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

“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 played out.”

“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 good points is right on the surface. Nothing to back it up.”

“She's sure running light, all right. Now,” Bud added sardonically, but with the whimsical quirk withal, “if it was like a carburetor, and you could give it a richer mixture—”

“Yeah. What do you make of it, Bud?”

“Well—aw, 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 winter—not 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 scarce worth the walking after.

“They're pretty thin,” Cash observed speculatively, as though he was measuring them mentally for some particular need.

“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 done—or will be when we muck out after that last shot. The claim is filed—I don't know what more we can do right away. Do you?”

“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 looked at the burros.

“They're tough little devils,” Bud observed hopefully. “We could take it easy, traveling when it's coolest. And by packing light, and graining the whole bunch—”

“Yeah. We can 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 out—say at daybreak?” Bud turned to him with some eagerness.

Cash grinned sourly. “When it's time to go, seven radishes can't stop me. No, nor a whole row of 'em—if there was a whole row.”

“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-night—how about starting along about midnight? That would put us in the Bend early in the forenoon to-morrow.”

“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 queer kind of smile.

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; so they started on the long, long journey to the green country.

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. To-morrow they would face the future with the past dropping farther and farther behind. To-night it rode with them.

Three months in that little, rough-walled 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 back now. He would starve. He never could make the trip to the Bend alone, even if he could track them.

There was, also, the disappointment in the Burro Lode claim. As Bud planned it, the Burro was packing a very light load—far 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 time—Quien sabe?

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 profanely that he would not give his share of the check for the whole claim.

They would go on prospecting, using the check for