but the speech of them was an unintelligible clamor and their laughter a commingling roar.

Billy gravely inspected his cigarette, which had gone cold, set down the gla.s.s and sought diligently for a match.

"Aw, come on an' have one on me!" bawled a voice peremptorily. "Yuh can't raise no wild cattle around _this_ joint, lessen yuh wet up good with whisky. Why, a feller as long as you be needs a good jolt for every foot of yuh--and that's about fifteen when you're lengthened out good. Come on--don't be a d.a.m.n' chubber! Yuh got to sample m'

hospitality. Hey, Tom! set out about a quart uh your _mildest_ for Daffy-down-Dilly. He's dry, clean down to his hand-made socks."

Charming Billy, having found a match, held it unlighted in his fingers and watched the commotion from his perch on the bar. In the very midst of the clamor towered the melancholy Alexander P. Dill, and he was endeavoring to explain, in his quiet, grammatical fas.h.i.+on. A lull that must have been an accident carried the words clearly across to Charming Billy.

"Thank you, gentlemen. I really don't care for anything in the way of refreshment. I merely came in to find a friend who has promised to spend the night with me. It is getting along toward bedtime. Have your fun, gentlemen, if you must--but I am really too tired to join you."

"Make 'im dance!" yelled the sheepherder, giving over the attempt to find the sum of twelve and fourteen. "By gosh, yuh made _me_ dance when I struck town. Make 'im dance!"

"You go off and lay down!" commanded Billy again, and to emphasize his words leaned and emptied the contents of his gla.s.s neatly inside the collar of the sheepherder. "Cool down, yuh Ba-ba-black-sheep!"

The herder forgot everything after that--everything but the desire to tear limb from limb one Charming Billy Boyle, who sat and raked his spurs up and down the marred front of the bar and grinned maliciously down at him. "Go-awn off, before I take yuh all to pieces," he urged wearily, already regretting the unjustifiable waste of good beer.

"Quit your buzzing; I wanta listen over there."

"Come on 'n' have a drink!" vociferated the hospitable one. "Yuh got to be sociable, or yuh can't stop in _this_ man's town." So insistent was he that he laid violent hold of Mr. Dill and tried to pull him bodily to the bar.

"Gentlemen, this pa.s.ses a joke!" protested Mr. Dill, looking around him in his blankly melancholy way. "I do not drink liquor. I must insist upon your stopping this horseplay immediately!"

"Oh, it ain't no _play_," a.s.serted the insistent one darkly. "I mean it, by thunder."

It was at this point that Charming Billy decided to have a word.

"Here, break away, there!" he yelled, pus.h.i.+ng the belligerent sheepherder to one side. "Hands off that long person! That there's _my_ dill pickle!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HANDS OFF THAT LONG PERSON! THAT THERE'S _MY_ DILL PICKLE."]