The Man from the Bitter Roots
Page 5
V
"THE JACK-POT"
As Uncle Bill Griswold came breathless from the raging whiteness outsidewith an armful of bark and wood, the two long icicles hanging from theends of his mustache made him look like an industrious walrus. He drewthe fuel beside the tiny, sheet-iron camp stove, and tied fast the flapof the canvas tent.
"We're in a jack-pot, all right."
He delivered the commonplace pronunciamento in a tone which would haveconveyed much to a mountain man. To Mr. Sprudell it meant only that hemight expect further annoyance. He demanded querulously:
"Did you find my shirt?"
Uncle Bill rolled his eyes with a droll grimace of despair toward themound of blankets in the corner whence came the muffled voice. Theinnocence of a dude was almost pitiful. He answered dryly:
"I wouldn't swear to it--I wouldn't go so far as to make my affadavvy toit, but I think I seen your shirt wavin' from a p'int a rock aboutseventy mile to the south'ard--over t'ward the Thunder Mountaincountry."
"Gone?"
"Gone"--mournfully--"where the woodbine twineth."
"And my trousers?"
"Where the wangdoodle mourneth fer his lost love. Blowed off. I got yourunion suit out'n the top of a pine tree. You've no more pants than arabbit, feller. Everything went when the guy-ropes busted--I warned youto sleep in your clothes."
"But what'll I do?" Sprudell quavered.
"Nothin'." His tone was as dry as punk. "You kin jest as well die inthem pink pajammers as anything else."
"Huh?" excitedly. The mound began to heave.
"I say we're in for it. There's a feel in the air like what the Injunscall 'The White Death.' It hurt my lungs like I was breathin' darnin'needles when I cut this wood. The drifts is ten feet high and gittin'higher." Laconically: "The horses have quit us; we're afoot."
"Is that so? Well, we've got to get out of here--I refuse to put inanother such night. Lie still!" he commanded ferociously. "You're lettingin a lot of cold air. Quit rampin' round!" From which it may be gatheredthat Mr. Sprudell, for purposes of warmth and protection, was sleepingwith the Chinese cook.
"Three in a bed _is_ crowded," Uncle Bill admitted, with a grin."To-night you might try settin' up."
A head of tousled white hair appeared above the edge of the blankets,then a pair of gleaming eyes. "I propose to get out of here to-day," Mr.Sprudell announced, with hauteur.
"Indeed?" inquired Uncle Bill calmly. "Where do you aim to go?"
"I'm going back to Ore City--on foot, if need be--I'll walk!"
Uncle Bill explained patiently:
"The trail's wiped out, the pass is drifted full of snow, and the cold'sa fright. You'd be lost inside of fifteen yards. That's loco talk."
"I'm going to get up." There was offended dignity in Mr. Sprudell'stone.
"You can't," said the old man shortly. "You ain't got no pants, and yourshoes is full of snow. I doubts if you has socks till I takes a stickand digs around where your tepee was."
"Tsch! Tsch!" Mr. Sprudell's tongue clicked against his teeth in theextreme of exasperation at Uncle Bill. By some process of reasoning heblamed him for their present plight.
"I'm hungry!" he snapped, in a voice which implied that the fact was amatter of moment.
"So am I," said Uncle Bill; "I'm holler to my toes."
"I presume"--in cold sarcasm--"there's no reason why we shouldn'tbreakfast, since it's after ten."
"None at all," Uncle Bill answered easily, "except we're out of grub."
"What!"
"I explained that to you four days ago, but you said you'd got to get asheep. I thought I could eat snowballs as long as you could. But Ididn't look for such a storm as this."
"There's nothing?" demanded Sprudell, aghast.
"Oh, yes, there's _somethin'_," grimly. "I kin take the ax and break upa couple of them doughnuts and bile the coffee grounds again. To-nightwe'll gorge ourselves on a can of froze tomatoes, though I hates to eatso hearty and go right to bed. There's a pint of beans, too, that bycookin' steady in this altitude ought to be done by spring. We'd 'a' hadthat sheep meat, only it blowed out of the tree last night andsomethin' drug it off. Here's your doughnut."
Mr. Sprudell snatched eagerly at it and retired under the covers, wherea loud scrunching told of his efforts to masticate the frozen tidbit.
"Can you eat a little somethin', Toy? Is your rheumatiz a-hurtin' prettybad?"
"Hiyu lumatiz," a faint voice answered, "plitty bad."
The look of gravity on the man's face deepened as he stood rubbing hishands over the red-hot stove, which gave out little or no heat in theintense cold.
The long hours of that day dragged somehow, and the next. When the thirdday dawned, the tent was buried nearly to the ridgepole under snow.Outside, the storm was roaring with unabated fury, and Uncle Bill'semergency supply of wood was almost gone. He crept from under theblankets and boiled some water, making a few tasteless pancakes with ateacupful of flour.
Sprudell sat up suddenly and said, with savage energy:
"Look here--I'll give you a thousand dollars to get me out of this!"
Uncle Bill looked at him curiously. A thousand dollars! Wasn't that likea dude? Dudes thought money could do anything, buy anything.
Uncle Bill would rather have had a sack of flour just then than all themoney Sprudell owned.
"Your check's no more good than a bunch of dried leaves. It's endurancethat's countin' from now on. We're up against it right, I tell you, withToy down sick and all."
Sprudell stared.
"Toy?" Was that why Griswold would not leave? "What's Toy got to do withit?" he demanded.
It was the old man's turn to stare.
"What's Toy got to do with it?" He looked intently at Sprudell's smallround eyes--hard as agate--at his selfish, Cupid's mouth. "You don'tthink I'd quit him, do you, when he's sick--leave him here to diealone?" Griswold flopped a pancake in the skillet and added, in asomewhat milder voice: "I've no special love for Chinks, but I've knownToy since '79. He wouldn't pull out and leave me if I was down."
"But what about me?" Sprudell demanded furiously.
"You'll have to take your chances along with us. It may let up in a dayor two, and then again it mayn't. Anyway, the game goes; we stop eatin'altogether before to-morry night."
"You got me into this fix! And what am I paying you five dollars a dayfor, except to get me out and do as you are told?"
"_I_ got you into this fix? _I_ did?" The stove lids danced with thevigor with which Uncle Bill banged down the frying pan. The mild old manwas stirred at last. "I sure like your nerve! And, say, when you talk tome, jest try and remember that I don't wear brass buttons and auniform." His blue eyes blazed. "It's your infernal meanness that's toblame, and nothin' else. I warned you--I told you half a dozen timesthat you wasn't gittin' grub enough to come into the hills this time ofyear. But you was so afraid of havin' six bits' worth left over that youwouldn't listen to what I said. I don't like you anyhow. You're thekind of galoot that ought never to git out of sight of a railroad. Now,blast you--you starve!"
Incredible as the sensation was, Sprudell felt small. He had to remindhimself repeatedly who he was before he quite got back his poise, and nosuitable retort came to him, for his guide had told the truth. But thethought that blanched his pink face until it was only a shade less whitethan his thick, white hair was that he, T. Victor Sprudell, president ofthe Bartlesville Tool Works, of Bartlesville, Indiana, was going tostarve! To freeze! To die in the pitiless hills like any pennilessprospector! His check-book was as useless as a bent weapon in his hand,and his importance in the world counted for no more than that of theChinaman, by his side. Mr. Sprudell lay down again, weak from anoverwhelming sense of helplessness.
Sprudell had not realized it before; but now he knew that always in theback of his head there had been a picture of an imposing cortege, blockslong, following a wreath-covered coffin in which he reposed. And later,an afternoon extra in which his demise was feature
d and his delicate,unostentatious charities described--not that he could think of any, buthe presumed that that was the usual thing.
But this--this miserable finality! Unconsciously Sprudell groaned. Todie bravely in the sight of a crowd was sublime; but to perish alone,unnoted, side by side with the Chinese cook and chiefly for want oftrousers in which to escape, was ignominious. He snatched his cold feetfrom the middle of the cook's back.
Another wretched day passed, the event of which was the uncovering ofSprudell's fine field boots in a drift outside. That night he did notclose his eyes. His nervousness became panic, and his panic like untohysteria. He ached with cold and his cramped position, and he was nowgetting in earnest the gnawing pangs of hunger. What was a Chinaman'slife compared to his? There were millions like him left--and there wasonly one Sprudell! In the faint, gray light of the fourth day, Griswoldfelt him crawling out.
Griswold watched him while he kneaded the hard leather of his boots tosoften it, and listened to the chattering of his teeth while he wentthrough the Chinaman's war bag for an extra pair of socks.
"The sizes in them Levi Strauss' allus run too small," Uncle Billobserved suddenly, after Sprudell had squeezed into Toy's one pair ofoveralls.
"There's no sense in us all staying here to starve," said Sprudelldefiantly, as though he had been accused. "I'm going to Ore City beforeI get too weak to start."
"I won't stop you if you're set on goin'; but, as I told you once,you'll be lost in fifteen yards. There's just one chance I see,Sprudell, and I'll take it if you'll say you'll stay with Toy. I'll tryto get down to that cabin on the river. The feller may be there, andagain he may have gone for grub. I won't say that I can make it, butI'll do my best."
Sprudell said stubbornly:
"I won't be left behind! It's every man for himself now."
The old man replied, with equal obstinacy:
"Then you'll start alone." He added grimly: "I reckon you've neverwallered snow neck deep."
For the first time the Chinaman stirred, and raising himself painfullyto his elbow, turned to Uncle Bill.
"You go, I think."
Griswold shook his head.
"That 'every-man-for-himself' talk aint the law we know, Toy."
The Chinaman reiterated, in monotone:
"You go, I think."
"You heard what I said."
"You take my watch, give him Chiny Charley. He savvy my grandson, thelittle Sun Loon. Tell Chiny Charley he write the bank in Spokane forsend money to Chiny to pay on lice lanch. Tell Chiny Charley--he savvyall. I stay here. You come back--all light. You no come back--all light.I no care. You go now." He lay down. The matter was quite settled inToy's mind.
While Sprudell stamped around trying to get feeling into his numb feetand making his preparations to leave, Uncle Bill lay still. He knew thatToy was sincere in urging him to go, and finally he said:
"I'll take you at your word, Toy; I'll make the break. If there's nobodyin the cabin, I don't believe I'll have the strength to waller backalone; but if there is, we'll get some grub together and come as soon aswe can start. I'll do my best."
The glimmer of a smile lighted old Toy's broad, Mongolian face whenGriswold was ready to go, and he laid his chiefest treasure inGriswold's hand.
"For the little Sun Loon." His oblique, black eyes softened withaffectionate pride. "Plitty fine kid, Bill, hiyu wawa."
"For the little Sun Loon," repeated Uncle Bill gravely. "And hang on aslong as you can." Then he shook hands with Toy and divided the matches.
The old Chinaman turned his face to the wall of the tent and lay quitestill as the two went out and tied the flap securely behind them.
It did not take Sprudell long to realize that Uncle Bill was correct inhis assertion that he would have been lost alone in fifteen yards. Hewould have been lost in less than that, or as soon as the full force ofthe howling storm had struck him and the wind-driven snow shut out thetent. He had not gone far before he wished that he had done as UncleBill had told him and wrapped his feet in "Californy socks." The stripsof gunny sacking which he had refused because they looked bunglesome hecould see now were an immense protection against cold and wet. Sprudellalmost admitted, as he felt the dampness beginning to penetrate hiswaterproof field boots, that there might still be some things he couldlearn.
He gasped like a person taking a long, hard dive into icy water whenthey plunged into the swirling world which shut out the tent they hadcalled home. And the wind that took his breath had a curious, piercingquality that hurt, as Uncle Bill had said, like breathing darningneedles. "The White Death!" Literally it was that. Panting and quicklyexhausted, as he "wallered snow to his neck," T. Victor Sprudell beganseriously to doubt if he could make it.
"Aire you comin'?" There was no sympathy, only impatience, in the callwhich kept coming back with increasing frequency, and Sprudell waslonging mightily for sympathy. He had a quaint conceit concerning histoes, not being able to rid himself of the notion that when he removedhis socks they would rattle in the ends like bits of broken glass; andsoon he was so cold that he felt a mild wonder as to how his heartcould go on pumping congealed blood through the auricles and ventricles.It had annoyed him at first when chunks of snow dropped from overhangingbranches and lodged between his neck and collar, to trickle down hisspine; but shortly he ceased to notice so small a matter. In the start,when he had inadvertently slipped off a buried log and found himselfentangled in a network of down timber, he had struggled frantically toget out, but now he experienced not even a glimmer of surprise when hestepped off the edge of something into nothing. He merely flounderedlike a fallen stage horse to get back, without excitement or any senseof irritation. After three exhausting hours or so of fighting snow, hisfrenzy lest he lose sight of Uncle Bill gave place to apathy. When hefell, he even lay there--resting.
Generally he responded to Griswold's call; if the effort was too great,he did not answer, knowing the old man would come back. That he cameback swearing made no difference, so long as he came back. He hadlearned that Griswold would not leave him.
When he stumbled into a drift and settled back in the snow, it feltexactly like his favorite leather chair by the fire-place in theBartlesville Commercial Club. He had the same cozy sensation ofcontentment. He could almost feel the crackling fire warming his kneesand shins, and it required no great stretch of the imagination tobelieve that by simply extending his hand he could grasp a glass ofwhisky and seltzer on the wide arm-rest.
"What's the matter? Aire you down ag'in?"
How different the suave deference of his friends Abe Cone and Y. FredSmart to the rude tone and manner of this irascible guide! Mr. Sprudellfancied that by way of reply he smiled a tolerant smile, but as a matterof fact the expression of his white, set face did not change.
"Great cats! Have I got to go back and git that dude?" The interveningfeet looked like miles to the tired old man.
Wiry and seasoned as he was, he was nearly exhausted by the extra stepshe had taken and the effort he had put forth to coax and bully, somehowto drag Sprudell along. The situation was desperate. The bitter coldgrew worse as night came on. He knew that they had worked their way downtoward the river, but how far down? Was the deep canyon he had tried tofollow the right one? Somewhere he had lost the "squaw ax," and dry woodwas inaccessible under snow. If it were not for Sprudell, he knew thathe could still plod on.
His deep breath of exhaustion was a groan as he floundered back andshook the inert figure with all his might.
"Git up!" he shouted. "You must keep movin'! Do you want to lay rightdown and die?"
"Lemme be!" The words came thickly, and Sprudell did not lift his eyes.
"He's goin' to freeze on me sure!" Uncle Bill tried to lift him, tocarry him, to drag him somehow--a dead weight--farther down the canyon.
It was hopeless. He let him fall and yelled. Again and again he yelledinto the empty world about him. Not so much that he expected an answeras to give vent to his despair. There was not a chance
in a million thatthe miner in the cabin would hear him, even if he were there. But hekept on yelling, whooping, yodling with all his might.
His heart leaped, and he stopped in the midst of a breath. He listened,with his mouth wide open. Surely he heard an answering cry! Faint itwas--far off--as though it came through thicknesses of blankets--but it_was_ a cry! A human voice!
"Hello! Hello!"
He was not mistaken. From somewhere in the white world of desolation,the answer came again:
"Hello! Hello!"
Uncle Bill was not much given to religious allusions except as a matterof emphasis, but he told himself that that far-off cry of reassurancesounded like the voice of God.
"Help!" he called desperately, sunk to his armpits in the snow. "Help!Come quick!"
Night was so near that it had just about closed down when Bruce camefighting his way up the canyon through the drifts to Griswold's side.They wasted no time in words, but between them dragged and carried theunresisting sportsman to the cabin.
The lethargy which had been so nearly fatal was without sensation, butafter an hour or so of work his saviors had the satisfaction of hearinghim begin to groan with the pain of returning circulation.
"Git up and stomp around!" Uncle Bill advised, when Sprudell couldstand. "But," sharply, as he stumbled, "look where you're goin'--that'sa corp' over there."
The admonition revived Sprudell as applications of snow and ice waterhad not done. He looked in wide-mouthed inquiry at Bruce.
Bruce's somber eyes darkened as he explained briefly:
"We had a fuss, and he went crazy. He tried to get me with the ax."
There was no need to warn Sprudell again to "look where he was goin',"as he existed from that moment with his gaze alternating between thegruesome bundle and the gloomy face of his black-browed host.Incredulity and suspicion shone plainly in his eyes. Sprudell'simagination was a winged thing, and now it spread its startled pinions.Penned up with a murderer--what a tale to tell in Bartlesville, if bychance he returned alive! The fellow had him at his mercy, and what,after all, did he know of Uncle Bill? Even fairly honest men sometimestook desperate chances for so fat a purse as his.
Sprudell saw to it that neither of them got behind him as they movedabout the room.
Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to seethe life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured todiscover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of theBritish Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarilyread, for instance, "Contributions to the Natural History of the UnitedStates," would split his skull when his back was turned. Yet theysmacked of affectation to Sprudell, who associated good reading withgood clothes.
"These are your books--you _read_ them?" There was skepticism, a covertsneer in Sprudell's tone.
"I'd hardly pack them into a place like this if I didn't," Bruceanswered curtly.
"I suppose not," he hastened to admit, and added, patronizingly; "Who_is_ this fellow Agassiz?"
Bruce turned as sharply as if he had attacked a personal friend. Thefamous, many-sided scientist was his hero, occupying a pedestal that noother celebrity approached. Sprudell had touched him on a tender spot.
"That 'fellow Agassiz,'" he answered in cold mimicry, "was one of thegreatest men who ever lived. Where do you stop when you're home that younever heard of Alexander Agassiz? I'd rather have been Alexander Agassizthan the richest man in America--than any king. He was a greatscientist, a great mining engineer, a successful business man. Hedeveloped and put the Calumet and Hecla on a paying basis. He made theUniversity Museum in Cambridge what it is. He knew more about seaurchins and coral reefs than men who specialize, and they were only sideissues with him. I met him once when I was a kid, in Old Mexico; hetalked to me a little, and it was the honor of my life. I'd rather walkbehind and pack his suitcase like a porter than ride with the presidentof the road!"
"Is that so?" Sprudell murmured, temporarily abashed.
"Great cats!" ejaculated Uncle Bill, with bulging eyes. "My head wouldgit a hot-box if I knowed jest half of that."
When Sprudell stretched his stiff muscles and turned his head upon thebear-grass pillow at daybreak, Bruce was writing a letter on the cornerof the table and Uncle Bill was stowing away provisions in a smallcanvas sack. He gathered, from the signs of preparation, that the minerwas going to try and find the Chinaman. Outside, the wind was stillsweeping the stinging snow before it like powder-driven shot. What afool he was to attempt it--to risk his life--and for what?
It was with immeasurable satisfaction that Sprudell told himself thatbut for his initiative they would have been there yet. These fellowsneeded a leader, a strong man--the ignorant always did. His eyes caughtthe suggestive outlines of the blanket on the floor, and, with a start,he remembered what was under it. They had no sensibilities, theseWesterners--they lacked fineness; certainly no one would suspect fromthe matter-of-factness of their manner that they were rooming with acorpse. For himself, he doubted if he could even eat.
"Oh, you awake?" Uncle Bill glanced at him casually.
"My feet hurt."
Uncle Bill ignored his plaintive tone.
"They're good and froze. They'll itch like forty thousand fleabitesatter while--like as not you'll haf to have them took off. Lay still anddon't clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I'll cook you somethin'bimeby."
Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. Hewished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the payroll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He'd----Sprudell'sresentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conduciveto the disciplining of Uncle Bill.
Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here andthere. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as thoughhe were weighing something pro and con.
Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist thoughhe was, he was equally aware that Bruce's observations still left him insome doubt.
Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to makeup his mind.
"I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case Idon't come back. I intend to, but"--he glanced instinctively out of thewindow--"it's no sure thing I will.
"My partner has a mother and a sister--here's the address, though it'stwelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise thatyou'll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and thisletter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust--our season's work."He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell's hand. "Say that Slimsent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write,that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.
"I've told them in my letter about the placer here--it's theirs, thewhole of it, if I don't come back. See that it's recorded; women don'tunderstand about such things. And be sure the assessment work's kept up.In the letter, there, I've given them my figures as to how the samplesrun. Some day there'll be found a way to work it on a big scale, andit'll pay them to hold on. That's all, I guess." He looked deep intoSprudell's eyes. "You'll do it?"
"As soon as I get out."
"I'd just about come back and haunt you if you lied."
There were no heroics when he left them; he simply fastened on his packand went.
"Don't try to hunt me if I stay too long," was all he said to Uncle Billat parting. "If there's any way of getting there, I can make it just aswell alone."
It was disappointing to Sprudell--nothing like the Western plays attragic moments; no long handshakes and heart-breaking speeches offarewell from the "rough diamonds."
"S' long," said Uncle Bill.
He polished a place on the window-pane with his elbow and watched Burt'sstruggle with the cold and wind and snow begin.
"Pure grit, that feller," when, working like a snowplow, Bruce haddisappeared. "He's man all through." The old voice trembled. "Say!" Heturned ferociously. "Git up and eat!"
But in this he seemed mistaken, for the snow fell with only briefcessation, and in such intervals the curious fog hung over the silentmountains with the malignant persistency of an evil spirit.
He scraped the snow away from beside the cabin, and Sprudell helped himbury Slim. Then, against the day of their going, he fashioned crudesnow-shoes of material he found about the cabin and built a rough handsled.
"If only 'twould thaw a little, and come a crust, he'd stand a whole lotbetter show of gittin' down." Uncle Bill scanned the sky regularly for abreak somewhere each noon.
"Lord, yes, if it only would!" Sprudell always answered fretfully."There are business reasons why I ought to be at home."
The day came when the old man calculated that even with the utmosteconomy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinchedand shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canyon intowhich Bruce had disappeared.
"He might kill somethin', if 'twould lift a little, but there's nothin'stirrin' in such a storm as this. I feel like a murderer settin' here."
Sprudell watched him fearfully lest the irresolution he read in his facechange to resolve, and urged:
"There's nothing we can do but wait."
Days after the most sanguine would have abandoned hope, Uncle Bill hungon. Sprudell paced the cabin like a captive panther, and his broad hintsbecame demands.
"A month of this, and there would be another killin'; I aches to chokethe windpipe off that dude," the old man told himself, and ignored theperemptory commands.
The crust that he prayed for came at last, but no sign of Bruce; then agale blowing down the river swept it fairly clear of snow.
"Git ready!" Griswold said one morning. "We'll start." And Sprudelljumped on his frosted feet for joy. "We'll take it on the ice to Long'sCrossin'," he vouchsafed shortly. "Ore City's closest, but I've no heartto pack you up that hill."
He left a note on the kitchen table, though he had the sensation ofwriting to the dead; and when he closed the door he did so reverently,as he would have left a mausoleum. Then, dragging blankets andprovision behind them on the sled, they started for the river, past thebroken snow and the shallow grave where the dead madman lay, past theclump of snow-laden willows where the starving horses that had workedtheir way down huddled for shelter, too weak to move. Leaden-hearted,Uncle Bill went with reluctant feet. Before a bend of the river shutfrom sight the white-roofed cabin from which a tiny thread of smokestill rose, he looked over his shoulder, wagging his head.
"I don't feel right about goin'. I shorely don't."