_The Day We Celebrate._
The days that followed were to Billy much like a delicious dream.
Sometimes he stopped short and wondered uneasily if he would wake up
pretty soon to find that he was still an exile from the Double-Crank,
wandering with Dill over the country in search of a location.
Sometimes he laughed aloud unexpectedly, and said, "Hell!" in a
chuckling undertone when came fresh realization of the miracle. But
mostly he was an exceedingly busy young man, with hands and brain too
full of the stress of business to do much wondering.
They were in possession of the Double-Crank, now--he in full
charge, walking the path which his own feet, when he was merely
a "forty-dollar puncher," had helped wear deep to the stable and
corrals; giving orders where he had been wont to receive them; riding
horses which he had long completed, but which had heretofore been
kept sacred to the use of Jawbreaker and old Brown himself; eating and
sleeping in the house with Dill instead of making one of the crowd in
the bunk-house; ordering the coming and going of the round-up crew and
tasting to the full the joys--and the sorrows--of being "head push"
where he had for long been content to serve. Truly, the world had
changed amazingly for one Charming Billy Boyle.
Most of the men he had kept on, for he liked them well and they had
faith to believe that success would not spoil him. The Pilgrim he had
promised himself the pleasure of firing bodily off the ranch within an
hour of his first taking control--but the Pilgrim had not waited.
He had left the ranch with the Old Man and where he had gone did not
concern Billy at the time. For there was the shipment of young stock
from the South to meet and drive up to the home range, and there was
the calf round-up to start on time, and after all the red tape of
buying the outfit and turning over the stock had been properly wound
up, time was precious in the extreme through May and June and well
into July.
But habit is strong upon a man even after the conditions which bred
the habit have utterly changed. One privilege had been always kept
inviolate at the Double-Crank, until it had come to be looked upon as
an inalienable right. The Glorious Fourth had been celebrated, come
rain, come shine. Usually the celebration was so generous that it
did not stop at midnight; anywhere within a week was considered
permissible, a gradual tapering off--not to say sobering up--being the
custom with the more hilarious souls.
When Dill with much solemnity tore off June from the calendar in the
dining room--the calendar with Custer's Last Charge rioting redly
above the dates--Billy, home for a day from the roundup, realized
suddenly that time was on the high lope; at least, that is how he put
it to Dill.
"Say, Dilly, we sure got to jar loose from getting rich long enough
to take in that picnic over to Bluebell Grove. Didn't know there was
a picnic or a Bluebell Grove? Well now, there is. Over on Horned-Toad
Creek--nice, pretty name to go with the grove, ain't it?--they've got
a patch uh shade big over as my hat. Right back up on the hill is the
schoolhouse where they do their dancing, and they've got a table or
two and a swing for the kids to fall outa--and they call it Bluebell
Grove because yuh never saw a bluebell within ten mile uh the place.
That's where the general round-up for the Fourth is pulled off this
year--so Jim Bleeker was telling me this morning. We sure got to be
present, Dilly."
"I'm afraid I'm not the sort of man to shine in society, William,"
dissented the other modestly. "You can go, and--"
"Don't yuh never _dance_?" Billy eyed him speculatively. A man under
fifty--and Dill might be anywhere between thirty and forty--who had
two sound legs and yet did not dance!
"Oh, I used to, after a fashion. But my feet are so far off that I
find communication with them necessarily slow, and they have a habit
of embarking in wild ventures of their own. I do not believe they
are really popular with the feminine element, William. And so I'd
rather--"
"Aw, you'll have to go and try it a whirl, anyhow. We ain't any of us
experts. Yuh see, the boys have been accustomed to having the wheels
of industry stop revolving on the Fourth, and turning kinda wobbly for
four or five days after. I don't feel like trying to break 'em in to
keep on working--do you?"
"To use your own term," said Dill, suddenly reckless of his diction,
"you're sure the doctor."
"Well, then, the proper dope for this case is, all hands show up at
the picnic." He picked up his hat from the floor, slapped it twice
against his leg to remove the dust, pinched the crown into four dents,
set it upon his head at a jaunty angle and went out, singing softly:
"She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."
Dill, looking after him, puckered his face into what passed with him
for a smile. "I wonder now," he meditated aloud, "if William is not
thinking of some particular young lady who--er--who 'cannot leave her
mother'." If he had only known it, William was; he was also wondering
whether she would be at the picnic. And if she were at the picnic,
would she remember him? He had only seen her that one night--and to
him it seemed a very long while ago. He thought, however, that
he might be able to recall himself to her mind--supposing she had
forgotten. It was a long time ago, he kept reminding himself, and
the light was poor and he hadn't shaved for a week--he had always
afterward realized that with much mental discomfort--and he really did
look a lot different when he had on his "war-togs," by which he meant
his best clothes. He wouldn't blame her at all if she passed him up
for a stranger, just at first. A great deal more he thought on the
same subject, and quite as foolishly.
Because of much thinking on the subject, when he and Dill rode down
the trail which much recent passing had made unusually dusty, with the
hot sunlight of the Fourth making the air quiver palpably around them;
with the cloudless blue arching hotly over their heads and with the
four by six cotton flag flying an involuntary signal of distress--on
account of its being hastily raised bottom-side-up and left that
way--and beckoning them from the little clump of shade below, the
heart of Charming Billy Boyle beat unsteadily under the left pocket of
his soft, cream-colored silk shirt, and the cheeks of him glowed red
under the coppery tan. Dill was not the sort of man who loves fast
riding and they ambled along quite decorously--"like we was headed
for prayer-meeting with a singing-book under each elbow," thought
Billy, secretly resentful of the pace.
"I reckon there'll be quite a crowd," he remarked wistfully. "I see a
good many horses staked out already."
Dill nodded absently, and Billy took to singing his pet ditty; one
must do something when one is covering the last mile of a journey
toward a place full of all sorts of delightful possibilities--and
covering that mile at a shambling trot which is truly maddening.
"She can make a punkin pie quick's a cat can wink her eye,
She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!"
"But, of course," observed Mr. Dill quite unexpectedly, "you know,
William, time will remedy that drawback."
Billy started, looked suspiciously at the other, grew rather red and
shut up like a clam. He did more; he put the spurs to his horse and
speedily hid himself in a dust-cloud, so that Dill, dutifully keeping
pace with him, made a rather spectacular arrival whether he would or
no.
Charming Billy, his hat carefully dimpled, his blue tie fastidiously
knotted and pierced with the Klondyke nugget-pin which was his only
ornament, wandered hastily through the assembled groups and
slapped viciously at mosquitoes. Twice he shied at a flutter of
woman-garments, retreated to a respectable distance and reconnoitred
with a fine air of indifference, to find that the flutter accompanied
the movements of some girl for whom he cared not at all.
In his nostrils was the indefinable, unmistakable picnic odor--the
odor of crushed grasses and damp leaf-mould stirred by the passing of
many feet, the mingling of cheap perfumes and starched muslin and iced
lemonade and sandwiches; in his ears the jumble of laughter and of
holiday speech, the squealing of children in a mob around the swing,
the protesting squeak of the ropes as they swung high, the snorting
of horses tied just outside the enchanted ground. And through the
tree-tops he could glimpse the range-land lying asleep in the hot
sunlight, unchanged, uncaring, with the wild range-cattle feeding
leisurely upon the slopes and lifting heads occasionally to snuff
suspiciously the unwonted sounds and smells that drifted up to them on
vagrant breezes.
He introduced Dill to four or five men whom he thought might
be congenial, left him talking solemnly with a man who at some
half-forgotten period had come from Michigan, and wandered aimlessly
on through the grove. Fellows there were in plenty whom he knew, but
he passed them with a brief word or two. Truth to tell, for the most
part they were otherwise occupied and had no time for him.
He loitered over to the swing, saw that the enthusiasts who were
making so much noise were all youngsters under fifteen or so and that
they hailed his coming with a joy tinged with self-interest. He rose
to the bait of one dark-eyed miss who had her hair done in two braids
crossed and tied close to her head with red-white-and-blue ribbon, and
who smiled alluringly and somewhat toothlessly and remarked that she
liked to go 'way, '_way_ up till it most turned over, and that
it didn't scare her a bit. He swung her almost into hysterics
and straightway found himself exceedingly popular with other
braided-and-tied young misses. Charming Billy never could tell
afterward how long or how many he swung 'way, '_way_ up; he knew that
he pushed and pushed until his arms ached and the hair on his forehead
became unpleasantly damp under his hat.
"That'll just about have to do yuh, kids," he rebelled suddenly and
left them, anxiously patting his hair and generally resettling himself
as he went. Once more in a dispirited fashion he threaded the crowd,
which had grown somewhat larger, side-stepped a group which called
after him, and went on down to the creek.
"I'm about the limit, I guess," he told himself irritably. "Why the
dickens didn't I have the sense and nerve to ride over and ask her
straight out if she was coming? I coulda drove her over, maybe--if
she'd come with me. I coulda took the bay team and top-buggy, and done
the thing right. I coulda--hell, there's a _heap_ uh things I coulda
done that would uh been a lot more wise than what I did do! Maybe she
ain't coming at all, and--"
On the heels of that he saw a spring-wagon, come rattling down the
trail across the creek. There were two seats full, and two parasols
were bobbing seductively, and one of them was blue. "I'll bet a dollar
that's them now," murmured Billy, and once more felt anxiously of his
hair where it had gone limp under his hat. "Darned kids--they'd uh kept
me there till I looked like I'd been wrassling calves half a day,"
went with the patting. He turned and went briskly through an empty
and untrampled part of the grove to the place where the wagon would be
most likely to stop. "I'm sure going to make good to-day or--" And a
little farther--"What if it ain't _them_?"
Speedily he discovered that it was "them," and at the same time he
discovered something else which pleased him not at all. Dressed with
much care, so that even Billy must reluctantly own him good-looking
enough, and riding so close to the blue parasol that his horse barely
escaped grazing a wheel, was the Pilgrim. He glared at Billy in
unfriendly fashion and would have shut him off completely from
approach to the wagon; but a shining milk can, left carelessly by a
bush, caught the eye of his horse, and after that the Pilgrim was very
busy riding erratically in circles and trying to keep in touch with
his saddle.
Billy, grown surprisingly bold, went straight to where the blue
parasol was being closed with dainty deliberation. "A little more, and
you'd have been late for dinner," he announced, smiling up at her, and
held out his eager arms. Diplomacy, perhaps, should have urged him to
assist the other lady first--but Billy Boyle was quite too direct
to be diplomatic and besides, the other lady was on the opposite side
from him.
Miss Bridger may have been surprised, and she may or may not have been
pleased; Billy could only guess at her emotions--granting she felt
any. But she smiled down at him and permitted the arms to receive her,
and she also permitted--though with some hesitation--Billy to lead her
straight away from the wagon and its occupants and from the gyrating
Pilgrim to the deep delights of the grove.
"Mr. Walland is a good rider, don't you think?" murmured Miss Bridger,
gazing over her shoulder.
"He's a bird," said Billy evenly, and was polite enough not to mention
what kind of bird. He was wondering what on earth had brought those
two together and why, after that night, Miss Bridger should be
friendly with the Pilgrim; but of these things he said nothing, though
he did find a good deal to say upon pleasanter subjects.
So far as any one knew, Charming Billy Boyle, while he had done many
things, had never before walked boldly into a picnic crowd carrying a
blue parasol as if it were a rifle and keeping step as best he might
over the humps and hollows of the grove with a young woman. Many there
were who turned and looked again--and these were the men who knew him
best. As for Billy, his whole attitude was one of determination; he
was not particularly lover-like--had he wanted to be, he would not
have known how. He was resolved to make the most of his opportunities,
because they were likely to be few and because he had an instinct that
he should know the girl better--he had even dreamed foolishly, once or
twice, of some day marrying her. But to clinch all, he had no notion
of letting the Pilgrim offend her by his presence.
So he somehow got her wedged between two fat women at one of the
tables, and stood behind and passed things impartially and ate ham
sandwiches and other indigestibles during the intervals. He had the
satisfaction of seeing the Pilgrim come within ten feet of them, hover
there scowling for a minute or two and then retreat. "He ain't forgot
the licking I gave him," thought Billy vaingloriously, and hid a smile
in the delectable softness of a wedge of cake with some kind of creamy
filling.
"_I_ made that cake," announced Miss Bridger over her shoulder when
she saw what he was eating. "Do you like it as well as--chicken stew?"
Whereupon Billy murmured incoherently and wished the two fat women ten
miles away. He had not dared--he would never have dared--refer to that
night, or mention chicken stew or prune pies or even dried apricots in
her presence; but with her own hand she had brushed aside the veil of
constraint that had hung between them.
"I wish I'd thought to bring a prune pie," he told her daringly, in
his eagerness half strangling over a crumb of cake.
"Nobody wants prune pie at a picnic," declared one of the fat women
sententiously. "You might as well bring fried bacon and done with it."
"Picnics," added the other and fatter woman, "iss for getting
somet'ings t' eat yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the
moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes.
"I _love_ prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the
snorts which came from either side.
Billy felt himself four inches taller just then. "Give me stewed
prairie-chicken," he stooped to murmur in her ear--or, to be exact, in
the blue bow on her hat.
"Ach, you folks didn'd ought to come to a picnic!" grunted the fatter
woman in disgust.
The two who had the secret between them laughed confidentially, and
Miss Bridger even turned her head away around so that their eyes could
meet and emphasize the joke.
Billy looked down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly
stuff on her shoulders--stuff that was just thin enough so that one
caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath--and
wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat
before--and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her
chin and--"Thunder! I guess I've sure got 'em, all right!" he brought
himself up angrily, and refrained from carrying the subject farther.
It was rumored that the dancing would shortly begin in the schoolhouse
up the hill, and Billy realized suddenly with some compunction that he
had forgotten all about Dill. "I want to introduce my new boss to
yuh, Miss Bridger," he said when they had left the table and she was
smoothing down the ruffly blue stuff in an adorably feminine way. "He
isn't much just to look at, but he's the whitest man I ever knew. You
wait here a minute and I'll go find him"--which was a foolish thing
for him to do, as he afterward found out.
For when he had hunted the whole length of the grove, he found
Dill standing like a blasted pine tree in the middle of a circle of
men--men who were married, and so were not wholly taken up with
the feminine element--and he was discoursing to them earnestly and
grammatically upon the capitalistic tendencies of modern politics.
Billy stood and listened long enough to see that there was no hope of
weaning his interest immediately, and then went back to where he had
left Miss Bridger. She was not there. He looked through the nearest
groups, approached one of the fat women, who was industriously
sorting the remains of the feast and depositing the largest and most
attractive pieces of cake in her own basket, and made bold to inquire
if she knew where Miss Bridger had gone.
"Gone home after some prune pie, I guess maybe," she retorted
quellingly, and Billy asked no farther.
Later he caught sight of a blue flutter in the swing; investigated and
saw that it was Miss Bridger, and that the Pilgrim, smiling and with
his hat set jauntily back on his head, was pushing the swing. They did
not catch sight of Billy for he did not linger there. He turned short
around, walked purposefully out to the edge of the grove where his
horse was feeding at the end of his rope, picked up the rope and led
the horse over to where his saddle lay on its side, the neatly folded
saddle-blanket laid across it. "Darn it, stand still!" he growled
unjustly, when the horse merely took the liberty of switching a fly
off his rump. Billy picked up the blanket, shook the wrinkles out
mechanically, held it before him ready to lay across the waiting back
of Barney; shook it again, hesitated and threw it violently back upon
the saddle.
"Go on off--I don't want nothing of yuh," he admonished the horse,
which turned and looked at him inquiringly. "I ain't through yet--I
got another chip to put up." He made him a cigarette, lighted it and
strolled nonchalantly back to the grove.