There were not so many of them—­these reluctant, wild-eyed pupils in the school of life.  Charming Billy, sitting his horse and keeping tally of the victims in his shabby little book, began to know the sinking of spirit that comes to a man when he finds that things have, after all, gone less smoothly than he had imagined.  There were withered carcasses scattered through the coulee bottoms and upon side hills that had some time made slippery climbing for a poor, weak cow.  The loss was not crippling, but it was greater than he had expected.  He remembered certain biting storms which had hidden deep the grasses, and certain short-lived chinooks that had served only to soften the surface of the snow so that the cold, coming after, might freeze it the harder.

It had not been a hard winter, as winters go, but the loss of cows had been above the average and the crop of calves below, and Billy for the first time faced squarely the fact that, in the cattle business as well as in others, there are downs to match the ups.  In his castle building, and so far in his realization of his dreams, he had not taken much account of the downs.

Thus it was that, when they swung back from the reservation and camped for a day upon lower Burnt Willow, he felt a great yearning for the ranch and for sight of the girl who lived there.  For excuses he had the mail and the natural wish to consult with Dill, so that, when he saddled Barney and told Jim Bleeker to keep things moving till to-morrow or the day after, he had the comfortable inner assurance that there were no side-glances or smiles and no lowered lids when he rode away.  For Charming Billy, while he would have faced the ridicule of a nation if that were the price he must pay to win his deep desire, was yet well pleased to go on his way unwatched and unneeded.

Since the Double-Crank ranch lay with Burnt Willow Creek loitering through the willows within easy gunshot of the corrals, Billy’s trail followed the creek except in its most irresponsible windings, when he would simplify his journey by taking straight as might be across the prairie.  It was after he had done this for the second time and had come down to the creek through a narrow, yellow-clay coulee that he came out quite suddenly upon a thing he had not before seen.

Across the creek, which at that point was so narrow that a horse could all but clear it in a running jump, lay the hills, a far-reaching ocean of fertile green.  Good grazing it was, as Billy well knew.  In another day the Double-Crank riders would be sweeping over it, gathering the cattle; at least, that had been his intent.  He looked across and his eyes settled immediately upon a long, dotted line drawn straight away to the south; at the far end a tiny huddle of figures moved indeterminately, the details of their business blunted by the distance.  But Charming Billy, though he liked them little, knew well when he looked upon a fence in the building.  The dotted line he read for post holes and the distant figures for the diggers.