CHAPTER XX.

The Shadow Lies Long.

What time he was compelled to be in the house, in the few remaining days before round-up, he avoided Flora or was punctiliously polite.  Only once did he address her directly by name, and then he called her Miss Bridger with a stiff formality that made Mama Joy dimple with spiteful satisfaction.  Flora replied by calling him Mr. Boyle, and would not look at him.

Then it was all in the past, and Billy was out on the range learning afresh how sickeningly awry one’s plans may go.  As mile after mile of smiling grass-land was covered by the sweep of the Double-Crank circles, the disaster pressed more painfully upon him.  When the wagons had left the range the fall before, Billy had estimated roughly that eight or nine thousand head of Double-Crank stock wandered at will in the open.  But with the gathering and the calf-branding he knew that the number had shrunk woefully.  Of the calves he had left with their mothers in the fall, scarce one remained; of the cows themselves he could find not half, and the calf-branding was becoming a grim joke among the men.

“Eat hearty,” they would sometimes banter one another.  “We got to buckle down and work this afternoon.  They’s three calves milling around out there waiting to be branded!”

“Aw, come off!  There ain’t but two,” another would bellow.

If it were not quite as bad as that, it was in all conscience bad enough, and when they swung up to the reservation line and found there a fence in the making, and saw the Indian cowboys at work throwing out all but reservation stock, Billy mentally threw up his hands and left the outfit in Jim Bleeker’s charge while he rode home to consult Dill.  For Billy Boyle, knowing well his range-lore, could see nothing before the Double-Crank but black failure.

“It begins to look, Dilly,” he began, “as though I’ve stuck yuh on this game.  Yuh staked the wrong player; yuh should uh backed the man that stacked the deck on me.  There’s hell to pay on the range, Dilly.  Last winter sure put a crimp in the range-stuff—­that’s what I come to tell yuh.  I knew it would cut into the bunch.  I could tell by the way things was going close around here—­but I didn’t look for it to be as bad as it is.  And they’re fencing in the reservation this spring—­that cuts off a big chunk uh mighty good grazing and winter shelter along all them creeks.  And I see there’s quite a bunch uh grangers come in, since I was along east uh here.  They’ve got cattle turned on the range, and there’s half a dozen shacks scattered—­”

“Mr. Brown is selling off tracts of land with water-rights—­under that big ditch, you understand.  He’s working a sort of colonization scheme, as near as I can find out.  He is also fencing more land to the north and west—­toward Hardup, in fact.  I believe they already have most of the posts set.  We’ll soon be surrounded, William.  And while we’re upon the subject of our calamities, I might state that we shall not be able to do any irrigating this season.  Mr. Brown is running his ditch half full and has been for some little time.  He kindly leaves enough for our stock to drink, however!”