So it was with a light heart that he swung down from the train at Tower, after his homing flight, and saw Dill, conspicuous as a flagstaff, waiting for him on the platform, his face puckered into a smile of welcome and his bony fingers extended ready to grip painfully the hand of Charming Billy.

“I’m very glad to see you back, William,” he greeted earnestly.  “I hope you are well, and that you met with no misfortune while you were away.  I have been very anxious for your return, as I need your advice upon a matter which seems to me of prime importance.  I did not wish to make any decisive move until I had consulted with you, and time is pressing.  Did you—­er—­buy as many cattle as you expected to get?” It seemed to Billy that there was an anxious note in his voice.  “Your letters were too few and too brief to keep me perfectly informed of your movements.”

“Why, everything was lovely at my end uh the trail, Dilly—­only I fell down on them four thousand two-year-olds.  Parts uh the country was quarantined for scab, and I went way around them places.  And I was too late to see the cattlemen in a bunch when they was at the Association—­only you ain’t likely to savvy that part uh the business—­and had to chase ’em all over the country.  Uh course it was my luck to have ’em stick their prices up on the end of a pole, where I didn’t feel like climbing after ’em.  So I only contracted for a couple uh thousand to be laid down in Billings somewhere between the first and the tenth of June, at twenty-one dollars a head.  It was the best I could do this year—­but next winter I can go down earlier, before the other buyers beat me to it, and do a lot better.  Don’t yuh worry, Dilly; it ain’t serious.”

On the contrary, Dill looked relieved, and Billy could not help noticing it.  His own face clouded a little.  Perhaps Dill had lost his money, or the bulk of it, and they couldn’t do all the things they had meant to do, after all; how else, thought Billy uneasily, could he look like that over what should ordinarily be something of a disappointment?  He remembered that Dill, after the workings of the cattle business from the very beginning had been painstakingly explained to him just before Billy started south, had been anxious to get at least four thousand head of young stock on the range that spring.  Something must have gone wrong.  Maybe a bank had gone busted or something like that.  Billy stole a glance up at the other, shambling silently along beside him, and decided that something had certainly happened—­and on the heels of that he remembered oddly that he had felt almost exactly like this when Miss Bridger had asked him to show her where was the coffee, and there wasn’t any coffee.  There was the same heavy feeling in his chest, and the same—­

“I wrote you a letter three or four days ago—­on the third, to be exact,” Dill was saying.  “I don’t suppose it reached you, however.  I was going to have you meet me in Hardup; but then your telegram was forwarded to me there and I came on here at once.  I only arrived this morning.  I think that after we have something to eat we would better start out immediately, unless you have other plans.  I drove over in a rig, and as the horses have rested several hours and are none the worse for the drive, I think we can easily make the return trip this afternoon.”