“I guess yuh can’t do any better.  Twenty-one dollars a head as they run—­and everything else thrown in, uh course?”

“That is the way I bought it, yes,” said Dill.

“Well, we ought to scare up six thousand, if we count close.  I know old Brown fine; he’ll hold yuh right down t’ what yuh turn over, and he’ll tally so close he’ll want to dock yuh if a critter’s shy one horn—­damn him.  That’s why I was wishing you’d bought that way, instead uh lumping the price and taking chances.  Only, uh course, I knew just about what was on the range.”

“Then I will accept the offer.  I have been merely considering it until I saw you.  And perhaps it will be as well to go about it immediately.”

“It’s plenty early,” objected Billy.  “I was going to break some more hosses for the saddle-bunch—­but I reckon I’ll leave ’em now for Brown to bust.  And for God-sake, Dilly, once yuh get wound up here, go on back where yuh come from.  If the range is going—­and they’s no use saying it ain’t—­this ain’t going to be no place for any white man.”  Which was merely Billy’s prejudice speaking.

CHAPTER XXI.

The End of the Double-Crank.

Dill himself rode on that last round-up.  Considering that it was all new to him, he made a remarkably good record for himself among the men, who were more than once heard to remark that “Dill-pickle’s sure making a hand!” Wherever Billy went—­and in those weeks Billy rode and worked with a feverish intensity that was merely a fight against bitter thinking—­Dill’s stirrup clacked close alongside.  He was silent, for the most part, but sometimes he talked reminiscently of Michigan and his earlier life there.  Seldom did he refer to the unhappy end of the Double-Crank, or to the reason why they were riding from dawn to dusk, sweeping together all the cattle within the wide circle of riders and later cutting out every Double-Crank animal and holding them under careful herd.

Even when they went with the first twelve hundred and turned them over to Brown and watched his careful counting, Dill made no comment upon the reason for it beyond one sentence.  He read the receipt over slowly before laying it methodically in the proper compartment of his long red-leather book, and drew his features into his puckered imitation of a smile.  “Mr. Brown has counted just twenty-one dollars more into my pocket than I expected,” he remarked.  “He tallied one more than you did, William.  I ought to hold that out of your wages, young man.”

Rare as were Dill’s efforts at joking, even this failed to bring more than a slight smile to the face of Charming Billy Boyle.  He was trying to look upon it all as a mere incident, a business matter, pure and simple, but he could not.  While he rode the wide open reaches, there rode with him the keen realization that it was the end.  For him the old life on the range was dead—­for had not Dill made him see it so?  And did not every raw-red fencepost proclaim anew its death?  For every hill and every coulee he buried something of his past and wept secretly beside the grave.  For every whiff of breakfast that mingled with the smell of clean air in the morning came a pang of homesickness for what would soon be only a memory.