Cabin Fever ........................................................................................................................................................1

B. M. Bower .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER ONE. THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF.........................................................................1

CHAPTER TWO. TWO MAKE A QUARREL ......................................................................................5

CHAPTER THREE. TEN DOLLARS AND A JOB FOB BUD............................................................7

CHAPTER FOUR. HEAD SOUTH AND KEEP GOING ....................................................................11

CHAPTER FIVE. BUD CANNOT PERFORM MIRACLES..............................................................15

CHAPTER SIX. BUD TAKES TO THE HILLS..................................................................................21

CHAPTER SEVEN. INTO THE DESERT ...........................................................................................24

CHAPTER EIGHT. MANY BARREN MONTHS AND MILES........................................................31

CHAPTER NINE. THE BITE OF MEMORY ......................................................................................34

CHAPTER TEN. EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS.....................................................................38

CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE FIRST STAGES .......................................................................................42

CHAPTER TWELVE. MARIE TAKES A DESPERATE CHANCE..................................................45

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. CABIN FEVER IN THE WORST FORM...................................................49

CHAPTER FOURTEEN. CASH GETS A SHOCK.............................................................................55

CHAPTER FIFTEEN. AND BUD NEVER GUESSED .......................................................................57

CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE ANTIDOTE .............................................................................................60

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. LOVIN CHILD WRIGGLES IN ...............................................................62

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THEY HAVE THEIR TROUBLES.............................................................65

CHAPTER NINETEEN. BUD FACES FACTS...................................................................................68

CHAPTER TWENTY. LOVIN CHILD STRIKES IT RICH...............................................................73

CHAPTER TWENTYONE. MARIE'S SIDE OF IT..........................................................................76

CHAPTER TWENTYTWO. THE CURE COMPLETE....................................................................80

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 middleclass 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

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 earthand 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

Bud Moore, excowpuncher 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

eyesdark blue and with a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhereand 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 cowpuncher 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 namewhich 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 glanceof 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 shesaidandthenIsaid, 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 carand his pocketand 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

You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated with them the world over. But Bud

happened to be a simplesouled fellow, and there was something about MarieHe 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

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

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 mothera shrewd, shrewish widowwas trying to

decide whether she should wash her hands of Marie, or whether it might be well to accept the situation and

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 inlaw. Also,

In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth Street where Bud had built the home nest with much

nearlyMission 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

breakfastor 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

"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or do something to shut him up?" he exploded

The squeak, squawk of the rocker ceased abruptly. "'Cause it isn't time yet to feed himthat'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 wahhhah! wahhhah, as though it was a phonograph that had been

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

"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 thatfeeding 'im four ounces every four daysor some simp rule like that"

He lifted the cakes on to a plate that held two messylooking 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 yuhsuch 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

"Yes, you willnot!" 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!

"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

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

He told Marie other things, and in return, Marie informed him that he was just a bigmouthed, 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 tencent 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

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 secondhand automobile that was offered at a very low price, and he wanted Bud to go with him and

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

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 motherinlaw had said

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 eyebrowsin other

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

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

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 bithe'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

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

The table was set for a mealbut 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

thereone 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 illconsidered 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

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 woodbox, 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 hotfoot it over to her mother's and whine around and

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 furniturehe'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

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

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 ajargetting 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 thusandso if they

were going to strongarm the stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live with him, why, his stuff was

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 safetyand proved it by the

neighbors who had seen and heard so muchBud was served with a legal paper that wordily enjoined him

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

"That cleans me out, Judge," he said stolidly. "I wasn't such a bad husband, at that. I got sorebut I'll bet

you get sore yourself and tell your wife whatfor, 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'tnot for you nor no other darn

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.

To withhold for his own start in life only one tendollar 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 selfsacrifice, 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

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

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

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 selfconsciously 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

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 downwardnormally they had a way of

tipping upward, as though he was secretly amused at somethingand his eyes sullen, though they carried

tiny lines at the corners to show how they used to twinkle. He took the tendollar 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, maybebut I guess I better tie a can to that idea."

"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

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

"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 ideaasking me if I can?"

"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

"There's good money in it, if you can drive with your mouth shut. This isn't any booster parade. Fact islet'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 tonight, get the

car, and have it down at the Broadway Wharf to meet the 11:30 boatthe 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 tenfoot gum sign, and be ready to go when I climb in. I may have a friend with me.

"Well, that's all right. I've got to go back to the city catching the next train. You better take the twofifty 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 smashthey'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 lifeanddeath 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 grudgewhich 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

"I'll be there." Bud thrust the key and another ten dollars into his pocket and turned away. "And don't say

The man laughed. "Not much, or I wouldn't have picked you for the trip." He hurried down to the depot

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 squeezingpaid 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 goodlooking 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 downat 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 womanraising 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

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

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, latemodeled 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 brakenot 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

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 tripmileage to zero professional driving had

made Bud careful as a taxi driver about recording the mileage of a triplooked at the clock set in the

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 fogand 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 tenthirty, 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

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

"Door left unlockedthe ignorant houndGood thing I don't trust him too far" Some one came fumbling

in and switched on the light. "Careless houndtold him to be careful never even put the robe on the rail

where it belongsand then they howl about the way they're treated! Want more wages don't earn what

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

raindaren'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

"Might have told me there was a fatherinlaw in the outfit," he grumbled to himself. "Big a buttin as

Marie's mother, at that. Huh. Never saw my suit case, never noticed the different numbers, never got next to

the chainshuh! Regular old hehen, 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

Fatherinlaw would holler if he heard the car, but Bud did not intend that fatherinlaw 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 fatherinlaw a chance to throw a fit, next

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

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 chugchug of the engine. With the lights on full he went purring down

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. "Ooh, 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

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

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 sidewalknot

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

"R'aring to go." Bud heard the second man get in and shut the door, and he jerked the gear lever into low. His

Foster settled back on the cushions with a sigh. The other man was fumbling the side curtains, swearing

"Well, head southany 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 wantthe speed

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

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 decidedand maybe run into a mess of streetimprovement litter, and

have to back trail around it. He held the car to a hurryhome 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

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

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

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

Bud was under the impression that they were talking about fatherinlaw, 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

shuttleweaving 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

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

Bud turned his face slightly to one side. "How about stopping; I'll have to feed her some oiland 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

"I guess you musta been, all right," Bud grunted. "Do you want breakfast here, or don't you? I've got to stop

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

Bud did these things, revising the plan to the extent of eating his own breakfast at the counter in the restaurant

From where he sat he could look across at the muddy car standing before a closed millineryanddrygoods

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 wellbeing, 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

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

Bud suddenly remembered that he wanted something more from the restaurant, and returned forthwith,

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

"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 thoughwe 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

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

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 coffeeand the whisky too, he

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.

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 fatherinlaw had not bought it, after all. Now that he

began thinking from a different angle, he remembered that father inlaw 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

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 motherinlaw. He

was not sure but he might have done something of the sort himself, if his motherinlaw had possessed a

sixthousanddollar car. Still, such a car generally means a good deal to the owner, and he did not wonder

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

Bud was not stupid. He was merely concerned chiefly with his own affairsa 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

What he did in this case was to stop in Bakersfield at a garage that had a combination drugstore and

newsstand 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

moleexcept, 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

frontpage article that had nothing whatever to do with the war, but told about the daring robbery of a

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

Bud also had glanced at the news items of less importance, and had been startled enoughyet not so much

surprised as he would have been a few hours earlierto 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

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 matteroffactly as though he had not just then discovered that

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

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

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

"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 letup.

"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

"Far enough to be called crazy if we go much farther without a square meal," Bud snapped. Then he glanced

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

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

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 decentlooking 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

In a sequestered spot where the road hugged close the concave outline of a bushy bluff, Bud slowed and

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

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 ithalf 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 billfolder, which Bud observed had

"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 hurryup trip you've made of it, and all that It's special work,

"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

Very precisely he did so, and accepted enough from Foster to make up the amount to twentyfive 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

"Want to get down and stretch your legs? I've got to take a look at the tires, anyway. Thought she was riding

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 daredBut 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

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 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 devilmaycare

confidence, swinging around curves with a squall of the powerful horn that made cattle feeding half a mile

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

"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,

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

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

"When I hit level ground, I'm going to find out," Bud retorted, still watching the road and steering with one

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

On the level Bud went into neutral and pressed the selfstarter 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

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

"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."

"Yeah," Bud interrupted with a secret grin, "I've been wondering about that, and the needle valve, and the

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 chugchug 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

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

"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

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 feedshe'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 innot 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

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

"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

"Why, sure. It's all right. Everything's all right, as far as I can find out." Bud looked Foster straight in the

"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 selfstarter hummed as it

spun the flywheel, but nothing whatever was elicited save a profane phrase from Foster and a growl from

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

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

"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

Foster studied awhile. "Well, let's see if we can push her off the middle of the roadand then I guess we'll

have to let you walk back and get help. Eh, Mert? There's nothing else we can do"

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

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.

"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

"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

"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

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

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 longdistance 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

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

"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 feedand 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

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 brieflythe 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

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

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 thoughtbut 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

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

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,

So when he presently came upon two swaybacked 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

Two or three minutes proved him right. He came upon a man just driving the last tent peg. He straightened up

"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

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

"I'll tell the world I am, and then some. I ain't had a square meal since yesterday morning, and I grabbed that

"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,

thoughunless 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,

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

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

"Dump her in here, oletimer," cried Bud, holding out the frying pan emptied of all but grease. "Wish I had

"I guess you've been there, all right," the other chuckled. "Well, I don't carry but the one frying pan. I'm

"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

"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

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 truthloving old dame who will

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

"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

"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 goldpan and not spill out all the colors, if there is

anyand 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 fiftyfifty. How'll that be, Bud?"

"Fair enoughfair 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.

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

First, there was the outfit. When they had outfitted at Needles for the real trip, Cash set down the names of all

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

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.

Up at 7 A.M. Fine sunny snow going fast. Fixed up tent cleaned up generally. Alkali flat a lake, can't cross

Up 6 A.M. Clear bright. Went up on divide, met 3 punchers who said road impassable. Saw 2 trains stalled

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

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 itthis 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 diarythings which he did not tell to any one save his few

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

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

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

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

Up at sunrise. Bud washed clothes. Tested rock. Fine looking mineral country here. Dressed Monte's withers

with liniment greatly reducing swelling from saddlegall. He likes to have it dressed came of his own accord.

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

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

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,

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

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 campCamp 48, Cash Markham recorded it in his diarythe 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 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 itall except the blistering heat and the

"sidewinders" 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

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

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

After breakfast fixed up shackshelves, 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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,

First he read back a few pages to get the hang of the thing. Then he shook down Cash's fountain pen, that

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

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.

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

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

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 pitchfork. 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Cool wind makes weather endurable, but bees terrible in kitchen around waterhole. 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

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

"Well, here come them darn burros, Cash. Cora's colt ain't with 'em though. Poor little devilssay, 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

"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

"She's sure running light, all right Now," Bud added sardonically, but with the whimsical quirk withal, "if it

"Wellaw, 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 winternot 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

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

"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 doneor will be when we muck out after that last shot. The claim is

"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're tough little devils," Bud observed hopefully. "We could take it easy, traveling when it's coolest. And

"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

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

"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 nighthow

about starting along about midnight? That would put us in the Bend early in the forenoon tomorrow."

"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

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;

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. Tomorrow they would face the future with the past dropping farther and farther behind.

Three months in that little, roughwalled 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

There was, also, the disappointment in the Burro Lode claim. As Bud planned it, the Burro was packing a

very light loadfar 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

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

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 natureand 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

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 lotand 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 pickthese

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

burrosSway 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 dayunless there was a washout somewhere, or a snowslide, or drifts too deep a train passed

over the road. One day it would go upstream, and the next day it would come back. And the houses stood

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 smalltown gossip, and

nodded his head contentedly. There was gold in these hills. Not enough, perhaps, to start a stampede

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"

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

"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

wintercoyotes 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.

"Oh, shore! Game everywhere in these hills, from weasels up to bear and mountain lion. If you want to trap,

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 doublebitted axe, and settled down in Nelson Flat to find what old Dame

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

"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

"Got something pretty good here, Budif she don't turn out like that dang Burro Lode ledge. Look here.

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

"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

"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

"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, Budgood or bad. I like this flat. I don't want it mucked over with a lot of

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,

"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

"What'll you bet this pans out the same?" "I never bet. No one but a fool will gamble." Cash pressed his lips

"Oh, yuh don't! Say, you're the king bee of all gamblers. Been prospecting for fifteen years, according to

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

"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 sayso. 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 lazyjust because he

couldn't run an autostage 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 herunless 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

wrongedwhy, 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

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

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 manat

least, he never had been one, beyond a convivial glass or two with his fellowsbut he felt that day the need

of a little push toward optimism. In the back part of the room three men were playing freezeout. 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

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,

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 playerpiano 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

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 onereel comedy that had for its climax a

chase of housemaids, policemen, and outraged fruit vendors after a wellmeaning but unfortunate lover. He

saw the lover pulled ignominiously out of a duck pond and soused relentlessly into a watering trough, and

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 freethere was nothing to hold him if he wanted to go. The

warhe 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, halfformed 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

marvelousand 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 wonall 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

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. Thenin 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, buthe wanted her just the same. He wanted to tell her so many things

about the burros, and about the desertthings 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

"Poor kidshe wasn't so much to blame," he muttered just above his breath, when the screen was swept

"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

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

"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,

"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 doublehandful 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

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

"Come over to my shack, Budrotten hotel. My bed's clean, anyway." Frank laughed and plucked him by

A man's mind is a tricky thingor, speaking more exactly, a man's emotions are tricky things. Love has

come rushing to the beck of a tiptilted 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 unbiddenand mayhap causes much distress by his return.

It is like a sudden resurrection of all the loved, longmourned 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

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 selfsufficient, 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,

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"

"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.

Bud glanced somberly across at Frank, who was sitting by the stove with his jaws between his palms and his

"I'm going to get drunk again," Bud announced bluntly. "If you don't want to, you'd better duck. You're too

easy ledI saw that last night. You follow anybody's lead that you happen to be with. If you follow my lead

Frank laughed uneasily. "Aw, I guess you ain't all that fatal, Bud. Let's go over and have some

"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

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 sixtythree 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

Frank watched him curiously, his jaws still resting between his two palms, his eyes redrimmed and swollen,

his lips loose and trembling. A dollar alarm clock ticked resonantly, punctuated now and then by the dull

"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 onlet's go hunt up some of them

marks that got all the dough last night. We'll split, fiftyfifty, and the same with what we win. Huh?"

"You're on, bolet'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 overand that was the three dollars and twenty centshe tossed into the can of

"We'll let that rideto sober up on, if we go broke," he grunted. "Come onlet'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 credulityhe ran the scale of Frank's various qualifications, seeking always to establish a

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

On the third day Bud suddenly stopped in the midst of a game of pool which neither was steady enough to

"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,

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

"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 acrossbut 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. AdiosI'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 Mariehe 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,

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, bluegray eyes peering sharply from beneath his forward tilted hat brim. He came up to

"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

"Well, get an eyeful, if that's what you come for. I'm here and lookin's cheap." Bud's anger flared at the

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

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

"Yeah. About what I thoughtonly 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,

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

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

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

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

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

"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.

"Aw, lay off that toldyouso 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

"Too bad you can't wait a day. I figured we'd have a cleanup tomorrow, maybe. She's been running pretty

"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

It was exactly five days alter that when he opened it again. Cash was mixing a batch of sourdough 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 Cashsince 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

"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. "Geeman ee, I've got a headache!" he muttered,

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

"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

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

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

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

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

"Huh! You'd think, the way he highbrows me, that Cash never done wrong in his life! Tin angel, himI

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

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 intentor so Bud believedput it away on the shelf

so that what coffee remained was stone cold. Bud muttered and threw out the coffee, grounds and alla 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

withfor a pastime? Then why bother about feeling ashamed for anything one did that was contrary to God's

Why be puffed up with pride for keeping one or two of them unbrokenlike 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

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 committhere 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 itespecially 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 Mariein

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

amazementand, 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

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 dogson the toboggandown and outwhatever 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 againnot if Bud could help it. Probably

Marie would say amen to that. He would like to know how she was getting alongand 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, redfaced, 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

Coming back to Marie and Joeit 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

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

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 bottledup

Neither man spoke, or made any sign of friendly recognition. Bud would not have talked to any one in his

present state of selfdisgust, but for all that Cash's silence rankled. A moment their eyes met and held; then

with shifted glances the souls of them drew apartfarther apart than they had ever been, even when they

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.

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 enthusiasmand 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 showunless 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

He went into a flower storedisdaining the banked loveliness upon the cornersand bought Marie a dozen

great, heavyheaded 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 sweetJoe held the bunch well away from his

protesting olfactory nerves which were not educated to tantalizing odorsbut they were more expensive than

roses, and he knew that women raved over them. He expected Marie to rave over them, whether she liked

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

Marie was impressedat 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

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, uninterestedbored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and took the plunge.

"I guess joyridin' kinda calls up old times, ay?" he began insidiously. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you

"No? Well, that's good to hear you say so, girlie. I was kinda afraid maybe trouble had hit you hard. A

sensitive, bighearted 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 mistakesyou wasn't to blameinnocent little kid like you"

"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

Marie tilted back her head and looked up at the tall row of eucalyptus trees feathered against the stars.

"WellI don't want to knock, especially a fellow that's on the toboggan already. But I know a little girl that's

"Why in particular?" Joe leaned toward her. "Say, you must of heard how Bud's going to the dogs. If you

"No, I hadn't heard," said Marie, looking up at the Big Dipper so that her profile, dainty and girlish still, was

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

"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 sillymuch 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 knowand evenings and Sundays baby takes up all my time."

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

"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

Marie looked down over the golf links, as the car swung around the long curve at the head of the slope. "I

Joe's hesitation lasted but long enough for him to give his mustache end a twist. Marie certainly seemed to be

"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 moneyhe 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

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

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

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 sharptongued

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,

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 coldblooded and condemnatory. She wrote another,

letting a little of her real self into the lines. But that sounded sentimental and movingpictury, and she knew

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

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

Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He was like Budso 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 straightlimbed 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 twoyear 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 gladNow 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 woohwooh, and hims

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 heartenough 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 itif 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 fourfive 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 Buddrunk, 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

"See all thepitty 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 seeMarie dropped her face down upon his fuzzy red "bunny" cap, hugged him close

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 pigeontoed 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 coldand 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 oilclothcovered table.

When, by certain wellknown 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 darnhe 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

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

somehowwithout 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

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

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

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

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

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 tunewhich would

have given Bud an excuse to say something almost as mean as his mood. Abstractedness rode upon Cash's

The bacon came from the oven juicycrisp 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

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

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

Cash had laughed disagreeably and asked Bud what he was going to dodraw 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

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

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

mailorder mittens over his mailorder gloves, stamped his feet into heavy, threebuckled 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 returnedfor 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 illhumored 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 snowshoeing

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

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 waysince 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

Bud strode on, his nose lifted at the odor of stale smoke that pervaded the air as he passed. The squaw, giving

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 canvaswrapped 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

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

"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

highkeyed howling ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and Bud, peering under the rolled edge of the red

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

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

"Good glory!" he blurted, as though the words had been jolted from him by the shock. Whereupon the baby

reached out its hand to him and said haltingly, as though its lips had not yet grown really familiar with the

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

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.

"Loong ways," she crooned, and her voice was the first attractive thing Bud had discovered about her. It was

"Who belongs to it?" Bud was plainly suspicious. The shake of the squaw's bandannaed head was more

artfully vague than her gesture. "Don' knowmodder diefadder dieketchum long waysoff."

"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 "Pikk?" 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

"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

"Pikk?" said the baby, spreading his fat hand again and twinkling at Bud between his fingers. But

immediately afterwards it gave a little, piteous whimper. "TakeUvin Chal!" it beseeched Bud with voice

There was that in the baby's tone, in the unbabylike 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 themat 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

redsweatered 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

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 "Pikk?" with that distracting little

"You son of a gun!" grinned Bud, in the tone that turned the epithet in to a caress. "You dog gone little devil,

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.

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 amand 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 tohalf the cabin's

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 heartthe warmth that came from a child's unquestioning faith in his protecting tenderness.

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

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

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 morebut 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

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 warmtoo 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 twomile trip with that solid little body lying at ease in the

His back to that end of the room, Cash sat stiffnecked 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

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

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 makeshift napkin, and would carefully wipe the border of gravy

Both seemed abominably happy and selfsatisfied. 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 talkand incidentally doled out

Cash cocked an eye at the two as he went by, threw the wood down on his side of the hearth, and began to

"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."

"Jajajajah!" 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, kidyou ain't in no Injun camp now. You're

Cash sat down on the bench he had made for himself, and stared into the fire. His whole attitude spelled

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

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,

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

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 roundeyed 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

But Cash would not be scared. He refused absolutely to jump up and back off in wildeyed terror, crying out

"Ooh! Here comes a bear!" the way Marie had always donethe 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 watchingcurious

to see what Cash would doBud 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

"Pikk?" 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 slowfalling tiny white

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.

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

"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 pocketa man's infallible remedy for the weeping

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

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

Lovin Child stopped crying and condescended to take a languid interest in the watchwhich 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 toonly

don't drop it on the floorhere! Quit kickin' your feet out like that! You wanta freeze? I'll tell the world

straight, it's plumb cold and snaky outside tonight, 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, nowlay

"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 highkeyed

wailing of this same manchild 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

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

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 manchild 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

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

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

"Some kidthat 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 fireplaceon his side of the dead line, to be surehung the little garments upon it and sat up to

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, firelighted 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

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

A storm like that meant that plenty of fuel would be needed to keep the cabin snug and warm, and he was

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,"

"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 dimeyed at the flickering shadows on the wall. What

Three days it stormed with never a break, stormed so that the men dreaded the carrying of water from the

spring that became icerimmed 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

"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 "'Ocka by!

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

"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 nonono! You doggone little rascal, I'd rather herd a flea on a hot plate! I've a plumb good

notion to hogtie yuh for awhile. Can't trust yuh a minute nowhere. Now look what you got to wear while

"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 mailorder 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

"H'yah! You young imp!" Bud shouted, stubbing his toe as he hurried forward. "Watcha think you area

Cash bent his head lowit 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

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 unrepentantuntil he was buttoned into

"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 hollerbut 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

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

Bud, his sleeves rolled up, his hair rumpled and the perspiration standing thick on his forehead, stood over

"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

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,

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,

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

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

"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

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, cowboyhe's your meat!"

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,

Presently Bud gave a whoop, forgetting the feud in his play. "Lookit, Cash! He's ridin' straight up and

Cash turned and looked, grinned and turned away againbut only to strip the rind off a freshfried 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

On the fourth day Bud's conscience pricked him into making a sort of apology to Cash, under the guise of

"I've got a blame good notion to pack you to town today, 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 slanteyed glance at Cash, dourly frying his own hotcakes. "We'll see what it looks like after a while. I

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

"Gee, it's going to storm again!" Bud blustered in. "It'll be snowing like all gitout 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 snowstorm and letting yuh freeze,

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

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 hardmuscled, 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

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

strangersand yet he must until the parents could have him back. The black depths of their grief tonight

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 manchild 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

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

Bud did not think much about it at firstbeing 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

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 twoyearold 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

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

"Say," he began constrainedly, and waited. Cash muttered something and moved his hand irritatedly, without

"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. "YeahI'm all right,"

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

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 iodinenot an encouraging array for a man fifteen miles of

untrodden snow from the nearest human habitation. He took three of the liver pillsjudging them by size

rather than what might be their compositionand 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

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 cowpunching days he had

seen men die of it before a doctor could be brought from the faraway 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

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

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 bughunting meadow lark, when he had to hurry in

For a man who was wintering in what is called enforced idleness in a snowbound cabin in the mountains,

Bud Moore did not find the next few days hanging heavily on his hands. Far from it.

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, nowwe'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' yellowjackets, 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

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,

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

The coyote skin rattled a little. A fluff of yellow, a spark of blue, and "Pikk?" chirped Lovin Child from

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 skinor 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

"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, 'Pikk,'

doggone yuhafter 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 "Ooooooooo!" like a

bearalmost. 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

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 materialslike using a Stilson wrench to adjust a carburetor, he

told Lovin Child who tagged him up and down the cabin. An axe, a big jackknife, 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

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

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,

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

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

It may have been the wet snowmore 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 holloweyed 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

"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 stifflyhe had been sitting there a long time, while the baby slept

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

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

"Bacon grease and turpentine, " Bud answered him despondently. "I'll have to commence on something else,

"Coal oil's good. And fry up a mess of onions and make a poultice." He put up a shaking hand before his

Lovin Child threw up his hands and whimpered, and Bud went over to him anxiously. "His little hands are

Cash did not answer. There did not seem anything to say that would do any good. He drank his coffee and

"Looks like you, Bud," he croaked suddenly. "Eyes, expression, mouthyou could pass him off as your own

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

"Ain't like me," Cash denied weakly, studying Lovin Child. "Give him here again, and you go fry them

"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

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 Scythethe 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 feverbright 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

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

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

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

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

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 softfooted attendance and soothing silence and cool

drinksand 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

spankingswhich 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

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

"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."

"Can't tellthe 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

"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 today 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

"I guess you don't realize how that kid's growing!" Bud defended his handiwork "And time I get the seams

"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

"Yeahthat'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

"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

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

When he came back an hour or so later, Lovin Child was wearing his ragged rompers, and Bud was bent over

a WeinstockLubin mailorder 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

"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 fifteenmile 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 postoffice. 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

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

Cash cast his eyes over the stock of baby clothes which Bud gleefully unwrapped on his bunk, and pinched

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

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 himif they pan out anything," he retorted. "Come here, Boy, and let's try this suit on. Looks pretty

small to memarked three year, but I reckon they don't grow 'em as husky as you, back where they make all

"Yeah. But you ought to put it in writing, Bud. S'pose anything happened to us bothand 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,

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

"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, grubkidsequal

"That's where you're dead wrong. Mines and mules and grub is all right, but when it comes to this old Lovin

"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

"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, whyyou 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

"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, oldtimer, 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

"I don't knowcome to think of it, I can't just leave the kid all my property. II've got a kid of my own,

and if she's aliveI 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

"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 orother

Bud, holding Lovin Child on his knees, frowned a little at first. But when he looked at Cash, and caught the

"A couple of old hehens like uswe 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

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

"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

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

"All rightput 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

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

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

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 behe 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 babya 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 bulkif so tenuous a thing as Cash's fortune may be said to

have bulkfor 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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hey! You'll have all the chinkin' out of the dang shack, if you let him keep that lick up, Bud," Cash

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 fussthough in selfdefense he kept his head down and his

"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

"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 heaveuhh! I'll tell the world in words

"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

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

"Yes, Bud pikk." 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

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

bakingpowder cans, all heavy as lead. He laid his cheek against the log and peered down the length of it,

"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

"Looky, Boy!" Bud had the top off a can, and took out a couple of nuggets the size of a cooked Lima bean.

"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 cleanup, old prospector. Don't swallow any, is all. let's weigh it out, Cash, and see how

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 twentythree hundred dollars it amounted to, not

"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.

Twentythree hundred would be a good price for a half interest, as the claims stand, don't yuh think, Cash?"

"Yeahwell, I dunno's I'd sell for that. But on the showing we've got so faryes, five thousand, say, for the

"Pretty good haul for a kid, anyway. He's got a couple of hundred dollars in nuggets, right there on the bunk.

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

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

"All rightall right! Keep your gold, durn it. You're like all the restminute you get your paws on to some

Cash was pouring the fine gold back into the buck skin bag and the bakingpowder 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,

Budthe 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 today, 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 elsebut 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 otherfrom 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 Moorenamed 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,

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

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

Marie's agonized experience in Alpineand afterwardwas of that kind. She went there under the lure of

her loneliness, her hearthunger 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

Yet she did turn backand 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 notat

least she did notdream 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

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

She was tired when she reached the hotel, carrying Lovin Child and her suit case tooporters 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

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 sleepshe did

not believe that she could sleep if she had wanted to. Fall asleep she did, however, and she must have slept

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

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

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

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 sagecovered hills beyond. No one doubted that Lovin Child had

been swept away in that tearing, rockchurned current. No one had any hope of finding his body, though they

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

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,

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 upstream 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 thattherefore 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

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

Dully she settled down in a cheap, semiprivate 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 nowhappy. 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 concentrationa dentist's office, where her chief duties consisted of opening the daily budget

of circulars, sending out monthly bills, and telling painedlooking 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

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

WeinstockLubin's big department store gave her desk space in the mailorder 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

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 woohwooh 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 twoyearold 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,

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 somethingorother 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.

Mechanically she copied the order on a slip of paper which she put into her pocket, left her desk and her work

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 hersomething so amazing that she could scarcely comprehend its full significance. Budnever

for a minute did she doubt that it was Bud, for she knew his handwriting too well to be mistakenBud was

"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 sizeshe certainly would buy than

threeyear size, if she were buying for Lovin Child. And the little "Buddy tucker" suitthat, too, sounded

like Lovin Child. He mustBud certainly must have him up there with him! Then Lovin Child was not

"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

"You devil!" she muttered, gritting her teeth when that thought formed clearly in her mind. "Oh, you devil,

In Nelson Flat the lupines were like spilled bluing in great, acrewide 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

"The big brute!" she gritted, and got off and went to the cabin door, walking straightbacked 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 highchair 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 expectedit 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

On a rope stretched between a young cottonwood tree in full leaf and a scaly, redbarked 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 stockingsand,

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

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

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

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, wildpea vines and columbines, tiny, gnomefaced 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

She was crying with the pain and the beauty of it when she heard the first high, chirpy notes of a babyher

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 "sunnygun." 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

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 kickingandsquirming 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!"

"Awcome to Marie, sweetheart! Marie's own lovin' little man baby! You let him go, or I'llI'll kill you.

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

Marie lifted her face from kissing Lovin Child very much against his will, and stared roundeyed at Cash.

"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

Marie gasped. "Whyfather? Whywhy, 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.

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 "Sunnygun! sunnygun!" 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

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

"Kid's all right" Cash stopped abruptly, blocking Bud's way. "It's something else. Bud, his mother's come

"Lemme go." Bud's voice had a grimness in it that spelled trouble for the lady laid out in a faint "She can be

"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! Hold 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 nowher 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 babynot whilst I'm around. You get that

settled in your mind before you go out there, oryou 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"

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 makea dang fool" Bud snorted contemptuously and leaped the dirt pile, landing close to

"Now, Bud," Cash called tardily when he had caught up with him, "you leave that girl alone! Don't you lay a

Bud lifted his lips away from Marie's and spoke over his shoulder, his arms tightening in their hold upon

(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.)

"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

"YeahI get it, all right." Cash came and stood awkwardly over them. "I get itfound 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