“That’s the time I got him,” he gritted through the smoke, holding the Pilgrim quiet before him with the gun.  “But I’ve got a heap more respect for him than I have for you, yuh damn’, low-down brute.  I’d ought to kill yuh like I would a coyote.  Yuh throw your traps together and light out uh here, before I forget and shoot yuh up.  There ain’t room in this camp for you and me no more.”

The Pilgrim backed, eying Billy malevolently.  “I never done nothing,” he defended sullenly.  “The boss’ll have something to say about this—­and I’ll 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.