Several men left their places and rushed over to them.  Because Flora was there and likely to be involved, Billy reached them first.

“This was my dance!” the fellow was expostulating.  “She promised it to me.”

“Aw, he’s drunk,” repeated the Pilgrim, turning to Billy.  “It’s Gus Svenstrom.  He’s got it in for me because I fired him last week.  Throw him out!  Miss Bridger isn’t going to dance with a drunken stiff like him.”

“Oh, I’ll go—­I ain’t so drunk I’ve got to be carried!” retorted the other, and pushed his way angrily through the crowd.

Flora had kept her place.  Though the color had gone from her cheeks, she seemed to have no intention of quitting the quadrille, so there was nothing for Billy to do but get off the floor and leave her to her partner.  He went out after the Swede, and, seeing him headed for the saloon across from the hotel, followed aimlessly.  He was not quite comfortable in the hall, anyway, for he had caught Mama Joy eying him strangely, and he thought she was wondering why he had not asked her to dance.

Charming Billy was not by nature a diplomat; it never once occurred to him that he would better treat Mama Joy as if that half minute in the kitchen had never been.  He had said good evening to her when he first met her that evening, and he considered his duty done.  He did not want to dance with her, and that was, in his opinion, an excellent reason for not doing so.  He did not like to have her watching him with those big, round, blue eyes of hers, so he stayed in the saloon for a while and only left it to go to supper when some one said that the dance crowd was over there.  There might be some chance that would permit him to eat with Flora.

There are moments in a town when, even with many people coming and going, one may look and see none.  When Billy closed the door of the saloon behind him and started across to the hotel, not a man did he see, though there was sound in plenty from the saloons and the hotel and the hall.  He was nearly half across the street when two men came into sight and met suddenly just outside a window of the hotel.  Billy, in the gloom of starlight and no moon, could not tell who they were; he heard a sharp sentence or two, saw them close together, heard a blow.  Then they broke apart and there was the flash of a shot.  One man fell and the other whirled about as if he would run, but Billy was then almost upon them and the man turned back and stood looking down at the fallen figure.

“Damn him, he pulled a knife on me!” he cried defensively.  Billy saw that it was the Pilgrim.

“Who is he?” he asked, and knelt beside the form.  The man was lying just where the lamp-light streamed out from the window, but his face was in shadow.  “Oh, it’s that Swede,” he added, and rose.  “I’ll get somebody; I believe he’s dead.”  He left the Pilgrim standing there and hurried to the door of the hotel office.