“Honest t’ God, Pilgrim, I won’t try to get in ahead uh yuh!  I couldn’t if I tried, because mine’s at m’ belt yet and I ain’t so swift.  Come on!  Please—­purty please!” Billy looked around the room and laughed.  He pointed his finger mockingly “Ain’t he a peach of a Bad Man, boys?  Ain’t yuh proud uh his acquaintance?  I reckon I’ll have to turn my back before he’ll cut loose.  Yuh know, he’s just aching t’ kill me—­only he don’t want me to know it when he does!  He’s afraid he might hurt m’ feelings!”

He swung back to the Pilgrim, went close, and looked at him impertinently, his head on one side.  He reached out deliberately with his hand, and the Pilgrim ducked and cringed away.  “Aw, look here!” he whined. “I ain’t done nothing to yuh, Bill!”

Billy’s hand dropped slowly and hung at his side.  “Yuh—­damned—­coward!” he gritted.  “Yuh know yuh wouldn’t get any more than an even break with me, and that ain’t enough for yuh.  You’re afraid to take a chance.  You’re afraid—­God!” he cried suddenly, swept out of his mockery by the rage within.  “And I can’t kill yuh!  Yuh won’t show nerve enough to give me a chance!  Yuh won’t even fight, will yuh?”

He leaned and struck the Pilgrim savagely.  “Get out uh my sight, then!  Get 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.”