_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.

He was at heart a dreamer--was Charming Billy Boyle; perhaps an
idealist--possibly a sentimentalist. He had never tried to find a name
for the side of his life that struck deepest. He knew that the
ripple of a meadow-lark swinging on a weed against the sunrise, with
diamond-sparkles all on the grass around, gripped him and hurt him
vaguely with its very swe