The sun was rising redly, and the hurrying ripples were all tipped with gold, and the sky above a bewildering, tumbled fabric of barbaric coloring. Would the sun rise like that in New Mexico? Billy wondered, and watched the coming of his last day here, where he had lived, had loved, had dreamed dreams and builded castles--and had seen the dreams change to bitterness, and the castles go toppling to ruins. He would like to stay with Dill, for he had grown fond of the lank, whimsical man who was like no one Billy had ever known. He would have stayed even in the face of the change that had come to the range-land--but he could not bear to see the familiar line of low hills which marked the Double-Crank and, farther down, the line-camp, and know that Flora was gone quite away from him into the North.
He caught himself back from brooding, and gave a pull at the halter by way of hinting to Barney that he need not drink the creek entirely dry--when suddenly he quivered and stood so still that he scarcely breathed.
"Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy? Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?"
Some one at the top of the creek-bank was singing it; some one with an exceedingly small, shaky little voice that was trying to be daring and mocking and indifferent, and that was none of these things--but only wistful and a bit pathetic.
Charming Billy, his face quite pale, turned his head cautiously as though he feared too abrupt a glance would drive her away, and looked at her standing there with her gray felt hat tilted against the sun, flipping her gloves nervously against her skirt. She was obviously trying to seem perfectly at ease, but her eyes were giving the lie to her manner.
Billy tried to smile, but instead his lips quivered and his eyes blinked.
"I have been to see my wife--"
he began to sing gamely, and stuck there, because something came up in his throat and squeezed his voice to a whisper. By main strength he pulled Barney away from the gold-tipped ripples, and came stumbling over the loose rocks.
She watched him warily, half-turned, ready to run away. "We--I--aren't you going to be nice and say good-by to me?"
He came on, staring at her and saying nothing.
"Well, if you still want to sulk--I wouldn't be as nasty as that, and--and hold a grudge the way you do--and I was going to be nice and forgiving; but if you don't care, and don't want--"
By this time he was close--quite close. "Yuh know I care! And yuh know I want--you. Oh, girlie, girlie!"