t out uh town! Get clean out uh the country! Get out among the
coyotes--they're nearer your breed than men!" For every sentence there
was a stinging blow--a blow with the flat of his hand, driving the
Pilgrim back, step by step, to the door. The Pilgrim, shielding his
head with an uplifted arm, turned then and bolted out into the night.

[Illustration: FOR EVERY SENTENCE A STINGING BLOW WITH THE FLAT OF HIS
HAND.]

Behind him were men who stood ashamed for their manhood, not caring to
look straight at one another with so sickening an example before them
of the craven coward a man may be. In the doorway, Billy stood framed
against the yellow lamplight, a hand pressing hard against the casings
while he leaned and hurled curses in a voice half-sobbing with rage.

It was so that Dill found him when he came looking. When he reached
out and laid a big-knuckled hand gently on his arm, Billy shivered and
stared at him in a queer, dazed fashion for a minute.

"Why--hello, Dilly!" he said then, and his voice was hoarse and
broken. "Where the dickens did _you_ come from?"

Without a word Dill, still holding him by the arm, led him unresisting
away.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_Oh, Where Have You Been, Charming Billy?_

Presently they were in the little room which Dill had kept for himself
by the simple method of buying the shack that held it, and Billy was
drinking something which Dill poured out for him and which steadied
him wonderfully.

"If you are not feeling quite yourself, William, perhaps we would do
better to postpone our conversation until morning," Dill was saying
while he rocked awkwardly, his hands folded loosely together, his
elbows on the rocker--arms and his round, melancholy eyes regarding
Billy solemnly. "I wanted to ask how you came out--with the
Double-Crank."

"Go ahead; I'm all right," said Billy. "I aim to hit the trail by
sun-up, so we'll have our little say now." He made him a cigarette and
looked wistfully at Dill, while he felt for a match. "Go ahead. What
do yuh want to know the worst?"

"Well, I did not see Brown, and it occurred to me that after I left
you must have gathered more stock than you anticipated. I discovered
from the men that you have paid them off. I rode out there to-day, you
know. I arrived about two hours after you had left."

"You're still in the hole on the cow-business," Billy stated flatly,
as if there were no use in trying to soften the telling. "Yuh owe
Brown two tho