CHAPTER XIV.

A Winter at the Double-Crank.

There are times when, although the months as they pass seem full, nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the destiny of man.  After a year, those months of petty detail might be wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events—­and such a time was the winter that saw “Dill and Bill,” as one alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank.  The affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic running than had been employed under Brown’s ownership.  Dill settled more and more into the new life, so that he was so longer looked upon as a foreign element; he could discuss practical ranch business and be sure of his ground—­and it was then that Billy realized more fully how shrewd a brain lay behind those mild, melancholy blue eyes, and how much a part of the man was that integrity which could not stoop to small meanness or deceit.  It would have been satisfying merely to know that such a man lived, and if Billy had needed any one to point the way to square living he must certainly have been better for the companionship of Dill.

As to Miss Bridger, he stood upon much the same footing with her as he had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity which comes of daily association; to his secret discomfort she had fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy.  Though he liked the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental attitude which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him that.  Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the door of the living room and say:  “Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes for me—­that’s a good kid!”

Billy had no objections to drying the dishes; of a truth, although that had been a duty which he shirked systematically in line-camps until everything in the cabin was in that state which compels action, he would have been willing to stand beside Flora Bridger at the sink and wipe dishes (and watch her bare, white arms, with the dimply elbows) from dark until dawn.  What he did object to was the half-patronizing, wholly matter-of-fact tone of her, which seemed to preclude any possibility of sentiment so far as she was concerned.  She always looked at him so frankly, with never a tinge of red in her cheeks to betray that consciousness of sex which goes ever—­say what you like—­with the love of a man and a maid.

He did not want her to call him “Billy Boy” in just that tone; it made him feel small and ineffective and young—­he who was eight or nine years older than she!  It put him down, so that he could not bring himself to making actual love to her—­and once or twice when he had tried it, she took it as a great joke.

Still, it was good to have her there and to be friends.  The absence of the Pilgrim, who had gone East quite suddenly soon after the round-up was over, and the generosity of the other fellows, who saw quite plainly how it was—­with Billy, at least—­and forbore making any advances on their own account, made the winter pass easily and left Charming Billy in the spring not content, perhaps, but hopeful.