“Grateful!” snorted Billy, spilling tobacco on the strip of faded ingrain carpet before the bed.  “Grateful—­hell!”

Mr. Dill looked at him a moment and there was a certain keen man-measuring behind the wistfulness.  But he said no more about the friendship of Charming Billy Boyle, which was as well.

That is why the two of them later sat apart on the sunny side of the hotel “office”—­which was also a saloon—­and talked of many things, but chiefly of the cattle industry as Montana knows it and of the hopes and the aims of Alexander P. Dill.  Perhaps, also, that is why Billy breathed clean of whisky and had the bulk of his winter wages still unspent in his pocket.

“Looks to me,” he was saying between puffs, “like you’d uh stayed back where yuh knew the lay uh the land, instead uh drifting out here where it’s all plumb strange to yuh.”

“Well, several incidents influenced my actions,” Mr. Dill explained quietly.  “I had always lived within twenty miles of my birthplace.  I owned a general store in a little place near the old farm, and did well.  The farm paid well, also.  Then mother died and the place did not seem quite the same.  A railroad was built through the town and the land I owned there rose enormously in value.  I had a splendid location for a modern store but I could not seem to make up my mind to change.  So I sold out everything—­store, land, the home farm and all, and received a good figure—­a very good figure.  I was very fortunate in owning practically the whole townsite—­the new townsite, that is.  I do not like these so-called booms, however, and so I left to begin somewhere else.  I did not care to enter the mercantile business again, and our doctor advised me to live as much as possible in the open air.  Mother died of consumption.  So I decided to come West and buy a cattle ranch.  I believed I should like it.  I always liked animals.”

“Uh-huh—­so do I.”  It was not just what Charming Billy most wanted to say, but that much was perfectly safe, and noncommittal to say.

Mr. Dill was silent a minute, looking speculatively across to the Hardup Saloon which was practically empty and therefore quite peaceful.  Billy, because long living on the range made silence easy, smoked and said nothing.

“Mr. Boyle,” began Dill at last, in the hesitating way that he had used when Billy first met him, “you say you know this country, and have worked at cattle-raising for a good many years—­”

“Twelve,” supplemented Charming Billy.  “Turned my first cow when I was sixteen.”

“So you must be perfectly familiar with the business.  I frankly admit that I am not familiar with it.  You say you are at present out of employment and so I am thinking seriously of offering you a position myself, as confidential adviser if you like.  I really need some one who can accompany me about the country and keep me from such deplorable blunders as was yesterday’s experience.  After I have bought a place, I shall need some one who is familiar with the business and will honestly work for my interests and assist me in the details until I have myself gained a practical working-knowledge of it.  I think I can make such an arrangement to your advantage as well as my own.  From the start the salary would be what is usually paid to a foreman.  What do you say?”