A coarse, earthenware plate,
which the Pilgrim had used for his breakfast, lay unbroken at the feet
of him. Billy picked it up, went to the door and cast it violently
forth, watching with grim satisfaction the pieces when they scattered
over the frozen ground. "No white man'll ever have to eat after
_him_," he muttered. To ease his outraged feelings still farther,
he picked up the Pilgrim's knife and fork, and sent them after the
plate--and knives and forks were not numerous in that particular
camp, either. After that he felt better and picked up the coffee-pot,
lighted a fire and cooked himself some breakfast, which he ate
hungrily, his wrath cooling a bit with the cheer of warm food and
strong coffee.

The routine work of the line-camp was performed in a hurried,
perfunctory manner that day. Charming Billy, riding the high-lines
to make sure the cattle had not drifted where they should not, was
vaguely ill at ease. He told himself it was the want of a smoke that
made him uncomfortable, and he planned a hurried trip to Hardup, if
the weather held good for another day, when he would lay in a supply
of tobacco and papers that would last till roundup. This running out
every two or three weeks, and living in hell till you got more, was
plumb wearisome and unnecessary.

On the way back, his trail crossed that of a breed wolfer on his way
into the Bad Lands. Billy immediately asked for tobacco, and the breed
somewhat reluctantly opened his pack and exchanged two small sacks for
a two-bit piece. Billy, rolling a cigarette with eager fingers,
felt for the moment a deep satisfaction with life. He even felt some
compunction about killing the Pilgrim's dog, when he passed the body
stiffening on the snow. "Poor devil! Yuh hadn't ought to expect much
from a dawg--and he was a heap more white-acting than what his owner
was," was his tribute to the dead.

It seemed as though, when he closed the cabin door behind him, he
somehow shut out his newborn satisfaction. "A shack with one window is
sure unpleasant when the sun is shining outside," he said fretfully
to himself. "This joint looks a heap like a cellar. I wonder what the
girl thought of it; I reckon it looked pretty sousy, to her--and them
with everything shining. Oh, hell!" He took off his chaps and his
spurs, rolled another cigarette and smoked it meditatively. When it
had burned down so that it came near scorching his lips, he lighted a
fire, carried water from the creek,