The face of Billy stiffened perceptibly; otherwise he moved not a muscle.
"The Old Man says for you to stay till he can put another man down here in your place, though. He'll send Jim Bleeker soon as he comes back from town—which ain't apt to be for two or three days unless they're short on booze."
Billy caught his breath, hesitated, and reached for his smoking material. It was not till he had licked his cigarette into shape and was feeling in his pocket for a match that he spoke. "I've drawed wages from the Double-Crank for quite a spell, and I always aimed to act white with the outfit. It's more than they're doing by me, but—I'll stay till Jim comes." He smoked moodily, and stared at his boots. "Yuh ain't going back tonight, are yuh?"
The foreman said he must, and came back to the subject. "Yuh don't want to think I'm firing yuh, Billy. If it was my say-so, I'd tell the Pilgrim to go to hell. But he went straight to headquarters with his tale uh woe, and the Old Man is kinda uncertain these days, on account uh not being right sure uh the widow. He feels just about obliged to keep the Pilgrim smoothed down; he ain't worth his grub, if you ask me."
"Oh, I ain't thinking nothing at all about it," Billy lied proudly. "If the Old Man feels like canning me, that there's his funeral. I reckon maybe he likes the Pilgrim's breed better for a change. And I wouldn't be none surprised if I could get a job with some other outfit, all right. I ain't aiming to starve—nor yet ride grub-line."
"When you analyze the thing right down to fundamentals," observed the foreman, whom men called "Jawbreaker" for obvious reasons, "it's a cussed shame. You're one of the oldest men with the outfit, and the Pilgrim is the youngest—and the most inadequate. The Old Man oughta waited till he heard both sides uh the case, and I told him so. But he couldn't forget how the widow might feel if he canned her stepbrother—and what's a man, more or less, in a case uh that kind?"
"Now look here, Jawbreaker," Billy protested cheerfully, "don't yuh go oozing comfort and sympathy on my account. I don't know but what I'm tickled to death. As yuh say, I've worked for this outfit a blame long while—and it's maybe kinda hard on other outfits; they oughta have a chance to use me for a spell. There's no reason why the Double-Crank should be a hog and keep a good man forever."
The foreman studied keenly the face of Charming Billy, saw there an immobility that somehow belied his cheerful view of the case, and abruptly changed the subject.
"You've got things swept and garnished, all right," he remarked, looking at the nearly clean floor with the tiny pools of dirty water still standing in the worn places. "When did the fit take yuh? Did it come on with fever-n'-chills, like most other breaking-outs? Or, did the girl—"
"Aw, the darned dawg mussed up the floor, dying in here," Billy apologized weakly. "I was plumb obliged to clean up after him." He glanced somewhat shamefacedly at the floor. After all, it did not look quite like the one where Miss Bridger lived; in his heart Billy believed that was because he had no strip of carpet to spread before the table. He permitted his glance to take in the bunk, nakedly showing the hay it held for a softening influence and piled high with many things—the things that would not go beneath.