Chapter 1 - Page 2

Billy sighed again, threaded a needle with coarse, black thread and attacked petulantly a long rent in his coat. "Darn this bushwhacking all over God's earth after a horse a man can't stay with, nor even hold by the bridle reins," he complained dispiritedly. "I could uh cleaned the blamed shack up so it would look like folks was living here--and I woulda, if I didn't have to set all day and toggle up the places in my clothes"--Billy muttered incoherently over a knot in his thread. "I've been plumb puzzled, all winter, to know whether it's man or cattle I'm supposed to chappyrone. If it's man, this coat has sure got the marks uh the trade, all right." He drew the needle spitefully through the cloth.

The wind gathered breath and swooped down upon the cabin so that Billy felt the jar of it. "I don't see what's got the matter of the weather," he grumbled. "Yuh just get a chinook that starts water running down the coulées, and then the wind switches and she freezes up solid--and that means tailing-up poor cows and calves by the dozen--and for your side-partner yuh get dealt out to yuh a pilgrim that don't know nothing and can't ride a wagon seat, hardly, and that's bound to keep a dawg! And the Old Man stands for that kind uh thing and has forbid accidents happening to it--oh, hell!"

This last was inspired by a wriggling movement under the bunk. A black dog, of the apologetic drooping sort that always has its tail sagging and matted with burrs, crawled out and sidled past Billy with a deprecating wag or two when he caught his unfriendly glance, and shambled over to the door that he might sniff suspiciously the cold air coming in through the crack beneath.

Billy eyed him malevolently. "A dog in a line-camp is a plumb disgrace! I don't see why the Old Man stands for it--or the Pilgrim, either; it's a toss-up which is the worst. Yuh smell him coming, do yuh?" he snarled. "It's about time he was coming--me here eating dried apricots and tapioca steady diet (nobody but a pilgrim would fetch tapioca into a line-camp, and if he does it again you'll sure be missing the only friend yuh got) and him gone four days when he'd oughta been back the second. Get out and welcome him, darn yuh!" He gathered the coat under one arm that he might open the door, and hurried the dog outside with a threatening boot toe. The wind whipped his brown cheeks so that he closed the door hastily and retired to the cheerless shelter of the cabin.

"Another blizzard coming, if I know the signs. And if the Pilgrim don't show up to-night with the grub and tobacco--But I reckon the dawg smelt him coming, all right." He fingered uncertainly a very flabby tobacco sack, grew suddenly reckless and made himself an exceedingly thin cigarette with the remaining crumbs of tobacco and what little he could glean from the pockets of the coat he was mending. Surely, the