by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THEY HAVE THEIR TROUBLES
To begin with, Lovin Child got hold of Cash's tobacco can and wasfeeding it by small handfuls to the flames, when Bud caught him. Heyelled when Bud took it away, and bumped his head on the floor andyelled again, and spatted his hands together and yelled, and threwhimself on his back and kicked and yelled; while Bud towered over himand yelled expostulations and reprimands and cajolery that did notcajole.
Cash turned over with a groan, his two palms pressed against hissplitting head, and hoarsely commanded the two to shut up that infernalnoise. He was a sick man. He was a very sick man, and he had stood thelimit.
"Shut up?" Bud shouted above the din of Lovin Child. "Ain't I trying toshut him up, for gosh sake? What d'yuh want me to do?--let him throwall 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! Youlay down there, Cash, and quit your croaking. You'll croak right, if youdon't keep covered up. Hey, Boy! My jumpin' yellow-jackets, you'd drowna Klakon till you couldn't hear it ten feet! Cash, you old fool, youshut up, I tell yuh, or I'll come over there and shut you up! I'll tellthe world--Boy! Good glory! shut up-p!"
Cash was a sick man, but he had not lost all his resourcefulness. Hehad stopped Lovin Child once, and thereby he had learned a little ofthe infantile mind. He had a coyote skin on the foot of his bed, andhe raised himself up and reached for it as one reaches for a fireextinguisher. Like a fire extinguisher he aimed it, straight in themiddle of the uproar.
Lovin Child, thumping head and heels regularly on the floor andpunctuating the thumps with screeches, was extinguished--suddenly,completely silenced by the muffling fur that fell from the sky, so faras he knew. The skin covered him completely. Not a sound came from underit. 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 inthe 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 backagain out of sight.
Bud sat down weakly on a box and shook his head slowly from one side tothe other. "You've got me going south," he made solemn confession to thewobbling skin--or to what it concealed. "I throw up my hands, I'll tellthe 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 LovinChild.
"Here I've got wood to cut and water to bring and grub to cook, and Ican'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, andthinking you're about to blow your radiator cap plumb up through theroof! I'll tell yuh right here and now, this storm has got to let uppretty quick so I can pack you outa here, or else I've got to pen youup somehow, so I can do something besides watch you. Look at the wayyou scattered them beans, over there by the cupboard! By rights I oughtastand over yuh and make yuh pick every one of 'em up! and who was itdrug 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 ascant two feet from the flames, and carried fur, baby and all, to thebunk. "My good lord, what's a fellow going to do with yuh?" he groanedin desperation. "Burn yourself up, you would! I can see now why folkskeep their kids corralled in high chairs and gocarts all the time. Theygot to, or they wouldn't have no kids."
Bud certainly was learning a few things that he had come near toskipping altogether in his curriculum of life. Speaking of high chairs,whereof he had thought little enough in his active life, set himseriously to considering ways and means. Weinstock-Lubin had high chairslisted in their catalogue. Very nice high chairs, for one of which Budwould have paid its weight in gold dust (if one may believe his word) ifit could have been set down in that cabin at that particular moment. Hestudied the small cuts of the chairs, holding Lovin Child off the pageby main strength the while. Wishing one out of the catalogue and intothe 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 overcomingcertain obstacles raised by the wilderness in the path of comfort, Budwent to work with what tools he had, and with the material closestto his hand. Crude tools they were, and crude materials--like using aStilson wrench to adjust a carburetor, he told Lovin Child who taggedhim up and down the cabin. An axe, a big jack-knife, a hammer and somenails 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 hisbunk for safety's sake, he went out and cut down four young oaks behindthe 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 itto dry while he mounted the four legs, with braces of the green oak anda skeleton frame on top. Then he knocked one end out of the box, paddedthe edges of the box with burlap, and set Lovin Child in his new highchair.
He was tempted to call Cash's attention to his handiwork, but Cash wastoo sick to be disturbed, even if the atmosphere between them had beenclear enough for easy converse. So he stifled the impulse and addressedhimself to Lovin Child, which did just as well.
Things went better after that. Bud could tie the baby in the chair, givehim a tin cup and a spoon and a bacon rind, and go out to the woodpilefeeling reasonably certain that the house would not be set afire duringhis absence. He could cook a meal in peace, without fear of stepping onthe baby. And Cash could lie as close as he liked to the edge of the bedwithout running the risk of having his eyes jabbed with Lovin Child'sfinger, or something slapped unexpectedly in his face.
He needed protection from slight discomforts while he lay there eatenwith fever, hovering so close to pneumonia that Bud believed he reallyhad it and watched over him nights as well as daytimes. The care hegave Cash was not, perhaps, such as the medical profession would haveendorsed, but it was faithful and it made for comfort and so aidedNature more than it hindered.
Fair weather came, and days of melting snow. But they served only toincrease Bud's activities at the woodpile and in hunting small gameclose by, while Lovin Child took his nap and Cash was drowsing.Sometimes he would bundle the baby in an extra sweater and take himoutside and let him wallow in the snow while Bud cut wood and piled iton the sheltered side of the cabin wall, a reserve supply to draw on inan emergency.
It may have been the wet snow--more likely it was the cabin air filledwith germs of cold. Whatever it was, Lovin Child caught cold and coughedcroupy all one night, and fretted and would not sleep. Bud anointed himas he had anointed Cash, and rocked him in front of the fire, and metthe 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 croonedsoothing fragments of old range songs to the baby, and at daylightCash managed to dress himself and help; though what assistance he couldpossibly give was not all clear to him, until he saw Bud's glance roveanxiously toward the cook-stove.
"Hand the kid over here," Cash said huskily. "I can hold him while youget yourself some breakfast."
Bud looked at him stupidly, hesitated, looked down at the flushed littleface, and carefully laid him in Cash's outstretched arms. He got upstiffly--he had been sitting there a long time, while the baby sleptuneasily--and went on his tiptoes to make a fire in the stove.
He did not wonder at Cash's sudden interest, his abrupt change frommoody aloofness to his old partnership in trouble as well as in goodfortune. He knew that Cash was not fit for the task, however, and hehurried the coffee to the boiling point that he might the sooner sendCash back to bed. He gulped down a cup of coffee scalding hot, ate a fewmouthfuls of bacon and bread, and brought a cup back to Cash.
"What d'yuh think about him?" he whispere
d, setting the coffee down ona box so that he could take Lovin Child. "Pretty sick kid, don't yuhthink?"
"It's the same cold I got," Cash breathed huskily. "Swallows like it'shis throat, mostly. What you doing for him?"
"Bacon grease and turpentine," Bud answered him despondently. "I'll haveto commence on something else, though--turpentine's played out I used itmost all up on you."
"Coal oil's good. And fry up a mess of onions and make a poultice." Heput up a shaking hand before his mouth and coughed behind it, stiflingthe sound all he could.
Lovin Child threw up his hands and whimpered, and Bud went over to himanxiously. "His little hands are awful hot," he muttered. "He's beenthat way all night."
Cash did not answer. There did not seem anything to say that would doany good. He drank his coffee and eyed the two, lifting his eyebrows nowand 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 inhim, though, all along. He lifts his eyebrows same way you do."
"Ain't like me," Cash denied weakly, studying Lovin Child. "Give himhere again, and you go fry them onions. I would--if I had the strengthto get around."
"Well, you ain't got the strength. You go back to bed, and I'll lay himin 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 imposedby sickness and the care of a baby, they dropped back into theirold routine, their old relationship. They walked over the dead lineheedlessly, forgetting why it came to be there. Cabin fever no longertormented them with its magnifying of little things. They had no timeor thought for trifles; a bigger matter than their own petty prejudicesconcerned them. They were fighting side by side, with the Old Man of theScythe--the Old Man who spares not.
Lovin Child was pulling farther and farther away from them. Theyknew it, they felt it in his hot little hands, they read it in hisfever-bright eyes. But never once did they admit it, even to themselves.They dared not weaken their efforts with any admissions of a possibledefeat. They just watched, and fought the fever as best they could, andwaited, and kept hope alive with fresh efforts.
Cash was tottery weak from his own illness, and he could not speak abovea whisper. Yet he directed, and helped soothe the baby with baths andslow strokings of his hot forehead, and watched him while Bud did thework, and worried because he could not do more.
They did not know when Lovin Child took a turn for the better, exceptthat they realized the fever was broken. But his listlessness, theunnatural drooping of his whole body, scared them worse than before.Night and day one or the other watched over him, trying to anticipateevery need, every vagrant whim. When he began to grow exacting, theywere still worried, though they were too fagged to abase themselvesbefore him as much as they would have liked.
Then Bud was seized with an attack of the grippe before Lovin Childhad passed the stage of wanting to be held every waking minute. Whichburdened 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 snowand found a little spruce, hacked it off close to the drift and broughtit in, all loaded with frozen snow, to dry before the fire. The kid, hedeclared, should have a Christmas tree, anyway. He tied a candle tothe top, and a rabbit skin to the bottom, and prunes to the tip of thebranches, and tried to rouse a little enthusiasm in Lovin Child. ButLovin Child was not interested in the makeshift. He was crying becauseBud 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 acrossthe 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 merelygrunted.