disgrace! I don't see why the Old Man stands for it--or the Pilgrim,
either; it's a toss-up which is the worst. Yuh smell him coming, do
yuh?" he snarled. "It's about _time_ he was coming--me here eating
dried apricots and tapioca steady diet (nobody but a pilgrim would
fetch tapioca into a line-camp, and if he does it again you'll sure
be missing the only friend yuh got) and him gone four days when he'd
oughta been back the second. Get out and welcome him, darn yuh!"
He gathered the coat under one arm that he might open the door, and
hurried the dog outside with a threatening boot toe. The wind whipped
his brown cheeks so that he closed the door hastily and retired to the
cheerless shelter of the cabin.

"Another blizzard coming, if I know the signs. And if the Pilgrim
don't show up to-night with the grub and tobacco--But I reckon the
dawg smelt him coming, all right." He fingered uncertainly a very
flabby tobacco sack, grew suddenly reckless and made himself an
exceedingly thin cigarette with the remaining crumbs of tobacco
and what little he could glean from the pockets of the coat he was
mending. Surely, the Pilgrim would remember his tobacco! Incapable
as he was, he could scarcely forget that, after the extreme emphasis
Charming Billy had laid upon the getting, and the penalties attached
to its oversight.

Outside, the dog was barking spasmodically; but Billy, being a product
of the cattle industry pure and simple, knew not the way of dogs.
He took it for granted that the Pilgrim was arriving with the grub,
though he was too disgusted with his delay to go out and make sure.
Dogs always barked at everything impartially--when they were not
gnawing surreptitiously at bones or snooping in corners for scraps,
or planting themselves deliberately upon your clothes. Even when the