Cabin Fever

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN. CASH GETS A SHOCK

  It happened that Cash was just returning to the cabin from the BlindLedge claim. He met Bud almost at the doorstep, just as Bud was fumblingwith the latch, trying to open the door without moving Lovin Child inhis arms. Cash may or may not have been astonished. Certainly he didnot betray by more than one quick glance that he was interested in Bud'sreturn or in the mysterious burden he bore. He stepped ahead of Bud andopened 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 ownside of the room and laid Lovin Child carefully down so as not to wakenhim. He unbuttoned the coat he had wrapped around him, pulled off theconcealing red cap and stared down at the pale gold, silky hair and theadorable curve of the soft cheek and the lips with the dimples trickedin at the corners; the lashes lying like the delicate strokes of anartist's pencil under the closed eyes. For at least five minutes hestood 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 incredulousbewilderment.

  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 peeredinto the cold firebox, frowning as though he was expecting to see fireand warmth where only a sprinkle of warm ashes remained. Stubbornnessheld him mute and outwardly indifferent. He whittled shavings andstarted a fire in the cook stove, filled the teakettle and set it onto boil, got out the side of bacon and cut three slices, and never oncelooked toward the bunk. Bud might have brought home a winged angel, ora rainbow, or a casket of jewels, and Cash would not have permittedhimself to show any human interest.

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

  Bud started a fire in the fireplace and heaped the dry limbs high. Cashfried 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 ortwo, and making frequent cautious trips to the bunk, peeking and peeringto see if the child was all right. It seemed unnatural that it shouldsleep 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 lookedred, as if it had fever, and he reached down and touched anxiously thehand 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 itclear in to Alpine in his arms. Fifteen miles of that did not appealto Bud, whose arms ached after the two-mile trip with that solid littlebody lying at ease in the cradle they made.

  His back to that end of the room, Cash sat stiff-necked and stubbornlyspeechless, 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, hewatched Cash furtively for some sign of yielding, some softening of thatgrim grudge. It seemed to him as though Cash was not human, or he wouldshow some signs of life when a live baby was brought to camp and laiddown right under his nose.

  Cash finished and began washing his dishes, keeping his back turnedtoward Bud and Bud's new possession, and trying to make it appear thathe did so unconsciously. He did not fool Bud for a minute. Bud knew thatCash was nearly bursting with curiosity, and he had occasional fleetingimpulses to provoke Cash to speech of some sort. Perhaps Cash knewwhat was in Bud's mind. At any rate he left the cabin and went out andchopped 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 babysitting on one corner of the table, and was feeding it bread andgravy as the nearest approach to baby food he could think of. Duringoccasional interludes in the steady procession of bits of bread from theplate to the baby's mouth, Lovin Child would suck a bacon rind whichhe held firmly grasped in a greasy little fist. Now and then Bud wouldreach into his hip pocket, pull out his handkerchief as a make-shiftnapkin, and would carefully wipe the border of gravy from the baby'smouth, and stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket again.

  Both seemed abominably happy and self-satisfied. Lovin Child kickedhis heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligibleconversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud repliedwith a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding of LovinChild'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 hisside of the hearth, and began to replenish the fire. If he heard, hegave no sign of understanding or interest.

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

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

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

  Cash sat down on the bench he had made for himself, and stared into thefire. His whole attitude spelled abstraction; nevertheless he missed nolittle sound behind him.

  He knew that Bud was talking largely for his benefit, and he knewthat here was the psychological time for breaking the spell of silencebetween 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 theyielding, make the first step toward amity.

  But Bud had other things to occupy him just then. Having eaten all hissmall 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 LovinChild, who had an insistent way that was scarcely to be combated orignored.

  "But listen here, Boy!" Bud protested, after he had for the third timeprevented Lovin Child from backing off the table. "I was going to takeoff these dirty duds and wash some of the Injun smell off yuh. I'll tella 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 badpolicy to take a bath right after yuh eat. We'll let it ride awhile, butyou sure have got to be scrubbed a plenty before you can crawl in withme, old-timer," he said, and set him down on the floor.

  Lovin Child went immediately about the business that seemed mostimportant. He got down on his hands and knees and gravely inspected thebroad black line, hopefully testing it with tongue and with fingers tosee 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 andtasteless. He got up, planted both feet on it and teetered back andforth, chuckling up at Bud with his eyes squinted.

  He teetered so enthusiastically that he sat down unexpectedly and withmuch emphasis. That put him between two impulses, and while they battledhe stared round-eyed at Bud. But he decided not to cry, and straightwayturned himself into a growly bear and went down the line on all fourstoward Cash, growling "Ooooooo!" as fearsomely as his baby throat wascapable 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 wayMarie had always done--the way every one had always done, when LovinChild got down and came at them growling. Cash sat rigid with his faceto the fire, and would not look.

  Lovin Child crawled all around him and growled his terriblest. For someunexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as though he hadturned to some insensate metal. From where he sat watching--curious tosee what Cash would do--Bud saw him flinch and stiffen as a man doesunder pain. And because Bud had a sore spot in his own heart, Bud felt aquick stab of understanding and sympathy. Cash Markham's past could nothave been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for the salveof 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 ashe had investigated the line, with fingers and with pink tongue, likea puppy. From the lowest buckle he went on to the top one, where Cash'skhaki trousers were tucked inside with a deep fold on top. Lovin Child'ssmall forefinger went sliding up in the mysterious recesses of the folduntil 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 didso. Cash tried to keep on staring into the fire, but in spite of himselfhis eyes lowered to meet the upward look.

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

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

  Until the door slammed shut Lovin Child looked after him, scowling, hiseyes a blaze of resentment. He brought his palms together with a viciousslap, leaned over, and bumped his forehead deliberately and painfullyupon the flat rock hearth, and set up a howl that could have been heardfor three city blocks.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN. AND BUD NEVER GUESSED

  That night, when he had been given a bath in the little zinc tub theyused for washing clothes, and had been carefully buttoned inside a cleanundershirt of Bud's, for want of better raiment, Lovin Child missedsomething out of his sleepytime cudding. He wanted Marie, and he did notknow how to make his want known to this big, tender, awkward man who hadbefriended him and filled his thoughts till bedtime. He began to whimperand look seekingly around the little cabin. The whimper grew to a crywhich Bud's rude rocking back and forth on the box before the fireplacecould not still.

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

  "Aw, now, you don't wanta go and act like that. Listen here, Boy. Youlay down here and go to sleep. You can search me for what it is you'retrying 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'sinfallible remedy for the weeping of infant charges--and dangled itanxiously before Lovin Child.

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

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

  Lovin Child stopped crying and condescended to take a languid interestin the watch--which had a picture of Marie pasted inside the back of thecase, by the way. "Ee?" he inquired, with a pitiful little catch in hisbreath, 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 benchbeside the head of his bunk and staring into the fire. But Cash gaveno sign that he heard or saw anything save the visions his memory wasconjuring in the dancing flames.

  "Lay down, now, like a good boy, and go to sleep," Bud wheedled. "Youcan hold it if you want to--only don't drop it on the floor--here! Quitkickin' your feet out like that! You wanta freeze? I'll tell the worldstraight, it's plumb cold and snaky outside to-night, and you're prettydarn lucky to be here instead of in some Injun camp where you'd have tobed down with a mess of mangy dogs, most likely. Come on, now--lay downlike 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 naggedhim with a vague memory of something familiar and unpleasant. He rockedhis body backward and forward, and frowned while he tried to lay hold ofthe memory. It was the high-keyed wailing of this same man-child wantinghis bottle, but it eluded Bud completely. There was a tantalizing senseof familiarity with the sound, but the lungs and the vocal chords ofLovin Child had developed amazingly in two years, and he had lost thesmall-infant wah-hah.

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

  Yet Lovin Child was answering every one of Bud's mute questions. Lyingthere in his "Daddy Bud's" arms, wrapped comically in his Daddy Bud'ssoftest undershirt, Lovin Child was proving to his Daddy Bud that hisown man-child was strong and beautiful and had a keen little brainbehind those twinkling blue eyes. He was telling why he cried. He wantedMarie to take him and rock him to sleep, just as she had rocked himto sleep every night of his young memory, until that time when he hadtoddled out of her life and into a new and peculiar world that held noMarie.

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

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

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

  Cash stirred a little, like a sleeper only half awakened. But he did notreply, and Bud gave an impatient snort, tiptoed over and picked up thediscarded clothes of Lovin Child, that held still a faint odor of woodsmoke and rancid grease, and, removing his shoes that he might movesilently, went to work.

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

  While he rubbed and rinsed and wrung and hung to dry, he had planned thedetails of taking the baby to Alpine and placing it in good hands thereuntil its parents could be found. It was stolen, he had no doubt atall. He could picture quite plainly the agony of the parents, and commonhumanity imposed upon him the duty of shortening their misery as muchas possible. But one day of the baby's presence he had taken, withthe excuse that it needed immediate warmth and wholesome food. Hisconscience did not trouble him over that short delay, for he was honestenough 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 thewarm, fire-lighted room and pulling the blan
kets up to his ears. Heeither slept or pretended to sleep, Bud did not know which. Of thebaby's healthy slumber there was no doubt at all. Bud put on hisovershoes and went outside after more wood, so that there would be nodelay in starting the fire in the morning and having the cabin warmbefore the baby woke.

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

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

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

  "Gawd," Bud whispered in a swift passion of longing, "I wish you was myown 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 hethought, what visions filled his vigil, who can say?