It is a fact that when he rode away just after sunrise next morning (he would have given much if duty and his pride had permitted him to linger a while) no one could have accused him of being in any degree a comfortable young man.  For his last sight of Miss Bridger had been the flutter of her when she disappeared through the stable door.

CHAPTER XIII.

Billy Meets the Pilgrim.

The weeks that followed did not pass as quickly as before for Billy Boyle, nor did raking the range with his riders bring quite as keen a satisfaction with life.  Always, when he rode apart in the soft haze and watched the sky-line shimmer and dance toward him and then retreat like a teasing maid, his thoughts wandered from the range and the cattle and the men who rode at his bidding and rested with one slim young woman who puzzled and tantalized him and caused him more mental discomfort than he had ever known in his life before that night when she entered so unexpectedly the line-camp and his life.  He scarcely knew just how he did feel toward her; sometimes he hungered for her with every physical and mental fibre and was tempted to leave everything and go to her.  Times there were when he resented deeply her treatment of him and repeated to himself the resolution not to lie down and let her walk all over him just because he liked her.

When the round-up was over and the last of the beef on the way to Chicago, and the fat Irish cook gathered up the reins of his four-horse team, mounted with a grunt to the high seat of the mess wagon and pointed his leaders thankfully into the trail which led to the Double-Crank, though the sky was a hard gray and the wind blew chill with the bite of winter and though tiny snowflakes drifted aimlessly to earth with a quite deceitful innocence, as if they knew nothing of more to come and were only idling through the air, the blood of Charming Billy rioted warmly through his veins and his voice had a lilt which it had long lacked and he sang again the pitifully foolish thing with which he was wont to voice his joy in living.

     “I have been to see my wife,
     She’s the joy of my life,
     She’s a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!”

“Thought Bill had got too proud t’ sing that song uh hisn,” the cook yelled facetiously to the riders who were nearest.  “I was lookin’ for him to bust out in grand-opry, or something else that’s a heap more stylish than his old come-all-ye.”

Charming Billy turned and rested a hand briefly upon the cantle while he told the cook laughingly to go to the hot place, and then settled himself to the pace that matched the leaping blood of him.  That pace soon discouraged the others and left them jogging leisurely a mile or two in the rear, and it also brought him the sooner to his destination.

“Wonder if she’s mad yet,” he asked himself, when he dismounted.  No one seemed to be about, but he reflected that it was just about noon and they would probably be at dinner—­and, besides, the weather was not the sort to invite one outdoors unless driven by necessity.