Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower (best ebook reader .TXT) 📗

just driving the last tent peg. He straightened up and stared at Bud unblinkingly for a few seconds.

“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 hills—but few of them would bear discussion with strangers.

“Yes. I am, and I ain't.” Bud came up and stood with his hands in his coat pockets, and watched the old fellow start his fire.

“Yeah—how about some supper? If you am, and you ain't as hungry as you look—”

“I'll tell the world I am, and then some. I ain't had a square meal since yesterday morning, and I grabbed that at a quick-lunch joint. I'm open to supper engagements, brother.”

“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, though—unless 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, pottering about while Bud fried the bacon.

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

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

“Yeah. Well, how's your luck with bannock? I've got it all mixed.”

“Dump her in here, ole-timer,” cried Bud, holding out the frying pan emptied of all but grease. “Wish I had another hot skillet to turn over the top.”

“I guess you've been there, all right,” the other chuckled. “Well, I don't carry but the one frying pan. I'm equipped light, because I've got to outfit with grub, further along.”

“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 essentials. I just thought I'd tell you.”

“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 furtherest kyack, and a cup. Bannock looks about done, so we'll eat.”

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 truth-loving old dame who will never lead you far astray if only she is left alone to do her work in peace.

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 could do the work under the supervision of Cash, and Cash could prospect.

“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 of sickness or accident—or suppose the stock strays off—it's bad to be alone.”

“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 gold-pan and not spill out all the colors, if there is any—and 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 fifty-fifty. How'll that be, Bud?”

“Fair enough—fair 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.