“No, Dilly, I couldn’t.  I—­I’m thinking uh drifting down into New Mexico.  I—­I want to see that country, bad.”

Dill crossed his long legs the other way, let his hands drop loosely, and stared wistfully at Billy.  “I really wish I could induce you to stay, William,” he murmured.

“Well, yuh can’t.  I hope yuh come through better than yuh did with the Double-Crank—­but I guess it’ll be some considerable time before the towns and the gentle farmer (damn him!) are crowded to the wall by your damn’ Progress.”  It was the first direct protest against changing conditions which Billy had so far put into words, and he looked sorry for having said so much.  “Oh, here’s your little blue book,” he added, feeling it in his pocket.  “I found it behind the trunk when everything else was packed.”

“You saw—­er—­you saw Bridger, then?  He is going to take his wife and Flora up North with him in the spring.  It seems he has done well.”

“I know—­he told me.”

Dill turned the leaves of the book slowly, and consciously refrained from looking at Billy.  “They were about to leave when I was there.  It is a shame.  I am very sorry for Flora—­she does not want to go.  If—­” He cleared his throat again and guiltily pretended to be reading a bit, here and there, and to be speaking casually.  “If I were a marrying man, I am not sure but I should make love to Flora—­h-m-m!—­this ‘Bachelor’s Complaint’ here—­have you read it, William?  It is very—­here, for instance—­’Nothing is to me more distasteful than the entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple’—­and so on.  I feel tempted sometimes when I look at Flora—­only she looks upon me as a—­er—­piece of furniture—­the kind that sticks out in the way and you have to feel your way around it in the dark—­awkward, but necessary.  Poor girl, she cried in the most heartbroken way when I told her we would not be likely to see her again, and—­I wonder what is the trouble between her and Walland?  They used to be quite friendly, in a way, but she has not spoken to him, to my certain knowledge, since last spring.  Whenever he came to the ranch she would go to her room and refuse to come out until he had left.  H-m-m!  Did she ever tell you, William?”

“No,” snapped William huskily, smoking with his head bent and turned away.

“I know positively that she cut him dead, as they say, at the last Fourth-of-July dance.  He asked her to dance, and she refused almost rudely and immediately got up and danced with that boy of Gunderson’s—­the one with the hair-lip.  She could not have been taken with the hair-lipped fellow—­at least, I should scarcely think so.  Should you, William?”

This time William did not answer at all.  Dill, watching his bent head tenderly, puckered his face into his peculiar smile.