Mr. Dill warmed pitifully to the friendliness.  “I was told that Mr. Murton wanted to sell his far——­ ranch and cattle, and I was going to see him about it.  I would like to buy a place outright, you see, with the cattle all branded, and—­everything.”

Billy suddenly felt the instinct of the champion.  “Well, somebody lied to yuh a lot, then,” he replied warmly.  “Don’t yuh never go near old Murton.  In the first place, he ain’t a cowman—­he’s a sheepman, on a small scale so far as sheep go but on a sure-enough big scale when yuh count his feelin’s.  He runs about twelve hundred woollies, and is about as unpolite a cuss as I ever met up with.  He’d uh roasted yuh brown just for saying cattle at him—­and if yuh let out inadvertant that yuh took him for a cowman, the chances is he’d a took a shot at yuh.  If yuh ask me, you was playin’ big luck when yuh went and lost the trail.”

“I can’t see what would be their object in misinforming me on the subject,” Mr. Dill complained.  “You don’t suppose that they had any grudge against Mr. Murton, do you?”

Charming Billy eyed him aslant and was merciful.  “I can’t say, not knowing who they was that told yuh,” he answered.  “They’re liable to have a grudge agin’ him, though; just about everybody has, that ever bumped into him.”

It would appear that Mr. Dill needed time to think this over, for he said nothing more for a long while.  Charming Billy half turned once or twice to importune his pack-pony in language humorously querulous, but beyond that he kept silence, wondering what freakish impulse drove Alexander P. Dill to Montana “to raise wild cattle for the Eastern markets.”  The very simplicity of his purpose and the unsophistication of his outlook were irresistible and came near weaning Charming Billy from considering his own personal grievances.

For a grievance it was to be turned adrift from the Double-Crank—­he, who had come to look upon the outfit almost with proprietorship; who for years had said “my outfit” when speaking of it; who had set the searing iron upon sucking calves and had watched them grow to yearlings, then to sleek four-year-olds; who had at last helped prod them up the chutes into the cars at shipping time and had seen them take the long trail to Chicago—­the trail from which, for them, there was no return; who had thrown his rope on kicking, striking “bronks”; had worked, with the sweat streaming like tears down his cheeks, to “gentle” them; had, with much patience, taught them the feel of saddle and cinch and had ridden them with much stress until they accepted his mastery and became the dependable, wise old “cow-horses” of the range; who had followed, spring, summer and fall, the wide wandering of the Double-Crank wagons, asking nothing better, secure in the knowledge that he, Charming Billy Boyle, was conceded to be one of the Double-Crank’s “top-hands.”  It was bitter to be turned adrift—­and for such a cause!  Because