Cabin Fever Part 16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovin Child was pulling farther and farther away from them. They knew it, they felt it in his hot little hands, they read it in his fever-bright eyes. But never once did they admit it, even to themselves.

They dared not weaken their efforts with any admissions of a possible defeat. They just watched, and fought the fever as best they could, and waited, and kept hope alive with fresh efforts.

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

They did not know when Lovin Child took a turn for the better, except that they realized the fever was broken. But his listlessness, the unnatural drooping of his whole body, scared them worse than before.

Night and day one or the other watched over him, trying to antic.i.p.ate every need, every vagrant whim. When he began to grow exacting, they were still worried, though they were too f.a.gged to abase themselves before him as much as they would have liked.

Then Bud was seized with an attack of the grippe before Lovin Child had pa.s.sed 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 makes.h.i.+ft. He was crying because Bud had told him to keep out of the ashes, and he would not look.

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

"Remember what you said about the Fourth of July down in Arizona, Bud?"

he asked glumly. "Well, this is the same kind of Christmas." Bud merely grunted.

CHAPTER NINETEEN. BUD FACES FACTS

New Year came and pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances. He craved clean white beds and soft-footed attendance and soothing silence and cool drinks--and he could have none of those things. His bedclothes were heavy upon his aching limbs; he had to wait upon his own wants; the fretful crying of Lovin Child or the racking cough of Cash was always in his ears, and as for cool drinks, there was ice water in plenty, to be sure, but nothing else. Fair weather came, and storms, and cold: more storms and cold than fair weather. Neither man ever mentioned taking Lovin Child to Alpine. At first, because it was out of the question; after that, because they did not want to mention it. They frequently declared that Lovin Child was a pest, and there were times when Bud spoke darkly of spankings--which did not materialize. But though they did not mention it, they knew that Lovin Child was something more; something endearing, something humanizing, something they needed to keep them immune from cabin fever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If he can stand that, I guess he ain't very delicate."

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

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

"Yeah. Where you going to get the b.u.t.tons? You never sent for any."

"Oh, I'll find b.u.t.tons. You can donate a couple off some of your clothes, if you want to right bad."

"Who? Me? I ain't got enough now to keep the wind out," Cash protested.

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

"Well, good glory! Who's making these pants? Me, or you?" Bud exploded.

"If you think you can do any better job than what I'm doing, go get yourself some cloth and fly at it! Don't think you can come hornin' in on my job, 'cause I'll tell the world right out loud, you can't."

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

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

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

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

"Yeah. Well, the trail's just as good now as it was when I took it,"

Cash hinted strongly. "When I go to town again, it'll be because I've got to go. And far as I can see, I won't have to go for quite some time."

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

But he did not grudge the hards.h.i.+p, 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 t.i.tle of Old Prospector. And there were little s.h.i.+rts and stockings and nightgowns and a pair of shoes, and a toy or two that failed to interest him at all, after the first inspection.

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

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

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

Bud looked up in quick jealousy. "What's mine's his, and I own a half interest in both claims. I guess that'll feed him--if they pan out anything," he retorted. "Come here, Boy, and let's try this suit on.

Looks pretty small to me--marked three year, but I reckon they don't grow 'em as husky as you, back where they make all these clothes."

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

Well, the kid oughta have some security in case anything did happen.

Now--"