_Self-defense_.
The wagons of the Double-Crank had stopped to tarry over the Fourth
at Fighting Wolf Spring, which bubbles from under a great rock in a
narrow "draw" that runs itself out to a cherry-masked point halfway
up the side of Fighting Wolf Butte. Billy, with wisdom born of much
experience in the ways of a round-up crew when the Fourth of July
draws near, started his riders at day-dawn to rake all Fighting Wolf
on its southern side. "Better catch up your ridge-runners," he had
cautioned, "because I'll set yuh plumb afoot if yuh don't." The boys,
knowing well his meaning and that the circle that day would be a
big one over rough country, saddled their best horses and settled
themselves to a hard day's work.
Till near noon they rode, and branded after dinner to the tune of much
scurrying and bawling and a great deal of dust and rank smoke, urged
by the ever-present fear that they would not finish in time. But their
leader was fully as anxious as they and had timed the work so that by
four o'clock the herd was turned loose, the fires drenched with water
and the branding irons put away.
At sundown the long slope from Fighting Wolf Spring was dotted for
a space with men, fresh-shaven, clean-shirted and otherwise
rehabilitated, galloping eagerly toward Hardup fifteen miles away.
That they had been practically in the saddle since dawn was a trifle
not to be considered; they would dance until another dawn to make up
for it.
Hardup, decked meagrely in the colors that spell patriotism, was
unwontedly alive and full of Fourth of July noises. But even with
the distraction of a holiday and a dance just about to start and the
surrounding country emptied of humans into the town, the clatter
of the Double-Crank outfit--fifteen wiry young fellows hungry for
play--brought men to the doors and into the streets.
Charming Billy, because his eagerness was spiced with expectancy, did
not stop even for a drink, but made for the hotel. At the hotel he
learned that his "crowd" was over at the hall, and there he hurried so
soon as he had removed the dust and straightened his tie and brushed
his hair and sworn at his upstanding scalp-lock, in the corner of the
hotel office dedicated to public cleanliness.
It was a pity that such single-hearted effort must go unrewarded, but
the fact remains that he reached the hall just as the couples were
promenading for the first waltz. He was permitted the doubtful
pleasure of a welcoming nod from Flora as she went by with the
Pilgrim. Dill was on the floor with Mama Joy, and at a glance he saw
how it was; the Pilgrim had "butted in" and come along with them. He
supposed Flora really could not help it, but it was pretty hard
lines, all the same. For even in the range-land are certain rules of
etiquette which must be observed when men and women foregather in the
pursuit of pleasure. Billy remembered ruefully how a girl must dance
first, last, and oftenest with her partner of the evening, and must
eat supper with him besides, whether she likes or not; to tweak this
rule means to insult the man beyond forgiveness.
"Well, it wouldn't hurt me none if Flora _did_ cut him off short,"
Billy concluded, his eyes following them resentfully whenever they
whirled down to his end of the room. "The way I've got it framed up,
I'd spoke for her first--if Dilly told her what I said."
Still, what he thought privately did not seem to have much effect upon
realities. Flora he afterward saw intermittently while they danced a
quadrille together, and she made it plain that she had not considered
Billy as her partner; how could she, when he was trailing around over
the country with the round-up, and nobody knew whether he would come
or not? No, Mr. Walland did not come to the ranch so very often.
She added naïvely that he was awfully busy. He had ridden in with
them--and why not? Was there any reason--
Billy, though he could think of reasons in plenty, turned just then to
balance on the corner and swing, and to do many other senseless things
at the behest of the man on the platform, so that when they stood
together again for a brief space, both were breathless and she was
anxiously feeling her hair and taking out side combs and putting them
back again, and Billy felt diffident about interrupting her and said
no more about who was her partner.
An hour or so later he was looking about for her, meaning to dance
with her again, when a man pushed him aside hurriedly and went across
the floor and spoke angrily to another. Billy, moving aside so that he
could see, discovered Flora standing up with the Pilgrim for the dance
in another "set" that was forming. The man who had jostled him was
speaking to them angrily, but Billy could not catch the words.
"He's drunk," called the Pilgrim to the floor manager. "Put him out!"
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.
In any other locality a shot would have brought on the run every man
who heard it; but in a "cow-town," especially on a dance night,
shots are as common as shouts. In Hardup that night there had been
periodical outbursts which no one, not even the women, minded in the
least.
So it was not until Billy opened the door, put his head in, and cried:
"Come alive! A fellow's been shot, right out here," that there was a
stampede for the door.
The Pilgrim still stood beside the other, waiting. Three or four
stooped over the man on the ground. Billy was one of them.
"He pulled a gun on me," explained the Pilgrim. "I was trying to take
it away from him, and it went off."
Billy stood up, and, as he did so, his foot struck against a revolver
lying beside the Swede. He looked at the Pilgrim queerly, but he did
not say anything. They were lifting the Swede to carry him into the
office; they knew that he was dead, even before they got him into the
light.
"Somebody better get word to the coroner," said the Pilgrim, fighting
for self-control. "It was self-defense. My God, boys, I couldn't help
it! He pulled a gun on me. Yuh saw it on the ground there, right where
he dropped it."
Billy turned clear around and looked again at the Pilgrim, and the
Pilgrim met his eyes defiantly before he turned away.
"I understood yuh to say it was a knife," he remarked slowly.
The Pilgrim swung back again. "I didn't--or, if I did, I was rattled.
It was a gun--that gun on the ground. He met me there and started a
row and said he'd fix me. He pulled his gun, and I made a grab for it
and it went off. That's all there is to it." He stared hard at Billy.
There was much talk among the men, and several told how they had
heard the Swede "cussing" Walland in the saloon that evening. Some
remembered threats--the threats which a man will foolishly make when
he is pouring whisky down his throat by the glassful. No one seemed to
blame Walland in the least, and Billy felt that the Pilgrim was in a
fair way to become something of a hero. It is not every man who has
the nerve to grab a gun with which he is threatened.
They made a cursory search of the Pilgrim and found that he was not
armed, and he was given to understand that he would be expected to
stay around town until the coroner came and "sat" on the case. But
he was treated to drinks right and left, and when Billy went to find
Flora the Pilgrim was leaning heavily upon the bar with a glass in his
hand and his hat far back on his head, declaiming to the crowd that
he was perfectly harmless so long as he was left alone. But he wasn't
safe to monkey with, and any man who came at him hunting trouble would
sure get all he wanted and then some. He said he didn't kill people if
he could help it--but a man was plumb obliged to, sometimes.
"I'm sure surprised to think I got off with m' life, last winter, when
I hazed him away from line-camp; I guess I must uh had a close call,
all right!" Billy snorted contemptuously and shut the door upon the
wordy revelation of the Pilgrim's deep inner nature which had been
until that night carefully hidden from an admiring world.
The dance stopped abruptly with the killing; people were already going
home. Billy, with the excuse that he would be wanted at the inquest,
hunted up Jim Bleeker, gave him charge of the round-up for a few days,
and told him what route to take. For himself, he meant to ride home
with Flora or know the reason why.
"Come along, Dilly, and let's get out uh town," he urged, when he had
found him. "It's a kinda small burg, and at the rate the Pilgrim is
swelling up over what he done, there won't be room for nobody but him
in another hour. He's making me plumb nervous and afraid to be around
him, he's so fatal."
"We'll go at once, William. Walland is drinking a great deal more
than he should, but I don't think he means to be boastful over so
unfortunate an affair. Do you think you are taking an altogether
unprejudiced view of the matter? Our judgment," he added
deprecatingly, "is so apt to be warped by our likes and dislikes."
"Well, if that was the case here," Billy told him shortly, "I've got
dislike enough for him to wind my judgment up like a clock spring.
I'll go see if Flora and her mother are ready." In that way he avoided
discussing the Pilgrim, for Dill was not so dull that he failed to
take the hint.