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Cabin Fever

by B. M. Bower

February, 1998  [Etext #1204]


***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower***
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This etext was prepared by Anthony Matonak.





Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower




CONTENTS
CHAPTER

I     THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF
II    TWO MAKE A QUARREL
III   TEN DOLLARS AND A JOB FOR BUD
IV    HEAD SOUTH AND KEEP GOING
V     BUD CANNOT PERFORM MIRACLES
VI    BUD TAKES TO THE HILLS
VII   INTO THE DESERT
VIII  MANY BARREN MONTHS AND MILES
IX    THE BITE OF MEMORY
X     EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS
XI    THE FIRST STAGES
XII   MARIE TAKES A DESPERATE CHANCE
XIII  CABIN FEVER IN ITS WORST FORM
XIV   CASH GETS A SHOCK
XV    AND BUD NEVER GUESSED
XVI   THE ANTIDOTE
XVII  LOVIN CHILD WRIGGLES IN
XVIII THEY HAVE THEIR TROUBLES
XIX   BUD FACES FACTS
XX    LOVIN CHILD STRIKES IT RICH
XXI   MARIE'S SIDE OF IT
XXII  THE CURE COMPLETE



CABIN FEVER

CHAPTER ONE. THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF

There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one
thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to
that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon
monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West
calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names,
according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a
palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit
peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You may be
attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various
names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and
alimony. You may have it wherever you are shunted into a
backwater of life, and lose the sense of being borne along in the
full current of progress. Be sure that it will make you
abnormally sensitive to little things; irritable where once you
were amiable; glum where once you went whistling about your work
and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acid test
of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray
your little, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered
virtues, reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your
companions in exile--if so be you have any.

If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the
wilderness and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three
things will surely happen: You will hate each other afterward
with that enlightened hatred which is seasoned with contempt; you
will emerge with the contempt tinged with a pitying toleration,
or you will be close, unquestioning friends to the last six feet
of earth--and beyond. All these things will cabin fever do,
and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. It has driven
men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of all
semblance to its former self. It has sweetened love and killed
love. There is an antidote--but I am going to let you find the
antidote somewhere in the story.

Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that
did not run in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did
not know what ailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up
through Los Gatos and over the Bear Creek road across the summit
of the Santa Cruz Mountains and down to the State Park, which is
locally called Big Basin. For something over fifty miles of
wonderful scenic travel he charged six dollars, and usually his
big car was loaded to the running boards. Bud was a good driver,
and he had a friendly pair of eyes--dark blue and with a
humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere--and a
human little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not
know it, but these things helped to fill his car.

Until gasoline married into the skylark family, Bud did well
enough to keep him contented out of a stock saddle. (You may not
know it, but it is harder for an old cow-puncher to find content,
now that the free range is gone into history, than it is for a
labor agitator to be happy in a municipal boarding house.)

Bud did well enough, which was very well indeed. Before the
second season closed with the first fall rains, he had paid for
his big car and got the insurance policy transferred to his name.
He walked up First Street with his hat pushed back and a
cigarette dangling from the quirkiest corner of his mouth, and
his hands in his pockets. The glow of prosperity warmed his
manner toward the world. He had a little money in the bank, he
had his big car, he had the good will of a smiling world. He
could not walk half a block in any one of three or four towns but
he was hailed with a "Hello, Bud!" in a welcoming tone. More
people knew him than Bud remembered well enough to call by
name--which is the final proof of popularity the world over.

In that glowing mood he had met and married a girl who went
into Big Basin with her mother and camped for three weeks. The
girl had taken frequent trips to Boulder Creek, and twice had
gone on to San Jose, and she had made it a point to ride with the
driver because she was crazy about cars. So she said. Marie had
all the effect of being a pretty girl. She habitually wore white
middies with blue collar and tie, which went well with her clear,
pink skin and her hair that just escaped being red. She knew how
to tilt her "beach" hat at the most provocative angle, and she
knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance--of
the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic
behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too
much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and
was yet moderate in her use of it.

Bud did not notice Marie much on the first trip. She was
demure, and Bud had a girl in San Jose who had brought him to
that interesting stage of dalliance where he wondered if he dared
kiss her good night the next time he called. He was preoccupiedly
reviewing the she-said-and-then-I-said, and trying to make up his
mind whether he should kiss her and take a chance on her
displeasure, or whether he had better wait. To him Marie appeared
hazily as another camper who helped fill the car--and his
pocket--and was not at all hard to look at. It was not until the
third trip that Bud thought her beautiful, and was secretly glad
that he had not kissed that San Jose girl.

You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated
with them the world over. But Bud happened to be a simple-souled
fellow, and there was something about Marie--He didn't know
what it was. Men never do know, until it is all over. He only
knew that the drive through the shady stretches of woodland grew
suddenly to seem like little journeys into paradise. Sentiment
lurked behind every great, mossy tree bole. New beauties unfolded
in the winding drive up over the mountain crests. Bud was
terribly in love with the world in those days.

There were the evenings he spent in the Basin, sitting beside
Marie in the huge campfire circle, made wonderful by the shadowy
giants, the redwoods; talking foolishness in undertones while the
crowd sang snatches of songs which no one knew from beginning to
end, and that went very lumpy in the verses and very much out of
harmony in the choruses. Sometimes they would stroll down toward
that sweeter music the creek made, and stand beside one of the
enormous trees and watch the glow of the fire, and the
silhouettes of the people gathered around it.

In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands. In two weeks
they could scarcely endure the partings when Bud must start back
to San Jose, and were taxing their ingenuity to invent new
reasons why Marie must go along. In three weeks they were
married, and Marie's mother--a shrewd, shrewish widow--was
trying to decide whether she should wash her hands of Marie, or
whether it might be well to accept the situation and hope that
Bud would prove himself a rising young man.

But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin fever now and
did not know what ailed him, though cause might have been summed
up in two meaty phrases: too much idleness, and too much mother-
in-law. Also, not enough comfort and not enough love.

In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth
Street where Bud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission
furniture and a piano, Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his
ten o'clock breakfast, and was scowling over the task. He did not
mind the hour so much, but he did mortally hate to cook his own
breakfast--or any other meal, for that matter. In the next
room a rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmic squeak, and a
baby was squalling with that sustained volume of sound which
never fails to fill the adult listener with amazement. It
affected Bud unpleasantly, just as the incessant bawling of a
band of weaning calves used to do. He could not bear the thought
of young things going hungry.

"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or
do something to shut him up?" he exploded suddenly, dribbling
pancake batter over the untidy range.

The squeak, squawk of the rocker ceased abruptly. "'Cause it
isn't time yet to feed him--that's why. What's burning out
there? I'll bet you've got the stove all over dough again--"
The chair resumed its squeaking, the baby continued uninterrupted
its wah-h-hah! wah-h-hah, as though it was a phonograph that had
been wound up with that record on, and no one around to stop it

Bud turned his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more
batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but
that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he
had never known before. He knew, for instance, that the baby
wanted its bottle, and that Marie was going to make him wait till
feeding time by the clock.

"By heck, I wonder what would happen if that darn clock was to
stop!" he exclaimed savagely, when his nerves would bear no more.
"You'd let the kid starve to death before you'd let your own
brains tell you what to do! Husky youngster like that--feeding
'im four ounces every four days--or some simp rule like that--"
He lifted the cakes on to a plate that held two messy-looking
fried eggs whose yolks had broken, set the plate on the cluttered
table and slid petulantly into a chair and began to eat. The
squeaking chair and the crying baby continued to torment him.
Furthermore, the cakes were doughy in the middle.

"For gosh sake, Marie, give that kid his bottle!" Bud exploded
again. "Use the brains God gave yuh--such as they are! By
heck, I'll stick that darn book in the stove. Ain't yuh got any
feelings at all? Why, I wouldn't let a dog go hungry like that!
Don't yuh reckon the kid knows when he's hungry? Why, good Lord!
I'll take and feed him myself, if you don't. I'll burn that
book--so help me!"

"Yes, you will--not!" Marie's voice rose shrewishly, riding
the high waves of the baby's incessant outcry against the
restrictions upon appetite imposed by enlightened motherhood.
"You do, and see what'll happen! You'd have him howling with
colic, that's what you'd do."

"Well, I'll tell the world he wouldn't holler for grub! You'd
go by the book if it told yuh to stand 'im on his head in the ice
chest! By heck, between a woman and a hen turkey, give me the
turkey when it comes to sense. They do take care of their young
ones--"

"Aw, forget that! When it comes to sense---"

Oh, well, why go into details? You all know how these domestic
storms arise, and how love washes overboard when the matrimonial
ship begins to wallow in the seas of recrimination.

Bud lost his temper and said a good many things should not have
said. Marie flung back angry retorts and reminded Bud of all his
sins and slights and shortcomings, and told him many of mamma's
pessimistic prophecies concerning him, most of which seemed
likely to be fulfilled. Bud fought back, telling Marie how much
of a snap she had had since she married him, and how he must have
looked like ready money to her, and added that now, by heck, he
even had to do his own cooking, as well as listen to her whining
and nagging, and that there wasn't clean corner in the house, and
she'd rather let her own baby go hungry than break a simp rule in
a darn book got up by a bunch of boobs that didn't know anything
about kids. Surely to goodness, he finished his heated paragraph,
it wouldn't break any woman's back to pour a little warm water on
a little malted milk, and shake it up.

He told Marie other things, and in return, Marie informed him
that he was just a big-mouthed, lazy brute, and she could curse
the day she ever met him. That was going pretty far. Bud reminded
her that she had not done any cursing at the time, being in his
opinion too busy roping him in to support her.

By that time he had gulped down his coffee, and was into his
coat, and looking for his hat. Marie, crying and scolding and
rocking the vociferous infant, interrupted herself to tell him
that she wanted a ten-cent roll of cotton from the drug store,
and added that she hoped she would not have to wait until next
Christmas for it, either. Which bit of sarcasm so inflamed Bud's
rage that he swore every step of the way to Santa Clara Avenue,
and only stopped then because he happened to meet a friend who
was going down town, and they walked together.

At the drug store on the corner of Second Street Bud stopped
and bought the cotton, feeling remorseful for some of the
things he had said to Marie, but not enough so to send him back
home to tell her he was sorry. He went on, and met another friend
before he had taken twenty steps.
This friend was thinking of buying a certain second-hand
automobile that was offered at a very low price, and he wanted
Bud to go with him and look her over. Bud went, glad of the
excuse to kill the rest of the forenoon.

They took the car out and drove to Schutzen Park and back. Bud
opined that she didn't bark to suit him, and she had a knock in
her cylinders that shouted of carbon. They ran her into the
garage shop and went deep into her vitals, and because she jerked
when Bud threw her into second, Bud suspected that her bevel
gears had lost a tooth or two, and was eager to find out for
sure.

Bill looked at his watch and suggested that they eat first
before they got all over grease by monkeying with the rear end.
So they went to the nearest restaurant and had smothered
beefsteak and mashed potato and coffee and pie, and while they
ate they talked of gears and carburetors and transmission and
ignition troubles, all of which alleviated temporarily Bud's case
of cabin fever and caused him to forget that he was married and
had quarreled with his wife and had heard a good many unkind
things which his mother-in-law had said about him.

By the time they were back in the garage and had the grease
cleaned out of the rear gears so that they could see whether they
were really burred or broken, as Bud had suspected, the twinkle
was back in his eyes, and the smiley quirk stayed at the corners
of his mouth, and when he was not talking mechanics with Bill he
was whistling. He found much lost motion and four broken teeth,
and he was grease to his eyebrows--in other words, he was happy.

When he and Bill finally shed their borrowed overalls and caps,
the garage lights were on, and the lot behind the shop was dusky.
Bud sat down on the running board and began to figure what the
actual cost of the bargain would be when Bill had put it into
good mechanical condition. New bearings, new bevel gear, new
brake, lining, rebored cylinders--they totalled a sum that
made Bill gasp.

By the time Bud had proved each item an absolute necessity, and
had reached the final ejaculation: "Aw, forget it, Bill, and buy
yuh a Ford!" it was so late that he knew Marie must have given up
looking for him home to supper. She would have taken it for
granted that he had eaten down town. So, not to disappoint her,
Bud did eat down town. Then Bill wanted him to go to a movie, and
after a praiseworthy hesitation Bud yielded to temptation and
went. No use going home now, just when Marie would be rocking the
kid to sleep and wouldn't let him speak above a whisper, he told
his conscience. Might as well wait till they settled down for the
night.



CHAPTER TWO. TWO MAKE A QUARREL

At nine o'clock Bud went home. He was feeling very well
satisfied with himself for some reason which he did not try to
analyze, but which was undoubtedly his sense of having saved Bill
from throwing away six hundred dollars on a bum car; and the
weight in his coat pocket of a box of chocolates that he had
bought for Marie. Poor girl, it was kinda tough on her, all
right, being tied to the house now with the kid. Next spring when
he started his run to Big Basin again, he would get a little camp
in there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travel
wasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just
as she took a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be
bigger then, and the outdoors would make him grow like a pig.
Thinking of these things, Bud walked briskly, whistling as he
neared the little green house, so that Marie would know who it
was, and would not be afraid when he stepped up on the front
porch.

He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house,
for it was dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key
was not in the letter box where they always kept it for the
convenience of the first one who returned, so Bud went around to
the back and climbed through the pantry window. He fell over a
chair, bumped into the table, and damned a few things. The
electric light was hung in the center of the room by a cord that
kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finally
touched the elusive bulb with his fingers and switched on the
light.

The table was set for a meal--but whether it was dinner or
supper Bud could not determine. He went into the little sleeping
room and turned on the light there, looked around the empty room,
grunted, and tiptoed into the bedroom. (In the last month he had
learned to enter on his toes, lest he waken the baby.) He might
have saved himself the bother, for the baby was not there in its
new gocart. The gocart was not there, Marie was not there--one
after another these facts impressed themselves upon Bud's mind,
even before he found the letter propped against the clock in the
orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the
letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little
heating stove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell
the world you can go and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let
that end the matter so far as he was concerned. But he could not
shake off the sense of having been badly used. He did not stop to
consider that while he was working off his anger, that day, Marie
had been rocking back and forth, crying and magnifying the
quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new and sinister
meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Bud was
thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had
reached the white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous
action. Marie was packing a suitcase and meditating upon the
scorching letter she meant to write.

Judging from the effect which the letter had upon Bud, it must
have been a masterpiece of its kind. He threw the box of
chocolates into the wood-box, crawled out of the window by which
he had entered, and went down town to a hotel. If the house
wasn't good enough for Marie, let her go. He could go just as
fast and as far as she could. And if she thought he was going to
hot-foot it over to her mother's and whine around and beg her to
come home, she had another think coming.

He wouldn't go near the darn place again, except to get his
clothes. He'd bust up the joint, by thunder. He'd sell off the
furniture and turn the house over to the agent again, and Marie
could whistle for a home. She had been darn glad to get into that
house, he remembered, and away from that old cat of a mother. Let
her stay there now till she was darn good and sick of it. He'd
just keep her guessing for awhile; a week or so would do her
good. Well, he wouldn't sell the furniture--he'd just move it
into another house, and give her a darn good scare. He'd get a
better one, that had a porcelain bathtub instead of a zinc one,
and a better porch, where the kid could be out in the sun. Yes,
sir, he'd just do that little thing, and lay low and see what
Marie did about that. Keep her guessing--that was the play to
make.

Unfortunately for his domestic happiness, Bud failed to take
into account two very important factors in the quarrel. The first
and most important one was Marie's mother, who, having been a
widow for fifteen years and therefore having acquired a habit of
managing affairs that even remotely concerned her, assumed that
Marie's affairs must be managed also. The other factor was
Marie's craving to be coaxed back to smiles by the man who drove
her to tears. Marie wanted Bud to come and say he was sorry, and
had been a brute and so forth. She wanted to hear him tell how
empty the house had seemed when he returned and found her gone.
She wanted him to be good and scared with that letter. She stayed
awake until after midnight, listening for his anxious footsteps;
after midnight she stayed awake to cry over the inhuman way he
was treating her, and to wish she was dead, and so forth; also
because the baby woke and wanted his bottle, and she was teaching
him to sleep all night without it, and because the baby had a
temper just like his father.

His father's temper would have yielded a point or two, the next
day, had it been given the least encouragement. For instance, he
might have gone over to see Marie before he moved the furniture
out of the house, had he not discovered an express wagon standing
in front of the door when he went home about noon to see if Marie
had come back. Before he had recovered to the point of profane
speech, the express man appeared, coming out of the house, bent
nearly double under the weight of Marie's trunk. Behind him in
the doorway Bud got a glimpse of Marie's mother.

That settled it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest
drayage company, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the
scene; in other words, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd
show 'em. Marie and her mother couldn't put anything over on him
--he'd stand over that furniture with a sheriff first.

He went back and found Marie's mother still there, packing
dishes and doilies and the like. They had a terrible row, and all
the nearest neighbors inclined ears to doors ajar--getting an
earful, as Bud contemptuously put it. He finally led Marie's
mother to the front door and set her firmly outside. Told her
that Marie had come to him with no more than the clothes she had,
and that his money had bought every teaspoon and every towel and
every stick of furniture in the darned place, and he'd be
everlastingly thus-and-so if they were going to strong-arm the
stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live with him, why,
his stuff was too good for her to have.

Oh, yes, the neighbors certainly got an earful, as the town
gossips proved when the divorce suit seeped into the papers. Bud
refused to answer the proceedings, and was therefore ordered to
pay twice as much alimony as he could afford to pay; more, in
fact, than all his domestic expense had amounted to in the
fourteen months that he had been married. Also Marie was awarded
the custody of the child and, because Marie's mother had
represented Bud to be a violent man who was a menace to her
daughter's safety--and proved it by the neighbors who had seen
and heard so much--Bud was served with a legal paper that
wordily enjoined him from annoying Marie with his presence.

That unnecessary insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret
for what had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile,
took the money to the judge that had tried the case, told the
judge a few wholesome truths, and laid the pile of money on the
desk.

"That cleans me out, Judge," he said stolidly. "I wasn't such a
bad husband, at that. I got sore--but I'll bet you get sore
yourself and tell your wife what-for, now and then. I didn't get
a square deal, but that's all right. I'm giving a better deal
than I got. Now you can keep that money and pay it out to Marie
as she needs it, for herself and the kid. But for the Lord's
sake, Judge, don't let that wildcat of a mother of hers get her
fingers into the pile! She framed this deal, thinking she'd get a
haul outa me this way. I'm asking you to block that little game.
I've held out ten dollars, to eat on till I strike something. I'm
clean; they've licked the platter and broke the dish. So don't
never ask me to dig up any more, because I won't--not for you
nor no other darn man. Get that."

This, you must know, was not in the courtroom, so Bud was not
fined for contempt. The judge was a married man himself, and he
may have had a sympathetic understanding of Bud's position. At
any rate he listened unofficially, and helped Bud out with the
legal part of it, so that Bud walked out of the judge's office
financially free, even though he had a suspicion that his freedom
would not bear the test of prosperity, and that Marie's mother
would let him alone only so long as he and prosperity were
strangers.



CHAPTER THREE. TEN DOLLARS AND A JOB FOB BUD

To withhold for his own start in life only one ten-dollar bill
from fifteen hundred dollars was spectacular enough to soothe
even so bruised an ego as Bud Moore carried into the judge's
office. There is an anger which carries a person to the extreme
of self-sacrifice, in the subconscious hope of exciting pity for
one so hardly used. Bud was boiling with such an anger, and it
demanded that he should all but give Marie the shirt off his
back, since she had demanded so much--and for so slight a
cause.

Bud could not see for the life of him why Marie should have
quit for that little ruction. It was not their first quarrel, nor
their worst; certainly he had not expected it to be their last.
Why, he asked the high heavens, had she told him to bring home a
roll of cotton, if she was going to leave him? Why had she turned
her back on that little home, that had seemed to mean as much to
her as it had to him?

Being kin to primitive man, Bud could only bellow rage when he
should have analyzed calmly the situation. He should have seen
that Marie too had cabin fever, induced by changing too suddenly
from carefree girlhood to the ills and irks of wifehood and
motherhood. He should have known that she had been for two months
wholly dedicated to the small physical wants of their baby, and
that if his nerves were fraying with watching that incessant
servitude, her own must be close to the snapping point; had
snapped, when dusk did not bring him home repentant.

But he did not know, and so he blamed Marie bitterly for the
wreck of their home, and he flung down all his worldly goods
before her, and marched off feeling self-consciously proud of his
martyrdom. It soothed him paradoxically to tell himself that he
was "cleaned"; that Marie had ruined him absolutely, and that he
was just ten dollars and a decent suit or two of clothes better
off than a tramp. He was tempted to go back and send the ten
dollars after the rest of the fifteen hundred, but good sense
prevailed. He would have to borrow money for his next meal, if he
did that, and Bud was touchy about such things.

He kept the ten dollars therefore, and went down to the garage
where he felt most at home, and stood there with his hands in his
pockets and the corners of his mouth tipped downward--normally
they had a way of tipping upward, as though he was secretly
amused at something--and his eyes sullen, though they carried
tiny lines at the corners to show how they used to twinkle. He
took the ten-dollar bank note from his pocket, straightened out
the wrinkles and looked at it disdainfully. As plainly as though
he spoke, his face told what he was thinking about it: that this
was what a woman had brought him to! He crumpled it up and made a
gesture as though he would throw it into the street, and a man
behind him laughed abruptly. Bud scowled and turned toward him a
belligerent glance, and the man stopped laughing as suddenly as
he had begun.

"If you've got money to throw to the birds, brother, I guess I
won't make the proposition I was going to make. Thought I could
talk business to you, maybe--but I guess I better tie a can to
that idea."

Bud grunted and put the ten dollars in his pocket.

"What idea's that?"

"Oh, driving a car I'm taking south. Sprained my shoulder, and
don't feel like tackling it myself. They tell me in here that you
aren't doing anything now--" He made the pause that asks for an
answer.

"They told you right. I've done it."

The man's eyebrows lifted, but since Bud did not explain, he
went on with his own explanation.

"You don't remember me, but I rode into Big Basin with you last
summer. I know you can drive, and it doesn't matter a lot whether
it's asphalt or cow trail you drive over."

Bud was in too sour a mood to respond to the flattery. He did
not even grunt.

"Could you take a car south for me? There'll be night driving,
and bad roads, maybe--"

"If you know what you say you know about my driving, what's the
idea--asking me if I can?"

"Well, put it another way. Will you?"

"You're on. Where's the car? Here?" Bud sent a seeking look
into the depths of the garage. He knew every car in there. "What
is there in it for me?" he added perfunctorily, because he would
have gone just for sake of getting a free ride rather than stay
in San Jose over night.

"There's good money in it, if you can drive with your mouth
shut. This isn't any booster parade. Fact is--let's walk to
the depot, while I tell you." He stepped out of the doorway, and
Bud gloomily followed him. "Little trouble with my wife," the man
explained apologetically. "Having me shadowed, and all that sort
of thing. And I've got business south and want to be left alone
to do it. Darn these women!" he exploded suddenly.

Bud mentally said amen, but kept his mouth shut upon his
sympathy with the sentiment.

"Foster's my name. Now here's a key to the garage at this
address." He handed Bud a padlock key and an address scribbled on
a card. "That's my place in Oakland, out by Lake Merritt. You go
there to-night, get the car, and have it down at the Broadway
Wharf to meet the 11:30 boat--the one the theater crowd uses.
Have plenty of gas and oil; there won't be any stops after we
start. Park out pretty well near the shore end as close as you
can get to that ten-foot gum sign, and be ready to go when I
climb in. I may have a friend with me. You know Oakland?"

"Fair to middling. I can get around by myself."

"Well, that's all right. I've got to go back to the city--
catching the next train. You better take the two-fifty to
Oakland. Here's money for whatever expense there is. And say! put
these number plates in your pocket, and take off the ones on the
car. I bought these of a fellow that had a smash--they'll do
for the trip. Put them on, will you? She's wise to the car
number, of course. Put the plates you take off under the seat
cushion; don't leave 'em. Be just as careful as if it was a
life-and-death matter, will you? I've got a big deal on, down
there,and I don't want her spilling the beans just to satisfy a
grudge--which she would do in a minute. So don't fail to be at
the ferry, parked so you can slide out easy. Get down there by
that big gum sign. I'll find you, all right."

"I'll be there." Bud thrust the key and another ten dollars into
his pocket and turned away.

"And don't say anything--"

"Do I look like an open-faced guy?"

The man laughed. "Not much, or I wouldn't have picked you for
the trip." He hurried down to the depot platform, for his train
was already whistling, farther down the yards.

Bud looked after him, the corners of his mouth taking their
normal, upward tilt. It began to look as though luck had not
altogether deserted him, in spite of the recent blow it had
given. He slid the wrapped number plates into the inside pocket
of his overcoat, pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and
walked up to the cheap hotel which had been his bleak substitute
for a home during his trouble. He packed everything he owned--
a big suitcase held it all by squeezing--paid his bill at the
office, accepted a poor cigar, and in return said, yes, he was
going to strike out and look for work; and took the train for
Oakland.

A street car landed him within two blocks of the address on the
tag, and Bud walked through thickening fog and dusk to the place.
Foster had a good-looking house, he observed. Set back on the
middle of two lots, it was, with a cement drive sloping up from
the street to the garage backed against the alley. Under cover of
lighting a cigarette, he inspected the place before he ventured
farther. The blinds were drawn down--at least upon the side
next the drive. On the other he thought he caught a gleam of
light at the rear; rather, the beam that came from a gleam of
light in Foster's dining room or kitchen shining on the next
house. But he was not certain of it, and the absolute quiet
reassured him so that he went up the drive, keeping on the grass
border until he reached the garage. This, he told himself, was
just like a woman--raising the deuce around so that a man had
to sneak into his own place to get his own car out of his own
garage. If Foster was up against the kind of deal Bud had been up
against, he sure had Bud's sympathy, and he sure would get the
best help Bud was capable of giving him.

The key fitted the lock, and Bud went in, set down his
suitcase, and closed the door after him. It was dark as a pocket
in there, save where a square of grayness betrayed a window. Bud
felt his way to the side of the car, groped to the robe rail,
found a heavy, fringed robe, and curtained the window until he
could see no thread of light anywhere; after which he ventured to
use his flashlight until he had found the switch and turned on
the light.

There was a little side door at the back, and it was fastened
on the inside with a stout hook. Bud thought for a minute, took a
long chance, and let himself out into the yard, closing the door
after him. He walked around the garage to the front and satisfied
himself that the light inside did not show. Then he went around
the back of the house and found that he had not been mistaken
about the light. The house was certainly occupied, and like the
neighboring houses seemed concerned only with the dinner hour of
the inmates. He went back, hooked the little door on the inside,
and began a careful inspection of the car he was to drive.

It was a big, late-modeled touring car, of the kind that sells
for nearly five thousand dollars. Bud's eyes lightened with
satisfaction when he looked at it. There would be pleasure as
well as profit in driving this old girl to Los Angeles, he told
himself. It fairly made his mouth water to look at her standing
there. He got in and slid behind the wheel and fingered the gear
lever, and tested the clutch and the foot brake--not because
he doubted them, but because he had a hankering to feel their
smoothness of operation. Bud loved a good car just as he had
loved a good horse in the years behind him. Just as he used to
walk around a good horse and pat its sleek shoulder and feel the
hard muscles of its trim legs, so now he made love to this big
car. Let that old hen of Foster's crab the trip south? He should
sa-a-ay not!

There did not seem to be a thing that he could do to her, but
nevertheless he got down and, gave all the grease cups a turn,
removed the number plates and put them under the rear seat
cushion, inspected the gas tank and the oil gauge and the fanbelt
and the radiator, turned back the trip-mileage to zero--
professional driving had made Bud careful as a taxi driver about
recording the mileage of a trip--looked at the clock set in
the instrument board, and pondered.

What if the old lady took a notion to drive somewhere? She
would miss the car and raise a hullabaloo, and maybe crab the
whole thing in the start. In that case, Bud decided that the best
way would be to let her go. He could pile on to the empty trunk
rack behind, and manage somehow to get off with the car when she
stopped. Still, there was not much chance of her going out in the
fog--and now that he listened, he heard the drip of rain. No,
there was not much chance. Foster had not seemed to think there
was any chance of the car being in use, and Foster ought to know.
He would wait until about ten-thirty, to play safe, and then go.

Rain spelled skid chains to Bud. He looked in the tool box,
found a set, and put them on. Then, because he was not going to
take any chances, he put another set, that he found hanging up,
on the front wheels. After that he turned out the light, took
down the robe and wrapped himself in it, and laid himself down on
the rear seat to wait for ten-thirty.

He dozed, and the next he knew there was a fumbling at the door
in front, and the muttering of a voice. Bud slid noiselessly out
of the car and under it, head to the rear where he could crawl
out quickly. The voice sounded like a man, and presently the door
opened and Bud was sure of it. He caught a querulous sentence or
two.

"Door left unlocked--the ignorant hound--Good thing I
don't trust him too far--" Some one came fumbling in and
switched on the light. "Careless hound--told him to be careful
--never even put the robe on the rail where it belongs--and
then they howl about the way they're treated! Want more wages--
don't earn what they do get--"

Bud, twisting his head, saw a pair of slippered feet beside the
running board. The owner of the slippers was folding the robe and
laying it over the rail, and grumbling to himself all the while.
"Have to come out in the rain--daren't trust him an inch--
just like him to go off and leave the door unlocked--" With a
last grunt or two the mumbling ceased. The light was switched
off, and Bud heard the doors pulled shut, and the rattle of the
padlock and chain. He waited another minute and crawled out.

"Might have told me there was a father-in-law in the outfit,"
he grumbled to himself. "Big a butt-in as Marie's mother, at
that. Huh. Never saw my suit case, never noticed the different
numbers, never got next to the chains--huh! Regular old he-hen,
and I sure don't blame Foster for wanting to tie a can to the
bunch."

Very cautiously he turned his flashlight on the face of the
automobile clock. The hour hand stood a little past ten, and Bud
decided he had better go. He would have to fill the gas tank, and
get more oil, and he wanted to test the air in his tires. No
stops after they started, said Foster; Bud had set his heart on
showing Foster something in the way of getting a car over the
road.

Father-in-law would holler if he heard the car, but Bud did not
intend that father-in-law should hear it. He would much rather
run the gauntlet of that driveway then wait in the dark any
longer. He remembered the slope down to the street, and grinned
contentedly. He would give father-in-law a chance to throw a fit,
next morning.

He set his suit case in the tonneau, went out of the little
door, edged around to the front and very, very cautiously he
unlocked the big doors and set them open. He went in and felt the
front wheels, judged that they were set straight, felt around the
interior until his fingers touched a block of wood and stepped
off the approximate length of the car in front of the garage,
allowing for the swing of the doors, and placed the block there.
Then he went back, eased off the emergency brake, grabbed a good
handhold and strained forward.

The chains hindered, but the floor sloped to the front a
trifle, which helped. In a moment he had the satisfaction of
feeling the big car give, then roll slowly ahead. The front
wheels dipped down over the threshold, and Bud stepped upon the
running board, took the wheel, and by instinct more than by sight
guided her through the doorway without a scratch. She rolled
forward like a black shadow until a wheel jarred against the
block, whereupon he set the emergency brake and got off,
breathing free once more. He picked up the block and carried it
back, quietly closed the big doors and locked them, taking time
to do it silently. Then, in a glow of satisfaction with his work,
he climbed slowly into the car, settled down luxuriously in the
driver's seat, eased off the brake, and with a little lurch of
his body forward started the car rolling down the driveway.

There was a risk, of course, in coasting out on to the street
with no lights, but he took it cheerfully, planning to dodge if
he saw the lights of another car coming. It pleased him to
remember that the street inclined toward the bay. He rolled past
the house without a betraying sound, dipped over the curb to the
asphalt, swung the car townward, and coasted nearly half a block
with the ignition switch on before he pushed up the throttle, let
in his clutch, and got the answering chug-chug of the engine.
With the lights on full he went purring down the street in the
misty fog, pleased with himself and his mission.



CHAPTER FOUR. HEAD SOUTH AND KEEP GOING

At a lunch wagon down near the water front, Bud stopped and
bought two "hot dog" sandwiches and a mug of hot coffee boiled
with milk in it and sweetened with three cubes of sugar. "O-oh,
boy!" he ejaculated gleefully when he set his teeth into biscuit
and hot hamburger. Leaning back luxuriously in the big car, he
ate and drank until he could eat and drink no more. Then, with a
bag of bananas on the seat beside him, he drove on down to the
mole, searching through the drizzle for the big gum sign which
Foster had named. Just even with the coughing engine of a waiting
through train he saw it, and backed in against the curb, pointing
the car's radiator toward the mainland. He had still half an hour
to wait, and he buttoned on the curtains of the car, since a wind
from across the bay was sending the drizzle slantwise; moreover
it occurred to him that Foster would not object to the
concealment while they were passing through Oakland. Then he
listlessly ate a banana while he waited.

The hoarse siren of a ferryboat bellowed through the murk. Bud
started the engine, throttled it down to his liking, and left it
to warm up for the flight. He ate another banana, thinking lazily
that he wished he owned this car. For the first time in many a
day his mind was not filled and boiling over with his trouble.
Marie and all the bitterness she had come to mean to him receded
into the misty background of his mind and hovered there, an
indistinct memory of something painful in his life.

A street car slipped past, bobbing down the track like a duck
sailing over ripples. A local train clanged down to the depot and
stood jangling its bell while it disgorged passengers for the
last boat to the City whose wall of stars was hidden behind the
drizzle and the clinging fog. People came straggling down the
sidewalk--not many, for few had business with the front end of
the waiting trains. Bud pushed the throttle up a little. His
fingers dropped down to the gear lever, his foot snuggled against
the clutch pedal.

Feet came hurrying. Two voices mumbled together. "Here he is,"
said one. "That's the number I gave him." Bud felt some one step
hurriedly upon the running board. The tonneau door was yanked
open. A man puffed audibly behind him. "Yuh ready?" Foster's
voice hissed in Bud's ear.

"R'aring to go." Bud heard the second man get in and shut the
door, and he jerked the gear lever into low. His foot came gently
back with the clutch, and the car slid out and away.

Foster settled back on the cushions with a sigh. The other man
was fumbling the side curtains, swearing under his breath when
his fingers bungled the fastenings.

"Everything all ready?" Foster's voice was strident with
anxiety.

"Sure thing."

"Well, head south--any road you know best. And keep going,
till I tell you to stop. How's the oil and gas?"

"Full up. Gas enough for three hundred miles. Extra gallon of
oil in the car. What d'yah want--the speed limit through town?"

"Nah. Side streets, if you know any. They might get quick
action and telephone ahead."

"Leave it to me, brother."

Bud did not know for sure, never having been pursued; but it
seemed to him that a straightaway course down a main street where
other cars were scudding homeward would be the safest route,
because the simplest. He did not want any side streets in his, he
decided--and maybe run into a mess of street-improvement
litter, and have to back trail around it. He held the car to a
hurry-home pace that was well within the law, and worked into the
direct route to Hayward. He sensed that either Foster or his
friend turned frequently to look back through the square
celluloid window, but he did not pay much attention to them, for
the streets were greasy with wet, and not all drivers would equip
with four skid chains. Keeping sharp lookout for skidding cars
and unexpected pedestrians and street-car crossings and the like
fully occupied Bud.

For all that, an occasional mutter came unheeded to his ears,
the closed curtains preserving articulate sounds like room walls.

"He's all right," he heard Foster whisper once. "Better than if
he was in on it." He did not know that Foster was speaking of
him.

"--if he gets next," the friend mumbled.

"Ah, quit your worrying," Foster grunted. "The trick's turned;
that's something."

Bud was under the impression that they were talking about
father-in-law, who had called Foster a careless hound; but
whether they were or not concerned him so little that his own
thoughts never flagged in their shuttle-weaving through his mind.
The mechanics of handling the big car and getting the best speed
out of her with the least effort and risk, the tearing away of
the last link of his past happiness and his grief; the feeling
that this night was the real parting between him and Marie, the
real stepping out into the future; the future itself, blank
beyond the end of this trip, these were quite enough to hold Bud
oblivious to the conversation of strangers.

At dawn they neared a little village. Through this particular
county the road was unpaved and muddy, and the car was a sight to
behold. The only clean spot was on the windshield, where Bud had
reached around once or twice with a handful of waste and cleaned
a place to see through. It was raining soddenly, steadily, as
though it always had rained and always would rain.

Bud turned his face slightly to one side. "How about stopping;
I'll have to feed her some oil--and it wouldn't hurt to fill
the gas tank again. These heavy roads eat up a lot of extra
power. What's her average mileage on a gallon, Foster?"

"How the deuce should I know?" Foster snapped, just coming out
of a doze.

"You ought to know, with your own car--and gas costing what
it does."

"Oh!--ah--what was it you asked?" Foster yawned aloud. "I
musta been asleep."

"I guess you musta been, all right," Bud grunted. "Do you want
breakfast here, or don't you? I've got to stop for gas and oil;
that's what I was asking?"

The two consulted together, and finally told Bud to stop at the
first garage and get his oil and gas. After that he could drive
to a drug store and buy a couple of thermos bottles, and after
that he could go to the nearest restaurant and get the bottles
filled with black coffee, and have lunch put up for six people.
Foster and his friend would remain in the car.

Bud did these things, revising the plan to the extent of eating
his own breakfast at the counter in the restaurant while the
lunch was being prepared in the kitchen.

From where he sat he could look across at the muddy car
standing before a closed millinery-and-drygoods store. It surely
did not look much like the immaculate machine he had gloated over
the evening before, but it was a powerful, big brute of a car and
looked its class in every line. Bud was proud to drive a car like
that. The curtains were buttoned down tight, and he thought
amusedly of the two men huddled inside, shivering and hungry, yet
refusing to come in and get warmed up with a decent breakfast.
Foster, he thought, must certainly be scared of his wife, if he
daren't show himself in this little rube town. For the first time
Bud had a vagrant suspicion that Foster had not told quite all
there was to tell about this trip. Bud wondered now if Foster was
not going to meet a "Jane" somewhere in the South. That
terrifying Mann Act would account for his caution much better
than would the business deal of which Foster had hinted.

Of course, Bud told himself while the waiter refilled his
coffee cup, it was none of his business what Foster had up his
sleeve. He wanted to get somewhere quickly and quietly, and Bud
was getting him there. That was all he need to consider. Warmed
and once more filled with a sense of well-being, Bud made
himself a cigarette before the lunch was ready, and with his arms
full of food he went out and across the street. Just before he
reached the car one of the thermos bottles started to slide down
under his elbow. Bud attempted to grip it against his ribs, but
the thing had developed a slipperiness that threatened the whole
load, so he stopped to rearrange his packages, and got an
irritated sentence or two from his passengers.

"Giving yourself away like that! Why couldn't you fake up a
mileage? Everybody lies or guesses about the gas--"

"Aw, what's the difference? The simp ain't next to anything. He
thinks I own it."

"Well, don't make the mistake of thinking he's a sheep. Once he
--"

Bud suddenly remembered that he wanted something more from the
restaurant, and returned forth-with, slipping thermos bottle and
all. He bought two packages of chewing gum to while away the time
when he could not handily smoke, and when he returned to the car
he went muttering disapproving remarks about the rain and the mud
and the bottles. He poked his head under the front curtain and
into a glum silence. The two men leaned back into the two corners
of the wide seat, with their heads drawn down into their coat
collars and their hands thrust under the robe. Foster reached
forward and took a thermos bottle, his partner seized another.

"Say, you might get us a bottle of good whisky, too," said
Foster, holding out a small gold piece between his gloved thumb
and finger. "Be quick about it though--we want to be traveling.
Lord, it's cold! "

Bud went into a saloon a few doors up the street, and was back
presently with the bottle and the change. There being nothing
more to detain them there, he kicked some of the mud off his
feet, scraped off the rest on the edge of the running board and
climbed in, fastening the curtain against the storm. "Lovely
weather," he grunted sarcastically. "Straight on to Bakersfield,
huh?"

There was a minute of silence save for the gurgling of liquid
running out of a bottle into an eager mouth. Bud laid an arm
along the back of his seat and waited, his head turned toward
them. "Where are you fellows going, anyway?" he asked
impatiently.

"Los An--" the stranger gurgled, still drinking.

"Yuma!" snapped Foster. "You shut up, Mert. I'm running this."

"Better--"

"Yuma. You hit the shortest trail for Yuma, Bud. I'm running
this."

Foster seemed distinctly out of humor. He told Mert again to
shut up, and Mert did so grumblingly, but somewhat diverted and
consoled, Bud fancied, by the sandwiches and coffee--and the
whisky too, he guessed. For presently there was an odor from the
uncorked bottle in the car.

Bud started and drove steadily on through the rain that never
ceased. The big car warmed his heart with its perfect
performance, its smooth, effortless speed, its ease of handling.
He had driven too long and too constantly to tire easily, and he
was almost tempted to settle down to sheer enjoyment in driving
such a car. Last night he had enjoyed it, but last night was not
to-day.

He wished he had not overheard so much, or else had overheard
more. He was inclined to regret his retreat from the acrimonious
voices as being premature. Just why was he a simp, for instance?
Was it because he thought Foster owned the car? Bud wondered
whether father-in-law had not bought it, after all. Now that he
began thinking from a different angle, he remembered that father-
in-law had behaved very much like the proud possessor of a new
car. It really did not look plausible that he would come out in
the drizzle to see if Foster's car was safely locked in for the
night. There had been, too, a fussy fastidiousness in the way the
robe had been folded and hung over the rail. No man would do that
for some other man's property, unless he was paid for it.

Wherefore, Bud finally concluded that Foster was not above
helping himself to family property. On the whole, Bud did not
greatly disapprove of that; he was too actively resentful of his
own mother-in-law. He was not sure but he might have done
something of the sort himself, if his mother-in-law had possessed
a six-thousand-dollar car. Still, such a car generally means a
good deal to the owner, and he did not wonder that Foster was
nervous about it.

But in the back of his mind there lurked a faint
dissatisfaction with this easy explanation. It occurred to him
that if there was going to be any trouble about the car, he might
be involved beyond the point of comfort. After all, he did not
know Foster, and he had no more reason for believing Foster's
story than he had for doubting. For all he knew, it might not be
a wife that Foster was so afraid of.

Bud was not stupid. He was merely concerned chiefly with his
own affairs--a common enough failing, surely. But now that he
had thought himself into a mental eddy where his own affairs
offered no new impulse toward emotion, he turned over and over in
his mind the mysterious trip he was taking. It had come to seem
just a little too mysterious to suit him, and when Bud Moore was
not suited he was apt to do something about it.

What he did in this case was to stop in Bakersfield at a garage
that had a combination drugstore and news-stand next door. He
explained shortly to his companions that he had to stop and buy a
road map and that he wouldn't be long, and crawled out into the
rain. At the open doorway of the garage he turned and looked at
the car. No, it certainly did not look in the least like the
machine he had driven down to the Oakland mole--except, of
course, that it was big and of the same make. It might have been
empty, too, for all the sign it gave of being occupied. Foster
and Mert evidently had no intention whatever of showing
themselves.

Bud went into the drugstore, remained there for five minutes
perhaps, and emerged with a morning paper which he rolled up and
put into his pocket. He had glanced through its feature news, and
had read hastily one front-page article that had nothing whatever
to do with the war, but told about the daring robbery of a
jewelry store in San Francisco the night before.

The safe, it seemed, had been opened almost in plain sight of
the street crowds, with the lights full on in the store. A clever
arrangement of two movable mirrors had served to shield the thief
--or thieves. For no longer than two or three minutes, it
seemed, the lights had been off, and it was thought that the
raiders had used the interval of darkness to move the mirrors
into position. Which went far toward proving that the crime had
been carefully planned in advance. Furthermore, the article
stated with some assurance that trusted employees were involved.

Bud also had glanced at the news items of less importance, and
had been startled enough--yet not so much surprised as he
would have been a few hours earlier--to read, under the
caption: DARING THIEF STEALS COSTLY CAR, to learn that a certain
rich man of Oakland had lost his new automobile. The address of
the bereaved man had been given, and Bud's heart had given a flop
when he read it. The details of the theft had not been told, but
Bud never noticed their absence. His memory supplied all that for
him with sufficient vividness.

He rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and with the paper stuffed
carelessly into his pocket he went to the car, climbed in, and
drove on to the south, just as matter-of-factly as though he had
not just then discovered that he, Bud Moore, had stolen a six-
thousand-dollar automobile the night before.



CHAPTER FIVE. BUD CANNOT PERFORM MIRACLES

They went on and on, through the rain and the wind, sometimes
through the mud as well, where the roads were not paved. Foster
had almost pounced upon the newspaper when he discovered it in
Bud's pocket as he climbed in, and Bud knew that the two read
that feature article avidly. But if they had any comments to
make, they saved them for future privacy. Beyond a few muttered
sentences they were silent.

Bud did not care whether they talked or not. They might have
talked themselves hoarse, when it came to that, without changing
his opinions or his attitude toward them. He had started out the
most unsuspecting of men, and now he was making up for it by
suspecting Foster and Mert of being robbers and hypocrites and
potential murderers. He could readily imagine them shooting him
in the back of the head while he drove, if that would suit their
purpose, or if they thought that he suspected them.

He kept reviewing his performance in that garage. Had he really
intended to steal the car, he would not have had the nerve to
take the chances he had taken. He shivered when he recalled how
he had slid under the car when the owner came in. What if the man
had seen him or heard him? He would be in jail now, instead of
splashing along the highway many miles to the south. For that
matter, he was likely to land in jail, anyway, before he was done
with Foster, unless he did some pretty close figuring. Wherefore
he drove with one part of his brain, and with the other he
figured upon how he was going to get out of the mess himself--
and land Foster and Mert deep in the middle of it. For such was
his vengeful desire.

After an hour or so, when his stomach began to hint that it was
eating time for healthy men, he slowed down and turned his head
toward the tonneau. There they were, hunched down under the robe,
their heeds drawn into their collars like two turtles half asleep
on a mud bank.

"Say, how about some lunch?" he demanded. "Maybe you fellows can
get along on whisky and sandwiches, but I'm doing the work; and
if you notice, I've been doing it for about twelve hours now
without any let-up. There's a town ahead here a ways--"

"Drive around it, then," growled Foster, lifting his chin to
stare ahead through the fogged windshield. "We've got hot coffee
here, and there's plenty to eat. Enough for two meals. How far
have we come since we started?"

"Far enough to be called crazy if we go much farther without a
square meal," Bud snapped. Then he glanced at the rumpled
newspaper and added carelessly, "Anything new in the paper?"

"No!" Mert spoke up sharply. "Go on. You're doing all right so
far--don't spoil it by laying down on your job!"

"Sure, go on!" Foster urged. "We'll stop when we get away from
this darn burg, and you can rest your legs a little while we
eat."

Bud went on, straight through the middle of the town without
stopping. They scurried down a long, dismal lane toward a low-
lying range of hills pertly wooded with bald patches of barren
earth and rock. Beyond were mountains which Bud guessed was the
Tehachapi range. Beyond them, he believed he would find desert
and desertion. He had never been over this road before, so he
could no more than guess. He knew that the ridge road led to Los
Angeles, and he did not want anything of that road. Too many
travelers. He swung into a decent-looking road that branched off
to the left, wondering where it led, but not greatly caring. He
kept that road until they had climbed over a ridge or two and
were in the mountains. Soaked wilderness lay all about them,
green in places where grass would grow, brushy in places, barren
and scarred with outcropping ledges, pencilled with wire fences
drawn up over high knolls.

In a sequestered spot where the road hugged close the concave
outline of a bushy bluff, Bud slowed and turned out behind a
fringe of bushes, and stopped.

"This is safe enough," he announced, "and my muscles are kinda
crampy. I'll tell the world that's been quite some spell of
straight driving."

Mert grunted, but Foster was inclined to cheerfulness. "You're
some driver, Bud. I've got to hand it to you."

Bud grinned. "All right, I'll take it--half of it, anyway,
if you don't mind. You must remember I don't know you fellows.
Most generally I collect half in advance, on a long trip like
this." Foster's eyes opened, but he reached obediently inside his
coat. Mert growled inaudible comments upon Bud's nerve.

"Oh, we can't kick, Mert," Foster smoothed him down
diplomatically. "He's delivered the goods, so far. And he
certainly does know how to put a car over the road. He don't know
us, remember!"

Mert grunted again and subsided. Foster extracted a bank note
from his bill-folder, which Bud observed had a prosperous
plumpness, and held it out to Bud.

"I guess fifty dollars won't hurt your feelings, will it,
brother? That's more than you'd charge for twice the trip, but we
appreciate a tight mouth, and the hurry-up trip you've made of
it, and all that It's special work, and we're willing to pay a
special price. See?"

"Sure. But I only want half, right now. Maybe," he added with
the lurking twinkle in his eyes, "I won't suit yuh quite so well
the rest of the way. I'll have to go b'-guess and b'-gosh from
here on. I've got some change left from what I bought for yuh
this morning too. Wait till I check up."

Very precisely he did so, and accepted enough from Foster to
make up the amount to twenty-five dollars. He was tempted to take
more. For one minute he even contemplated holding the two up and
taking enough to salve his hurt pride and his endangered
reputation. But he did not do anything of the sort, of course;
let's believe he was too honest to do it even in revenge for the
scurvy trick they had played him.

He ate a generous lunch of sandwiches and dill pickles and a
wedge of tasteless cocoanut cake, and drank half a pint or so of
the hot, black coffee, and felt more cheerful.

"Want to get down and stretch your legs? I've got to take a
look at the tires, anyway. Thought she was riding like one was
kinda flat, the last few miles."

They climbed out stiffly into the rain, stood around the car
and stared at it and at Bud testing his tires, and walked off
down the road for a little distance where they stood talking
earnestly together. From the corner of his eye Bud caught Mert
tilting his head that way, and smiled to himself. Of course they
were talking about him! Any fool would know that much. Also they
were discussing the best means of getting rid of him, or of
saddling upon him the crime of stealing the car, or some other
angle at which he touched their problem.

Under cover of testing the rear wheel farthest from them, he
peeked into the tonneau and took a good look at the small
traveling bag they had kept on the seat between them all the way.
He wished he dared--But they were coming back, as if they
would not trust him too long alone with that bag. He bent again
to the tire, and when they climbed back into the curtained car he
was getting the pump tubing out to pump up that particular tire a
few pounds.

They did not pay much attention to him. They seemed preoccupied
and not too friendly with each other, Bud thought. Their general
air of gloom he could of course lay to the weather and the fact
that they had been traveling for about fourteen hours without any
rest; but there was something more than that in the atmosphere.
He thought they had disagreed, and that he was the subject of
their disagreement.

He screwed down the valve cap, coiled the pump tube and stowed
it away in the tool box, opened the gas tank, and looked in--
and right there he did something else; something that would have
spelled disaster if either of them had seen him do it. He spilled
a handful of little round white objects like marbles into the
tank before he screwed on the cap, and from his pocket he pulled
a little paper box, crushed it in his hand, and threw it as far
as he could into the bushes. Then, whistling just above his
breath, which was a habit with Bud when his work was going along
pleasantly, he scraped the mud off his feet, climbed in, and
drove on down the road.

The big car picked up speed on the down grade, racing along as
though the short rest had given it a fresh enthusiasm for the
long road that wound in and out and up and down and seemed to
have no end. As though he joyed in putting her over the miles,
Bud drove. Came a hill, he sent her up it with a devil-may-care
confidence, swinging around curves with a squall of the powerful
horn that made cattle feeding half a mile away on the slopes lift
their startled heads and look.

"How much longer are you good for, Bud?" Foster leaned forward
to ask, his tone flattering with the praise that was in it.

"Me? As long as this old boat will travel," Bud
flung back gleefully, giving her a little more speed
as they rocked over a culvert and sped away to the
next hill. He chuckled, but Foster had settled back
again satisfied, and did not notice.

Halfway up the next hill the car slowed suddenly, gave a snort,
gasped twice as Bud retarded the spark to help her out, and,
died. She was a heavy car to hold on that stiff grade, and in
spite of the full emergency brake helped out with the service
brake, she inched backward until the rear wheels came full
against a hump across the road and held.

Bud did not say anything; your efficient chauffeur reserves his
eloquence for something more complex than a dead engine. He took
down the curtain on that side, leaned out into the rain and
inspected the road behind him, shifted into reverse, and backed
to the bottom.

"What's wrong?" Foster leaned forward to ask senselessly.

"When I hit level ground, I'm going to find out," Bud retorted,
still watching the road and steering with one hand. "Does the old
girl ever cut up with you on hills?"

"Why--no. She never has," Foster answered dubiously.

"Reason I asked, she didn't just choke down from the pull. She
went and died on me."

"That's funny," Foster observed weakly.

On the level Bud went into neutral and pressed the self-starter
with a pessimistic deliberation. He got three chugs and a
backfire into the carburetor, and after that silence. He tried it
again, coaxing her with the spark and throttle. The engine gave a
snort, hesitated and then, quite suddenly, began to throb with
docile regularity that seemed to belie any previous intention of
"cutting up."

Bud fed her the gas and took a run at the hill. She went up
like a thoroughbred and died at the top, just when the road had
dipped into the descent. Bud sent her down hill on compression,
but at the bottom she refused to find her voice again when he
turned on the switch and pressed the accelerator. She simply
rolled down to the first incline and stopped there like a balky
mule.

"Thunder!" said Bud, and looked around at Foster. "Do you
reckon the old boat is jinxed, just because I said I could drive
her as far as she'd go? The old rip ain't shot a cylinder since
we hit the top of the hill."

"Maybe the mixture--"

"Yeah," Bud interrupted with a secret grin, "I've been wondering
about that, and the needle valve, and the feed pipe, and a few
other little things. Well, we'll have a look."

Forthwith he climbed out into the drizzle and began a
conscientious search for the trouble. He inspected the needle
valve with much care, and had Foster on the front seat trying to
start her afterwards. He looked for short circuit. He changed the
carburetor adjustment, and Foster got a weary chug-chug that
ceased almost as soon as it had begun. He looked all the spark
plugs over, he went after the vacuum feed and found that working
perfectly. He stood back, finally, with his hands on his hips,
and stared at the engine and shook his head slowly twice.

Foster, in the driver's seat, swore and tried again to start
it. "Maybe if you cranked it," he suggested tentatively.

"What for? The starter turns her over all right. Spark's all
right too, strong and hot. However--" With a sigh of
resignation Bud got out what tools he wanted and went to work.
Foster got out and stood around, offering suggestions that were
too obvious to be of much use, but which Bud made it a point to
follow as far as was practicable.

Foster said it must be the carburetor, and Bud went
relentlessly after the carburetor. He impressed Foster with the
fact that he knew cars, and when he told Foster to get in and try
her again, Foster did so with the air of having seen the end of
the trouble. At first it did seem so, for the engine started at
once and worked smoothly until Bud had gathered his wrenches off
the running board and was climbing it, when it slowed down and
stopped, in spite of Foster's frantic efforts to keep it alive
with spark and throttle.

"Good Glory!" cried Bud, looking reproachfully in at Foster.
"What'd yuh want to stop her for?"

"I didn't!" Foster's consternation was ample proof of his
innocence. "What the devil ails the thing?"

"You tell me, and I'll fix it," Bud retorted savagely. Then he
smoothed his manner and went back to the carburetor. "Acts like
the gas kept choking off," he said, "but it ain't that. She's
O.K. I know, 'cause I've tested it clean back to tank. There's
nothing the matter with the feed--she's getting gas same as
she has all along. I can take off the mag. and see if anything's
wrong there; but I'm pretty sure there ain't. Couldn't any water
or mud get in--not with that oil pan perfect. She looks dry as
a bone, and clean. Try her again, Foster; wait till I set the
spark about right. Now, you leave it there, and give her the gas
kinda gradual, and catch her when she talks. We'll see--"

They saw that she was not going to "talk" at all. Bud swore a
little and got out more tools and went after the magneto with
grim determination. Again Foster climbed out and stood in the
drizzle and watched him. Mert crawled over into the front seat
where he could view the proceedings through the windshield. Bud
glanced up and saw him there, and grinned maliciously. "Your
friend seems to love wet weather same as a cat does," he observed
to Foster. "He'll be terrible happy if you're stalled here till
you get a tow in somewhere."

"It's your business to see that we aren't stalled," Mert
snapped at him viciously. "You've got to make the thing go.
You've got to!"

"Well, I ain't the Almighty," Bud retorted acidly. "I can't
perform miracles while yuh wait."

"Starting a cranky car doesn't take a miracle," whined Mert.
"Anybody that knows cars--"

"She's no business to be a cranky car," Foster interposed
pacifically. "Why, she's practically new!" He stepped over a
puddle and stood beside Bud, peering down at the silent engine.
"Have you looked at the intake valve?" he asked pathetically.

"Why, sure. It's all right. Everything's all right, as far as I
can find out." Bud looked Foster straight in the eye--and if
his own were a bit anxious, that was to be expected.

"Everything's all right," he added measuredly. "Only, she won't
go." He waited, watching Foster's face.

Foster chewed a corner of his lip worriedly. "Well, what do you
make of it?" His tone was helpless.

Bud threw out his two hands expressively, and shook his head.
He let down the hood, climbed in, slid into the driver's seat,
and went through the operation of starting. Only, he didn't
start. The self-starter hummed as it spun the flywheel, but
nothing whatever was elicited save a profane phrase from Foster
and a growl from Mert. Bud sat back flaccid, his whole body
owning defeat.

"Well, that means a tow in to the nearest shop," he stated,
after a minute of dismal silence. "She's dead as a doornail."

Mert sat back in his corner of the seat, muttering into his
collar. Foster looked at him, looked at Bud, looked at the car
and at the surrounding hills. He seemed terribly depressed and at
the same time determined to make the best of things. Bud could
almost pity him--almost.

"Do you know how far it is back to that town we passed?" he
asked Bud spiritlessly after a while. Bud looked at the
speedometer, made a mental calculation and told him it was
fifteen miles. Towns, it seemed, were rather far apart in this
section of the country.

"Well, let's see the road map. How far is it to the next one?"

"Search me. They didn't have any road maps back there. Darned
hick burg."

Foster studied awhile. "Well, let's see if we can push her off
the middle of the road--and then I guess we'll have to let you
walk back and get help. Eh, Mert? There's nothing else we can
do--"

"What yuh going to tell 'em?" Mert demanded suspiciously.

Bud permitted a surprised glance to slant back at Mert. "Why,
whatever you fellows fake up for me to tell," he said naively. "I
know the truth ain't popular on this trip, so get together and
dope out something. And hand me over my suit case, will yuh? I
want some dry socks to put on when I get there."

Foster very obligingly tilted the suit case over into the front
seat. After that he and Mert, as by a common thought impelled,
climbed out and went over to a bushy live oak to confer in
privacy. Mert carried the leather bag with him.

By the time they had finished and were coming back, Bud had
gone through his belongings and had taken out a few letters that
might prove awkward if found there later, two pairs of socks and
his razor and toothbrush. He was folding the socks to stow away
in his pocket when they got in.

"You can say that we're from Los Angeles, and on our way home,"
Foster told him curtly. It was evident to Bud that the two had
not quite agreed upon some subject they had discussed. "That's
all right. I'm Foster, and he's named Brown--if any one gets
too curious"

"Fine. Fine because it's so simple. I'll eat another sandwich,
if you don't mind, before I go. I'll tell a heartless world that
fifteen miles is some little stroll--for a guy that hates
walkin'."

"You're paid for it," Mert growled at him rudely.

"Sure, I'm paid for it," Bud assented placidly, taking a bite.
They might have wondered at his calm, but they did not. He ate
what he wanted, took a long drink of the coffee, and started off
up the hill they had rolled down an hour or more past.

He walked briskly, and when he was well out of earshot Bud
began to whistle. Now and then he stopped to chuckle, and
sometimes he frowned at an uncomfortable thought. But on the
whole he was very well pleased with his present circumstances.



CHAPTER SIX. BUD TAKES TO THE HILLS

In a little village which he had glimpsed from the top of a
hill Bud went into the cluttered little general store and bought
a few blocks of slim, evil smelling matches and a couple of
pounds of sliced bacon, a loaf of stale bread, and two small cans
of baked beans. He stuffed them all into the pocket of his
overcoat, and went out and hunted up a long-distance telephone
sign. It had not taken him more than an hour to walk to the town,
for he had only to follow a country road that branched off that
way for a couple of miles down a valley. There was a post office
and the general store and a couple of saloons and a blacksmith
shop that was thinking of turning into a garage but had gone no
further than to hang out a sign that gasoline was for sale there.
It was all very sordid and very lifeless and altogether
discouraging in the drizzle of late afternoon. Bud did not see
half a dozen human beings on his way to the telephone office,
which he found was in the post office.

He called up San Francisco, and got the chief of police's
office on the wire, and told them where they would find the men
who had robbed that jewelry store of all its diamonds and some
other unset jewels. Also he mentioned the car that was stolen,
and that was now stalled and waiting for some kind soul to come
and give it a tow.

He speedily had all the attention of the chief, and having
thought out in advance his answers to certain pertinent
questions, he did not stutter when they were asked. Yes, he had
been hired to drive the ear south, and he had overheard enough to
make him suspicious on the way. He knew that they had stolen the
car. He was not absolutely sure that they were the diamond
thieves but it would be easy enough to find out, because officers
sent after them would naturally be mistaken for first aid from
some garage, and the cops could nab the men and look into that
grip they were so careful not to let out of their sight.

"Are you sure they won't get the car repaired and go on?" It
was perfectly natural that the chief should fear that very thing.

"No chance!" Bud chuckled into the 'phone. "Not a chance in the
world, chief. They'll be right there where I left 'em, unless
some car comes along and gives 'em a tow. And if that happens
you'll be able to trace 'em." He started to hang up, and added
another bit of advice. "Say, chief, you better tell whoever gets
the car, to empty the gas tank and clean out the carburetor and
vacuum feed--and she'll go, all right! Adios."

He hung up and paid the charge hurriedly, and went out and down
a crooked little lane that led between bushes to a creek and
heavy timber. It did not seem to him advisable to linger; the San
Francisco chief of police might set some officer in that village
on his trail, just as a matter of precaution. Bud told himself
that he would do it were he in the chief's place. When he reached
the woods along the creek he ran, keeping as much as possible on
thick leaf mold that left the least impression. He headed to the
east, as nearly as he could judge, and when he came to a rocky
canyon he struck into it.

He presently found himself in a network of small gorges that
twisted away into the hills without any system whatever, as far
as he could see. He took one that seemed to lead straightest
toward where the sun would rise next morning, and climbed
laboriously deeper and deeper into the hills. After awhile he had
to descend from the ridge where he found himself standing bleakly
revealed against a lowering, slaty sky that dripped rain
incessantly. As far as he could see were hills and more hills,
bald and barren except in certain canyons whose deeper shadows
told of timber. Away off to the southwest a bright light showed
briefly--the headlight of a Santa Fe train, he guessed it must
be. To the east which be faced the land was broken with bare
hills that fell just short of being mountains. He went down the
first canyon that opened in that direction, ploughing doggedly
ahead into the unknown.

That night Bud camped in the lee of a bank that was fairly well
screened with rocks and bushes, and dined off broiled bacon and
bread and a can of beans with tomato sauce, and called it a meal.
At first he was not much inclined to take the risk of having a
fire big enough to keep him warm. Later in the night he was
perfectly willing to take the risk, but could not find enough dry
wood. His rainproofed overcoat became quite soggy and damp on the
inside, in spite of his efforts to shield himself from the rain.
It was not exactly a comfortable night, but he worried through it
somehow.

At daylight he opened another can of beans and made himself two
thick bean sandwiches, and walked on while he ate them slowly.
They tasted mighty good, Bud thought--but he wished fleetingly
that he was back in the little green cottage on North Sixth
Street, getting his own breakfast. He felt as though he could
drink about four caps of coffee; and as to hotcakes--! But
breakfast in the little green cottage recalled Marie, and Marie
was a bitter memory. All the more bitter because he did not know
where burrowed the root of his hot resentment. In a strong man's
love for his home and his mate was it rooted, and drew therefrom
the wormwood of love thwarted and spurned.

After awhile the high air currents flung aside the clouds like
curtains before a doorway. The sunlight flashed out dazzlingly
and showed Bud that the world, even this tumbled world, was good
to look upon. His instincts were all for the great outdoors, and
from such the sun brings quick response. Bud lifted his head,
looked out over the hills to where a bare plain stretched in the
far distance, and went on more briskly.

He did not meet any one at all; but that was chiefly because he
did not want to meet any one. He went with his ears and his eyes
alert, and was not above hiding behind a clump of stunted bushes
when two horsemen rode down a canyon trail just below him. Also
he searched for roads and then avoided them. It would be a fat
morsel for Marie and her mother to roll under their tongues, he
told himself savagely, if he were arrested and appeared in the
papers as one of that bunch of crooks!

Late that afternoon, by traveling steadily in one direction, he
topped a low ridge and saw an arm of the desert thrust out to
meet him. A scooped gully with gravelly sides and rocky bottom
led down that way, and because his feet were sore from so much
sidehill travel, Bud went down. He was pretty well fagged too,
and ready to risk meeting men, if thereby he might gain a square
meal. Though he was not starving, or anywhere near it, he craved
warm food and hot coffee.

So when he presently came upon two sway-backed burros that
showed the sweaty imprint of packsaddles freshly removed, and a
couple of horses also sweat roughened, he straightway assumed
that some one was making camp not far away. One of the horses was
hobbled, and they were all eating hungrily the grass that grew
along the gully's sides. Camp was not only close, but had not
yet reached suppertime, Bud guessed from the well-known range
signs.

Two or three minutes proved him right. He came upon a man just
driving the last tent peg. He straightened up and stared at Bud
unblinkingly for a few seconds.

"Howdy, howdy," he greeted him then with tentative
friendliness, and went on with his work. "You lost?" he added
carefully. A man walking down out of the barren hills, and
carrying absolutely nothing in the way of camp outfit, was enough
to whet the curiosity of any one who knew that country. At the
same time curiosity that became too apparent might be extremely
unwelcome. So many things may drive a man into the hills--but
few of them would bear discussion with strangers.

"Yes. I am, and I ain't." Bud came up and stood with his hands
in his coat pockets, and watched the old fellow start his fire.

"Yeah--how about some supper? If you am, and you ain't as
hungry as you look--"

"I'll tell the world I am, and then some. I ain't had a square
meal since yesterday morning, and I grabbed that at a quick-lunch
joint. I'm open to supper engagements, brother."

"All right. There's a side of bacon in that kyack over there.
Get it out and slice some off, and we'll have supper before you
know it. We will," he added pessimistically, "if this dang brush
will burn."

Bud found the bacon and cut according to his appetite. His host
got out a blackened coffeepot and half filled it with water from
a dented bucket, and balanced it on one side of the struggling
fire. He remarked that they had had some rain, to which Bud
agreed. He added gravely that he believed it was going to clear
up, though--unless the wind swung back into the storm quarter.
Bud again professed cheerfully to be in perfect accord. After
which conversational sparring they fell back upon the little
commonplaces of the moment.

Bud went into a brush patch and managed to glean an armful of
nearly dry wood, which he broke up with the axe and fed to the
fire, coaxing it into freer blazing. The stranger watched him
unobtrusively, critically, pottering about while Bud fried the
bacon.

"I guess you've handled a frying pan before, all right," he
remarked at last, when the bacon was fried without burning.

Bud grinned. "I saw one in a store window once as I was going
by," he parried facetiously. "That was quite a while back."

"Yeah. Well, how's your luck with bannock? I've got it all
mixed."

"Dump her in here, ole-timer," cried Bud, holding out the
frying pan emptied of all but grease. "Wish I had another hot
skillet to turn over the top."

"I guess you've been there, all right," the other chuckled.
"Well, I don't carry but the one frying pan. I'm equipped light,
because I've got to outfit with grub, further along."

"Well, we'll make out all right, just like this." Bud propped
the handle of the frying pan high with a forked stick, and stood
up. "Say, my name's Bud Moore, and I'm not headed anywhere in
particular. I'm just traveling in one general direction, and
that's with the Coast at my back. Drifting, that's all. I ain't
done anything I'm ashamed of or scared of, but I am kinda bashful
about towns. I tangled with a couple of crooks, and they're
pulled by now, I expect. I'm dodging newspaper notoriety. Don't
want to be named with 'em at all." He, spread his hands with an
air of finality. "That's my tale of woe," he supplemented,
"boiled down to essentials. I just thought I'd tell you."

"Yeah. Well, my name's Cash Markham, and I despise to have
folks get funny over it. I'm a miner and prospector, and I'm
outfitting for a trip for another party, looking up an old
location that showed good prospects ten years ago. Man died, and
his wife's trying to get the claim relocated. Get you a plate
outa that furtherest kyack, and a cup. Bannock looks about done,
so we'll eat."

That night Bud shared Cash Markham's blankets, and in the
morning he cooked the breakfast while Cash Markham rounded up the
burros and horses. In that freemasonry of the wilderness they
dispensed with credentials, save those each man carried in his
face and in his manner. And if you stop to think of it, such
credentials are not easily forged, for nature writes them down,
and nature is a truth-loving old dame who will never lead you far
astray if only she is left alone to do her work in peace.

It transpired, in the course of the forenoon's travel, that
Cash Markham would like to have a partner, if he could find a man
that suited. One guessed that he was fastidious in the matter of
choosing his companions, in spite of the easy way in which he had
accepted Bud. By noon they had agreed that Bud should go along
and help relocate the widow's claim. Cash Markham hinted that
they might do a little prospecting on their own account. It was a
country he had long wanted to get into, he said, and while he
intended to do what Mrs. Thompson had hired him to do, still
there was no law against their prospecting on their own account.
And that, he explained, was one reason why he wanted a good man
along. If the Thompson claim was there, Bud could do the work
under the supervision of Cash, and Cash could prospect.

"And anyway, it's bad policy for a man to go off alone in this
part of the country," he added with a speculative look across the
sandy waste they were skirting at a pace to suit the heavily
packed burros. "Case of sickness or accident--or suppose the
stock strays off--it's bad to be alone."

"Suits me fine to go with you," Bud declared. "I'm next thing
to broke, but I've got a lot of muscle I can cash in on the deal.
And I know the open. And I can rock a gold-pan and not spill out
all the colors, if there is any--and whatever else I know is
liable to come in handy, and what I don't know I can learn."

"That's fair enough. Fair enough," Markham agreed. "I'll allow
you wages on the Thompson job' till you've earned enough to
balance up with the outfit. After that it'll be fifty-fifty.
How'll that be, Bud?"

"Fair enough--fair enough," Bud retorted with faint mimicry.
"If I was all up in the air a few days ago, I seem to have lit on
my feet, and that's good enough for me right now. We'll let 'er
ride that way."

And the twinkle, as he talked, was back in his eyes, and the
smiley quirk was at the corner of his lips.



CHAPTER SEVEN. INTO THE DESERT

If you want to know what mad adventure Bud found himself
launched upon, just read a few extracts from the diary which Cash
Markham, being a methodical sort of person, kept faithfully from
day to day, until he cut his thumb on a can of tomatoes which he
had been cutting open with his knife. Alter that Bud kept the
diary for him, jotting down the main happenings of the day. When
Cash's thumb healed so that he could hold a pencil with some
comfort, Bud thankfully relinquished the task. He hated to write,
anyway, and it seemed to him that Cash ought to trust his memory
a little more than he did.

I shall skip a good many days, of course--though the diary
did not, I assure you.

First, there was the outfit. When they had outfitted at Needles
for the real trip, Cash set down the names of all living things
in this wise:

Outfit, Cassius B. Markham, Bud Moore, Daddy a bull terrier,
bay horse, Mars, Pete a sorrel, Ed a burro, Swayback a jinny,
Maude a jack, Cora another jinny, Billy a riding burro & Sways
colt & Maude colt a white mean looking little devil

Sat. Apr. 1.

Up at 7:30. Snowing and blowing 3 ft. of snow on ground.
Managed to get breakfast & returned to bed. Fed Monte & Peter our
cornmeal, poor things half frozen. Made a fire in tent at 1:30 &
cooked a meal. Much smoke, ripped hole in back of tent. Three
burros in sight weathering fairly well. No sign of let up
everything under snow & wind a gale. Making out fairly well under
adverse conditions. Worst weather we have experienced.

Apr. 2.

Up at 7 A.M. Fine & sunny snow going fast. Fixed up tent &
cleaned up generally. Alkali flat a lake, can't cross till it
dries. Stock some scattered, brought them all together.

Apr. 3.

Up 7 A.M. Clear & bright. Snow going fast. All creeks flowing.
Fine sunny day.

Apr. 4.

Up 6 A.M. Clear & bright. Went up on divide, met 3 punchers
who said road impassable. Saw 2 trains stalled away across alkali
flat. Very boggy and moist.

Apr.5.

Up 5 A.M. Clear & bright. Start out, on Monte & Pete at
6. Animals traveled well, did not appear tired. Feed fine all
over. Plenty water everywhere.

Not much like Bud's auto stage, was it? But the very novelty of
it, the harking back to old plains days, appealed to him and sent
him forward from dull hardship to duller discomfort, and kept the
quirk at the corners of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. Bud
liked to travel this way, though it took them all day long to
cover as much distance as he had been wont to slide behind him in
an hour. He liked it--this slow, monotonous journeying across
the lean land which Cash had traversed years ago, where the
stark, black pinnacles and rough knobs of rock might be hiding
Indians with good eyesight and a vindictive temperament. Cash
told him many things out of his past, while they poked along,
driving the packed burros before them. Things which he never had
set down in his diary--things which he did not tell to any one
save his few friends.

But it was not always mud and rain and snow, as Cash's meager
chronicle betrays.

May 6.

Up at sunrise. Monte & Pete gone leaving no tracks. Bud found
them 3 miles South near Indian village. Bud cut his hair, did a
good job. Prospector dropped into camp with fist full of good
looking quartz. Stock very thirsty all day. Very hot Tied Monte &
Pete up for night.

May 8.

Up 5:30. Fine, but hot. Left 7:30. Pete walked over a
sidewinder & Bud shot him ten ft. in air. Also prior killed
another beside road. Feed as usual, desert weeds. Pulled grain
growing side of track and fed plugs. Water from cistern & R.R.
ties for fuel. Put up tent for shade. Flies horrible.

May 9.

Up 4. Left 6. Feed as usual. Killed a sidewinder in a bush with
3 shots of Krag. Made 21 m. today. R.R. ties for fuel Cool breeze
all day.

May 11.

Up at sunrise. Bud washed clothes. Tested rock. Fine looking
mineral country here. Dressed Monte's withers with liniment
greatly reducing swelling from saddle-gall. He likes to have it
dressed & came of his own accord. Day quite comfortable.

May 15.

Up 4. Left 6:30 over desert plain & up dry wash. Daddy suffered
from heat & ran into cactus while looking for shade. Got it in
his mouth, tongue, feet & all over body. Fixed him up poor
creature groaned all evening & would not eat his supper. Poor
feed & wood here. Water found by digging 2 ft. in sand in
sandstone basins in bed of dry wash. Monte lay down en route.
Very hot & all suffered from heat.

May 16.

Bud has sick headache. Very hot so laid around camp all day.
Put two blankets up on tent pols for sun break. Daddy under
weather from cactus experience. Papago Indian boy about 18 on
fine bay mare driving 4 ponies watered at our well. Moon almost
full, lots of mocking birds. Pretty songs.

May 17.

Up 7:30 Bud some better. Day promises hot, but slight breeze.
White gauzy clouds in sky. Daddy better. Monte & Pete gone all
day. Hunted twice but impossible to track them in this stony soil
Bud followed trail, found them 2 mi. east of here in flat sound
asleep about 3 P.M. At 6 went to flat 1/4 mi. N. of camp to tie
Pete, leading Monte by bell strap almost stepped on rattler 3 ft.
long. 10 rattles & a button. Killed him. To date, 1 Prairie
rattler, 3 Diamond back & 8 sidewinders, 12 in all. Bud feels
better.

May 18.

At 4 A. M. Bud woke up by stock passing camp. Spoke to me who
half awake hollered, "sic Daddy!" Daddy sicced 'em & they went up
bank of wash to right. Bud swore it was Monte & Pete. I went to
flat & found M. & P. safe. Water in sink all gone. Bud got
stomach trouble. I threw up my breakfast. Very hot weather.
Lanced Monte's back & dressed it with creoline. Turned them loose
& away they put again.

Soon after this they arrived at the place where Thompson had
located his claim. It was desert, of course, sloping away on one
side to a dreary waste of sand and weeds with now and then a
giant cactus standing gloomily alone with malformed lingers
stretched stiffly to the staring blue sky. Behind where they
pitched their final camp--Camp 48, Cash Markham recorded it in
his diary--the hills rose. But they were as stark and barren
almost as the desert below. Black rock humps here and there, with
ledges of mineral bearing rock. Bushes and weeds and dry washes
for the rest, with enough struggling grass to feed the horses and
burros if they rustled hard enough for it.

They settled down quietly to a life of grinding monotony that
would have driven some men crazy. But Bud, because it was a man's
kind of monotony, bore it cheerfully. He was out of doors, and he
was hedged about by no rules or petty restrictions. He liked Cash
Markham and he liked Pete, his saddle horse, and he was fond of
Daddy who was still paying the penalty of seeking too carelessly
for shade and, according to Cash's record, "getting it in his
mouth, tongue, feet & all over body." Bud liked it--all except
the blistering heat and the "side-winders" and other rattlers. He
did not bother with trying to formulate any explanation of why he
liked it. It may have been picturesque, though picturesqueness
of that sort is better appreciated when it is seen through the
dim radiance of memory that blurs sordid details. Certainly it
was not adventurous, as men have come to judge adventure.

Life droned along very dully. Day after day was filled with
petty details. A hill looks like a mountain if it rises abruptly
out of a level plain, with no real mountains in sight to measure
it by. Here's the diary to prove how little things came to look
important because the days held no contrasts. If it bores you to
read it, think what it must have been to live it.

June 10.

Up at 6:30 Baked till 11. Then unrigged well and rigged up an
incline for the stock to water. Bud dressed Daddy's back. Stock
did not come in all morning, but Monte & Pete came in before
supper. Incline water shaft does not work. Prospected & found 8
ledges. Bud found none.

June 11.

After breakfast fixed up shack--shelves, benches, tools,
etc. Cleaned guns. Bud dressed Daddy's back which is much better.
Strong gold in test of ledge, I found below creek. Took more
specimens to sample. Cora comes in with a little black colt newly
born. Proud as a bull pup with two tails. Monte & Pete did not
come in so we went by lantern light a mile or so down the wash &
found them headed this way & snake them in to drink about 80
gallons of water apiece. Daddy tied up and howling like a demon
all the while. Bud took a bath.

June 12.

Bud got out and got breakfast again. Then started off on Pete
to hunt trail that makes short cut 18 miles to Bend. Roofed the
kitchen. Bud got back about 1:30, being gone 6 hours. Found trail
& two good ledges. Cora & colt came for water. Other burros did
not. Brought in specimens from ledge up creek that showed very
rich gold in tests. Burros came in at 9:30. Bud got up and tied
them up.

June 13.

Bud gets breakfast. I took Sway & brought in load of wood. Bud
went out and found a wash lined with good looking ledges. Hung up
white rags on bushes to identify same. Found large ledge of good
quartz showing fine in tests about one mile down wash. Bud
dressed Daddy's back. Located a claim west of Thompson's. Burros
did not come in except Cora & colt. Pete & Monte came separated.

June 14.

Bud got breakfast & dressed Daddy's back. Very hot day. Stock
came in about 2. Tied up Billy Maud & Cora. Bud has had headache.
Monte & Pete did not come in. Bud went after them & found them 4
miles away where we killed the Gila monster. Sent 2 samples from
big ledge to Tucson for assay. Daddy better.

June 15.

Up 2.30. Bud left for Bend at 4. Walked down to flat but could
not see stock. About 3 Cora & Colt came in for water & Sway & Ed
from the south about 5. No Monte. Monte got in about midnight &
went past kitchen to creek on run. Got up, found him very nervous
& frightened & tied him up.

June 17.

Bud got back 4 P.M. in gale of wind & sand. Burros did not come
in for water. Very hot. Bud brought canned stuff. Rigged gallows
for No. 2 shaft also block & tackle & pail for drinking water,
also washed clothes. While drying went around in cap undershirt &
shoes.

June 18.

Burros came in during night for water. Hot as nether depths of
infernal regions. Went up on hill a mile away. Seamed with veins
similar to shaft No. 2 ore. Blew in two faces & got good looking
ore seamed with a black incrustation, oxide of something, but
what could not determine. Could find neither silver nor copper in
it. Monte & Pete came in about 1 & tied them up. Very hot.
Hottest day yet, even the breeze scorching. Test of ore showed
best yet. One half of solution in tube turning to chloride of
gold, 3 tests showing same. Burros except Ed & Cora do not come
in days any more. Bud made a gate for kitchen to keep burros out.

The next morning it was that Cash cut the ball of his right
thumb open on the sharp edge of a tomato can. He wanted the diary
to go on as usual. He had promised, he said, to keep one for the
widow who wanted a record of the way the work was carried on, and
the progress made. Bud could not see that there had been much
progress, except as a matter of miles. Put a speedometer on one
of his legs, he told Cash, and he'd bet it would register more
mileage chasing after them fool burros than his auto stage could
show after a full season. As for working the widow's claim, it
was not worth working, from all he could judge of it. And if it
were full of gold as the United States treasury, the burros took
up all their time so they couldn't do much. Between doggone stock
drinking or not drinking and the darn fool diary that had to be
kept, Bud opined that they needed an extra hand or two. Bud was
peevish, these days. Gila Bend had exasperated him because it was
not the town it called itself, but a huddle of adobe huts. He had
come away in the sour mood of a thirsty man who finds an alkali
spring sparkling deceptively under a rock. Furthermore, the
nights had been hot and the mosquitoes a humming torment. And as
a last affliction he was called upon to keep the diary going. He
did it, faithfully enough but in a fashion of his own.

First he read back a few pages to get the hang of the thing.
Then he shook down Cash's fountain pen, that dried quickly in
that heat. Then he read another page as a model, and wrote:

June 19.

Mosquitoes last night was worse than the heat and that was
worse than Gila Bend's great white way. Hunted up the burros.
Pete and Monte came in and drank. Monte had colic. We fed them
and turned them loose but the blamed fools hung around all day
and eat up some sour beans I throwed out. Cash was peeved and
swore they couldn't have another grain of feed. But Monte come to
the shack and watched Cash through a knothole the size of one eye
till Cash opened up his heart and the bag. Cash cut his thumb
opening tomatoes. The tomatoes wasn't hurt any.

June 20.

Got breakfast. Bill and harem did not come to water. Cash done
the regular hike after them. His thumb don't hurt him for hazing
donkeys. Bill and harem come in after Cash left. They must of saw
him go. Cash was out four hours and come in mad. Shot a
hidrophobia skunk out by the creek. Nothing doing. Too hot.

June 21.

The sun would blister a mud turtle so he'd holler. Cash put in
most of day holding a parasol over his garden patch. Burros did
not miss their daily drink. Night brings mosquitoes with their
wings singed but their stingers O.K. They must hole up daytimes
or they would fry.

June 22.

Thought I know what heat was. I never did before. Cash took a
bath. It was his first. Burros did not come to water. Cash and I
tried to sleep on kitchen roof but the darned mosquitoes fed up
on us and then played heavenly choir all night.

June 25.

Cash got back from Bend. Thumb is better and he can have this
job any time now. He hustled up a widow that made a couple of
mosquito bags to go over our heads. No shape (bags, not widow)
but help keep flies and mosquitoes from chewing on us all day and
all night. Training for hades. I can stand the heat as well as
the old boy with the pitch-fork. Ain't got used to brimstone yet,
but I'd trade mosquitoes for sulphur smoke and give some boot.
Worried about Cash. He took a bath today again, using water I had
packed for mine. Heat must be getting him.

June 26.

Cash opened up thumb again, trying to brain Pete with rock.
Pete got halfway into kitchen and eat biggest part of a pie I
made. Cash threw jagged rock, hit Pete in side of jaw. Cut big
gash. Swelled now like a punkin. Cash and I tangled over same.
I'm going to quit. I have had enough of this darn country.
Creek's drying up, and mosquitoes have found way to crawl under
bags. Cash wants me to stay till we find good claim, but Cash can
go to thunder.

Then Cash's record goes on:

June 27.

Bud very sick & out of head. Think it is heat, which is
terrible. Talked all night about burros, gasoline, & camphor
balls which he seemed wanting to buy in gunny sack. No sleep for
either. Burros came in for water about daylight. Picketed Monte &
Pete as may need doctor if Bud grows worse. Thumb nearly well.

June 27.
Bud same, slept most of day. Gave liver pills & made gruel of
cornmeal, best could do with present stores. Burros came at about
3 but could not drink owing to bees around water hold. Monte got
stung and kicked over water cans & buckets I had salted for
burros. Burros put for hills again. No way of driving off bees.

June 28.

Burros came & drank in night. Cooler breeze, Bud some better &
slept. Sway has badly swollen neck. May be rattler bite or
perhaps bee. Bud wanted cigarettes but smoked last the day before
he took sick. Gave him more liver pills & sponge off with water
every hour. Best can do under circumstances. Have not prospected
account Bud's sickness.

June 29.

Very hot all day, breeze like blast from furnace. Burros refuse
to leave flat. Bees better, as can't fly well in this wind. Bud
worse. High fever & very restless & flighty. Imagines much
trouble with automobile, talk very technical & can't make head or
tail of it. Monte & Pete did not come in, left soon as turned
loose. No feed for them here & figured Bud too sick to travel or
stay alone so horses useless at present. Sponged frequently with
coolest water can get, seems to give some relief as he is quieter
afterwards.

July 4th.

Monte & Pete came in the night & hung around all day. Drove
them away from vicinity of shack several times but they returned
& moped in shade of house. Terrible hot, strong gusty wind. Bud
sat up part of day, slept rest of time. Looks very thin and great
hollows under eyes, but chief trouble seems to be, no cigarettes.
Shade over radishes & lettice works all right. Watered copiously
at daylight & again at dusk. Doing fine. Fixed fence which M & P.
broke down while tramping around. Prospected west of ranche.
Found enormous ledge of black quartz, looks like sulphur stem
during volcanic era but may be iron. Strong gold & heavy
precipitate in test, silver test poor but on filtering showed
like white of egg in tube (unusual). Clearing iron out showed for
gold the highest yet made, being more pronounced with
Fenosulphate than $1500 rock have seen. Immense ledge of it &
slightest estimate from test at least $10. Did not tell Bud as
keeping for surprise when he is able to visit ledge. Very
monotonous since Bud has been sick. Bud woke up & said Hell of a
Fourth & turned over & went to sleep again with mosquito net over
head to keep off flies. Burros came in after dark, all but Cora &
Colt, which arrived about midnight. Daddy gone since yesterday
morning leaving no trace.

July 5.

Miserable hot night. Burros trickled in sometime during night.
Bud better, managed to walk to big ledge after sundown. Suggests
we call it the Burro Lode. His idea of wit, claims we have
occupied camp all summer for sake of timing burros when they come
to waterhole. Wish to call it Columbia mine for patriotic reasons
having found it on Fourth. Will settle it soon so as to put up
location. Put in 2 shots & pulpel samples for assay. Rigged
windows on shack to keep out bees, nats & flies & mosquitoes. Bud
objects because it keeps out air as well. Took them off. Sick
folks must be humored. Hot, miserable and sleepless. Bud very
restless.

July 6.

Cool wind makes weather endurable, but bees terrible in kitchen
& around water-hole. Flipped a dollar to settle name of big
ledge. Bud won tails, Burro lode. Must cultivate my sense of
humor so as to see the joke. Bud agrees to stay & help develop
claim. Still very weak, puttered around house all day cleaning &
baking bread & stewing fruit which brought bees by millions so we
could not eat same till after dark when they subsided. Bud got
stung twice in kitchen. Very peevish & full of cuss. Says
positively must make trip to Bend & get cigarettes tomorrow or
will blow up whole outfit. Has already blowed up same several
times today with no damage. Burros came in about 5. Monte & Pete
later, tied them up with grain. Pete has very bad eye. Bud will
ride Monte if not too hot for trip. Still no sign of daddy, think
must be dead or stolen though nobody to steal same in country.

July 7.

Put in 2 shots on Burro Lode & got her down to required depth.
Hot. Bud finds old location on widow's claim, upturns all
previous calculation & information given me by her. Wrote letter
explaining same, which Bud will mail. Bud left 4 P.M. should make
Bend by midnight. Much better but still weak Burros came in late
& hung around water hole. Put up monument at Burro Lode. Sent off
samples to assay at Tucson. Killed rattler near shack, making 16
so far killed.

CHAPTER EIGHT. MANY BARREN MONTHS AND MILES

"Well, here come them darn burros, Cash. Cora's colt ain't with
'em though. Poor little devils--say, Cash, they look like hard
sleddin', and that's a fact. I'll tell the world they've got
about as much pep as a flat tire."

"Maybe we better grain 'em again." Cash looked up from studying
the last assay report of the Burro Lode, and his look was not
pleasant. "But it'll cost a good deal, in both time and money.
The feed around here is played out"

"Well, when it comes to that--" Bud cast a glum glance at the
paper Cash was holding.

"Yeah. Looks like everything's about played out. Promising
ledge, too. Like some people, though. Most all its good points is
right on the surface. Nothing to back it up."

"She's sure running light, all right Now," Bud added
sardonically, but with the whimsical quirk withal, "if it was
like a carburetor, and you could give it a richer mixture--"

"Yeah. What do you make of it, Bud?"

"Well--aw, there comes that durn colt, bringing up the drag.
Say Cash, that colt's just about all in. Cora's nothing but a bag
of bones, too. They'll never winter--not on this range, they
won't."

Cash got up and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's
shoulder at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond
them the desert baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above
them the sky glared a brassy blue with never a could. Over a low
ridge came Monte and Pete, walking with heads drooping. Their hip
bones lifted above their ridged paunches, their backbones, peaked
sharp above, their withers were lean and pinched looking. In
August the desert herbage has lost what little succulence it ever
possessed, and the gleanings are scarce worth the walking after.

"They're pretty thin," Cash observed speculatively, as though
be was measuring them mentally for some particular need.

"We'd have to grain 'em heavy till we struck better feed. And
pack light." Bud answered his thought.

"The question is, where shall we head for, Bud? Have you any
particular idea?" Cash looked slightingly down at the assayer's
report. "Such as she is, we've done all we can do to the Burro
Lode, for a year at least," he said. "The assessment work is all
done--or will be when we muck out after that last shot. The
claim is filed--I don't know what more we can do right away.
Do you?"

"Sure thing," grinned Bud. "We can get outa here and go some
place where it's green."

"Yeah." Cash meditated, absently eyeing the burros. "Where it's
green." He looked at the near hills, and at the desert, and at
the dreary march of the starved animals. "It's a long way to
green. country," he said.

They looked at the burros.

"They're tough little devils," Bud observed hopefully. "We
could take it easy, traveling when it's coolest. And by packing
light, and graining the whole bunch--"

"Yeah. We con ease 'em through, I guess. It does seem as
though it would be foolish to hang on here any longer." Carefully
as he made his tests, Cash weighed the question of their going.
"This last report kills any chance of interesting capital to the
extent of developing the claim on a large enough scale to make it
profitable. It's too long a haul to take the ore out, and it's
too spotted to justify any great investment in machinery to
handle it on the ground. And," he added with an undernote of
fierceness, "it's a terrible place for man or beast to stay in,
unless the object to be attained is great enough to justify
enduring the hardships."

"You said a mouthful, Cash. Well, can you leave your seven
radishes and three hunches of lettuce and pull out--say at
daybreak?" Bud turned to him with some eagerness.

Cash grinned sourly. "When it's time to go, seven radishes
can't stop me. No, nor a whole row of 'em--if there was a
whole row."

"And you watered 'em copiously too," Bud murmured, with the
corners of his mouth twitching. "Well, I guess we might as well
tie up the livestock. I'm going to give 'em all a feed of
rolled oats, Cash. We can get along without, and they've got to
have something to put a little heart in 'em. There's a moon to-
night--how about starting along about midnight? That would put
us in the Bend early in the forenoon to-morrow."

"Suits me," said Cash. "Now I've made up my mind about going, I
can't go too soon."

"You're on. Midnight sees us started." Bud went out with ropes
to catch and tie up the burros and their two saddle horses. And
as he went, for the first time in two months he whistled; a
detail which Cash noted with a queer kind of smile.

Midnight and the moon riding high in the purple bowl of sky
sprinkled thick with stars; with a little, warm wind stirring the
parched weeds as they passed; with the burros shuffling single
file along the dim trail which was the short cut through the
hills to the Bend, Ed taking the lead, with the camp kitchen
wabbling lumpily on his back, Cora bringing up the rear with her
skinny colt trying its best to keep up, and with no pack at all;
so they started on the long, long journey to the green country.

A silent journey it was for the most part. The moon and the
starry bowl of sky had laid their spell upon the desert, and the
two men rode wordlessly, filled with vague, unreasoning regret
that they must go. Months they had spent with the desert,
learning well every little varying mood; cursing it for its
blistering heat and its sand storms and its parched thirst and
its utter, blank loneliness. Loving it too, without ever dreaming
that they loved. To-morrow they would face the future with the
past dropping farther and farther behind. To-night it rode with
them.

Three months in that little, rough-walled hut had lent it an
atmosphere of home, which a man instinctively responds to with a
certain clinging affection, however crude may be the shelter he
calls his own. Cash secretly regretted the thirsty death of his
radishes and lettuce which he had planted and tended with such
optimistic care. Bud wondered if Daddy might not stray half-
starved into the shack, and find them gone. While they were
there, he had agreed with Cash that the dog must be dead. But now
he felt uneasily doubtful It would be fierce if Daddy did come
beck now. He would starve. He never could make the trip to the
Bend alone, even if he could track them.

There was, also, the disappointment in the Burro Lode claim. As
Bud planned it, the Burro was packing a very light load--far
lighter than had seemed possible with that strong indication on
the surface. Cash's "enormous black ledge" had shown less and
less gold as they went into it, though it still seemed worth
while, if they had the capital to develop it further. Wherefore
they had done generous assessment work and had recorded their
claim and built their monuments to mark its boundaries. It would
be safe for a year, and by that time--Quien sabe?

The Thompson claim, too, had not justified any enthusiasm
whatever. They had found it, had relocated it, and worked out the
assessment for the widow. Cash had her check for all they had
earned, and he had declared profanely that he would not give his
share of the check for the whole claim.

They would go on prospecting, using the check for a grubstake,
That much they had decided without argument. The gambling
instinct was wide awake in Bud's nature--and as for Cash, he
would hunt gold as long as he could carry pick and pan. They
would prospect as long as their money held out. When that was
gone, they would get more and go on prospecting. But they would
prospect in a green country where wood and water were not so
precious as in the desert and where, Cash averred, the chance of
striking it rich was just as good; better, because they could
kill game and make their grubstake last longer.

Wherefore. they waited in Gila Bend for three days, to
strengthen the weakened animals with rest and good hay and grain.
Then they took again to the trail, traveling as lightly as they
could, with food for themselves and grain for the stock to last
them until they reached Needles. From there with fresh supplies
they pushed on up to Goldfield, found that camp in the throes of
labor disputes, and went on to Tonopah.

There they found work for themselves and the burros, packing
winter supplies to a mine lying back in the hills. They made
money at it, and during the winter they made more. With the
opening of spring they outfitted again and took the trail, their
goal the high mountains south of Honey Lake. They did not hurry.
Wherever the land they traveled through seemed to promise gold,
they would stop and prospect. Many a pan of likely looking dirt
they washed beside some stream where the burros stopped to drink
and feed a little on the grassy banks,

So, late in June, they reached Reno; outfitted and went on
again, traveling to the north, to the green country for which
they yearned, though now they were fairly in it and would have
stopped if any tempting ledge or bar had come in their way. They
prospected every gulch that showed any mineral signs at all. It
was a carefree kind of life, with just enough of variety to hold
Bud's interest to the adventuring. The nomad in him responded
easily to this leisurely pilgrimage. There was no stampede
anywhere to stir their blood with the thought of quick wealth.
There was hope enough, on the other hand, to keep them going.
Cash had prospected and trapped for more than fifteen years now,
and he preached the doctrine of freedom and the great outdoors.

Of what use was a house and lot--and taxes and trouble with
the plumbing? he would chuckle. A tent and blankets and a frying
pan and grub; two good legs and wild country to travel; a gold
pan and a pick--these things, to Cash, spelled independence
and the joy of living. The burros and the two horses were
luxuries, he declared. When they once got located on a good claim
they would sell off everything but a couple of burros--Sway
and Ed, most likely. The others would bring enough for a winter
grubstake, and would prolong their freedom and their independence
just that much. That is, supposing they did not strike a good
claim before then. Cash had learned, he said, to hope high but
keep an eye on the grubstake.

Late in August they came upon a mountain village perched
beside a swift stream and walled in on three sided by pine-
covered mountains. A branch railroad linked the place more or
less precariously with civilization, and every day--unless
there was a washout somewhere, or a snowslide, or drifts too deep
--a train passed over the road. One day it would go up-stream,
and the next day it would come back. And the houses stood drawn
up in a row alongside the track to watch for these passings.

Miners came in with burros or with horses, packed flour and
bacon and tea and coffee across their middles, got drunk, perhaps
as a parting ceremony, and went away into the hills. Cash watched
them for a day or so; saw the size of their grubstakes, asked few
questions and listened to a good deal of small-town gossip, and
nodded his head contentedly. There was gold in these hills. Not
enough, perhaps, to start a stampede with--but enough to keep
wise old hermits burrowing after it.

So one day Bud sold the two horses and one of the saddles, and
Cash bought flour and bacon and beans and coffee, and added other
things quite as desirable but not so necessary. Then they too
went away into the hills.

Fifteen miles from Alpine, as a cannon would shoot; high up in
the hills, where a creek flowed down through a saucerlike basin
under beetling ledges fringed all around with forest, they came,
after much wandering, upon an old log cabin whose dirt roof still
held in spite of the snows that heaped upon it through many a
winter. The ledge showed the scars of old prospect holes, and in
the sand of the creek they found "colors" strong enough to make
it seem worth while to stop here--for awhile, at least.

They cleaned out the cabin and took possession of it, and the
next time they went to town Cash made cautious inquiries about
the place. It was, he learned, an old abandoned claim. Abandoned
chiefly because the old miner who had lived there died one day,
and left behind him all the marks of having died from starvation,
mostly. A cursory examination of his few belongings had revealed
much want, but no gold save a little coarse dust in a small
bottle.

"About enough to fill a rifle ca'tridge," detailed the teller
of the tale. "He'd pecked around that draw for two, three year
mebby. Never showed no gold much, for all the time he spent
there. Trapped some in winter--coyotes and bobcats and skunks,
mostly. Kinda off in the upper story, old Nelson was. I guess he
just stayed there because he happened to light there and didn't
have gumption enough to git out. Hills is full of old fellers
like him. They live off to the'rselves, and peck around and git a
pocket now and then that keeps 'm in grub and tobacco. If you
want to use the cabin, I guess nobody's goin' to care. Nelson
never had any folks, that anybody knows of. Nobody ever bothered
about takin' up the claim after he cashed in, either. Didn't seem
worth nothin' much. Went back to the gov'ment."

"Trapped, you say. Any game around there now?"

"Oh, shore! Game everywhere in these hills, from weasels up to
bear and mountain lion. If you want to trap, that's as good a
place as any, I guess."

So Cash and Bud sold the burros and bought traps and more
supplies, and two window sashes and a crosscut saw and some
wedges and a double-bitted axe, and settled down in Nelson Flat
to find what old Dame Fortune had tucked away in this little side
pocket and forgotten.



CHAPTER NINE. THE BITE OF MEMORY

The heavy boom of a dynamite blast rolled across the fiat to
the hills that flung it back in a tardy echo like a spent ball of
sound. A blob of blue smoke curled out of a hole the size of a
hogshead in a steep bank overhung with alders. Outside, the wind
caught the smoke and carried streamers of it away to play with. A
startled bluejay, on a limb high up on the bank, lifted his slaty
crest and teetered forward, clinging with his toe nails to the
branch while he scolded down at the men who had scared him so. A
rattle of clods and small rocks fell from their high flight into
the sweet air of a mountain sunset.

"Good execution, that was," Cash remarked, craning his neck
toward the hole. "If you're a mind to go on ahead and cook
supper, I'll stay and see if we opened up anything. Or you can
stay, just as you please."

Dynamite smoke invariably made Bud's head ache splittingly.
Cash was not so susceptible. Bud chose the cooking, and went away
down the flat, the bluejay screaming insults after him. He was
frying bacon when Cash came in, a hatful of broken rock riding in
the hollow of his arm.

"Got something pretty good here, Bud--if she don't turn out
like that dang Burro Lode ledge. Look here. Best looking quartz
we've struck yet. What do you think of it?"

He dumped the rock out on the oilcloth behind the sugar can and
directly under the little square window through which the sun was
pouring a lavish yellow flood of light before it dropped behind
the peak. Bud set the bacon back where it would not burn, and
bent over the table to look.

"Gee, but it's heavy!" he cried, picking up a fragment the size
of an egg, and balancing it in his hands. "I don't know a lot
about gold-bearing quartz, but she looks good to me, all right."

"Yeah. It is good, unless I'm badly mistaken. I'll test some
after supper. Old Nelson couldn't have used powder at all, or
he'd have uncovered enough of this, I should think, to show the
rest what he had. Or maybe he died just when he had started that
hole. Seems queer he never struck pay dirt in this flat. Well,
let's eat if it's ready, Bud. Then we'll see."

"Seems kinda queer, don't it, Cash, that nobody stepped in and
filed on any claims here?" Bud dumped half a kettle of boiled
beans into a basin and set it on the table. "Want any prunes to-
night, Cash?"

Cash did not want prunes, which was just as well, seeing there
were none cooked. He sat down and ate, with his mind and his eyes
clinging to the grayish, veined fragments of rock lying on the
table beside his plate.

"We'll send some of that down to Sacramento right away," he
observed, "and have it assayed. And we won't let out anything
about it, Bud--good or bad. I like this flat. I don't want it
mucked over with a lot of gold-crazy lunatics."

Bud laughed and reached for the bacon. "We ain't been followed
up with stampedes so far," he pointed out. "Burro Lode never
caused a ripple in the Bend, you recollect. And I'll tell a
sinful world it looked awful good, too."

"Yeah. Well, Arizona's hard to excite. They've had so dang much
strenuosity all their lives, and then the climate's against
violent effort, either mental or physical. I was calm, perfectly
calm when I discovered that big ledge. It is just as well--
seeing how it petered out."

"What'll you bet this pans out the same?"

"I never bet. No one but a fool will gamble." Cash pressed his
lips together in a way that drove the color from there.

"Oh, yuh don't! Say, you're the king bee of all gamblers. Been
prospecting for fifteen years, according to you--and then
you've got the nerve to say you don't gamble!"

Cash ignored the charge. He picked up a piece of rock and held
it to the fading light. "It looks good," he said again. "Better
than that placer ground down by the creek. That's all right, too.
We can wash enough gold there to keep us going while we develop
this. That is, if this proves as good as it looks."

Bud looked across at him enigmatically. "Well, here's hoping
she's worth a million. You go ahead with your tests, Cash. I'll
wash the dishes."

"Of course," Cash began to conserve his enthusiasm, "there's
nothing so sure as an assay. And it was too dark in the hole to
see how much was uncovered. This may be just a freak deposit.
There may not be any real vein of it. You can't tell until it's
developed further. But it looks good. Awful good."

His makeshift tests confirmed his opinion. Bud started out next
day with three different samples for the assayer, and an air
castle or two to keep him company. He would like to find himself
half owner of a mine worth about a million, he mused. Maybe Marie
would wish then that she had thought twice about quitting him
just on her mother's say-so. He'd like to go buzzing into San
Jose behind the wheel of a car like the one Foster had fooled him
into stealing. And meet Marie, and her mother too, and let them
get an eyeful. He guessed the old lady would have to swallow what
she had said about him being lazy--just because he couldn't
run an auto-stage in the winter to Big Basin! What was the matter
with the old woman, anyway? Didn't he keep Maria in comfort.
Well, he'd like to see her face when he drove along the street in
a big new Sussex. She'd wish she had let him and Marie alone.
They would have made out all right if they had been let alone. He
ought to have taken Marie to some other town, where her mother
couldn't nag at her every day about him. Marie wasn't such a bad
kid, if she were left alone. They might have been happy--

He tried then to shake himself free of thoughts of her. That
was the trouble with him, he brooded morosely. He couldn't let
his thoughts ride free, any more. They kept heading straight for
Marie. He could not see why she should cling so to his memory; he
had not wronged her--unless it was by letting her go without
making a bigger fight for their home. Still, she had gone of her
own free will. He was the one that had been wronged--why,
hadn't they lied about him in court and to the gossipy neighbors?
Hadn't they broke him? No. If the mine panned out big as Cash
seemed to think was likely, the best thing he could do was steer
clear of San Jose. And whether it panned out or not, the best
thing he could do was forget that such girl as Marie had ever
existed..

Which was all very well, as far as it went. The trouble was
that resolving not to think of Marie, calling up all the
bitterness he could muster against her memory, did no more toward
blotting her image from his mind than did the miles and the
months he had put between them.

He reached the town in a dour mood of unrest, spite of the
promise of wealth he carried in his pocket. He mailed the package
and the letter, and went to a saloon and had a highball. He was
not a drinking man--at least, he never had been one, beyond a
convivial glass or two with his fellows--but he felt that day
the need of a little push toward optimism. In the back part of
the room three men were playing freeze-out. Bud went over and
stood with his hands in his pockets and watched them, because
there was nothing else to do, and because he was still having
some trouble with his thoughts. He was lonely, without quite
knowing what ailed him. He hungered for friends to hail him with
that cordial, "Hello, Bud!" when they saw him coming.

No one in Alpine had said hello, Bud, when he came walking in
that day. The postmaster bad given him one measuring glance when
he had weighed the package of ore, but he had not spoken except
to name the amount of postage required. The bartender had made
some remark about the weather, and had smiled with a surface
friendliness that did not deceive Bud for a moment. He knew too
well that the smile was not for him, but for his patronage.

He watched the game. And when the man opposite him pushed back
his chair and, looking up at Bud, asked if he wanted to sit in,
Bud went and sat down, buying a dollar's worth of chips as an
evidence of his intention to play. His interest in the game was
not keen. He played for the feeling it gave him of being one of
the bunch, a man among his friends; or if not friends, at least
acquaintances. And, such was his varying luck with the cards, he
played for an hour or so without having won enough to irritate
his companions. Wherefore he rose from the table at supper time
calling one young fellow Frank quite naturally. They went to the
Alpine House and had supper together, and after that they sat in
the office and talked about automobiles for an hour, which gave
Bud a comforting sense of having fallen among friends.

Later they strolled over to a picture show which ran films two
years behind their first release, and charged fifteen cents for
the privilege of watching them. It was the first theater Bud had
entered since he left San Jose, and at the last minute he
hesitated, tempted to turn back. He hated moving pictures. They
always had love scenes somewhere in the story, and love scenes
hurt. But Frank had already bought two tickets, and it seemed
unfriendly to turn back now. He went inside to the jangling of a
player-piano in dire need of a tuner's service, and sat down near
the back of the hall with his hat upon his lifted knees which
could have used more space between the seats.

While they waited for the program they talked in low tones, a
mumble of commonplaces. Bud forgot for the moment his distaste
for such places, and let himself slip easily back into the old
thought channels, the old habits of relaxation after a day's work
was done. He laughed at the one-reel comedy that had for its
climax a chase of housemaids, policemen, and outraged fruit
vendors after a well-meaning but unfortunate lover. He saw the
lover pulled ignominiously out of a duck pond and soused
relentlessly into a watering trough, and laughed with Frank and
called it some picture.

He eyed a succession of "current events" long since gone stale
out where the world moved swifter than here in the mountains, and
he felt as though he had come once more into close touch with
life. All the dull months he had spent with Cash and the burros
dwarfed into a pointless, irrelevant incident of his life. He
felt that he ought to be out in the world, doing bigger things
than hunting gold that somehow always refused at the last minute
to be found. He stirred restlessly. He was free--there was
nothing to hold him if he wanted to go. The war--he believed
he would go over and take a hand. He could drive an ambulance or
a truck--

Current Events, however, came abruptly to an end; and presently
Bud's vagrant, half-formed desire for achievement merged into
biting recollections. Here was a love drama, three reels of it.
At first Bud watched it with only a vague, disquieting sense of
familiarity. Then abruptly he recalled too vividly the time and
circumstance of his first sight of the picture. It was in San
Jose, at the Liberty. He and Marie had been married two days, and
were living in that glamorous world of the honeymoon, so
poignantly sweet, so marvelous--and so fleeting. He had
whispered that the girl looked like her, and she had leaned
heavily against his shoulder. In the dusk of lowered lights their
hands had groped and found each other, and clung.

The girl did look like Marie. When she turned her head with
that little tilt of the chin, when she smiled, she was like
Marie. Bud leaned forward, staring, his brows drawn together,
breathing the short, quick breaths of emotion focussed upon one
object, excluding all else. Once, when Frank moved his body a
little in the next seat, Bud's hand went out that way
involuntarily. The touch of Frank's rough coat sleeve recalled
him brutally, so that he drew away with a wincing movement as
though he bad been hurt.

All those months in the desert; all those months of the slow
journeying northward; all the fought battles with memory, when he
thought that he had won--all gone for nothing, their slow
anodyne serving but to sharpen now the bite of merciless
remembering. His hand shook upon his knee. Small beads of
moisture oozed out upon his forehead. He sat stunned before the
amazing revelation of how little time and distance had done to
heal his hurt.

He wanted Marie. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted her
in the old days, with a tenderness, an impulse to shield her from
her own weaknesses, her own mistakes. Then--in those old days
--there had been the glamor of mystery that is called romance.
That was gone, worn away by the close intimacies of matrimony. He
knew her faults, he knew how she looked when she was angry and
petulant. He knew how little the real Marie resembled the
speciously amiable, altogether attractive Marie who faced a
smiling world when she went pleasuring. He knew, but--he
wanted her just the same. He wanted to tell her so many things
about the burros, and about the desert--things that would make
her laugh, and things that would make her blink back the tears.
He was homesick for her as he had never been homesick in his life
before. The picture flickered on through scene after scene that
Bud did not see at all, though he was staring unwinkingly at the
screen all the while. The love scenes at the last were poignantly
real, but they passed before his eyes unnoticed. Bud's mind was
dwelling upon certain love scenes of his own. He was feeling
Marie's presence beside him there in the dusk.

"Poor kid--she wasn't so much to blame," he muttered just
above his breath, when the screen was swept clean and blank at
the end of the last reel.

"Huh? Oh, he was the big mutt, right from the start," Frank
replied with the assured air of a connoisseur. "He didn't have
the brains of a bluejay, or he'd have known all the time she was
strong for him."

"I guess that's right," Bud mumbled, but he did not mean what
Frank thought he meant. "Let's go. I want a drink."

Frank was willing enough; too willing, if the truth were known.
They went out into the cool starlight, and hurried across the
side street that was no more than a dusty roadway, to the saloon
where they had spent the afternoon. Bud called for whisky, and
helped himself twice from the bottle which the bartender placed
between them. He did not speak until the second glass was
emptied, and then he turned to Frank with a purple glare in his
eyes.

"Let's have a game of pool or something," he suggested.

"There's a good poker game going, back there," vouchsafed the
bartender, turning his thumb toward the rear, where half a dozen
men were gathered in a close group around a table. "There's some
real money in sight, to-night."

"All right, let's go see." Bud turned that way, Frank following
like a pet dog at his heels.

At dawn the next morning, Bud got up stiffly from the chair
where he had spent the night. His eyeballs showed a network of
tiny red veins, swollen with the surge of alcohol in his blood
and with the strain of staring all night at the cards. Beneath
his eyes were puffy ridges. His cheekbones flamed with the whisky
flush. He cashed in a double-handful of chips, stuffed the money
he had won into his coat pocket, walked, with that stiff
precision of gait by which a drunken man strives to hide his
drunkenness, to the bar and had another drink. Frank was at his
elbow. Frank was staggering, garrulous, laughing a great deal
over very small jokes.

"I'm going to bed," said Bud, his tongue forming the words with
a slow carefulness.

"Come over to my shack, Bud--rotten hotel. My bed's clean,
anyway." Frank laughed and plucked him by the sleeve.

"All right," Bud consented gravely. "We'll take a bottle
along."



CHAPTER TEN. EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS

A man's mind is a tricky thing--or, speaking more exactly, a
man's emotions are tricky things. Love has come rushing to the
beck of a tip-tilted chin, or the tone of a voice, or the droop
of an eyelid. It has fled for cause as slight. Sometimes it runs
before resentment for a real or fancied wrong, but then, if you
have observed it closely, you will see that quite frequently,
when anger grows slow of foot, or dies of slow starvation, love
steals back, all unsuspected and unbidden--and mayhap causes
much distress by his return. It is like a sudden resurrection of
all the loved, long-mourned dead that sleep so serenely in their
tended plots. Loved though they were and long mourned, think of
the consternation if they all came trooping back to take their
old places in life! The old places that have been filled, most of
them, by others who are loved as dearly, who would be mourned if
they were taken away.

Psychologists will tell us all about the subconscious mind, the
hidden loves and hates and longings which we believe are dead and
long forgotten. When one of those emotions suddenly comes alive
and stands, terribly real and intrusive, between our souls and
our everyday lives, the strongest and the best of us may stumble
and grope blindly after content, or reparation, or forgetfulness,
or whatever seems most likely to give relief.

I am apologizing now for Bud, who had spent a good many months
in pushing all thoughts of Marie out of his mind, all hunger for
her out of his heart. He had kept away from towns, from women,
lest he be reminded too keenly of his matrimonial wreck. He had
stayed with Cash and had hunted gold, partly because Cash never
seemed conscious of any need of a home or love or wife or
children, and therefore never reminded Bud of the home and the
wife and the love and the child he had lost out of his own life.
Cash seldom mentioned women at all, and when he did it was in a
purely general way, as women touched some other subject he was
discussing. He never paid any attention to the children they met
casually in their travels. He seemed absolutely self-sufficient,
interested only in the prospect of finding a paying claim. What
he would do with wealth, if so be he attained it, he never seemed
to know or care. He never asked Bud any questions about his
private affairs, never seemed to care how Bud had lived, or
where. And Bud thankfully left his past behind the wall of
silence. So he had come to believe that he was almost as emotion-
proof as Cash appeared to be, and had let it go at that.

Now here be was, with his heart and his mind full of Marie--
after more than a year and a half of forgetting her! Getting
drunk and playing poker all night did not help him at all, for
when he woke it was from a sweet, intimate dream of her, and it
was to a tormenting desire for her, that gnawed at his mind as
hunger gnaws at the stomach. Bud could not understand it. Nothing
like that had ever happened to him before. By all his simple
rules of reckoning he ought to be "over it" by now. He had been,
until he saw that picture.

He was so very far from being over his trouble that he was
under it; a beaten dog wincing under the blows of memory, stung
by the lash of his longing. He groaned, and Frank thought it was
the usual "morning after" headache, and laughed ruefully.

"Same here," he said. "I've got one like a barrel, and I
didn't punish half the booze you did."

Bud did not say anything, but he reached for the bottle, tilted
it and swallowed three times before he stopped.

"Gee!" whispered Frank, a little enviously.

Bud glanced somberly across at Frank, who was sitting by the
stove with his jaws between his palms and his hair toweled,
regarding his guest speculatively.

"I'm going to get drunk again," Bud announced bluntly. "If you
don't want to, you'd better duck. You're too easy led--I saw
that last night. You follow anybody's lead that you happen to be
with. If you follow my lead to-day, you'll be petrified by night.
You better git, and let me go it alone."

Frank laughed uneasily. "Aw, I guess you ain't all that fatal,
Bud. Let's go over and have some breakfast--only it'll be
dinner."

"You go, if you want to." Bud tilted the bottle again, his eyes
half closed while he swallowed. When he had finished, he
shuddered violently at the taste of the whisky. He got up, went
to the water bucket and drank half a dipper of water. "Good
glory! I hate whisky," he grumbled. "Takes a barrel to have any
effect on me too." He turned and looked down at Frank with a
morose kind of pity. "You go on and get your breakfast, kid. I
don't want any. I'll stay here for awhile."

He sat down on the side of the cheap, iron bedstead, and
emptied his pockets on the top quilt. He straightened the
crumpled bills and counted them, and sorted the silver pieces.
All told, he had sixty-three dollars and twenty cents. He sat
fingering the money absently, his mind upon other things. Upon
Marie and the baby, to be exact. He was fighting the impulse to
send Marie the money. She might need it for the kid. If he was
sure her mother wouldn't get any of it... A year and a half was
quite a while, and fifteen hundred dollars wasn't much to live on
these days. She couldn't work, with the baby on her hands...

Frank watched him curiously, his jaws still resting between his
two palms, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen, his lips loose and
trembling. A dollar alarm clock ticked resonantly, punctuated now
and then by the dull clink of silver as Bud lifted a coin and let
it drop on the little pile.

"Pretty good luck you had last night," Frank ventured wishfully.
"They cleaned me."

Bud straightened his drooping shoulders and scooped the money
into his hand. He laughed recklessly, and got up. "We'll try her
another whirl, and see if luck'll bring luck. Come on--let's
go hunt up some of them marks that got all the dough last night.
We'll split, fifty-fifty, and the same with what we win. Huh?"

"You're on, bo--let's go." Bud had gauged him correctly--
Frank would follow any one who would lead. He got up and came to
the table where Bud was dividing the money into two equal sums,
as nearly as he could make change. What was left over--and
that was the three dollars and twenty cents--he tossed into the
can of tobacco on a shelf.

"We'll let that ride--to sober up on, if we go broke," he
grunted. "Come on--let's get action."

Action, of a sort, they proceeded to get. Luck brought luck of
the same complexion. They won in fluctuating spells of good cards
and judicious teamwork. They did not cheat, though Frank was
ready if Bud had led him that way. Frank was ready for anything
that Bud suggested. He drank when Bud drank, went from the first
saloon to the one farther down and across the street, returned to
the first with cheerful alacrity and much meaningless laughter
when Bud signified a desire to change. It soothed Bud and
irritated him by turns, this ready acquiescence of Frank's. He
began to take a malicious delight in testing that acquiescence.
He began to try whether he could not find the end of Frank's
endurance in staying awake, his capacity for drink, his good
nature, his credulity--he ran the scale of Frank's various
qualifications, seeking always to establish a well-defined
limitation somewhere.

But Frank was utterly, absolutely plastic. He laughed and drank
when Bud suggested that they drink. He laughed and played
whatever game Bud urged him into. He laughed and agreed with Bud
when Bud made statements to test the credulity of anyman. He
laughed and said,"Sure. Let's go!" when Bud pined for a change of
scene.

On the third day Bud suddenly stopped in the midst of a game of
pool which neither was steady enough to play, and gravely
inspected the chalked end of his cue.

"That's about enough of this," he said. "We're drunk. We're so
drunk we don't know a pocket from a prospect hole. I'm tired of
being a hog. I'm going to go get another drink and sober up. And
if you're the dog Fido you've been so far, you'll do the same."
He leaned heavily upon the table, and regarded Frank with stern,
bloodshot blue eyes.

Frank laughed and slid his cue the length of the table. He also
leaned a bit heavily. "Sure," he said. "I'm ready, any time you
are."

"Some of these days," Bud stated with drunken deliberation,
"they'll take and hang you, Frank, for being such an agreeable
cuss." He took Frank gravely by the arm and walked him to the
bar, paid for two beers with almost his last dollar, and, still
holding Frank firmly, walked him out of doors and down the street
to Frank's cabin. He pushed him inside and stood looking in upon
him with a sour appraisement.

"You are the derndest fool I ever run across--but at that
you're a good scout too," he informed Frank. "You sober up now,
like I said. You ought to know better 'n to act the way you've
been acting. I'm sure ashamed of you, Frank. Adios--I'm going
to hit the trail for camp." With that he pulled the door shut and
walked away, with that same circumspect exactness in his stride
which marks the drunken man as surely as does a stagger.

He remembered what it was that had brought him to town--
which is more than most men in his condition would have done. He
went to the pest office and inquired for mail, got what proved to
be the assayer's report, and went on. He bought half a dozen
bananas which did not remind him of that night when he had waited
on the Oakland pier for the mysterious Foster, though they might
have recalled the incident vividly to mind had he been sober. He
had been wooing forgetfulness, and for the time being he had won.

Walking up the steep, winding trail that led to Nelson Flat
cleared a little his fogged brain. He began to remember what it
was that he had been fighting to forget. Marie's face floated
sometimes before him, but the vision was misty and remote, like
distant woodland seen through the gray film of a storm. The
thought of her filled him with a vague discomfort now when his
emotions were dulled by the terrific strain he had wilfully put
upon brain and body. Resentment crept into the foreground again.
Marie had made him suffer. Marie was to blame for this beastly
fit of intoxication. He did not love Marie--he hated her. He
did not want to see her, he did not want to think of her. She had
done nothing for him but bring him trouble. Marie, forsooth!
(Only, Bud put it in a slightly different way.)

Halfway to the flat, he met Cash walking down the slope where
the trail seemed tunneled through deep green, so thick stood the
young spruce. Cash was swinging his arms in that free stride of
the man who has learned how to walk with the least effort. He did
not halt when he saw Bud plodding slowly up the trail, but came
on steadily, his keen, blue-gray eyes peering sharply from
beneath his forward tilted hat brim. He came up to within ten
feet of Bud, and stopped.

"Well!" He stood eyeing Bud appraisingly, much as Bud had eyed
Frank a couple of hours before. "I was just starting out to see
what had become of you," he added, his voice carrying the full
weight of reproach that the words only hinted at.

"Well, get an eyeful, if that's what you come for. I'm here--
and lookin's cheap." Bud's anger flared at the disapproval he
read in Cash's eyes, his voice, the set of his lips.

But Cash did not take the challenge. "Did the report come?" he
asked, as though that was the only matter worth discussing.

Bud pulled the letter sullenly from his pocket and gave it to
Cash. He stood moodily waiting while Cash opened and read and
returned it.

"Yeah. About what I thought--only it runs lighter in gold,
with a higher percentage of copper. It'll pay to go on and see
what's at bed rock. If the copper holds up to this all along,
we'll be figuring on the gold to pay for getting the copper. This
is copper country, Bud. Looks like we'd found us a copper mine."
He turned and walked on beside Bud. "I dug in to quite a rich
streak of sand while you was gone," he volunteered after a
silence. "Coarse gold, as high as fifteen cents a pan. I figure
we better work that while the weather's good, and run our tunnel
in on this other when snow comes."

Bud turned his head and looked at Cash intently for a minute.
"I've been drunker'n a fool for three days," he announced
solemnly.

"Yeah. You look it," was Cash's dry retort, while he stared
straight ahead, up the steep, shadowed trail.



CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE FIRST STAGES

For a month Bud worked and forced himself to cheerfulness, and
tried to forget. Sometimes it was easy enough, but there were
other times when he must get away by himself and walk and walk,
with his rifle over his shoulder as a mild pretense that he was
hunting game. But if he brought any back camp it was because the
game walked up and waited to he shot; half the time Bud did not
know where he was going, much less whether there were deer within
ten rods or ten miles.

During those spells of heartsickness he would sit all the
evening and smoke and stare at some object which his mind failed
to register. Cash would sit and watch him furtively; but Bud was
too engrossed with his own misery to notice it. Then, quite
unexpectedly, reaction would come and leave Bud in a peace that
was more than half a torpid refusal of his mind to worry much
over anything.

He worked then, and talked much with Cash, and made plans for
the development of their mine. In that month they had come to
call it a mine, and they had filed and recorded their claim, and
had drawn up an agreement of partnership in it. They would "sit
tight" and work on it through the winter, and when spring came
they hoped to have something tangible upon which to raise
sufficient capital to develop it properly. Or, times when they
had done unusually well with their sandbank, they would talk
optimistically about washing enough gold out of that claim to
develop the other, and keep the title all in their own hands.

Then, one night Bud dreamed again of Marie, and awoke with an
insistent craving for the oblivion of drunkenness. He got up and
cooked the breakfast, washed the dishes and swept the cabin, and
measured out two ounces of gold from what they had saved.

"You're keeping tabs on everything, Cash," he said shortly.
"Just charge this up to me. I'm going to town."

Cash looked up at him from under a slanted eye. brow. His lips
had a twist of pained disapproval.

"Yeah. I figured you was about due in town," he said
resignedly.

"Aw, lay off that told-you-so stuff," Bud growled. "You never
figured anything of the kind, and you know it." He pulled his
heavy sweater down off a nail and put it on, scowling because the
sleeves had to be pulled in place on his arms.

"Too bad you can't wait a day. I figured we'd have a clean-up
to-morrow, maybe. She's been running pretty heavy---"

"Well, go ahead and clean up, then. You can do it alone. Or
wait till I get back."

Cash laughed, as a retort cutting, and not because he was
amused. Bud swore and went out, slamming the door behind him.

It was exactly five days alter that when he opened it again.
Cash was mixing a batch of sour-dough bread into loaves, and he
did not say anything at all when Bud came in and stood beside the
stove, warming his hands and glowering around the, room. He
merely looked up, and then went on with his bread making.

Bud was not a pretty sight. Four days and nights of trying to
see how much whisky he could drink, and how long he could play
poker without going to sleep or going broke, had left their mark
on his face and his trembling hands. His eyes were puffy and red,
and his cheeks were mottled, and his lips were fevered and had
lost any sign of a humorous quirk at the corners. He looked ugly;
as if he would like nothing better than an excuse to quarrel with
Cash--since Cash was the only person at hand to quarrel with.

But Cash had not knocked around the world for nothing. He had
seen men in that mood before, and he had no hankering for trouble
which is vastly easier to start than it is to stop. He paid no
attention to Bud. He made his loaves, tucked them into the pan
and greased the top with bacon grease saved in a tomato can for
such use. He set the pan on a shelf behind the stove, covered it
with a clean flour sack, opened the stove door, and slid in two
sticks.

"She's getting cold," he observed casually. "It'll be winter
now before we know it."

Bud grunted, pulled an empty box toward him by the simple
expedient of hooking his toes behind the corner, and sat down. He
set his elbows on his thighs and buried his face in his hands.
His hat dropped off his head and lay crown down beside him. He
made a pathetic figure of miserable manhood, of strength
mistreated. His fine, brown hair fell in heavy locks down over
his fingers that rested on his forehead. Five minutes so, and he
lifted his head and glanced around him apathetically. "Gee-man-
ee, I've got a headache!" he muttered, dropping his forehead into
his spread palms again.

Cash hesitated, derision hiding in the back of his eyes. Then
he pushed the dented coffeepot forward on the stove.

"Try a cup of coffee straight," he said unemotionally, "and
then lay down. You'll sleep it off in a few hours."

Bud did not look up, or make any move to show that he heard.
But presently he rose and went heavily over to his bunk. "I don't
want any darn coffee," he growled, and sprawled himself stomach
down on the bed, with his face turned from the light.

Cash eyed him coldly, with the corner of his upper lip lifted a
little. Whatever weaknesses he possessed, drinking and gambling
had no place in the list. Nor had he any patience with those
faults in others. Had Bud walked down drunk to Cash's camp, that
evening when they first met, he might have received a little food
doled out to him grudgingly, but he assuredly would not have
slept in Cash's bed that night. That he tolerated drunkenness in
Bud now would have been rather surprising to any one who knew
Cash well. Perhaps he had a vague understanding of the deeps
through which Bud was struggling, and so was constrained to hide
his disapproval, hoping that the moral let-down was merely a
temporary one.

He finished his strictly utilitarian household labor and went
off up the flat to the sluice boxes. Bud had not moved from his
first position on the bed, but he did not breathe like a sleeping
man. Not at first; after an hour or so he did sleep, heavily and
with queer, muddled dreams that had no sequence and left only a
disturbed sense of discomfort behind then.

At noon or a little after Cash returned to the cabin, cast a
sour look of contempt at the recumbent Bud, and built a fire in
the old cookstove. He got his dinner, ate it, and washed his
dishes with never a word to Bud, who had wakened and lay with his
eyes half open, sluggishly miserable and staring dully at the
rough spruce logs of the wall.

Cash put on his cap, looked at Bud and gave a snort, and went
off again to his work. Bud lay still for awhile longer, staring
dully at the wall. Finally he raised up, swung his feet to the
floor, and sat there staring around the little cabin as though he
had never before seen it.

"Huh! You'd think, the way he highbrows me, that Cash never
done wrong in his life! Tin angel, him--I don't think. Next
time, I'll tell a pinheaded world I'll have to bring home a quart
or two, and put on a show right!"

Just what he meant by that remained rather obscure, even to
Bud. He got up, shut his eyes very tight and then opened them
wide to clear his vision, shook himself into his clothes and went
over to the stove. Cash had not left the coffeepot on the stove
but had, with malicious intent--or so Bud believed--put it
away on the shelf so that what coffee remained was stone cold.
Bud muttered and threw out the coffee, grounds and all--a bit
of bachelor extravagance which only anger could drive him to--
and made fresh coffee, and made it strong. He did not want it. He
drank it for the work of physical regeneration it would do for
him.

He lay down afterwards, and this time he dropped into a more
nearly normal sleep, which lasted until Cash returned at dusk
After that he lay with his face hidden, awake and thinking.
Thinking, for the most part, of how dull and purposeless life
was, and wondering why the world was made, or the people in it
--since nobody was happy, and few even pretended to be. Did God
really make the world, and man, just to play with--for a
pastime? Then why bother about feeling ashamed for anything one
did that was contrary to God's laws?

Why be puffed up with pride for keeping one or two of them
unbroken--like Cash, for instance. Just because Cash never
drank or played cards, what right had he to charge the whole
atmosphere of the cabin with his contempt and his disapproval of
Bud, who chose to do both?

On the other hand, why did he choose a spree as a relief from
his particular bunch of ghosts? Trading one misery for another
was all you could call it. Doing exactly the things that Marie's
mother had predicted he would do, committing the very sins that
Marie was always a little afraid he would commit--there must
be some sort of twisted revenge in that, he thought, but for the
life of him he could not quite see any real, permanent
satisfaction in it--especially since Marie and her mother
would never get to hear of it.

For that matter, he was not so sure that they would not get to
hear. He remembered meeting, just on the first edge of his spree,
one Joe De Barr, a cigar salesman whom he had known in San Jose.
Joe knew Marie--in fact, Joe had paid her a little attention
before Bud came into her life. Joe had been in Alpine between
trains, taking orders for goods from the two saloons and the
hotel. He had seen Bud drinking. Bud knew perfectly well how much
Joe had seen him drinking, and he knew perfectly well that Joe
was surprised to the point of amazement--and, Bud suspected,
secretly gratified as well. Wherefore Bud had deliberately done
what he could do to stimulate and emphasize both the surprise and
the gratification. Why is it that most human beings feel a
sneaking satisfaction in the downfall of another? Especially
another who is, or has been at sometime, a rival in love or in
business?

Bud had no delusions concerning Joe De Barr. If Joe should
happen to meet Marie, he would manage somehow to let her know
that Bud was going to the dogs--on the toboggan--down and
out--whatever it suited Joe to declare him. It made Bud sore
now to think of Joe standing so smug and so well dressed and so
immaculate beside the bar, smiling and twisting the ends of his
little brown mustache while he watched Bud make such a consummate
fool of himself. At the time, though, Bud had taken a perverse
delight in making himself appear more soddenly drunken, more
boisterous and reckless than he really was.

Oh, well, what was the odds? Marie couldn't think any worse of
him than she already thought. And whatever she thought, their
trails had parted, and they would never cross again--not if
Bud could help it. Probably Marie would say amen to that. He
would like to know how she was getting along--and the baby,
too. Though the baby had never seemed quite real to Bud, or as if
it were a permanent member of the household. It was a leather-
lunged, red-faced, squirming little mite, and in his heart of
hearts Bud had not felt as though it belonged to him at all. He
had never rocked it, for instance, or carried it in his arms. He
had been afraid he might drop it, or squeeze it too hard, or
break it somehow with his man's strength. When he thought of
Marie he did not necessarily think of the baby, though sometimes
he did, wondering vaguely how much it had grown, and if it still
hollered for its bottle, all hours of the day and night.

Coming back to Marie and Joe--it was not at all certain that
they would meet; or that Joe would mention him, even if they did.
A wrecked home is always a touchy subject, so touchy that Joe had
never intimated in his few remarks to Bud that there had ever
been a Marie, and Bud, drunk as he had been, was still not too
drunk to held back the question that clamored to be spoken.

Whether he admitted it to himself or not, the sober Bud Moore
who lay on his bunk nursing a headache and a grouch against the
world was ashamed of the drunken Bud Moore who had paraded his
drunkenness before the man who knew Marie. He did not want Marie
to hear what Joe might tell There was no use, he told himself
miserably, in making Marie despise him as well as hate him. There
was a difference. She might think him a brute, and she might
accuse him of failing to be a kind and loving husband; but she
could not, unless Joe told of his spree, say that she had ever
heard of his carousing around. That it would be his own fault if
she did hear, served only to embitter his mood.

He rolled over and glared at Cash, who had cooked his supper
and was sitting down to eat it alone. Cash was looking
particularly misanthropic as he bent his head to meet the upward
journey of his coffee cup, and his eyes, when they lifted
involuntarily with Bud's sudden movement. had still that hard
look of bottled-up rancor that had impressed itself upon Bud
earlier in the day.

Neither man spoke, or made any sign of friendly recognition.
Bud would not have talked to any one in his present state of
self-disgust, but for all that Cash's silence rankled. A moment
their eyes met and held; then with shifted glances the souls of
them drew apart--farther apart than they had ever been, even
when they quarreled over Pete, down in Arizona.

When Cash had finished and was filing his pipe, Bud got up and
reheated the coffee, and fried more bacon and potatoes, Cash
having cooked just enough for himself. Cash smoked and gave no
heed, and Bud retorted by eating in silence and in straightway
washing his own cup, plate, knife, and fork and wiping clean the
side of the table where he always sat. He did not look at Cash,
but he felt morbidly that Cash was regarding him with that
hateful sneer hidden under his beard. He knew that it was silly
to keep that stony silence, but he kept telling himself that if
Cash wanted to talk, he had a tongue, and it was not tied.
Besides, Cash had registered pretty plainly his intentions and
his wishes when he excluded Bud from his supper.

It was a foolish quarrel, but it was that kind of foolish
quarrel which is very apt to harden into a lasting one.



CHAPTER TWELVE. MARIE TAKES A DESPERATE CHANCE

Domestic wrecks may be a subject taboo in polite conversation,
but Joe De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover,
a very likely hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with
more favor than she had shown in the past. He did not chance to
see her at once, but as soon as his work would permit he made it
a point to meet her. He went about it with beautiful directness.
He made bold to call her up on "long distance" from San
Francisco, told her that he would be in San Jose that night, and
invited her to a show.

Marie accepted without enthusiasm--and her listlessness was
not lost over forty miles of telephone wire. Enough of it seeped
to Joe's ears to make him twist his mustache quite furiously when
he came out of the telephone booth. If she was still stuck on
that fellow Bud, and couldn't see anybody else, it was high time
she was told a few things about him. It was queer how a nice girl
like Marie would hang on to some cheap guy like Bud Moore.
Regular fellows didn't stand any show--unless they played what
cards happened to fall their way. Joe, warned by her
indifference, set himself very seriously to the problem of
playing his cards to the best advantage.

He went into a flower store--disdaining the banked
loveliness upon the corners--and bought Marie a dozen great,
heavy-headed chrysanthemums, whose color he could not name to
save his life, so called them pink and let it go at that. They
were not pink, and they were not sweet--Joe held the bunch
well away from his protesting olfactory nerves which were not
educated to tantalizing odors--but they were more expensive
than roses, and he knew that women raved over them. He expected
Marie to rave over them, whether she liked them or not.

Fortified by these, groomed and perfumed and as prosperous
looking as a tobacco salesman with a generous expense account may
be, he went to San Jose on an early evening train that carried a
parlor car in which Joe made himself comfortable. He fooled even
the sophisticated porter into thinking him a millionaire,
wherefore he arrived in a glow of self-esteem, which bred much
optimism.

Marie was impressed--at least with his assurance and the
chrysanthemums, over which she was sufficiently enthusiastic to
satisfy even Joe. Since he had driven to the house in a hired
automobile, he presently had the added satisfaction of handing
Marie into the tonneau as though she were a queen entering the
royal chariot, and of ordering the driver to take them out around
the golf links, since it was still very early. Then, settling
back with what purported to be a sigh of bliss, he regarded Marie
sitting small and still and listless beside him. The glow of the
chrysanthemums had already faded. Marie, with all the girlish
prettiness she had ever possessed, and with an added charm that
was very elusive and hard to analyze, seemed to have lost all of
her old animation.

Joe tried the weather, and the small gossip of the film world,
and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last
seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required
answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested--bored. Joe
twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and took the plunge.

"I guess joy-ridin' kinda calls up old times, ay?" he began
insidiously. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you out for a ride;
maybe it brings back painful memories, as the song goes."

"Oh, no," said Marie spiritlessly. "I don't see why it should."

"No? Well, that's good to hear you say so, girlie. I was kinda
afraid maybe trouble had hit you hard. A sensitive, big-hearted
little person like you. But if you've put it all outa your mind,
why, that's where you're dead right. Personally, I was glad to
see you saw where you'd made a mistake, and backed up. That takes
grit and brains. Of course, we all make mistakes--you wasn't
to blame--innocent little kid like you--"

"Yes," said Marie, "I guess I made a mistake, all right."

"Sure! But you seen it and backed up. And a good thing you did.
Look what he'd of brought you to by now, if you'd stuck!"

Marie tilted back her head and looked up at the tall row of
eucalyptus trees feathered against the stars. "What?" she asked
uninterestedly.

"Well--I don't want to knock, especially a fellow that's on
the toboggan already. But I know a little girl that's aw-fully
lucky, and I'm honest enough to say so."

"Why?" asked Marie obligingly. "Why--in particular?"

"Why in particular?" Joe leaned toward her. "Say, you must of
heard how Bud's going to the dogs. If you haven't, I don't
want--"

"No, I hadn't heard," said Marie, looking up at the Big Dipper
so that her profile, dainty and girlish still, was revealed like
a cameo to Joe. "Is he? I love to watch the stars, don't you?"

"I love to watch a star," Joe breathed softly. "So you hadn't
heard how Bud's turned out to be a regular souse? Honest, didn't
you know it?"

"No, I didn't know it," said Marie boredly. "Has he?"

"Well, say! You couldn't tell it from the real thing! Believe
me, Buds some pickled bum, these days. I run across him up in the
mountains, a month or so ago. Honest, I was knocked plumb
silly--much as I knew about Bud that you never knew, I never
thought he'd turn out quite so--" Joe paused, with a perfect
imitation of distaste for his subject. "Say, this is great, out
here," he murmured, tucking the robe around her with that tender
protectiveness which stops just short of being proprietary.
"Honest, Marie, do you like it?"

"Why, sure, I like it, Joe." Marie smiled at him in the star-
light. "It's great, don't you think? I don't get out very often,
any more. I'm working, you know--and evenings and Sundays baby
takes up all my time."

"You working? Say, that's a darned shame! Don't Bud send you
any money?"

"He left some," said Marie frankly. "But I'm keeping that for
baby, when he grows up and needs it. He don't send any."

"Well, say! As long as he's in the State, you can make him dig
up. For the kid's support, anyway. Why don't you get after him?"

Marie looked down over the golf links, as the car swung around
the long curve at the head of the slope. "I don't know where he
is," she said tonelessly. "Where did you see him, Joe?"

Joe's hesitation lasted but long enough for him to give his
mustache end a twist. Marie certainly seemed to be well "over
it." There could be no harm in telling.

"Well, when I saw him he was at Alpine; that's a little burg up
in the edge of the mountains, on the W. P. He didn't look none
too prosperous, at that. But he had money--he was playing
poker and that kind of thing. And he was drunk as a boiled owl,
and getting drunker just as fast as he knew how. Seemed to be
kind of a stranger there; at least he didn't throw in with the
bunch like a native would. But that was more than a month ago,
Marie. He might not be there now. I could write up and find out
for you."

Marie settled back against the cushions as though she had
already dismissed the subject from her mind.

"Oh, don't bother about it, Joe. I don't suppose he's got any
money, anyway. Let's forget him."

"You said it, Marie. Stacked up to me like a guy that's got
just enough dough for a good big souse. He ain't hard to forget
--is he, girlie?"

Marie laughed assentingly. And if she did not quite attain her
old bubbling spirits during the evening, at least she sent Joe
back to San Francisco feeling very well satisfied with himself.
He must have been satisfied with himself. He must have been
satisfied with his wooing also, because he strolled into a
jewelry store the next morning and priced several rings which he
judged would be perfectly suitable for engagement rings. He might
have gone so far as to buy one, if he had been sure of the size
and of Marie's preference in stones. Since he lacked detailed
information, he decided to wait, but he intimated plainly to the
clerk that he would return in a few days.

It was just as well that he did decide to wait, for when he
tried again to see Marie he failed altogether. Marie had left
town. Her mother, with an acrid tone of resentment, declared that
she did not know any more than the man in the moon where Marie
had gone, but that she "suspicioned" that some fool had told
Marie where Bud was, and that Marie had gone traipsing after him.
She had taken the baby along, which was another piece of
foolishness which her mother would never have permitted had she
been at home when Marie left.

Joe did not take the matter seriously, though he was
disappointed at having made a fruitless trip to San Jose. He did
not believe that Marie had done anything more than take a
vacation from her mother's sharp-tongued rule, and for that he
could not blame her, after having listened for fifteen minutes to
the lady's monologue upon the subject of selfish, inconsiderate,
ungrateful daughters. Remembering Marie's attitude toward Bud, he
did not believe that she had gone hunting him.

Yet Marie had done that very thing. True, she had spent a
sleepless night fighting the impulse, and a harassed day trying
to make up her mind whether to write first, or whether to go and
trust to the element of surprise to help plead her cause with
Bud; whether to take Lovin Child with her, or leave him with her
mother.

She definitely decided to write Bud a short note and ask him if
he remembered having had a wife and baby, once upon a time, and
if he never wished that he bad them still. She wrote the letter,
crying a little over it along toward the last, as women will. But
it sounded cold-blooded and condemnatory. She wrote another,
letting a little of her real self into the lines. But that
sounded sentimental and moving-pictury, and she knew how Bud
hated cheap sentimentalism.

So she tore them both up and put them in the little heating
stove, and lighted a match and set them burning, and watched them
until they withered down to gray ash, and then broke up the ashes
and scattered them amongst the cinders. Marie, you must know, had
learned a good many things, one of which was the unwisdom of
whetting the curiosity of a curious woman.

After that she proceeded to pack a suit case for herself and
Lovin Child, seizing the opportunity while her mother was
visiting a friend in Santa Clara. Once the packing was began,
Marie worked with a feverish intensity of purpose and an
eagerness that was amazing, considering her usual apathy toward
everything in her life as she was living it.

Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He
was like Bud--so much like him that Marie could not have loved
him so much if she had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes
to hate him. Lovin Child was a husky youngster, and he already
had the promise of being as tall and straight-limbed and square-
shouldered as his father. Deep in his eyes there lurked always a
twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would make you laugh--
if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly amused little
twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for a two-year-
old twinkle to be. To go with the twinkle, he had a quirky little
smile. And to better the smile, he had the jolliest little
chuckle that ever came through a pair of baby lips.

He came trotting up to the suit case which Marie had spread
wide open on the bed, stood up on his tippy toes, and peered in.
The quirky smile was twitching his lips, and the look he turned
toward Marie's back was full of twinkle. He reached into the suit
case, clutched a clean handkerchief and blew his nose with solemn
precision; put the handkerchief back all crumpled, grabbed a silk
stocking and drew it around his neck, and was straining to reach
his little red Brownie cap when Marie turned and caught him up in
her arms.

"No, no, Lovin Child! Baby mustn't. Marie is going to take her
lovin' baby boy to find--" She glanced hastily over her
shoulder to make sure there was no one to hear, buried her face
in the baby's fat neck and whispered the wonder. "--to find
hims daddy Bud! Does Lovin Man want to see hims daddy Bud? I bet
he does want! I bet hims daddy Bud will be glad--Now you sit
right still, and Marie will get him a cracker, an' then he can
watch Marie pack him little shirt, and hims little bunny suit,
and hims wooh-wooh, and hims 'tockins--"

It is a pity that Bud could not have seen the two of them in
the next hour, wherein Marie flew to her hopeful task of packing
her suit case, and Lovin Child was quite as busy pulling things
out of it, and getting stepped on, and having to be comforted,
and insisting upon having on his bunny suit, and then howling to
go before Marie was ready. Bud would have learned enough to ease
the ache in his heart--enough to humble him and fill him with
an abiding reverence for a love that will live, as Marie's had
lived, on bitterness and regret.

Nearly distracted under the lash of her own eagerness and the
fear that her mother would return too soon and bully her into
giving up her wild plan, Marie, carrying Lovin Child on one arm
and lugging the suit case in the other hand, and half running,
managed to catch a street car and climb aboard all out of breath
and with her hat tilted over one ear. She deposited the baby on
the seat beside her, fumbled for a nickel, and asked the
conductor pantingly if she would be in time to catch the four-
five to the city. It maddened her to watch the bored deliberation
of the man as he pulled out his watch and regarded it
meditatively.

"You'll catch it--if you're lucky about your transfer," he
said, and rang up her fare and went off to the rear platform,
just as if it were not a matter of life and death at all. Marie
could have shaken him for his indifference; and as for the
motorman, she was convinced that he ran as slow as he dared, just
to drive her crazy. But even with these two inhuman monsters
doing their best to make her miss the train, and with the street
car she wanted to transfer to running off and leaving her at the
very last minute, and with Lovin Child suddenly discovering that
he wanted to be carried, and that he emphatically did not want
her to carry the suit case at all, Marie actually reached the
depot ahead of the four-five train. Much disheveled and flushed
with nervousness and her exertions, she dragged Lovin Child up
the steps by one arm, found a seat in the chair car and, a few
minutes later, suddenly realized that she was really on her way
to an unknown little town in an unknown part of the country, in
quest of a man who very likely did not want to be found by her.

Two tears rolled down her cheeks, and were traced to the
corners of her mouth by the fat, investigative finger of Lovin
Child before Marie could find her handkerchief and wipe them
away. Was any one in this world ever so utterly, absolutely
miserable? She doubted it. What if she found Bud--drunk, as
Joe had described him? Or, worse than that, what if she did not
find him at all? She tried not to cry, but it seemed as though
she must cry or scream. Fast as she wiped them away, other tears
dropped over her eyelids upon her cheeks, and were given the
absorbed attention of Lovin Child, who tried to catch each one
with his finger. To distract him, she turned him around face to
the window.

"See all the--pitty cows," she urged, her lips trembling so
much that they would scarcely form the words. And when Lovin
Child flattened a finger tip against the window and chuckled, and
said "Ee? Ee?"--which was his way of saying see--Marie
dropped her face down upon his fuzzy red "bunny" cap, hugged him
close to her, and cried, from sheer, nervous reaction.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN. CABIN FEVER IN THE WORST FORM

Bud Moore woke on a certain morning with a distinct and well-
defined grouch against the world as he had found it; a grouch
quite different from the sullen imp of contrariness that had
possessed him lately. He did not know just what had caused the
grouch, and he did not care. He did know, however, that he
objected to the look of Cash's overshoes that stood pigeon-toed
beside Cash's bed on the opposite side of the room, where Bud had
not set his foot for three weeks and more. He disliked the
audible yawn with which Cash manifested his return from the
deathlike unconsciousness of sleep. He disliked the look of
Cash's rough coat and sweater and cap, that hung on a nail over
Cash's bunk. He disliked the thought of getting up in the
cold--and more, the sure knowledge that unless he did get up, and
that speedily, Cash would be dressed ahead of him, and starting a
fire in the cookstove. Which meant that Cash would be the first
to cook and eat his breakfast, and that the warped ethics of
their dumb quarrel would demand that Bud pretend to be asleep
until Cash had fried his bacon and his hotcakes and had carried
them to his end of the oilcloth-covered table.

When, by certain well-known sounds, Bud was sure that Cash was
eating, he could, without loss of dignity or without suspicion of
making any overtures toward friendliness, get up and dress and
cook his own breakfast, and eat it at his own end of the table.
Bud wondered how long Cash, the old fool, would sulk like that
Not that he gave a darn--he just wondered, is all. For all he
cared, Cash could go on forever cooking his own meals and living
on his own side of the shack. Bud certainly would not interrupt
him in acting the fool, and if Cash wanted to keep it up till
spring, Cash was perfectly welcome to do so. It just showed how
ornery a man could be when he was let to go. So far as he was
concerned, he would just as soon as not have that dead line
painted down the middle of the cabin floor.

Nor did its presence there trouble him in the least. Just this
morning, however, the fact of Cash's stubbornness in keeping to
his own side of the line irritated Bud. He wanted to get back at
the old hound somehow--without giving in an inch in the mute
deadlock. Furthermore, he was hungry, and he did not propose to
lie there and starve while old Cash pottered around the stove.
He'd tell the world he was going to have his own breakfast first,
and if Cash didn't want to set in on the cooking, Cash could lie
in bed till he was paralyzed, and be darned.

At that moment Cash pushed back the blankets that had been
banked to his ears. Simultaneously, Bud swung his feet to the
cold floor with a thump designed solely to inform Cash that Bud
was getting up. Cash turned over with his back to the room and
pulled up the blankets. Bud grinned maliciously and dressed as
deliberately as the cold of the cabin would let him. To be sure,
there was the disadvantage of having to start his own fire, but
that disagreeable task was offset by the pleasure he would get in
messing around as long as he could, cooking his breakfast. He
even thought of frying potatoes and onions after he cooked his
bacon. Potatoes and onions fried together have a lovely tendency
to stick to the frying pan, especially if there is not too much
grease, and if they are fried very slowly. Cash would have to do
some washing and scraping, when it came his turn to cook. Bud
knew just about how mad that would make Cash, and he dwelt upon
the prospect relishfully.

Bud never wanted potatoes for his breakfast. Coffee, bacon, and
hotcakes suited him perfectly. But just for meanness, because he
felt mean and he wanted to act mean, he sliced the potatoes and
the onions into the frying pan, and, to make his work
artistically complete, he let them burn and stick to the pan,--
after he had his bacon and hotcakes fried, of course!

He sat down and began to eat. And presently Cash crawled out
into the warm room filled with the odor of frying onions, and
dressed himself with the detached calm of the chronically sulky
individual. Not once did the manner of either man betray any
consciousness of the other's presence. Unless some detail of the
day's work compelled them to speech, not once for more than three
weeks had either seemed conscious of the other.

Cash washed his face and his hands, took the side of bacon, and
cut three slices with the precision of long practice. Bud sopped
his last hotcake in a pool of syrup and watched him from the
corner of his eyes, without turning his head an inch toward Cash.
His keenest desire, just then, was to see Cash when he tackled
the frying pan.

But Cash disappointed him there. He took a pie tin off the
shelf and laid his strips of bacon on it, and set it in the oven;
which is a very good way of cooking breakfast bacon, as Bud well
knew. Cash then took down the little square baking pan, greased
from the last baking of bread, and in that he fried his hot
cakes. As if that were not sufficiently exasperating, he gave
absolutely no sign of being conscious of the frying pan any more
than he was conscious of Bud. He did not overdo it by whistling,
or even humming a tune--which would have given Bud an excuse
to say something almost as mean as his mood. Abstractedness rode
upon Cash's lined brow. Placid meditation shone forth from his
keen old blue-gray eyes.

The bacon came from the oven juicy-crisp and curled at the
edges and delicately browned. The cakes came out of the baking
pan brown and thick and light. Cash sat down at his end of the
table, pulled his own can of sugar and his own cup of sirup and
his own square of butter toward him; poured his coffee, that he
had made in a small lard pail, and began to eat his breakfast
exactly as though he was alone in that cabin.

A great resentment filled Bud's soul to bursting, The old
hound! Bud believed now that Cash was capable of leaving that
frying pan dirty for the rest of the day! A man like that would
do anything! If it wasn't for that claim, he'd walk off and
forget to come back.

Thinking of that seemed to crystallize into definite purpose
what had been muddling his mind with vague impulses to let his
mood find expression. He would go to Alpine that day. He would
hunt up Frank and see if he couldn't jar him into  showing that
he had a mind of his own. Twice since that first unexpected
spree, he had spent a good deal of time and gold dust and
consumed a good deal of bad whisky and beer, in testing the
inherent obligingness of Frank. The last attempt had been the
cause of the final break between him and Cash. Cash had reminded
Bud harshly that they would need that gold to develop their
quartz claim, and he had further stated that he wanted no "truck"
with a gambler and a drunkard, and that Bud had better straighten
up if he wanted to keep friends with Cash.

Bud had retorted that Cash might as well remember that Bud had
a half interest in the two claims, and that he would certainly
stay with it. Meantime, he would tell the world he was his own
boss, and Cash needn't think for a minute that Bud was going to
ask permission for what he did or did not do. Cash needn't have
any truck with him, either. It suited Bud very well to keep on
his own side of the cabin, and he'd thank Cash to mind his own
business and not step over the dead line.

Cash had laughed disagreeably and asked Bud what he was going
to do--draw a chalk mark, maybe?

Bud, half drunk and unable to use ordinary good sense, had said
yes, by thunder, he'd draw a chalk line if he wanted to, and if
he did, Cash had better not step over it either, unless he wanted
to be kicked back.

Wherefore the broad, black line down the middle of the floor to
where the table stood. Obviously, he could not well divide the
stove and the teakettle and the frying pan and coffeepot. The
line stopped abruptly with a big blob of lampblack mixed with
coal oil, just where necessity compelled them both to use the
same floor space.

The next day Bud had been ashamed of the performance, but his
shame could not override his stubbornness. The black line stared
up at him accusingly. Cash, keeping scrupulously upon his own
side of it, went coldly about his own affairs and never yielded
so much as a glance at Bud. And Bud grew more moody and
dissatisfied with himself, but he would not yield, either.
Perversely he waited for Cash to apologize for what he had said
about gamblers and drunkards, and tried to believe that upon Cash
rested all of the blame.

Now he washed his own breakfast dishes, including the frying
pan, spread the blankets smooth on his bunk, swept as much of the
floor as lay upon his side of the dead line. Because the wind was
in the storm quarter and the lowering clouds promised more snow,
he carried in three big armfuls of wood and placed them upon his
corner of the fireplace, to provide warmth when he returned. Cash
would not touch that wood while Bud was gone, and Bud knew it.
Cash would freeze first. But there was small chance of that,
because a small, silent rivalry had grown from the quarrel; a
rivalry to see which kept the best supply of wood, which swept
cleanest under his bunk and up to the black line, which washed
his dishes cleanest, and kept his shelf in the cupboard the
tidiest. Before the fireplace in an evening Cash would put on
wood, and when next it was needed, Bud would get up and put on
wood. Neither would stoop to stinting or to shirking, neither
would give the other an inch of ground for complaint. It was not
enlivening to live together that way, but it worked well toward
keeping the cabin ship shape.

So Bud, knowing that it was going to storm, and perhaps
dreading a little the long monotony of being housed with a man as
stubborn as himself, buttoned a coat over his gray, roughneck
sweater, pulled a pair of mail-order mittens over his mail-order
gloves, stamped his feet into heavy, three-buckled overshoes, and
set out to tramp fifteen miles through the snow, seeking the kind
of pleasure which turns to pain with the finding.

He knew that Cash, out by the woodpile, let the axe blade
linger in the cut while he stared after him. He knew that Cash
would be lonesome without him, whether Cash ever admitted it or
not. He knew that Cash would be passively anxious until he
returned--for the months they had spent together had linked
them closer than either would confess. Like a married couple who
bicker and nag continually when together, but are miserable when
apart, close association had become a deeply grooved habit not
easily thrust aside. Cabin fever might grip them and impel them
to absurdities such as the dead line down the middle of their
floor and the silence that neither desired but both were too
stubborn to break; but it could not break the habit of being
together. So Bud was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be
missed, and he was ill-humored enough to be glad of it. Frank, if
he met Bud that day, was likely to have his amiability tested to
its limit.

Bud tramped along through the snow, wishing it was not so deep,
or else deep enough to make snow-shoeing practicable in the
timber; thinking too of Cash and how he hoped Cash would get his
fill of silence, and of Frank, and wondering where ho would find
him. He had covered perhaps two miles of the fifteen, and had
walked off a little of his grouch, and had stopped to unbutton
his coat, when he heard the crunching of feet in the snow, just
beyond a thick clump of young spruce.

Bud was not particularly cautious, nor was he averse to meeting
people in the trail. He stood still though, and waited to see who
was coming that way--since travelers on that trail were few
enough to be noticeable.

In a minute more a fat old squaw rounded the spruce grove and
shied off startled when she glimpsed Bud. Bud grunted and started
on, and the squaw stepped clear of the faintly defined trail to
let him pass. Moreover, she swung her shapeless body around so
that she half faced him as he passed. Bud's lips tightened, and
he gave her only a glance. He hated fat old squaws that were
dirty and wore their hair straggling down over their crafty,
black eyes. They burlesqued womanhood in a way that stirred
always a smoldering resentment against them. This particular
squaw had nothing to commend her to his notice. She had a dirty
red bandanna tied over her dirty, matted hair and under her grimy
double chin. A grimy gray blanket was draped closely over her
squat shoulders and formed a pouch behind, wherein the plump form
of a papoose was cradled, a little red cap pulled down over its
ears.

Bud strode on, his nose lifted at the odor of stale smoke that
pervaded the air as he passed. The squaw, giving him a furtive
stare, turned and started on, bent under her burden.

Then quite suddenly a wholly unexpected sound pursued Bud and
halted him in the trail; the high, insistent howl of a child that
has been denied its dearest desire of the moment. Bud looked back
inquiringly. The squaw was hurrying on, and but for the
straightness of the trail just there, her fat old canvas-wrapped
legs would have carried her speedily out of sight. Of course,
papooses did yell once in awhile, Bud supposed, though he did not
remember ever hearing one howl like that on the trail. But what
made the squaw in such a deuce of a hurry all at once?

Bud's theory of her kind was simple enough: If they fled from
you, it was because they had stolen something and were afraid you
would catch them at it. He swung around forthwith in the trail
and went after her--whereat she waddled faster through the
snow like a frightened duck.

"Hey! You come back here a minute! What's all the rush?" Bud's
voice and his long legs pursued, and presently he overtook her
and halted her by the simple expedient of grasping her shoulder
firmly. The high-keyed howling ceased as suddenly as it had
begun, and Bud, peering under the rolled edge of the red stocking
cap, felt his jaw go slack with surprise.

The baby was smiling at him delightedly, with a quirk of the
lips and a twinkle lodged deep somewhere in its eyes. It worked
one hand free of its odorous wrappings, spread four fat fingers
wide apart over one eye, and chirped, "Pik-k?" and chuckled
infectiously deep in its throat.

Bud gulped and stared and felt a warm rush of blood from his
heart up into his head. A white baby, with eyes that laughed, and
quirky red lips that laughed with the eyes, and a chuckling voice
like that, riding on the back of that old squaw, struck him dumb
with astonishment.

"Good glory!" he blurted, as though the words had been jolted
from him by the shock. Where-upon the baby reached out its hand
to him and said haltingly, as though its lips had not yet grown
really familiar with the words:

"Take--Uvin--Chal!"

The squaw tried to jerk away, and Bud gave her a jerk to let
her know who was boss. "Say, where'd you git that kid?" he
demanded aggressively.

She moved her wrapped feet uneasily in the snow, flickered a
filmy, black eyed glance at Bud's uncompromising face, and waved
a dirty paw vaguely in a wide sweep that would have kept a
compass needle revolving if it tried to follow and was not
calculated to be particularly enlightening.

"Lo-ong ways," she crooned, and her voice was the first
attractive thing Bud had discovered about her. It was pure
melody, soft and pensive as the cooing of a wood dove.

"Who belongs to it?" Bud was plainly suspicious. The shake of
the squaw's bandannaed head was more artfully vague than her
gesture. "Don' know--modder die--fadder die--ketchum
long ways--off."

"Well, what's its name?" Bud's voice harshened with his growing
interest and bewilderment. The baby was again covering one
twinkling eye with its spread, pink palm, and was saying "Pik-k?"
and laughing with the funniest little squint to its nose that Bud
had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve
himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much
that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of
the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely
individual and like none other--save one.

"What's his name?" Bud bullied the squaw, though his eyes were
on the baby.

"Don't know ─"

"Take--Uvin--Chal," the baby demanded imperiously.

"Uh--uh--uh? Take!"

"Uvin Chal? Now what'd yuh mean by that, oletimer?" Bud obeyed
an overpowering impulse to reach out and touch the baby's cheek
with a mittened thumb. The baby responded instantly by again
demanding that Bud should take.

"Pik-k?" said Bud, a mitten over one eye.

"Pik-k?" said the baby, spreading his fat hand again and
twinkling at Bud between his fingers. But immediately afterwards
it gave a little, piteous whimper. "Take--Uvin Chal!" it
beseeched Bud with voice and starlike blue eyes together. "Take!"

There was that in the baby's tone, in the unbaby-like
insistence of its bright eyes, which compelled obedience. Bud had
never taken a baby of that age in his arms. He was always in fear
of dropping it, or crushing it with his man's strength, or
something. He liked them--at a safe distance. He would chuck
one under the chin, or feel diffidently the soft little cheek,
but a closer familiarity scared him. Yet when this baby wriggled
its other arm loose and demanded him to take, Bud reached out and
grasped its plump little red-sweatered body firmly under the
armpits and drew it forth, squirming with eagerness.

"Well, I'll tell the world I don't blame yuh for wanting to git
outa that hog's nest," said Bud, answering the baby's gleeful
chuckle.

Freed from his detaining grip on her shoulder, the squaw ducked
unexpectedly and scuttled away down the trail as fast as her old
legs would carry her; which was surprisingly speedy for one of
her bulk. Bud had opened his mouth to ask her again where she had
gotten that baby. He left it open while he stared after her
astonished until the baby put up a hand over one of Bud's eyes
and said "Pik-k?" with that distracting little quirk at the
corners of its lips.

"You son of a gun!" grinned Bud, in the tone that turned the
epithet in to a caress. "You dog gone little devil, you! Pik-k!
then, if that's what you want."

The squaw had disappeared into the thick under growth, leaving
a track like a hippo in the snow. Bud could have overtaken her,
of course, and he could have made her take the baby back again.
But he could not face the thought of it. He made no move at all
toward pursuit, but instead he turned his face toward Alpine,
with some vague intention of turning the baby over to the hotel
woman there and getting the authorities to hunt up its parents.
It was plain enough that the squaw had no right to it, else she
would not have run off like that.

Bud walked at least a rod toward Alpine before he swung short
around in his tracks and started the other way. "No, I'll be
doggoned if I will!" he said. "You can't tell about women, no
time. She might spank the kid, or something. Or maybe she
wouldn't feed it enough. Anyway, it's too cold, and it's going to
storm pretty pronto. Hey! Yuh cold. old-timer?"

The baby whimpered a little and snuggled its face down against
Bud's chest. So Bud lifted his foot and scraped some snow off a
nearby log, and set the baby down there while he took off his
coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms
and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark
blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud
picked it up again in his arms.

"Now you're all right till we get to where it's warm," Bud
assured it gravely. "And we'll do some steppin', believe me. I
guess maybe you ain't any more crazy over that Injun smell on
yuh, than what I am--and that ain't any at all." He walked a
few steps farther before he added grimly, "It'll be some jolt for
Cash, doggone his skin. He'll about bust, I reckon. But we don't
give a darn. Let him bust if he wants to--half the cabin's
mine, anyway."

So, talking a few of his thoughts aloud to the baby, that
presently went to sleep with its face against his shoulder, Bud
tramped steadily through the snow, carrying Lovin Child in his
arms. No remote glimmer of the wonderful thing Fate had done for
him seeped into his consciousness, but there was a new, warm glow
in his heart--the warmth that came from a child's
unquestioning faith in his protecting tenderness.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN. CASH GETS A SHOCK

It happened that Cash was just returning to the cabin from the
Blind Ledge claim. He met Bud almost at the doorstep, just as Bud
was fumbling with the latch, trying to open the door without
moving Lovin Child in his arms. Cash may or may not have been
astonished. Certainly he did not betray by more than one quick
glance that he was interested in Bud's return or in the
mysterious burden he bore. He stepped ahead of Bud and opened the
door without a word, as if he always did it just in that way, and
went inside.

Bud followed him in silence, stepped across the black line to
his own side of the room and laid Lovin Child carefully down so
as not to waken him. He unbuttoned the coat he had wrapped around
him, pulled off the concealing red cap and stared down at the
pale gold, silky hair and the adorable curve of the soft cheek
and the lips with the dimples tricked in at the corners; the
lashes lying like the delicate strokes of an artist's pencil
under the closed eyes. For at least five minutes he stood without
moving, his whole face softened into a boyish wistfulness. By the
stove Cash stood and stared from Bud to the sleeping baby, his
bushy eyebrows lifted, his gray eyes a study of incredulous
bewilderment.

Then Bud drew a long breath and seemed about to move away from
the bank, and Cash turned abruptly to the stove and lifted a
rusty lid and peered into the cold firebox, frowning as though he
was expecting to see fire and warmth where only a sprinkle of
warm ashes remained. Stubbornness held him mute and outwardly
indifferent. He whittled shavings and started a fire in the cook
stove, filled the teakettle and set it on to boil, got out the
side of bacon and cut three slices, and never once looked toward
the bunk. Bud might have brought home a winged angel, or a
rainbow, or a casket of jewels, and Cash would not have permitted
himself to show any human interest.

But when Bud went teetering from the cabin on his toes to bring
in some pine cones they had saved for quick kindling, Cash craned
his neck toward the little bundle on the bunk. He saw a fat, warm
little hand stir with some baby dream. He listened and heard soft
breathing that stopped just short of being an infantile snore. He
made an errand to his own bunk and from there inspected the
mystery at closer range. He saw a nose and a little, knobby chin
and a bit of pinkish forehead with the pale yellow of hair above.
He leaned and cocked his head to one aide to see more--but at
that moment he heard Bud stamping off the snow from his feet on
the doorstep, and he took two long, noiseless strides to the dish
cupboard and was fumbling there with his back to the bunk when
Bud came tiptoeing in.

Bud started a fire in the fireplace and heaped the dry limbs
high. Cash fried his bacon, made his tea, and set the table for
his midday meal. Bud waited for the baby to wake, looking at his
watch every minute or two, and making frequent cautious trips to
the bunk, peeking and peering to see if the child was all right.
It seemed unnatural that it should sleep so long in the daytime.
No telling what that squaw had done to it; she might have doped
it or something. He thought the kid's face looked red, as if it
had fever, and he reached down and touched anxiously the hand
that was uncovered. The hand was warm--too warm, in Bud's
opinion. It would be just his luck if the kid got sick, he'd have
to pack it clear in to Alpine in his arms. Fifteen miles of that
did not appeal to Bud, whose arms ached after the two-mile trip
with that solid little body lying at ease in the cradle they
made.

His back to that end of the room, Cash sat stiff-necked and
stubbornly speechless, and ate and drank as though he were alone
in the cabin. Whenever Bud's mind left Lovin Child long enough to
think about it, he watched Cash furtively for some sign of
yielding, some softening of that grim grudge. It seemed to him as
though Cash was not human, or he would show some signs of life
when a live baby was brought to camp and laid down right under
his nose.

Cash finished and began washing his dishes, keeping his back
turned toward Bud and Bud's new possession, and trying to make it
appear that he did so unconsciously. He did not fool Bud for a
minute. Bud knew that Cash was nearly bursting with curiosity,
and he had occasional fleeting impulses to provoke Cash to speech
of some sort. Perhaps Cash knew what was in Bud's mind. At any
rate he left the cabin and went out and chopped wood for an hour,
furiously raining chips into the snow.

When he went in with his arms piled full of cut wood, Bud had
the baby sitting on one corner of the table, and was feeding it
bread and gravy as the nearest approach to baby food he could
think of. During occasional interludes in the steady procession
of bits of bread from the plate to the baby's mouth, Lovin Child
would suck a bacon rind which he held firmly grasped in a greasy
little fist. Now and then Bud would reach into his hip pocket,
pull out his handkerchief as a make-shift napkin, and would
carefully wipe the border of gravy from the baby's mouth, and
stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket again.

Both seemed abominably happy and self-satisfied. Lovin Child
kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled
unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate
sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a
perfect understanding of Lovin Child's talk--and incidentally
doled out information for Cash's benefit.

Cash cocked an eye at the two as he went by, threw the wood
down on his side of the hearth, and began to replenish the fire.
If he heard, he gave no sign of understanding or interest.

"I'll bet that old squaw musta half starved yah," Bud addressed
the baby while he spooned gravy out of a white enamel bowl on to
the second slice of bread. "You're putting away grub like a
nigger at a barbecue. I'll tell the world I don't know what
woulda happened if I hadn't run across yuh and made her hand yuh
over."

"Ja--ja--ja--jah!" said Lovin Child, nodding his head
and regarding Bud with the twinkle in his eyes.

"And that's where you're dead right, Boy. I sure do wish you'd
tell me your name; but I reckon that's too much to ask of a
little geezer like you. Here. Help yourself, kid--you ain't in
no Injun camp now. You're with white folks now."

Cash sat down on the bench he had made for himself, and stared
into the fire. His whole attitude spelled abstraction;
nevertheless he missed no little sound behind him.

He knew that Bud was talking largely for his benefit, and he
knew that here was the psychological time for breaking the spell
of silence between them. Yet he let the minutes slip past and
would not yield. The quarrel had been of Bud's making in the
first place. Let Bud do the yielding, make the first step toward
amity.

But Bud had other things to occupy him just then. Having eaten
all his small stomach would hold, Lovin Child wanted to get down
and explore. Bud had other ideas, but they did not seem to count
for much with Lovin Child, who had an insistent way that was
scarcely to be combated or ignored.

"But listen here, Boy!" Bud protested, after he had for the
third time prevented Lovin Child from backing off the table. "I
was going to take off these dirty duds and wash some of the Injun
smell off yuh. I'll tell a waiting world you need a bath, and
your clothes washed."

"Ugh, ugh, ugh," persisted Lovin Child, and pointed to the
floor.

So Bud sighed and made a virtue of defeat. "Oh, well, they say
it's bad policy to take a bath right after yuh eat. We'll let it
ride awhile, but you sure have got to be scrubbed a plenty before
you can crawl in with me, old-timer," he said, and set him down
on the floor.

Lovin Child went immediately about the business that seemed
most important. He got down on his hands and knees and gravely
inspected the broad black line, hopefully testing it with tongue
and with fingers to see if it would yield him anything in the way
of flavor or stickiness. It did not. It had been there long
enough to be thoroughly dry and tasteless. He got up, planted
both feet on it and teetered back and forth, chuckling up at Bud
with his eyes squinted.

He teetered so enthusiastically that he sat down unexpectedly
and with much emphasis. That put him between two impulses, and
while they battled he stared round-eyed at Bud. But he decided
not to cry, and straightway turned himself into a growly bear and
went down the line on all fours toward Cash, growling "Ooooooo!"
as fearsomely as his baby throat was capable of growling.

But Cash would not  be scared. He refused absolutely to jump up
and back off in wild-eyed terror, crying out "Ooh! Here comes a
bear!" the way Marie had always done--the way every one had
always done, when Lovin Child got down and came at them growling.
Cash sat rigid with his face to the fire, and would not look.

Lovin Child crawled all around him and growled his terriblest.
For some unexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as
though he had turned to some insensate metal. From where he sat
watching--curious to see what Cash would do--Bud saw him
flinch and stiffen as a man does under pain. And because Bud had
a sore spot in his own heart, Bud felt a quick stab of
understanding and sympathy. Cash Markham's past could not have
been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for the
salve of speech to lighten its hurt. There might have been a
child....

"Aw, come back here!" Bud commanded Lovin Child gruffly.

But Lovin Child was too busy. He had discovered in his circling
of Cash, the fanny buckles on Cash's high overshoes. He was
investigating them as he had investigated the line, with fingers
and with pink tongue, like a puppy. From the lowest buckle he
went on to the top one, where Cash's khaki trousers were tucked
inside with a deep fold on top. Lovin Child's small forefinger
went sliding up in the mysterious recesses of the fold until they
reached the flat surface of the knee. He looked up farther,
studying Cash's set face, sitting back on his little heels while
he did so. Cash tried to keep on staring into the fire, but in
spite of himself his eyes lowered to meet the upward look.

"Pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child, spreading his fingers over one
eye and twinkling up at Cash with the other.

Cash flinched again, wavered, swallowed twice, and got up so
abruptly that Lovin Child sat down again with a plunk. Cash
muttered something in his throat and rushed out into the wind and
the slow-falling tiny white flakes that presaged the storm.

Until the door slammed shut Lovin Child looked after him,
scowling, his eyes a blaze of resentment. He brought his palms
together with a vicious slap, leaned over, and bumped his
forehead deliberately and painfully upon the flat rock hearth,
and set up a howl that could have been heard for three city
blocks.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN. AND BUD NEVER GUESSED

That night, when he had been given a bath in the little zinc
tub they used for washing clothes, and had been carefully
buttoned inside a clean undershirt of Bud's, for want of better
raiment, Lovin Child missed something out of his sleepytime
cudding. He wanted Marie, and he did not know how to make his
want known to this big, tender, awkward man who had befriended
him and filled his thoughts till bedtime. He began to whimper and
look seekingly around the little cabin. The whimper grew to a cry
which Bud's rude rocking back and forth on the box before the
fireplace could not still.

"M'ee--take!" wailed Lovin Child, sitting up and listening.
"M'ee take--Uvin Chal!"

"Aw, now, you don't wanta go and act like that. Listen here,
Boy. You lay down here and go to sleep. You can search me for
what it is you're trying to say, but I guess you want your mama,
maybe, or your bottle, chances are. Aw, looky!" Bud pulled his
watch from his pocket--a man's infallible remedy for the
weeping of infant charges--and dangled it anxiously before
Lovin Child.

With some difficulty he extracted the small hands from the long
limp tunnels of sleeves, and placed the watch in the eager
fingers.

"Listen to the tick-tick! Aw, I wouldn't bite into it... oh,
well, darn it, if nothing else'll do yuh, why, eat it up!"

Lovin Child stopped crying and condescended to take a languid
interest in the watch--which had a picture of Marie pasted
inside the back of the case, by the way. "Ee?" he inquired, with
a pitiful little catch in his breath, and held it up for Bud to
see the busy little second hand. "Ee?" he smiled tearily and
tried to show Cash, sitting aloof on his bench beside the head of
his bunk and staring into the fire. But Cash gave no sign that he
heard or saw anything save the visions his memory was conjuring
in the dancing flames.

"Lay down, now, like a good boy, and go to sleep," Bud
wheedled. "You can hold it if you want to--only don't drop it
on the floor--here! Quit kickin' your feet out like that! You
wanta freeze? I'll tell the world straight, it's plumb cold and
snaky outside to-night, and you're pretty darn lucky to be here
instead of in some Injun camp where you'd have to bed down with a
mess of mangy dogs, most likely. Come on, now--lay down like a
good boy!"

"M'ee! M'ee take!" teased Lovin Child, and wept again;
steadily, insistently, with a monotonous vigor that rasped Bud's
nerves and nagged him with a vague memory of something familiar
and unpleasant. He rocked his body backward and forward, and
frowned while he tried to lay hold of the memory. It was the
high-keyed wailing of this same man-child wanting his bottle, but
it eluded Bud completely. There was a tantalizing sense of
familiarity with the sound, but the lungs and the vocal chords of
Lovin Child had developed amazingly in two years, and he had lost
the small-infant wah-hah.

Bud did not remember, bat for all that his thoughts went back
across those two years and clung to his own baby, and he wished
poignantly that he knew how it was getting along; and wondered if
it had grown to be as big a handful as this youngster, and how
Marie would handle the emergency he was struggling with now: a
lost, lonesome baby boy that would not go to sleep and could not
tell why.

Yet Lovin Child was answering every one of Bud's mute
questions. Lying there in his "Daddy Bud's" arms, wrapped
comically in his Daddy Bud's softest undershirt, Lovin Child was
proving to his Daddy Bud that his own man-child was strong and
beautiful and had a keen little brain behind those twinkling blue
eyes. He was telling why he cried. He wanted Marie to take him
and rock him to sleep, just as she had rocked him to sleep every
night of his young memory, until that time when he had toddled
out of her life and into a new and peculiar world that held no
Marie.

By and by he slept, still clinging to the watch that had
Marie's picture in the back. When he was all limp and rosy and
breathing softly against Bud's heart, Bud tiptoed over to the
bunk, reached down inconveniently with one hand and turned back
the blankets, and laid Lovin Child in his bed and covered him
carefully. On his bench beyond the dead line Cash sat leaning
forward with his elbows on his knees, and sucked at a pipe gone
cold, and stared abstractedly into the fire.

Bud looked at him sitting there. For the first time since their
trails had joined, he wondered what Cash was thinking about;
wondered with a new kind of sympathy about Cash's lonely life,
that held no ties, no warmth of love. For the first time it
struck him as significant that in the two years, almost, of their
constant companionship, Cash's reminiscences had stopped abruptly
about fifteen years back. Beyond that he never went, save now and
then when he jumped a space, to the time when he was a boy. Of
what dark years lay between, Bud had never been permitted a
glimpse.

"Some kid--that kid," Bud observed involuntarily, for the
first time in over three weeks speaking when he was not compelled
to speak to Cash. "I wish I knew where he came from. He wants his
mother."

Cash stirred a little, like a sleeper only half awakened. But
he did not reply, and Bud gave an impatient snort, tiptoed over
and picked up the discarded clothes of Lovin Child, that held
still a faint odor of wood smoke and rancid grease, and, removing
his shoes that he might move silently, went to work

He washed Lovin Child's clothes, even to the red sweater suit
and the fuzzy red "bunny" cap. He rigged a line before the
fireplace--on his side of the dead line, to be sure--hung
the little garments upon it and sat up to watch the fire while
they dried.

While he rubbed and rinsed and wrung and hung to dry, he had
planned the details of taking the baby to Alpine and placing it
in good hands there until its parents could be found. It was
stolen, he had no doubt at all. He could picture quite plainly
the agony of the parents, and common humanity imposed upon him
the duty of shortening their misery as much as possible. But one
day of the baby's presence he had taken, with the excuse that it
needed immediate warmth and wholesome food. His conscience did
not trouble him over that short delay, for he was honest enough
in his intentions and convinced that he had done the right thing.

Cash had long ago undressed and gone to bed, turning his back
to the warm, fire-lighted room and pulling the blankets up to his
ears. He either slept or pretended to sleep, Bud did not know
which. Of the baby's healthy slumber there was no doubt at all.
Bud put on his overshoes and went outside after more wood, so
that there would be no delay in starting the fire in the morning
and having the cabin warm before the baby woke.

It was snowing fiercely, and the wind was biting cold. Already
the woodpile was drifted under, so that Bud had to go back and
light the lantern and hang it on a nail in the cabin wall before
he could make any headway at shovelling off the heaped snow and
getting at the wood beneath. He worked hard for half an hour, and
carried in all the wood that had been cut. He even piled Cash's
end of the hearth high with the surplus, after his own side was
heaped full.

A storm like that meant that plenty of fuel would be needed to
keep the cabin snug and warm, and he was thinking of the baby's
comfort now, and would not be hampered by any grudge.

When he had done everything he could do that would add to the
baby's comfort, he folded the little garments and laid them on a
box ready for morning. Then, moving carefully, he crawled into
the bed made warm by the little body. Lovin Child, half wakened
by the movement, gave a little throaty chuckle, murmured "M'ee,"
and threw one fat arm over Bud's neck and left it there.

"Gawd," Bud whispered in a swift passion of longing, "I wish
you was my own kid!" He snuggled Lovin Child close in his arms
and held him there, and stared dim-eyed at the flickering shadows
on the wall. What he thought, what visions filled his vigil, who
can say?



CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE ANTIDOTE

Three days it stormed with never a break, stormed so that the
men dreaded the carrying of water from the spring that became
ice-rimmed but never froze over; that clogged with sodden masses
of snow half melted and sent faint wisps of steam up into the
chill air. Cutting wood was an ordeal, every armload an
achievement. Cash did not even attempt to visit his trap line,
but sat before the fire smoking or staring into the flames, or
pottered about the little domestic duties that could not half
fill the days.

With melted snow water, a bar of yellow soap, and one leg of an
old pair of drawers, he scrubbed on his knees the floor on his
side of the dead line, and tried not to notice Lovin Child. He
failed only because Lovin Child refused to be ignored, but
insisted upon occupying the immediate foreground and in helping
--much as he had helped Marie pack her suit case one fateful
afternoon not so long before.

When Lovin Child was not permitted to dabble in the pan of
soapy water, he revenged himself by bringing Cash's mitten and
throwing that in, and crying "Ee? Ee?" with a shameless delight
because it sailed round and round until Cash turned and saw it,
and threw it out.

"No, no, no!" Lovin Child admonished himself gravely, and got
it and threw it back again.

Cash did not say anything. Indeed, he hid a grin under his
thick, curling beard which he had grown since the first frost as
a protection against cold. He picked up the mitten and laid it to
dry on the slab mantel, and when he returned, Lovin Child was
sitting in the pan, rocking back and forth and crooning "'Ock-a-
by! 'Ock-a-by!" with the impish twinkle in his eyes.

Cash was just picking him out of the pan when Bud came in with
a load of wood. Bud hastily dropped the wood, and without a word
Cash handed Lovin Child across the dead line, much as he would
have handed over a wet puppy. Without a word Bud took him, but
the quirky smile hid at the corners of his mouth, and under
Cash's beard still lurked the grin.

"No, no, no!" Lovin Child kept repeating smugly, all the while
Bud was stripping off his wet clothes and chucking him into the
undershirt he wore for a nightgown, and trying a man's size pair
of socks on his legs.

"I should say no-no-no! You doggone little rascal, I'd rather
herd a flea on a hot plate! I've a plumb good notion to hog-tie
yuh for awhile. Can't trust yuh a minute nowhere. Now look what
you got to wear while your clothes dry!"

"Ee? Ee?" invited Lovin Child, gleefully holding up a muffled
little foot lost in the depths of Bud's sock.

"Oh, I see, all right! I'll tell the world I see you're a
doggone nuisance! Now see if you can keep outa mischief till I
get the wood carried in." Bud set him down on the bunk, gave him
a mail-order catalogue to look at, and went out again into the
storm. When he came back, Lovin Child was sitting on the hearth
with the socks off, and was picking bits of charcoal from the
ashes and crunching them like candy in his small, white teeth.
Cash was hurrying to finish his scrubbing before the charcoal
gave out, and was keeping an eye on the crunching to see that
Lovin Child did not get a hot ember.

"H'yah! You young imp!" Bud shouted, stubbing his toe as he
hurried forward. "Watcha think you are--a fire-eater, for gosh
sake?"

Cash bent his head low--it may have been to hide a chuckle.
Bud was having his hands full with the kid, and he was trying to
be stern against the handicap of a growing worship of Lovin Child
and all his little ways. Now Lovin Child was all over ashes, and
the clean undershirt was clean no longer, after having much
charcoal rubbed into its texture. Bud was not overstocked with
clothes; much traveling had formed the habit of buying as he
needed for immediate use. With Lovin Child held firmly under one
arm, where he would he sure of him, he emptied his "war-bag" on
the bunk and hunted out another shirt

Lovin Child got a bath, that time, because of the ashes he had
managed to gather on his feet and his hands and his head. Bud was
patient, and Lovin Child was delightedly unrepentant--until he
was buttoned into another shirt of Bud's, and the socks were tied
on him.

"Now, doggone yuh, I'm goin' to stake you out, or hobble yuh,
or some darn thing, till I get that wood in!" he thundered, with
his eyes laughing. "You want to freeze? Hey? Now you're goin' to
stay right on this bunk till I get through, because I'm goin' to
tie yuh on. You may holler--but you little son of a gun,
you'll stay safe!"

So Bud tied him, with a necktie around his body for a belt, and
a strap fastened to that and to a stout nail in the wall over the
bunk. And Lovin Child, when he discovered that it was not a new
game but instead a check upon his activities, threw himself on
his back and held his breath until he was purple, and then
screeched with rage.

I don't suppose Bud ever carried in wood so fast in his life.
He might as well have taken his time, for Lovin Child was in one
of his fits of temper, the kind that his grandmother invariably
called his father's cussedness coming out in him. He howled for
an hour and had both men nearly frantic before he suddenly
stopped and began to play with the things he had scorned before
to touch; the things that had made him bow his back and scream
when they were offered to him hopefully.

Bud, his sleeves rolled up, his hair rumpled and the
perspiration standing thick on his forehead, stood over him with
his hands on his hips, the picture of perturbed helplessness.

"You doggone little devil!" he breathed, his mind torn between
amusement and exasperation. "If you was my own kid, I'd spank
yuh! But," he added with a little chuckle, "if you was my own
kid, I'd tell the world you come by that temper honestly. Darned
if I wouldn't"

Cash, sitting dejected on the side of his own bunk, lifted his
head, and after that his hawklike brows, and stared from the face
of Bud to the face of Lovin Child. For the first time he was
struck with the resemblance between the two. The twinkle in the
eyes, the quirk of the lips, the shape of the forehead and,
emphasizing them all, the expression of having a secret joke,
struck him with a kind of shock. If it were possible... But, even
in the delirium of fever, Bud had never hinted that he had a
child, or a wife even. He had firmly planted in Cash's mind the
impression that his life had never held any close ties
whatsoever. So, lacking the clue, Cash only wondered and did not
suspect.

What most troubled Cash was the fact that he had unwittingly
caused all the trouble for Lovin Child. He should not have tried
to scrub the floor with the kid running loose all over the place.
As a slight token of his responsibility in the matter, he watched
his chance when Bud was busy at the old cookstove, and tossed a
rabbit fur across to Lovin Child to play with; a risky thing to
do, since he did not know what were Lovin Child's little
peculiarities in the way of receiving strange gifts. But he was
lucky. Lovin Child was enraptured with the soft fur and rubbed it
over his baby cheeks and cooed to it and kissed it, and said "Ee?
Ee?" to Cash, which was reward enough.

There was a strained moment when Bud came over and discovered
what it was he was having so much fun with. Having had three days
of experience by which to judge, he jumped to the conclusion that
Lovin Child had been in mischief again.

"Now what yuh up to, you little scallywag? " he demanded. "How
did you get hold of that? Consarn your little hide, Boy..."

"Let the kid have it," Cash muttered gruffly. "I gave it to him."
He got up abruptly and went outside, and came in with wood for
the cookstove, and became exceedingly busy, never once looking
toward the other end of the room, where Bud was sprawled upon his
back on the bunk, with Lovin Child astride his middle, having a
high old time with a wonderful new game of "bronk riding."

Now and then Bud would stop bucking long enough to slap Lovin
Child in the face with the soft side of the rabbit fur, and Lovin
Child would squint his eyes and wrinkle his nose and laugh until
he seemed likely to choke. Then Bud would cry, "Ride 'im, Boy!
Ride 'im an' scratch 'im. Go get 'im, cowboy--he's your meat!"
and would bounce Lovin Child till he squealed with glee.

Cash tried to ignore all that. Tried to keep his back to it.
But he was human, and Bud was changed so completely in the last
three days that Cash could scarcely credit his eyes and his ears.
The old surly scowl was gone from Bud's face, his eyes held again
the twinkle. Cash listened to the whoops, the baby laughter, the
old, rodeo catch-phrases, and grinned while he fried his bacon.

Presently Bud gave a whoop, forgetting the feud in his play.
"Lookit, Cash! He's ridin' straight up and whippin' as he rides!
He's so-o-me bronk-fighter, buh-lieve me!"

Cash turned and looked, grinned and turned away again--but
only to strip the rind off a fresh-fried slice of bacon the full
width of the piece. He came down the room on his own side the
dead line, and tossed the rind across to the bunk.

"Quirt him with that, Boy," he grunted, "and then you can eat
it if you want."



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. LOVIN CHILD WRIGGLES IN

On the fourth day Bud's conscience pricked him into making a
sort of apology to Cash, under the guise of speaking to Lovin
Child, for still keeping the baby in camp.

"I've got a blame good notion to pack you to town to-day, Boy,
and try and find out where you belong," he said, while he was
feeding him oatmeal mush with sugar and canned milk. "It's pretty
cold, though ..." He cast a slant-eyed glance at Cash, dourly
frying his own hotcakes. "We'll see what it looks like after a
while. I sure have got to hunt up your folks soon as I can. Ain't
I, old-timer?"

That salved his conscience a little, and freed him of the
uneasy conviction that Cash believed him a kidnapper. The weather
did the rest. An hour after breakfast, just when Bud was
downheartedly thinking he could not much longer put off starting
without betraying how hard it was going to be for him to give up
the baby, the wind shifted the clouds and herded them down to the
Big Mountain and held them there until they began to sift snow
down upon the burdened pines.

"Gee, it's going to storm again!" Bud blustered in. "It'll be
snowing like all git-out in another hour. I'll tell a cruel world
I wouldn't take a dog out such weather as this. Your folks may be
worrying about yuh, Boy, but they ain't going to climb my
carcass for packing yuh fifteen miles in a snow-storm and letting
yuh freeze, maybe. I guess the cabin's big enough to hold yuh
another day--what?"

Cash lifted his eyebrows and pinched in his lips under his
beard. It did not seem to occur to Bud that one of them could
stay in the cabin with the baby while the other carried to Alpine
the news of the baby's whereabouts and its safety. Or if it did
occur to Bud, he was careful not to consider it a feasible plan.
Cash wondered if Bud thought he was pulling the wool over
anybody's eyes. Bud did not want to give up that kid, and he was
tickled to death because the storm gave him an excuse for keeping
it. Cash was cynically amused at Bud's transparency. But the kid
was none of his business, and he did not intend to make any
suggestions that probably would not be taken anyway. Let Bud
pretend he was anxious to give up the baby, if that made him feel
any better about it.

That day went merrily to the music of Lovin Child's chuckling
laugh and his unintelligible chatter. Bud made the discovery that
"Boy" was trying to say Lovin Child when he wanted to be taken
and rocked, and declared that he would tell the world the name
fit, like a saddle on a duck's back. Lovin Child discovered
Cash's pipe, and was caught sucking it before the fireplace and
mimicking Cash's meditative pose with a comical exactness that
made Bud roar. Even Cash was betrayed into speaking a whole
sentence to Bud before he remembered his grudge. Taken
altogether, it was a day of fruitful pleasure in spite of the
storm outside.

That night the two men sat before the fire and watched the
flames and listened to the wind roaring in the pines. On his side
of the dead line Bud rocked his hard-muscled, big body back and
forth, cradling Lovin Child asleep in his arms. In one tender
palm he nested Lovin Child's little bare feet, like two fat,
white mice that slept together after a day's scampering.

Bud was thinking, as he always thought nowadays, of Marie and
his own boy; yearning, tender thoughts which his clumsy man's
tongue would never attempt to speak. Before, he had thought of
Marie alone, without the baby; but he had learned much, these
last four days. He knew now how closely a baby can creep in and
cling, how they can fill the days with joy. He knew how he would
miss Lovin Child when the storm cleared and he must take him
away. It did not seem right or just that he should give him into
the keeping of strangers--and yet he must until the parents
could have him back. The black depths of their grief to-night Bud
could not bring himself to contemplate. Bad enough to forecast
his own desolateness when Lovin Child was no longer romping up
and down the dead line, looking where he might find some mischief
to get into. Bad enough to know that the cabin would again be a
place of silence and gloom and futile resentments over little
things, with no happy little man-child to brighten it. He crept
into his bunk that night and snuggled the baby up in his arms, a
miserable man with no courage left in him for the future.

But the next day it was still storming, and colder than ever.
No one would expect him to take a baby out in such weather. So
Bud whistled and romped with Lovin Child, and would not worry
about what must happen when the storm was past.

All day Cash brooded before the fire, bundled in his mackinaw
and sweater. He did not even smoke, and though he seemed to feel
the cold abnormally, he did not bring in any wood except in the
morning, but let Bud keep the fireplace going with his own
generous supply. He did not eat any dinner, and at supper time he
went to bed with all the clothes he possessed piled on top of
him. By all these signs, Bud knew that Cash had a bad cold.

Bud did not think much about it at first--being of the
sturdy type that makes light of a cold. But when Cash began to
cough with that hoarse, racking sound that tells the tale of
laboring lungs, Bud began to feel guiltily that he ought to do
something about it.

He hushed Lovin Child's romping, that night, and would not let
him ride a bronk at bedtime. When he was asleep, Bud laid him
down and went over to the supply cupboard, which he had been
obliged to rearrange with everything except tin cans placed on
shelves too high for a two-year-old to reach even when he stood
on his tiptoes and grunted. He hunted for the small bottle of
turpentine, found it and mixed some with melted bacon grease, and
went over to Cash's bunk, hesitating before he crossed the dead
line, but crossing nevertheless.

Cash seemed to be asleep, but his breathing sounded harsh and
unnatural, and his hand, lying uncovered on the blanket, clenched
and unclenched spasmodically. Bud watched him for a minute,
holding the cup of grease and turpentine in his hand.

"Say," he began constrainedly, and waited. Cash muttered
something and moved his hand irritatedly, without opening his
eyes. Bud tried again.

"Say, you better swab your chest with this dope. Can't monkey
with a cold, such weather as this."

Cash opened his eyes, gave the log wall a startled look, and
swung his glance to Bud. "Yeah--I'm all right," he croaked,
and proved his statement wrong by coughing violently.

Bud set down the cup on a box, laid hold of Cash by the
shoulders and forced him on his back. With movements roughly
gentle he opened Cash's clothing at the throat, exposed his hairy
chest, and poured on grease until it ran in a tiny rivulets. He
reached in and rubbed the grease vigorously with the palm of his
hand, giving particular attention to the surface over the
bronchial tubes. When he was satisfied that Cash's skin could
absorb no more, he turned him unceremoniously on his face and
repeated his ministrations upon Cash's shoulders. Then he rolled
him back, buttoned his shirts for him, and tramped heavily back
to the table.

"I don't mind seeing a man play the mule when he's well," he
grumbled, "but he's got a right to call it a day when he gits
down sick. I ain't going to be bothered burying no corpses, in
weather like this. I'll tell the world I ain't!"

He went searching on all the shelves for something more that he
could give Cash. He found a box of liver pills, a bottle of
Jamaica ginger, and some iodine--not an encouraging array for
a man fifteen miles of untrodden snow from the nearest human
habitation. He took three of the liver pills--judging them by
size rather than what might be their composition--and a cup of
water to Cash and commanded him to sit up and swallow them. When
this was accomplished, Bud felt easier as to his conscience,
though he was still anxious over the possibilities in that cough.

Twice in the night he got up to put more wood on the fire and
to stand beside Cash's bed and listen to his breathing.
Pneumonia, the strong man's deadly foe, was what he feared. In
his cow-punching days he had seen men die of it before a doctor
could be brought from the far-away town. Had he been alone with
Cash, he would have fought his way to town and brought help, but
with Lovin Child to care for he could not take the trail.

At daylight Cash woke him by stumbling across the floor to the
water bucket. Bud arose then and swore at him for a fool and sent
him back to bed, and savagely greased him again with the bacon
grease and turpentine. He was cheered a little when Cash cussed
back, but he did not like the sound of his voice, for all that,
and so threatened mildly to brain him if he got out of bed again
without wrapping a blanket or something around him.

Thoroughly awakened by this little exchange of civilities, Bud
started a fire in the stove and made coffee for Cash, who drank
half a cup quite meekly. He still had that tearing cough, and his
voice was no more than a croak; but he seemed no worse than he
had been the night before. So on the whole Bud considered the
case encouraging, and ate his breakfast an hour or so earlier
than usual. Then he went out and chopped wood until he heard
Lovin Child chirping inside the cabin like a bug-hunting meadow
lark, when he had to hurry in before Lovin Child crawled off the
bunk and got into some mischief.

For a man who was wintering in what is called enforced idleness
in a snow-bound cabin in the mountains, Bud Moore did not find
the next few days hanging heavily on his hands. Far from it.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THEY HAVE THEIR TROUBLES

To begin with, Lovin Child got hold of Cash's tobacco can and
was feeding it by small handfuls to the flames, when Bud caught
him. He yelled when Bud took it away, and bumped his head on the
floor and yelled again, and spatted his hands together and
yelled, and threw himself on his back and kicked and yelled;
while Bud towered over him and yelled expostulations and
reprimands and cajolery that did not cajole.

Cash turned over with a groan, his two palms pressed against
his splitting head, and hoarsely commanded the two to shut up
that infernal noise. He was a sick man. He was a very sick man,
and he had stood the limit.

"Shut up?" Bud shouted above the din of Lovin Child. "Ain't I
trying to shut him up, for gosh sake? What d'yuh want me to do?
--let him throw all the tobacco you got into the fire? Here,
you young imp, quit that, before I spank you! Quick, now--we've
had about enough outa you! You lay down there, Cash, and
quit your croaking. You'll croak right, if you don't keep covered
up. Hey, Boy! My jumpin' yellow-jackets, you'd drown a Klakon
till you couldn't hear it ten feet! Cash, you old fool, you shut
up, I tell yuh, or I'll come over there and shut you up! I'll
tell the world--Boy! Good glory! shut up-p!"

Cash was a sick man, but he had not lost all his
resourcefulness. He had stopped Lovin Child once, and thereby he
had learned a little of the infantile mind. He had a coyote skin
on the foot of his bed, and he raised himself up and reached for
it as one reaches for a fire extinguisher. Like a fire
extinguisher he aimed it, straight in the middle of the uproar.

Lovin Child, thumping head and heels regularly on the floor and
punctuating the thumps with screeches, was extinguished--
suddenly, completely silenced by the muffling fur that fell from
the sky, so far as he knew. The skin covered him completely. Not
a sound came from under it. The stillness was so absolute that
Bud was scared, and so was Cash, a little. It was as though Lovin
Child, of a demon one instant, was in the next instant snuffed
out of existence.

"What yuh done?" Bud ejaculated, rolling wild eyes at Cash.
"You--"

The coyote skin rattled a little. A fluff of yellow, a spark of
blue, and "Pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child from under the edge, and
ducked back again out of sight

Bud sat down weakly on a box and shook his head slowly from one
side to the other. "You've got me going south," he made solemn
confession to the wobbling skin--or to what it concealed. "I
throw up my hands, I'll tell the world fair." He got up and went
over and sat down on his bunk, and rested his hands on his knees,
and considered the problem of Lovin Child.

"Here I've got wood to cut and water to bring and grub to cook,
and I can't do none of them because I've got to ride herd on you
every minute. You've got my goat, kid, and that's the truth. You
sure have. Yes, 'Pik-k,' doggone yuh--after me going crazy
with yuh, just about, and thinking you're about to blow your
radiator cap plumb up through the roof! I'll tell yuh right here
and now, this storm has got to let up pretty quick so I can pack
you outa here, or else I've got to pen you up somehow, so I can
do something besides watch you. Look at the way you scattered
them beans, over there by the cupboard! By rights I oughta stand
over yuh and make yuh pick every one of 'em up! and who was it
drug all the ashes outa the stove, I'd like to know?"

The coyote skin lifted a little and moved off toward the
fireplace, growling "Ooo-ooo-ooo!" like a bear--almost. Bud
rescued the bear a scant two feet from the flames, and carried
fur, baby and all, to the bunk. "My good lord, what's a fellow
going to do with yuh?" he groaned in desperation. "Burn yourself
up, you would! I can see now why folks keep their kids corralled
in high chairs and gocarts all the time. They got to, or they
wouldn't have no kids."

Bud certainly was learning a few things that he had come near
to skipping altogether in his curriculum of life. Speaking of
high chairs, whereof he had thought little enough in his active
life, set him seriously to considering ways and means. Weinstock-
Lubin had high chairs listed in their catalogue. Very nice high
chairs, for one of which Bud would have paid its weight in gold
dust (if one may believe his word) if it could have been set down
in that cabin at that particular moment. He studied the small
cuts of the chairs, holding Lovin Child off the page by main
strength the while. Wishing one out of the catalogue and into the
room being impracticable, he went after the essential features,
thinking to make one that would answer the purpose.

Accustomed as he was to exercising his inventive faculty in
overcoming certain obstacles raised by the wilderness in the path
of comfort, Bud went to work with what tools he had, and with the
material closest to his hand. Crude tools they were, and crude
materials--like using a Stilson wrench to adjust a carburetor,
he told Lovin Child who tagged him up and down the cabin. An axe,
a big jack-knife, a hammer and some nails left over from building
their sluice boxes, these were the tools. He took the axe first,
and having tied Lovin Child to the leg of his bunk for safety's
sake, he went out and cut down four young oaks behind the cabin,
lopped off the branches and brought them in for chair legs. He
emptied a dynamite box of odds and ends, scrubbed it out and left
it to dry while he mounted the four legs, with braces of the
green oak and a skeleton frame on top. Then he knocked one end
out of the box, padded the edges of the box with burlap, and set
Lovin Child in his new high chair.

He was tempted to call Cash's attention to his handiwork, but
Cash was too sick to be disturbed, even if the atmosphere between
them had been clear enough for easy converse. So he stifled the
impulse and addressed himself to Lovin Child, which did just as
well.

Things went better after that. Bud could tie the baby in the
chair, give him a tin cup and a spoon and a bacon rind, and go
out to the woodpile feeling reasonably certain that the house
would not be set afire during his absence. He could cook a meal
in peace, without fear of stepping on the baby. And Cash could
lie as close as he liked to the edge of the bed without running
the risk of having his eyes jabbed with Lovin Child's finger, or
something slapped unexpectedly in his face.

He needed protection from slight discomforts while he lay there
eaten with fever, hovering so close to pneumonia that Bud
believed he really had it and watched over him nights as well as
daytimes. The care he gave Cash was not, perhaps, such as the
medical profession would have endorsed, but it was faithful and
it made for comfort and so aided Nature more than it hindered.

Fair weather came, and days of melting snow. But they served
only to increase Bud's activities at the woodpile and in hunting
small game close by, while Lovin Child took his nap and Cash was
drowsing. Sometimes he would bundle the baby in an extra sweater
and take him outside and let him wallow in the snow while Bud cut
wood and piled it on the sheltered side of the cabin wall, a
reserve supply to draw on in an emergency.

It may have been the wet snow--more likely it was the cabin
air filled with germs of cold. Whatever it was, Lovin Child
caught cold and coughed croupy all one night, and fretted and
would not sleep. Bud anointed him as he had anointed Cash, and
rocked him in front of the fire, and met the morning hollow-eyed
and haggard. A great fear tore at his heart. Cash read it in his
eyes, in the tones of his voice when he crooned soothing
fragments of old range songs to the baby, and at daylight Cash
managed to dress himself and help; though what assistance he
could possibly give was not all clear to him, until he saw Bud's
glance rove anxiously toward the cook-stove.

"Hand the kid over here," Cash said huskily. "I can hold him
while you get yourself some breakfast"

Bud looked at him stupidly, hesitated, looked down at the
flushed little face, and carefully laid him in Cash's
outstretched arms. He got up stiffly--he had been sitting
there a long time, while the baby slept uneasily--and went on
his tiptoes to make a fire in the stove.

He did not wonder at Cash's sudden interest, his abrupt change
from moody aloofness to his old partnership in trouble as well as
in good fortune. He knew that Cash was not fit for the task,
however, and he hurried the coffee to the boiling point that he
might the sooner send Cash back to bed. He gulped down a cup of
coffee scalding hot, ate a few mouthfuls of bacon and bread, and
brought a cup back to Cash.

"What d'yuh think about him?" he whispered, setting the coffee
down on a box so that he could take Lovin Child. "Pretty sick
kid, don't yuh think?"

"It's the same cold I got," Cash breathed huskily. "Swallows
like it's his throat, mostly. What you doing for him?"

"Bacon grease and turpentine, " Bud answered him despondently.
"I'll have to commence on something else, though--turpentine's
played out I used it most all up on you."

"Coal oil's good. And fry up a mess of onions and make a
poultice." He put up a shaking hand before his mouth and coughed
behind it, stifling the sound all he could.

Lovin Child threw up his hands and whimpered, and Bud went over
to him anxiously. "His little hands are awful hot," he muttered.
"He's been that way all night."

Cash did not answer. There did not seem anything to say that
would do any good. He drank his coffee and eyed the two, lifting
his eyebrows now and then at some new thought.

"Looks like you, Bud," he croaked suddenly. "Eyes, expression,
mouth--you could pass him off as your own kid, if you wanted
to."

"I might, at that," Bud whispered absently. "I've been seeing
you in him, though, all along. He lifts his eyebrows same way you
do."

"Ain't like me," Cash denied weakly, studying Lovin Child.
"Give him here again, and you go fry them onions. I would--if
I had the strength to get around."

"Well, you ain't got the strength. You go back to bed, and I'll
lay him in with yuh. I guess he'll lay quiet. He likes to be
cuddled up close."

In this way was the feud forgotten. Save for the strange habits
imposed by sickness and the care of a baby, they dropped back
into their old routine, their old relationship. They walked over
the dead line heedlessly, forgetting why it came to be there.
Cabin fever no longer tormented them with its magnifying of
little things. They had no time or thought for trifles; a bigger
matter than their own petty prejudices concerned them. They were
fighting side by side, with the Old Man of the Scythe--the Old
Man who spares not.

Lovin Child was pulling farther and farther away from them.
They knew it, they felt it in his hot little hands, they read it
in his fever-bright eyes. But never once did they admit it, even
to themselves. They dared not weaken their efforts with any
admissions of a possible defeat. They just watched, and fought
the fever as best they could, and waited, and kept hope alive
with fresh efforts.

Cash was tottery weak from his own illness, and he could not
speak above a whisper. Yet he directed, and helped soothe the
baby with baths and slow strokings of his hot forehead, and
watched him while Bud did the work, and worried because he could
not do more.

They did not know when Lovin Child took a turn for the better,
except that they realized the fever was broken. But his
listlessness, the unnatural drooping of his whole body, scared
them worse than before. Night and day one or the other watched
over him, trying to anticipate every need, every vagrant whim.
When he began to grow exacting, they were still worried, though
they were too fagged to abase themselves before him as much as
they would have liked.

Then Bud was seized with an attack of the grippe before Lovin
Child had passed the stage of wanting to be held every waking
minute. Which burdened Cash with extra duties long before he was
fit.

Christmas came, and they did not know it until the day was half
gone, when Cash happened to remember. He went out then and groped
in the snow and found a little spruce, hacked it off close to the
drift and brought it in, all loaded with frozen snow, to dry
before the fire. The kid, he declared, should have a Christmas
tree, anyway. He tied a candle to the top, and a rabbit skin to
the bottom, and prunes to the tip of the branches, and tried to
rouse a little enthusiasm in Lovin Child. But Lovin Child was not
interested in the makeshift. He was crying because Bud had told
him to keep out of the ashes, and he would not look.

So Cash untied the candle and the fur and the prunes, threw
them across the room, and peevishly stuck the tree in the
fireplace.

"Remember what you said about the Fourth of July down in
Arizona, Bud?" he asked glumly. "Well, this is the same kind of
Christmas." Bud merely grunted.



CHAPTER NINETEEN. BUD FACES FACTS

New Year came and passed and won nothing in the way of
celebration from the three in Nelson's cabin. Bud's bones ached,
his head ached, the flesh on his body ached. He could take no
comfort anywhere, under any circumstances. He craved clean white
beds and soft-footed attendance and soothing silence and cool
drinks--and he could have none of those things. His bedclothes
were heavy upon his aching limbs; he had to wait upon his own
wants; the fretful crying of Lovin Child or the racking cough of
Cash was always in his ears, and as for cool drinks, there was
ice water in plenty, to be sure, but nothing else. Fair weather
came, and storms, and cold: more storms and cold than fair
weather. Neither man ever mentioned taking Lovin Child to Alpine.
At first, because it was out of the question; after that, because
they did not want to mention it. They frequently declared that
Lovin Child was a pest, and there were times when Bud spoke
darkly of spankings--which did not materialize. But though
they did not mention it, they knew that Lovin Child was something
more; something endearing, something humanizing, something they
needed to keep them immune from cabin fever.

Some time in February it was that Cash fashioned a crude pair
of snowshoes and went to town, returning the next day. He came
home loaded with little luxuries for Lovin Child, and with the
simpler medicines for other emergencies which they might have to
meet, but he did not bring any word of seeking parents. The
nearest he came to mentioning the subject was after supper, when
the baby was asleep and Bud trying to cut a small pair of
overalls from a large piece of blue duck that Cash had brought.
The shears were dull, and Lovin Child's little rompers were so
patched and shapeless that they were not much of a guide, so Bud
was swearing softly while he worked.

"I didn't hear a word said about that kid being lost," Cash
volunteered, after he had smoked and watched Bud awhile.
"Couldn't have been any one around Alpine, or I'd have heard
something about it."

Bud frowned, though it may have been over his tailoring
problem.

"Can't tell--the old squaw mighta been telling the truth,"
he said reluctantly. "I s'pose they do, once in awhile. She said
his folks were dead." And he added defiantly, with a quick glance
at Cash, "Far as I'm concerned, I'm willing to let it ride that
way. The kid's doing all right."

"Yeah. I got some stuff for that rash on his chest. I wouldn't
wonder if we been feeding him too heavy on bacon rinds, Bud. They
say too much of that kinda thing is bad for kids. Still, he seems
to feel all right."

"I'll tell the world he does! He got hold of your old pipe to-day
and was suckin' away on it, I don't know how long. Never
feazed him, either. If he can stand that, I guess he ain't very
delicate."

"Yeah. I laid that pipe aside myself because it was getting so
dang strong. Ain't you getting them pants too long in the seat,
Bud? They look to me big enough for a ten-year-old."

"I guess you don't realize how that kid's growing!" Bud
defended his handiwork "And time I get the seams sewed, and the
side lapped over for buttons--"

"Yeah. Where you going to get the buttons? You never sent for
any."

"Oh, I'll find buttons. You can donate a couple off some of
your clothes, if you want to right bad."

"Who? Me? I ain't got enough now to keep the wind out," Cash
protested. "Lemme tell yuh something, Bud. If you cut more
saving, you'd have enough cloth there for two pair of pants. You
don't need to cut the legs so long as all that. They'll drag on
the ground so the poor kid can't walk in 'em without falling all
over himself."

"Well, good glory! Who's making these pants? Me, or you?" Bud
exploded. "If you think you can do any better job than what I'm
doing, go get yourself some cloth and fly at it! Don't think you
can come hornin' in on my job, 'cause I'll tell the world right
out loud, you can't."

"Yeah--that's right! Go to bellerin' around like a bull
buffalo, and wake the kid up! I don't give a cuss how you make'm.
Go ahead and have the seat of his pants hangin' down below his
knees if you want to!" Cash got up and moved huffily over to the
fireplace and sat with his back to Bud.

"Maybe I will, at that," Bud retorted. "You can't come around
and grab the job I'm doing." Bud was jabbing a needle eye toward
the end of a thread too coarse for it, and it did not improve his
temper to have the thread refuse to pass through the eye.

Neither did it please him to find, when all the seams were
sewn, that the little overalls failed to look like any garment he
had ever seen on a child. When he tried them on Lovin Child, next
day, Cash took one look and bolted from the cabin with his hand
over his mouth.

When he came back an hour or so later, Lovin Child was wearing
his ragged rompers, and Bud was bent over a Weinstock-Lubin
mail-order catalogue. He had a sheet of paper half filled with
items, and was licking his pencil and looking for more. He looked
up and grinned a little, and asked Cash when he was going to town
again; and added that he wanted to mail a letter.

"Yeah. Well, the trail's just as good now as it was when I took
it," Cash hinted strongly. "When I go to town again, it'll be
because I've got to go. And far as I can see, I won't have to go
for quite some time."

So Bud rose before daylight the next morning, tied on the
makeshift snowshoes Cash had contrived, and made the fifteen-mile
trip to Alpine and back before dark. He brought candy for Lovin
Child, tended that young gentleman through a siege of indigestion
because of the indulgence, and waited impatiently until he was
fairly certain that the wardrobe he had ordered had arrived at
the post-office. When he had counted off the two days required
for a round trip to Sacramento, and had added three days for
possible delay in filling the order, he went again, and returned
in one of the worst storms of the winter.

But he did not grudge the hardship, for he carried on his back
a bulky bundle of clothes for Lovin Child; enough to last the
winter through, and some to spare; a woman would have laughed at
some of the things he chose: impractical, dainty garments that
Bud could not launder properly to save his life. But there were
little really truly overalls, in which Lovin Child promptly
developed a strut that delighted the men and earned him the title
of Old Prospector. And there were little shirts and stockings and
nightgowns and a pair of shoes, and a toy or two that failed to
interest him at all, after the first inspection.

It began to look as though Bud had deliberately resolved upon
carrying a guilty conscience all the rest of his life. He had
made absolutely no effort to trace the parents of Lovin Child
when he was in town. On the contrary he had avoided all casual
conversation, for fear some one might mention the fact that a
child had been lost. He had been careful not to buy anything in
the town that would lead one to suspect that he had a child
concealed upon his premises, and he had even furnished what he
called an alibi when he bought the candy, professing to own an
inordinately sweet tooth.

Cash cast his eyes over the stock of baby clothes which Bud
gleefully unwrapped on his bunk, and pinched out a smile under
his beard.

"Well, if the kid stays till he wears out all them clothes,
we'll just about have to give him a share in the company," he
said drily.

Bud looked up in quick jealousy. "What's mine's his, and I own
a half interest in both claims. I guess that'll feed him--if
they pan out anything," he retorted. "Come here, Boy, and let's
try this suit on. Looks pretty small to me--marked three year,
but I reckon they don't grow 'em as husky as you, back where they
make all these clothes."

"Yeah. But you ought to put it in writing, Bud. S'pose anything
happened to us both--and it might. Mining's always got its
risky side, even cutting out sickness, which we've had a big
sample of right this winter. Well, the kid oughta have some
security in case anything did happen. Now--"

Bud looked thoughtfully down at the fuzzy yellow head that did
not come much above his knee.

"Well, how yuh going to do anything like that without giving it
away that we've got him? Besides, what name'd we give him in the
company? No, sir, Cash, he gets what I've got, and I'll smash any
damn man that tries to get it away from him. But we can't get out
any legal papers--"

"Yeah. But we can make our wills, can't we? And I don't know
where you get the idea, Bud, that you've got the whole say about
him. We're pardners, ain't we? Share and share alike. Mines,
mules, grub--kids--equal shares goes."

"That's where you're dead wrong. Mines and mules and grub is
all right, but when it comes to this old Lovin Man, why--who
was it found him, for gosh sake?"

"Aw, git out!" Cash growled. "Don't you reckon I'd have grabbed
him off that squaw as quick as you did? I've humored you along,
Bud, and let you hog him nights, and feed him and wash his
clothes, and I ain't kicked none, have I? But when it comes to
prope'ty--"

"You ain't goin' to horn in there, neither. Anyway, we ain't
got so darn much the kid'll miss your share, Cash."

"Yeah. All the more reason why he'll need it I don't see how
you're going to stop me from willing my share where I please. And
when you come down to facts, Bud, why--you want to recollect
that I plumb forgot to report that kid, when I was in town. And I
ain't a doubt in the world but what his folks would be glad
enough--"

"Forget that stuff!" Bud's tone was so sharp that Lovin Child
turned clear around to look up curiously into his face. "You know
why you never reported him, doggone yuh! You couldn't give him up
no easier than I could. And I'll tell the world to its face that
if anybody gets this kid now they've pretty near got to fight for
him. It ain't right, and it ain't honest. It's stealing to keep
him, and I never stole a brass tack in my life before. But he's
mine as long as I live and can hang on to him. And that's where I
stand. I ain't hidin' behind no kind of alibi. The old squaw did
tell me his folks was dead; but if you'd ask me, I'd say she was
lying when she said it. Chances are she stole him. I'm sorry for
his folks, supposing he's got any. But I ain't sorry enough for
'em to give him up if I can help it. I hope they've got more, and
I hope they've gentled down by this time and are used to being
without him. Anyway, they can do without him now easier than what
I can, because ..." Bud did not finish that sentence, except by
picking Lovin Child up in his arms and squeezing him as hard as
he dared. He laid his face down for a minute on Lovin Child's
head, and when he raised it his lashes were wet.

"Say, old-timer, you need a hair cut. Yuh know it?" he said,
with a huskiness in his voice, and pulled a tangle playfully.
Then his eyes swung round defiantly to Cash. "It's stealing to
keep him, but I can't help it. I'd rather die right here in my
tracks than give up this little ole kid. And you can take that as
it lays, because I mean it."

Cash sat quiet for a minute or two, staring down at the floor.
"Yeah. I guess there's two of us in that fix," he observed in his
dry way, lifting his eyebrows while he studied a broken place in
the side of his overshoe. "All the more reason why we should
protect the kid, ain't it? My idea is that we ought to both of us
make our wills right here and now. Each of us to name the other
for guardeen, in case of accident, and each one picking a name
for the kid, and giving him our share in the claims and anything
else we may happen to own." He stopped abruptly, his jaw sagging
a little at some unpleasant thought.

"I don't know--come to think of it, I can't just leave the
kid all my property. I--I've got a kid of my own, and if she's
alive--I ain't heard anything of her for fifteen years and
more, but if she's alive she'd come in for a share. She's a woman
grown by this time. Her mother died when she was a baby. I
married the woman I hired to take care of her and the house--
like a fool. When we parted, she took the kid with her. She did
think a lot of her, I'll say that much for her, and that's all I
can say in her favor. I drifted around and lost track of 'em. Old
woman, she married again, and I heard that didn't pan out,
neither. Anyway, she kept the girl, and gave her the care and
schooling that I couldn't give. I was a drifter.

"Well, she can bust the will if I leave her out, yuh see. And
if the old woman gets a finger in the pie, it'll be busted, all
right. I can write her down for a hundred dollars perviding she
don't contest. That'll fix it. And the rest goes to the kid here.
But I want him to have the use of my name, understand. Something-
or-other Markham Moore ought to suit all hands well enough."

Bud, holding Lovin Child on his knees, frowned a little at
first. But when he looked at Cash, and caught the wistfulness in
his eyes, he surrendered warm-heartedly.

"A couple of old he-hens like us--we need a chick to look
after," he said whimsically. "I guess Markham Moore ought to be
good enough for most any kid. And if it ain't, by gosh, we'll
make it good enough! If I ain't been all I should be, there's no
law against straightening up. Markham Moore goes as it lays--
hey, Lovins?" But Lovin Child had gone to sleep over his foster
fathers' disposal of his future. His little yellow head was
wabbling on his limp neck, and Bud cradled him in his arms and
held him so.

"Yeah. But what are we going to call him?" Methodical Cash
wanted the whole matter settled at one conference, it seemed.

"Call him? Why, what've we been calling him, the last two
months? "

"That," Cash retorted, "depended on what devilment he was into
when we called!"

"You said it all, that time. I guess, come to think of it--
tell you what, Cash, let's call him what the kid calls himself.
That's fair enough. He's got some say in the matter, and if he's
satisfied with Lovin, we oughta be. Lovin Markam Moore ain't half
bad. Then if he wants to change it when he grows up, he can."

"Yeah. I guess that's as good as anything. I'd hate to see him
named Cassius. Well, now's as good a time as any to make them
wills, Bud. We oughta have a couple of witnesses, but we can act
for each other, and I guess it'll pass. You lay the kid down, and
we'll write 'em and have it done with and off our minds. I dunno
--I've got a couple of lots in Phoenix I'll leave to the girl.
By rights she should have 'em. Lovins, here, 'll have my share in
all mining claims; these two I'll name 'specially, because I
expect them to develop into paying mines; the Blind Lodge,
anyway."

A twinge of jealousy seized Bud. Cash was going ahead a little
too confidently in his plans for the kid. He did not want to hurt
old Cash's feelings, and of course he needed Cash's assistance if
he kept Lovin Child for his own. But Cash needn't think he was
going to claim the kid himself.

"All right--put it that way. Only, when you're writing it
down, you make it read 'child of Bud Moore' or something like
that. You can will him the moon, if you want, and you can have
your name sandwiched in between his and mine. But get this, and
get it right. He's mine, and if we ever split up, the kid goes
with me. I'll tell the world right now that this kid belongs to
me, and where I go he goes. You got that?"

"You don't have to beller at the top of your voice, do yuh? "
snapped Cash, prying the cork out of the ink bottle with his
jackknife. "Here's another pen point. Tie it onto a stick or
something and git to work before you git to putting it off."

Leaning over the table facing each other, they wrote steadily
for a few minutes. Then Bud began to flag, and finally he stopped
and crumpled the sheet of tablet paper into a ball. Cash looked
up, lifted his eyebrows irritatedly, and went on with his
composition.

Bud sat nibbling the end of his makeshift penholder. The
obstacle that had loomed in Cash's way and had constrained him to
reveal the closed pages of his life, loomed large in Bud's way
also. Lovin Child was a near and a very dear factor in his life
--but when it came to sitting down calmly and setting his
affairs in order for those who might be left behind, Lovin Child
was not the only person he must think of. What of his own
man-child? What of Marie?

He looked across at Cash writing steadily in his precise way,
duly bequeathing his worldly goods to Lovin; owning, too, his
responsibilities in another direction, but still making Lovin
Child his chief heir so far as he knew. On the spur of the moment
Bud had thought to do the same thing. But could he do it?

He seemed to see his own baby standing wistfully aloof, pushed
out of his life that this baby he had no right to keep might have
all of his affections, all of his poor estate. And Marie, whose
face was always in the back of his memory, a tearful, accusing
vision that would not let him be--he saw Marie working in some
office, earning the money to feed and clothe their child. And
Lovin Child romping up and down the cabin, cuddled and scolded
and cared for as best an awkward man may care for a baby--a
small, innocent usurper.

Bud dropped his face in his palms and tried to think the thing
out coldly, clearly, as Cash had stated his own case. Cash did
not know where his own child was, and he did not seem to care
greatly. He was glad to salve his conscience with a small
bequest, keeping the bulk--if so tenuous a thing as Cash's
fortune may be said to have bulk--for this baby they two were
hiding away from its lawful parents. Cash could do it; why
couldn't be? He raised his head and looked over at Lovin Child,
asleep in his new and rumpled little finery. Why did his own baby
come between them now, and withhold his hand from doing the same?

Cash finished, glanced curiously across at Bud, looked down at
what he had written, and slid the sheet of paper across.

"You sign it, and then if you don't know just how to word
yours, you can use this for a pattern. I've read law books enough
to know this will get by, all right. It's plain, and it tells
what I want, and that's sufficient to hold in court."

Bud read it over apathetically, signed his name as witness, and
pushed the paper back.

"That's all right for you," he said heavily. "Your kid is grown
up now, and besides, you've got other property to give her. But
--it's different with me. I want this baby, and I can't do
without him. But I can't give him my share in the claims, Cash. I
--there's others that's got to be thought of first."



CHAPTER TWENTY. LOVIN CHILD STRIKES IT RICH

It was only the next day that Bud was the means of helping
Lovin Child find a fortune for himself; which eased Bud's mind
considerably, and balanced better his half of the responsibility.
Cutting out the dramatic frills, then, this is what happened to
Lovin Child and Bud:

They were romping around the cabin, like two puppies that had a
surplus of energy to work off. Part of the time Lovin Child was a
bear, chasing Bud up and down the dead line, which was getting
pretty well worn out in places. After that, Bud was a bear and
chased Lovin. And when Lovin Child got so tickled he was
perfectly helpless in the corner where he had sought refuge, Bud
caught him and swung him up to his shoulder and let him grab
handfuls of dirt out of the roof.

Lovin Child liked that better than being a bear, and sifted
Bud's hair full of dried mud, and threw the rest on the floor,
and frequently cried "Tell a worl'!" which he had learned from
Bud and could say with the uncanny pertinency of a parrot.

He had signified a desire to have Bud carry him along the wall,
where some lovely lumps of dirt protruded temptingly over a
bulging log. Then he leaned and grabbed with his two fat hands at
a particularly big, hard lump. It came away in his hands and fell
plump on the blankets of the bunk, half blinding Bud with the
dust that came with it.

"Hey! You'll have all the chinkin' out of the dang shack, if
you let him keep that lick up, Bud," Cash grumbled, lifting his
eyebrows at the mess.

"Tell a worl'!" Lovin Child retorted over his shoulder, and
made another grab.

This time the thing he held resisted his baby strength. He
pulled and he grunted, he kicked Bud in the chest and grabbed
again. Bud was patient, and let him fuss--though in self-defense
he kept his head down and his eyes away from the expected dust
bath.

"Stay with it, Boy; pull the darn roof down, if yuh want.
Cash'll get out and chink 'er up again. "

"Yeah. Cash will not," the disapproving one amended the
statement gruffly. "He's trying to get the log outa the wall,
Bud."

"Well, let him try, doggone it. Shows he's a stayer. I wouldn't
have any use for him if he didn't have gumption enough to tackle
things too big for him, and you wouldn't either. Stay with 'er,
Lovins! Doggone it, can't yuh git that log outa there nohow? Uh-
h! A big old grunt and a big old heave--uh-h! I'll tell the
world in words uh one syllable, he's some stayer."

"Tell a worl'!" chuckled Lovin Child, and pulled harder at the
thing he wanted.

"Hey! The kid's got hold of a piece of gunny sack or something.
You look out, Bud, or he'll have all that chinkin' out. There's
no sense in lettin' him tear the whole blame shack to pieces, is
there?"

"Can if he wants to. It's his shack as much as it's anybody's."
Bud shifted Lovin Child more comfortably on his shoulder and
looked up, squinting his eyes half shut for fear of dirt in them.

"For the love of Mike, kid, what's that you've got? Looks to me
like a piece of buckskin, Cash. Here, you set down a minute, and
let Bud take a peek up there."

"Bud--pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child from the blankets, where
Bud had deposited him unceremoniously.

"Yes, Bud pik-k." Bud stepped up on the bunk, which brought his
head above the low eaves. He leaned and looked, and scraped away
the caked mud. "Good glory! The kid's found a cache of some kind,
sure as you live!" And he began to claw out what had been hidden
behind the mud.

First a buckskin bag, heavy and grimed and knobby. Gold inside
it, he knew without looking. He dropped it down on the bunk,
carefully so as not to smash a toe off the baby. After that he
pulled out four baking-powder cans, all heavy as lead. He laid
his cheek against the log and peered down the length of it, and
jumped down beside the bunk.

"Kid's found a gold mine of his own, and I'll bet on it," he
cried excitedly. "Looky, Cash!"

Cash was already looking, his eyebrows arched high to match his
astonishment. "Yeah. It's gold, all right. Old man Nelson's
hoard, I wouldn't wonder. I've always thought it was funny he
never found any gold in this flat, long as he lived here. And
traces of washing here and there, too. Well!"

"Looky, Boy!" Bud had the top off a can, and took out a couple of
nuggets the size of a cooked Lima bean. "Here's the real stuff
for yuh.

"It's yours, too--unless--did old Nelson leave any folks,
Cash, do yuh know?"

"They say not. The county buried him, they say. And nobody ever
turned up to claim him or what little he left. No, I guess
there's nobody got any better right to it than the kid. We'll
inquire around and see. But seein' the gold is found on the
claim, and we've got the claim according to law, looks to me
like--"

"Well, here's your clean-up, old prospector. Don't swallow any,
is all. let's weigh it out, Cash, and see how much it is, just
for a josh."

Lovin Child had nuggets to play with there on the bed, and told
the world many unintelligible things about it. Cash and Bud
dumped all the gold into a pan, and weighed it out on the little
scales Cash had for his tests. It was not a fortune, as fortunes
go. It was probably all the gold Nelson had panned out in a
couple of years, working alone and with crude devices. A little
over twenty-three hundred dollars it amounted to, not counting
the nuggets which Lovin Child had on the bunk with him.

"Well, it's a start for the kid, anyway," Bud said, leaning
back and regarding the heap with eyes shining. "I helped him find
it, and I kinda feel as if I'm square with him now for not giving
him my half the claim. Twenty-three hundred would be a good price
for a half interest, as the claims stand, don't yuh think, Cash?"

"Yeah--well, I dunno's I'd sell for that. But on the showing
we've got so far--yes, five thousand, say, for the claims
would be good money. "

"Pretty good haul for a kid, anyway. He's got a couple of
hundred dollars in nuggets, right there on the bunk. Let's see,
Lovins. Let Bud have 'em for a minute."

Then it was that Lovin Child revealed a primitive human trait.
He would not give up the gold. He held fast to one big nugget,
spread his fat legs over the remaining heap of them, and fought
Bud's hand away with the other fist.

"No, no, no! Tell a worl' no, no, no!" he remonstrated
vehemently, until Bud whooped with laughter.

"All right--all right! Keep your gold, durn it. You're like
all the rest--minute you get your paws on to some of the real
stuff, you go hog-wild over it."

Cash was pouring the fine gold back into the buck skin bag and
the baking-powder cans.

"Let the kid play with it," he said. "Getting used to gold when
he's little will maybe save him from a lot of foolishness over it
when he gets big. I dunno, but it looks reasonable to me. Let him
have a few nuggets if he wants. Familiarity breeds contempt, they
say; maybe he won't get to thinkin' too much of it if he's got it
around under his nose all the time. Same as everything else. It's
the finding that hits a feller hardest, Bud--the hunting for
it and dreaming about it and not finding it. What say we go up to
the claim for an hour or so? Take the kid along. It won't hurt
him if he's bundled up good. It ain't cold to-day, anyhow."

That night they discussed soberly the prospects of the claim
and their responsibilities in the matter of Lovin Child's
windfall. They would quietly investigate the history of old
Nelson, who had died a pauper in the eyes of the community, with
all his gleanings of gold hidden away. They agreed that Lovin
Child should not start off with one grain of gold that rightfully
belonged to some one else--but they agreed the more cheerfully
because neither man believed they would find any close relatives;
a wife or children they decided upon as rightful heirs. Brothers,
sisters, cousins, and aunts did not count. They were presumably
able to look after themselves just as old Nelson had done. Their
ethics were simple enough, surely.

Barring, then, the discovery of rightful heirs, their plan was
to take the gold to Sacramento in the spring, and deposit it
there in a savings bank for one Lovins Markham Moore. They would
let the interest "ride" with the principal, and they would--
though neither openly confessed it to the other--from time to
time add a little from their own earnings. Bud especially looked
forward to that as a compromise with his duty to his own child.
He intended to save every cent he could, and to start a savings
account in the same bank, for his own baby, Robert Edward
Moore--named for Bud. He could not start off with as large a sum
as Lovins would have, and for that Bud was honestly sorry. But
Robert Edward Moore would have Bud's share in the claims, which
would do a little toward evening things up.

Having settled these things to the satisfaction of their
desires and their consciences, they went to bed well pleased with
the day.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. MARIE'S SIDE OF IT

We all realize keenly, one time or another, the abject poverty
of language. To attempt putting some emotions into words is like
trying to play Ave Maria on a toy piano. There are heights and
depths utterly beyond the limitation of instrument and speech
alike.

Marie's agonized experience in Alpine--and afterward--was
of that kind. She went there under the lure of her loneliness,
her heart-hunger for Bud. Drunk or sober, loving her still or
turning away in anger, she had to see him; had to hear him speak;
had to tell him a little of what she felt of penitence and
longing, for that is what she believed she had to do. Once she
had started, she could not turn back. Come what might, she would
hunt until she found him. She had to, or go crazy, she told
herself over and over. She could not imagine any circumstance
that would turn her back from that quest.

Yet she did turn back--and with scarce a thought of Bud. She
could not imagine the thing happening that did happen, which is
the way life has of keeping us all on the anxious seat most of
the time. She could not--at least she did not--dream that
Lovin Child, at once her comfort and her strongest argument for a
new chance at happiness, would in ten minutes or so wipe out all
thought of Bud and leave only a dumb, dreadful agony that hounded
her day and night.

She had reached Alpine early in the forenoon, and had gone to
the one little hotel, to rest and gather up her courage for the
search which she felt was only beginning. She had been too
careful of her money to spend any for a sleeper, foregoing even a
berth in the tourist car. She could make Lovin Child comfortable
with a full seat in the day coach for his little bed, and for
herself it did not matter. She could not sleep anyway. So she sat
up all night and thought, and worried over the future which was
foolish, since the future held nothing at all that she pictured
in it.

She was tired when she reached the hotel, carrying Lovin Child
and her suit case too--porters being unheard of in small
villages, and the one hotel being too sure of its patronage to
bother about getting guests from depot to hall bedroom. A deaf
old fellow with white whiskers and poor eyesight fumbled two or
three keys on a nail, chose one and led the way down a little
dark hall to a little, stuffy room with another door opening
directly on the sidewalk. Marie had not registered on her
arrival, because there was no ink in the inkwell, and the pen had
only half a point; but she was rather relieved to find that she
was not obliged to write her name down--for Bud, perhaps, to
see before she had a chance to see him.

Lovin Child was in his most romping, rambunctious mood, and
Marie's head ached so badly that she was not quite so watchful of
his movements as usual. She gave him a cracker and left him alone
to investigate the tiny room while she laid down for just a
minute on the bed, grateful because the sun shone in warmly
through the window and she did not feel the absence of a fire.
She had no intention whatever of going to sleep--she did not
believe that she could sleep if she had wanted to. Fall asleep
she did, however, and she must have slept for at least half an
hour, perhaps longer.

When she sat up with that startled sensation that follows
unexpected, undesired slumber, the door was open, and Lovin Child
was gone. She had not believed that he could open the door, but
she discovered that its latch had a very precarious hold upon the
worn facing, and that a slight twist of the knob was all it
needed to swing the door open. She rushed out, of course, to look
for him, though, unaware of how long she had slept, she was not
greatly disturbed. Marie had run after Lovin Child too often to
be alarmed at a little thing like that.

I don't know when fear first took hold of her, or when fear was
swept away by the keen agony of loss. She went the whole length
of the one little street, and looked in all the open doorways,
and traversed the one short alley that led behind the hotel.
Facing the street was the railroad, with the station farther up
at the edge of the timber. Across the railroad was the little,
rushing river, swollen now with rains that had been snow on the
higher slopes of the mountain behind the town.

Marie did not go near the river at first. Some instinct of
dread made her shun even the possibility that Lovin Child had
headed that way. But a man told her, when she broke down her
diffidence and inquired, that he had seen a little tot in a red
suit and cap going off that way. He had not thought anything of
it. He was a stranger himself, he said, and he supposed the kid
belonged there, maybe.

Marie flew to the river, the man running beside her, and three
or four others coming out of buildings to see what was the
matter. She did not find Lovin Child, but she did find half of
the cracker she had given him. It was lying so close to a deep,
swirly place under the bank that Marie gave a scream when she saw
it, and the man caught her by the arm for fear she meant to jump
in.

Thereafter, the whole of Alpine turned out and searched the
river bank as far down as they could get into the box canyon
through which it roared to the sage-covered hills beyond. No one
doubted that Lovin Child had been swept away in that tearing,
rock-churned current. No one had any hope of finding his body,
though they searched just as diligently as if they were certain.

Marie walked the bank all that day, calling and crying and
fighting off despair. She walked the floor of her little room all
night, the door locked against sympathy that seemed to her
nothing but a prying curiosity over her torment, fighting back
the hysterical cries that kept struggling for outlet

The next day she was too exhausted to do anything more than
climb up the steps of the train when it stopped there. Towns and
ranches on the river below had been warned by wire and telephone
and a dozen officious citizens of Alpine assured her over and
over that she would be notified at once if anything was
discovered; meaning, of course, the body of her child. She did
not talk. Beyond telling the station agent her name, and that she
was going to stay in Sacramento until she heard something, she
shrank behind her silence and would reveal nothing of her errand
there in Alpine, nothing whatever concerning herself. Mrs. Marie
Moore, General Delivery, Sacramento, was all that Alpine learned
of her.

It is not surprising then, that the subject was talked out long
before Bud or Cash came down into the town more than two months
later. It is not surprising, either, that no one thought to look
up-stream for the baby, or that they failed to consider any
possible fate for him save drowning. That nibbled piece of
cracker on the very edge of the river threw them all off in their
reasoning. They took it for granted that the baby had fallen into
the river at the place where they found the cracker. If he had
done so, he would have been swept away instantly. No one could
look at the river and doubt that--therefore no one did doubt
it. That a squaw should find him sitting down where he had
fallen, two hundred yards above the town and in the edge of the
thick timber, never entered their minds at all. That she should
pick him up with the intention at first of stopping his crying,
and should yield to the temptingness of him just as Bud bad
yielded, would have seemed to Alpine still more unlikely; because
no Indian had ever kidnapped a white child in that neighborhood.
So much for the habit of thinking along grooves established by
precedent

Marie went to Sacramento merely because that was the closest
town of any size, where she could wait for the news she dreaded
to receive yet must receive before she could even begin to face
her tragedy. She did not want to find Bud now. She shrank from
any thought of him. Only for him, she would still have her Lovin
Child. Illogically she blamed Bud for what had happened. He had
caused her one more great heartache, and she hoped never to see
him again or to hear his name spoken.

Dully she settled down in a cheap, semi-private boarding house
to wait. In a day or two she pulled herself together and went out
to look for work, because she must have money to live on. Go home
to her mother she would not. Nor did she write to her. There,
too, her great hurt had flung some of the blame. If her mother
had not interfered and found fault all the time with Bud, they
would be living together now--happy. It was her mother who
had really brought about their separation. Her mother would nag
at her now for going after Bud, would say that she deserved to
lose her baby as a punishment for letting go her pride and self-
respect. No, she certainly did not want to see her mother, or any
one else she had ever known. Bud least of all.

She found work without much trouble, for she was neat and
efficient looking, of the type that seems to belong in a well-
ordered office, behind a typewriter desk near a window where the
sun shines in. The place did not require much concentration--a
dentist's office, where her chief duties consisted of opening the
daily budget of circulars, sending out monthly bills, and telling
pained-looking callers that the doctor was out just then. Her
salary just about paid her board, with a dollar or two left over
for headache tablets and a vaudeville show now and then. She did
not need much spending money, for her evenings were spent mostly
in crying over certain small garments and a canton-flannel dog
called "Wooh-wooh."

For three months she stayed, too apathetic to seek a better
position. Then the dentist's creditors became suddenly impatient,
and the dentist could not pay his office rent, much less his
office girl. Wherefore Marie found herself looking for work
again, just when spring was opening all the fruit blossoms and
merchants were smilingly telling one another that business was
picking up.

Weinstock-Lubin's big department store gave her desk space in
the mail-order department. Marie's duty it was to open the mail,
check up the orders, and see that enough money was sent, and
start the wheels moving to fill each order--to the
satisfaction of the customer if possible.

At first the work worried her a little. But she became
accustomed to it, and settled into the routine of passing the
orders along the proper channels with as little individual
thought given to each one as was compatible with efficiency. She
became acquainted with some of the girls, and changed to a better
boarding house. She still cried over the wooh-wooh and the little
garments, but she did not cry so often, nor did she buy so many
headache tablets. She was learning the futility of grief and the
wisdom of turning her back upon sorrow when she could. The sight
of a two-year-old baby boy would still bring tears to her eyes,
and she could not sit through a picture show that had scenes of
children and happy married couples, but she fought the pain of it
as a weakness which she must overcome. Her Lovin Child was gone;
she had given up everything but the sweet, poignant memory of how
pretty he had been and how endearing.

Then, one morning in early June, her practiced fingers were
going through the pile of mail orders and they singled out one
that carried the postmark of Alpine. Marie bit her lips, but her
fingers did not falter in their task. Cheap table linen, cheap
collars, cheap suits or cheap something-or-other was wanted, she
had no doubt. She took out the paper with the blue money order
folded inside, speared the money order on the hook with others,
drew her order pad closer, and began to go through the list of
articles wanted.

This was the list:--

XL  94, 3  Dig in the mud suits, 3 yr at 59c    $1.77
XL  14  1  Buddy tucker suit 3 yr                2.00
KL   6  1  Bunny pumps infant 5                  1.25
KL  54  1  Fat Ankle shoe infant 5                .98
HL 389  4  Rubens vests, 3 yr at 90c             2.70
SL 418  3  Pajamas 3 yr. at 59c                  1.77
OL 823  1  Express wagon, 15x32 in.              4.25
                                                  --
                                               $14.22

  For which money order is enclosed. Please ship at once.

                             Very truly,
                                        R. E. MOORE,
                                           Alpine, Calif.

Mechanically she copied the order on a slip of paper which she
put into her pocket, left her desk and her work and the store,
and hurried to her boarding house.

Not until she was in her own room with the door locked did she
dare let herself think. She sat down with the copy spread open
before her, her slim fingers pressing against her temples.
Something amazing had been revealed to her--something so
amazing that she could scarcely comprehend its full significance.
Bud--never for a minute did she doubt that it was Bud, for she
knew his handwriting too well to be mistaken--Bud was sending
for clothes for a baby boy!

"3 Dig in the mud suits, 3 yr--" it sounded, to the hungry
mother soul of her, exactly like her Lovin Child. She could see
so vividly just how he would look in them. And the size--she
certainly would buy than three-year size, if she were buying for
Lovin Child. And the little "Buddy tucker" suit--that, too,
sounded like Lovin Child. He must--Bud certainly must have him
up there with him! Then Lovin Child was not drowned at all, but
alive and needing dig-in-the-muds.

"Bud's got him! Oh, Bud has got him, I know he's got him!" she
whispered over and over to herself in an ecstasy of hope.
"My little Lovin Man! He's up there right now with his Daddy
Bud--"

A vague anger stirred faintly, flared, died almost, flared
again and burned steadily within her. Bud had her Lovin Child!
How did he come to have him, then, unless he stole him? Stole him
away, and let her suffer all this while, believing her baby was
dead in the river!

"You devil!" she muttered, gritting her teeth when that thought
formed clearly in her mind. "Oh, you devil, you! If you think you
can get away with a thing like that--You devil!"



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. THE CURE COMPLETE

In Nelson Flat the lupines were like spilled bluing in great,
acre-wide blots upon the meadow grass. Between cabin and creek
bank a little plot had been spaded and raked smooth, and already
the peas and lettuce and radishes were up and growing as if they
knew how short would be the season, and meant to take advantage
of every minute of the warm days. Here and there certain plants
were lifting themselves all awry from where they had been pressed
flat by two small feet that had strutted heedlessly down the
rows.

The cabin yard was clean, and the two small windows were
curtained with cheap, white scrim. All before the door and on the
path to the creek small footprints were scattered thick. It was
these that Marie pulled up her hired saddle horse to study in hot
resentment.

"The big brute!" she gritted, and got off and went to the cabin
door, walking straight-backed and every mental and physical fiber
of her braced for the coming struggle. She even regretted not
having a gun; rather, she wished that she was not more afraid of
a gun than of any possible need of one. She felt, at that minute,
as though she could shoot Bud Moore with no more compunction that
she would feel in swatting a fly.

That the cabin was empty and unlocked only made her blood boil
the hotter. She went in and looked around at the crude
furnishings and the small personal belongings of those who lived
there. She saw the table all set ready for the next meal, with
the extremely rustic high-chair that had DYNAMITE painted boldly
on the side of the box seat. Fastened to a nail at one side of
the box was a belt, evidently kept there for the purpose of
strapping a particularly wriggly young person into the chair.
That smacked strongly of Lovin Child, sure enough. Marie
remembered the various devices by which she had kept him in his
go cart.

She went closer and inspected the belt indignantly. Just as she
expected--it was Bud's belt; his old belt that she bought for
him just after they were married. She supposed that box beside
the queer high chair was where he would sit at table and stuff
her baby with all kinds of things he shouldn't eat. Where was her
baby? A fresh spasm of longing for Lovin Child drove her from the
cabin. Find him she would, and that no matter how cunningly Bud
had hidden him away.

On a rope stretched between a young cottonwood tree in full
leaf and a scaly, red-barked cedar, clothes that had been washed
were flapping lazily in the little breeze. Marie stopped and
looked at them. A man's shirt and drawers, two towels gray for
want of bluing, a little shirt and a nightgown and pair of
stockings--and, directly in front of Marie, a small pair of
blue overalls trimmed with red bands, the blue showing white
fiber where the color had been scrubbed out of the cloth, the two
knees flaunting patches sewed with long irregular stitches such
as a man would take.

Bud and Lovin Child. As in the cabin, so here she felt the
individuality in their belongings. Last night she had been
tormented with the fear that there might be a wife as well as a
baby boy in Bud's household. Even the evidence of the mail order,
that held nothing for a woman and that was written by Bud's hand,
could scarcely reassure her. Now she knew beyond all doubt that
she had no woman to reckon with, and the knowledge brought relief
of a sort.

She went up and touched the little overalls wistfully, laid her
cheek against one little patch, ducked under the line, and
followed a crooked little path that led up the creek. She forgot
all about her horse, which looked after her as long as she was in
sight, and then turned and trotted back the way it had come,
wondering, no doubt, at the foolish faith this rider had in him.

The path led up along the side of the flat, through tall grass
and all the brilliant blossoms of a mountain meadow in June.
Great, graceful mountain lilies nodded from little shady tangles
in the bushes. Harebells and lupines, wild-pea vines and
columbines, tiny, gnome-faced pansies, violets, and the daintier
flowering grasses lined the way with odorous loveliness. Birds
called happily from the tree tops. Away up next the clouds an
eagle sailed serene, alone, a tiny boat breasting the currents of
the sky ocean.

Marie's rage cooled a little on that walk. It was so beautiful
for Lovin Child, up here in this little valley among the snow-
topped mountains; so sheltered. Yesterday's grind in that beehive
of a department store seemed more remote than South Africa.
Unconsciously her first nervous pace slackened. She found herself
taking long breaths of this clean air, sweetened with the scent
of growing things. Why couldn't the world be happy, since it was
so beautiful? It made her think of those three weeks in Big
Basin, and the never-forgettable wonder of their love--hers
and Bud's.

She was crying with the pain and the beauty of it when she
heard the first high, chirpy notes of a baby--her baby. Lovin
Child was picketed to a young cedar near the mouth of the Blind
ledge tunnel, and he was throwing rocks at a chipmunk that kept
coming toward him in little rushes, hoping with each rush to get
a crumb of the bread and butter that Lovin Child had flung down.
Lovin Child was squealing and jabbering, with now and then a real
word that he had learned from Bud and Cash. Not particularly nice
words--"Doggone" was one and several times he called the
chipmunk a "sunny-gun." And of course he frequently announced
that he would "Tell a worl'" something. His head was bare and
shone in the sun like the gold for which Cash and his Daddy Bud
were digging, away back in the dark hole. He had on a pair of
faded overalls trimmed with red, mates of the ones on the rope
line, and he threw rocks impartially with first his right hand
and then his left, and sometimes with both at once; which did not
greatly distress the chipmunk, who knew Lovin Child of old and
had learned how wide the rocks always went of their mark.

Upon this scene Marie came, still crying. She had always been
an impulsive young woman, and now she forgot that Lovin Child had
not seen her for six months or so, and that baby memories are
short. She rushed in and snatched him off the ground and kissed
him and squeezed him and cried aloud upon her God and her baby,
and buried her wet face against his fat little neck.

Cash, trundling a wheelbarrow of ore out to the tunnel's mouth,
heard a howl and broke into a run with his load, bursting out
into the sunlight with a clatter and upsetting the barrow ten
feet short of the regular dumping place. Marie was frantically
trying to untie the rope, and was having trouble because Lovin
Child was in one of his worst kicking-and-squirming tantrums.
Cash rushed in and snatched the child from her.

"Here! What you doing to that kid? You're scaring him to death
--and you've got no right!"

"I have got a right! I have too got a right!" Marie was clawing
like a wildcat at Cash's grimy hands. "He's my baby! He's mine!
You ought to be hung for stealing him away from me. Let go--
he's mine, I tell you. Lovin! Lovin Child! Don't you know Marie?
Marie's sweet, pitty man, he is! Come to Marie, boy baby!"

"Tell a worl' no, no, no!" yelled Lovin Child, clinging to
Cash.

"Aw--come to Marie, sweetheart! Marie's own lovin' little
man baby! You let him go, or I'll--I'll kill you. You big
brute!"

Cash let go, but it was not because she commanded. He let go
and stared hard at Marie, lifting his eyebrows comically as he
stepped back, his hand going unconsciously up to smooth his
beard.

"Marie?" he repeated stupidly. "Marie?" He reached out and laid
a hand compellingly on her shoulder. "Ain't your name Marie
Markham, young lady? Don't you know your own dad?"

Marie lifted her face from kissing Lovin Child very much
against his will, and stared round-eyed at Cash. She did not say
anything.

"You're my Marie, all right You ain't changed so much I can't
recognize yuh. I should think you'd remember your own father--
but I guess maybe the beard kinda changes my looks. Is this true,
that this kid belongs to you?"

Marie gasped. "Why--father? Why--why, father!" She leaned
herself and Lovin Child into his arms. "Why, I can't believe it!
Why--" She closed her eyes and shivered, going suddenly weak,
and relaxed in his arms. "I-I-I can't--"

Cash slid Lovin Child to the ground, where that young gentleman
picked himself up indignantly and ran as far as his picket rope
would let him, whereupon he turned and screamed "Sunny-gun!
sunny-gun!" at the two like an enraged bluejay. Cash did not pay
any attention to him. He was busy seeking out a soft, shady spot
that was free of rocks, where he might lay Marie down. He leaned
over her and fanned her violently with his hat, his lips and his
eyebrows working with the complexity of his emotions. Then
suddenly he turned and ducked into the tunnel, after Bud.

Bud heard him coming and turned from his work. Cash was not
trundling the empty barrow, which in itself was proof enough that
something had happened, even if Cash had not been running. Bud
dropped his pick and started on a run to meet him.

"What's wrong? Is the kid--?"

"Kid's all right" Cash stopped abruptly, blocking Bud's way.
"It's something else. Bud, his mother's come after him. She's out
there now--laid out in a faint."

"Lemme go." Bud's voice had a grimness in it that spelled
trouble for the lady laid out in a faint "She can be his mother a
thousand times--"

"Yeah. Hold on a minute, Bud. You ain't going out there and
raise no hell with that poor girl. Lovins belongs to her, and
she's going to have him. ... Now, just keep your shirt on a
second. I've got something more to say. He's her kid, and she
wants him back, and she's going to have him back. If you git him
away from her, it'll be over my carcass. Now, now, hold on!
H-o-l-d on! You're goin' up against Cash Markham now, remember!
That girl is my girl! My girl that I ain't seen since she was a
kid in short dresses. It's her father you've got to deal with
now--her father and the kid's grandfather. You get that? You be
reasonable, Bud, and there won't be no trouble at all. But my
girl ain't goin' to be robbed of her baby--not whilst I'm
around. You get that settled in your mind before you go out
there, or--you don't go out whilst I'm here to stop you."

"You go to hell," Bud stated evenly, and thrust Cash aside with
one sweep of his arm, and went down the tunnel. Cash, his
eyebrows lifted with worry and alarm, was at his heels all the
way.

"Now, Bud, be calm!" he adjured as he ran. "Don't go and make a
dang fool of yourself! She's my girl, remember. You want to hold
on to yourself, Bud, and be reasonable. Don't go and let your
temper--"

"Shut your damn mouth!" Bud commanded him savagely, and went on
running.

At the tunnel mouth he stopped and blinked, blinded for a
moment by the strong sunlight in his face. Cash stumbled and lost
ten seconds or so, picking himself up. Behind him Bud heard Cash
panting, "Now, Bud, don't go and make--a dang fool--" Bud
snorted contemptuously and leaped the dirt pile, landing close to
Marie, who was just then raising herself dizzily to an elbow.

"Now, Bud," Cash called tardily when he had caught up with him,
"you leave that girl alone! Don't you lay a finger on her! That's
my--"

Bud lifted his lips away from Marie's and spoke over his
shoulder, his arms tightening in their hold upon Marie's
trembling, yielding body.

"Shut up, Cash. She's my wife--now where do you get off at?"

(That, o course, lacked a little of being the exact truth.
Lacked a few hours, in fact, because they did not reach Alpine
and the railroad until that afternoon, and were not remarried
until seven o'clock that evening.)

"No, no, no!" cried Lovin Child from a safe distance. "Tell a
worl' no, no!"

"I'll tell the world yes, yes!" Bud retorted ecstatically,
lifting his face again. "Come here, you little scallywag, and
love your mamma Marie. Cash, you old donkey, don't you get it
yet? We've got 'em both for keeps, you and me."

"Yeah--I get it, all right." Cash came and stood awkwardly
over them. "I get it--found my girl one minute, and lost her
again the next! But I'll tell yeh one thing, Bud Moore. The
kid's' goin' to call me grampaw, er I'll know the reason why!"





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower