On the Lightship Part 25

The man in the tent rolled his dough into a cannon ball and held it up at arm's length. "Sands," he repeated. "Charbridge University?" And striking his dough with his palm as though it could appreciate a joke, he added, "Well, you look it!"

He wiped his hands upon a strip of burlap bagging which served him as ap.r.o.n, and deliberately surveyed the new comer. "How did you ever get so far from home all by yourself?" he asked with open insolence. A fuller view of his face disclosed incongruous tones of red about the roots of hair and beard, and a long scar on the left cheek.

"I am connected with our geological expedition," Professor Sands explained concisely. "We are camping in the valley, and this morning I ventured to explore the canon on my own account, and have been tempted farther than I intended."

The large man put his hands upon his thighs and leaned against the tent pole. "So that's it?" he commented patronizingly. "Well, if I was you, I'd stick to camp, and not go roaming in the timber where you might get lost."

"Quite so," the little man a.s.sented readily; "but I was told I should surely come upon the railway survey somewhere in the canon, and I have had your stakes to guide me. The engineers are doubtless working somewhere near here?" he added, taking off his hat to cool his head with its thin gray hair.

The other spat and eyed his visitor with amused contempt. "We don't lay out railroads sitting round the fire," he volunteered. "The boys are working up near timber line, and won't be back till dark, and the teamster's gone to Freedom City for more grub."

"Ah!" remarked the scientist. "Then we are quite alone. I'll rest a little, if I may."

He deposited an army haversack that he carried slung about his shoulder upon a flat boulder just outside the tent door and sat down beside it.

"My geological specimens are rather heavy," he went on, wiping his brow.

"With your permission I should like to label them before I forget their ident.i.ty."

The other, with his hands in his overall pockets, took a slouching step beyond the tent to overlook the sack's contents as they appeared--a small steel sorting hammer, a heap of broken bits of float, and a large flask with a silver top. He watched the geologist sort his specimens with an idle interest mingled with contempt--for the trade he did not understand, for the spotless handkerchief, for the physical weakness of the man himself.

"I suppose that's some sort of acid you've got in your bottle?" he speculated presently.

"I beg your pardon?" asked the professor, absorbed in his work; then added as the question's meaning reached him, "Ah, the flask? No, that contains whiskey. I always carry a supply in case of accident."

Whistling softly, he marked another specimen, ignoring his host's nearer approach.

"Partner," the latter suggested, "if you'd like a bite to eat, you've only got to say so. That's mountain manners."

The professor glanced up now and with an odd intentness in his look; no doubt his mind was still with his specimens. "You're very kind, I'm sure," he responded courteously; "but I have lunched already on my sandwiches. Thank you, Mr.----" He paused for a name.

The other chuckled with new-found amiability. "You needn't 'Mister' me,"

he said. "I'm Budd, Jim Budd the Scorcher, and if any man in camp don't like my grub he's got the privilege of going hungry."

"Ah, quite so, quite so," rejoined the scientist. "I'm very sure your cooking is excellent."

"That's what the boys tell me," returned the scorcher; "but, by blood!

I've got 'em educated. I'll just set them biscuits to raise, and then we'll have a chat." He re-entered the tent, limping noticeably, and from the interior his voice was heard mingled with the clatter of utensils in blasphemous denunciation of everything about him. During this explosion the scientist from Charbridge made a rather singular experiment.

He rose, and after a cautious glance behind him he crept to the verge of the precipice, looked down into the water swirling over jagged rocks far below, and pulling up a sod of wire gra.s.s let it drop, and watched it sink and reappear in single straws that circled and sank again. This done, he went back to his specimens.

The Scorcher's pibrock of vituperation had now changed to a tuneless chant, scarcely less vindictive in its cadence:

Old John Rogers was burnt at the stake; His poor wife cried until her heart did break!

he sang, and the professor's listening face took on an expression out of keeping with the meaningless doggerel, the look of one who responds to an inexorable call.

"'Until her heart did break!'" he murmured. But when Budd appeared again he only asked if he was interested in geology.

"I am if it's the sort that's got silver in it," replied the cook.

"One does not look for silver in sandstone formation," the professor explained.

"Do you mean to tell me the Almighty couldn't put silver in this here red rock?" Jim demanded, from the stone on which he had seated himself.

"No," replied the professor guardedly: "I say only that He did not.

However, here is a bit of quartz----"

"Say!" interrupted the cook, "I'm a heap more interested in the specimen you've got in that bottle." He was staring at the polished cap of the flask.

"Indeed, are you?" the other smiled a a tolerant smile. "Then perhaps you will do me the honor----"

Budd seized the flask without a second invitation and raised it to his lips. He drank as dying men drink water, and when he stopped for lack of breath his face was fiery but for the white scar. As he lowered the bottle he met the professor's curious fixity of gaze, and wriggled uneasily before it.

"Say, partner," he remonstrated, "your whiskey's all right; but I'm hanged if I like your eye! By blood! it goes ag'in me!"

"I beg your pardon," said the professor without averting his look. "I have the habit of close observation. And," he proffered the flask afresh, "the more you drink of that, the less I'll have to carry home."

Budd poured a generous portion into a tin cup and stared reflectively at the bright cap. His next remark, mellowed by whiskey, had a genial candor. "Say! if I'd a popped you over, as I had a mind to when you came along the trail, just think what I'd a missed!"

"And so you had a mind to pop me over?" queried the other. "May I ask why?" Having finished his labeling, he was at leisure to regard his companion still more closely.

"There's fellers prowling in the timber I ain't got no use for," the cook explained, drinking. "But you're all right! You haven't got a cigar handy, now, have you?"

The scientist was well supplied, and as the cook bit off the end of a large and black cigar he sighed with satisfaction.

"I get the horrors sometimes," he explained. "I get as scary as a cottontail. Them quaking asps is enough to drive a feller crazy, anyhow."

"There's nothing like a little whiskey in such cases," remarked the professor, filling the extended cup.

"If this keeps up, one of us is liable to get drunk," remarked Budd.

"That's a handy flask of yours. Come all the way from New York?"

"From Richmond, I believe," responded the other. "My brother found it on a battle field and sent it home to me."

"I take it you wasn't there yourself," the Scorcher chuckled.

"No," said Professor Sands. "I was in bad health at the time."

"So was a lot of others," sneered Budd. "I wasn't feeling what you might call well myself; but I stuck to it till they biffed me in the leg--the hounds!--and put me out of business."

"Of course, you draw a pension," ventured the professor.

"No," said the cook, "I never asked for no pension. They've given one to about every feller what wasn't dead when the war broke out, but there hasn't been a bill pa.s.sed yet that takes me in."

"Indeed?" His listener was politely observant.

"Yes, that's the truth," went on the cook. "I declare I feel real dopy or dotty or something. They pensioned every beat that came back with a knapsack full of rebel watches, but they left out old Jim. He don't wear no medals; he don't parade on Decoration Day to scatter posies; he don't get no free beer while the band plays 'Georgia'--'Hurrah for the flag that makes us free!'" he chanted hoa.r.s.ely. "Hurrah for the Devil!

that's what I say. Hurrah for the man without a pension!"