The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Lockhart, Caroline

  Slim placed his rifle on the deer-horn gun rack without speaking and stamped the mud and snow from his feet in the middle of the freshly swept floor.

  “I was kind of worried about you,” Bruce said, endeavoring to speak naturally. “I’m glad you got in.”

  “Don’t know what you’d worry about me for,” was the snarling answer. “I’m as well able to take care of myself as you are.”

  “It’s a bad night for anybody to be roaming around the hills.” Bruce was adjusting the lamp chimney and putting it back on the shelf, but he noticed that Slim’s face was working as it did in his rages, and he sighed; they were in for another row.

  “You think you’re so almighty wise; I don’t need you to tell me when it’s fit to be out.”

  Bruce did not answer, but his black eyes began to shine. Slim noticed it with seeming satisfaction, and went on:

  “I saw them pet sheep of yourn comin’ down. Did you give ’em salt?”

  Bruce hesitated.

  “Yes, Slim, I did. I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but the poor little devils——”

  “And I’m to go without! Who the —— do you think you are to give away my salt?”

  “Your salt——” Bruce began savagely, then stopped. “Look here, Slim!” His deep voice had an appealing note. “It wasn’t right when there was so little, I’ll admit that, but what’s the use of being so onery? I wouldn’t have made a fuss if you had done the same thing. Let’s try and get along peaceable the few days we’ll be cooped up in here, and when the storm lets up I’ll pull out. I should have gone before. But I don’t want to wrangle and quarrel with you, Slim; honest I don’t.”

  “You bet you don’t!” Slim answered, with ugly significance.

  Bruce’s strong, brown fingers tightened as he leaned against the window casement with folded arms. His silence seemed to madden Slim.

  “You bet you don’t!” he reiterated, and added in shrill venom: “I might ’a’ knowd how ’twould be when I throwed in with a mucker like you.”

  “Careful, Slim—go slow!” Bruce’s eyes were blazing now between their narrowed lids, but he did not move. His voice was a whisper.

  “That’s what I said! I’ll bet your father toted mortar for a plasterer and your mother washed for a dance hall!”

  Slim’s taunting, devilish face, corpse-like in its pallor above his black beard, was all Bruce saw as he sprang for his throat. He backed him against the door and held him there.

  “You miserable dog—I ought to kill you!” The words came from between his set teeth. He drew back his hand and slapped him first on the right cheek, then on the left. He flung Slim from him the length of the cabin, where he struck against the bunk.

  Slim got to his feet and rushed headlong toward the door. Bruce thought he meant to snatch his rifle from the rack, and was ready, but he tore at the fastening and ran outside. Bruce watched the blackness swallow him, and wondered where he meant to go, what he meant to do on such a night. He was not left long in doubt.

  He heard Slim coming back, running, cursing vilely as he came. The shaft of yellow light which shot into the darkness fell upon the gleaming blade of the ax that he bore uplifted in his hand.

  “Slim!”

  The answer was a scream that was not human. Slim was a madman! Bruce saw it clearly now. Insanity blazed in his black eyes. There was no mistaking the look; Slim was violently, murderously insane!

  “I’m goin’ to get you!” His scream was like a woman’s screech. “I’ve meant to get you all along, and I’m goin’ to do it now!”

  “Drop it, Slim! Drop that ax!”

  But Slim came on.

  Instinctively Bruce reached for the heavy, old-fashioned revolver hanging on its nail.

  Slim half turned his body to get a longer, harder swing, aiming as deliberately for Bruce’s head as though he meant to split a stick of wood.

  Bruce saw one desperate chance and took it. He could not bring himself to stop Slim with a gun. He flung it from him. Swift and sure he swooped and caught Slim by the ankles in the instant that he paused. Exerting his great strength, he hurled him over his shoulder, ax and all, where he fell hard, in a heap, in the corner, between the bunk and wall. The sharp blade of the ax cut the carotid artery.

  Bruce turned to see a spurt of blood. Slim rolled over on his back, and it gushed like a crimson fountain. Bruce knelt beside him, trying frantically to bring together the severed ends, to stop somehow the ghastly flow that was draining the madman’s veins.

  But he did not know how, his fingers were clumsy, and Slim would not lie still. He threshed about like a dying animal, trying to rise and stagger around the room. Finally his chest heaved, and his contracted leg dropped with a thud. Bruce stared at the awful pallor of Slim’s face, then he got up and washed his hands.

  He looked at the watch ticking steadily through it all; it was barely a quarter to five. He spread his slicker on the bunk and laid Slim on it and tried to wash the blood from the floor and the logs of the cabin wall, but it left a stain. He changed his shirt—murderers always changed their shirts and burned them.

  Slim was dead; he wouldn’t have to get supper for Slim—ever again. And he had killed him! Mechanically he poked his finger into the dough. It was rising. He could work it out pretty soon. Slim was dead; he need not get supper for Slim; he kept looking at him to see if he had moved. How sinister, how “onery” Slim looked even in death. He closed his mouth and drew the corner of a blanket over the cruel, narrow face. How still it seemed after the commotion and Slim’s maniacal screams!

  He had joined the army of men who have killed their partners. What trifles bring on quarrels in the hills; what mountains molehills become when men are alone in the wilderness! That cook in the Buffalo Hump who tried to knife him because he stubbed his toe against the coffee-pot, and “Packsaddle Pete,” who meant to brain him when they differed over throwing the diamond hitch; and now Slim was dead because he had given a handful of salt to the mountain sheep.

  It did not seem to matter that Slim had said he meant to kill him, anyhow, or that the way in which his malignant eyes had followed his every movement took on new significance in the light of what had happened. He blamed himself. He should have quit long ago. He should have seen that Slim’s ill-balanced mind needed only a trifle to shove it over the edge. It had never seemed so still in the cabin even when Slim was gone as it did now. Mechanically he set about getting supper, making as much noise as he could.

  But he was unable to eat after it was on the table before him. He drank his coffee and stared at the bacon and cold biscuit a while, then washed the dishes again. Slim seemed to be getting farther and farther away.

  The storm outside had become a blizzard. Old Mother Westwind took to her heels and the Boss of the Arctic raged. It occurred to Bruce that it would be hard to bury Slim if the ground froze, and that reminded him that perhaps Slim had “folks” who ought to know.

  Bruce filled the stove, and shoved his bread in the oven; then he pulled Slim’s war bag from under the bunk and dumped the contents on the table, hoping with all his heart that he would not find an address. He could not imagine how his should find the words in which to tell them that he had killed Slim.

  There were neckties, samples of ore, a pair of silk suspenders, and a miner’s candlestick, one silk sock, a weasel skin, a copy of “The Gadfly,” and a box of quinine pills. No papers, no letters, not a single clew to his identity. Bruce felt relief. Wait—what was this? He took the bag by the corners, and a photographer’s mailing case fell out. It was addressed to Slim in Silver City, New Mexico, in a childish, unformed hand.

  He took out the picture and found himself smiling into the eyes that smiled up into his. He knew intuitively that it was Slim’s sister, yet the resemblance was the faintest, and there was not a trace of his meanness in her look.

  He had been right in his conjecture, Slim was “the runt of something good.” There was no mistaking the refinement and good breeding in
the girl’s sweet face.

  Slim had known better, yet nearly always he had talked in the language of the uneducated Westerner, in the jargon of yeggmen, and the vernacular of the professional tramps with whom he had hoboed over the West—a “gay cat,” as he was pleased to call himself, when boasting of the “toughness” of his life. He had affected uncleanliness, uncouthness; but in spite of his efforts the glimmer of the “something good” of which he was the runt had shown through.

  Slim had had specific knowledge of a world which Bruce knew only by hearsay; and when it had suited his purpose, as when Bruce had first met him in Meadows, he had talked correctly, even brilliantly, and he had had an undeniable charm of manner for men and women alike. But, once well started down the river, he had thrown off all restraint, ignoring completely the silent code which exists between partners in the hills.

  Such fellows were well named “black sheep,” Bruce thought, as he looked at the picture.

  A letter had been wrapped around the photograph, with an address and a date line twelve years old. The letter read:

  Dear Brother: We have just heard that you were working in a mine down there and so I thought I would write and tell you that I hope you are well and make a lot of money. I hope you do and come home because we are awful poor and mother says if I don’t marry well she don’t know what we will do because there are mortgages on everything and we don’t keep horses any more and only one servant which is pretty hard for mother. The girl is sassy sometimes but mother can’t let her go because she can’t pay her yet. Please, Freddie, come home and help us. Everything dreadful has happened to us since father died. Mother will forgive you for being bad and so do I although it was not nice to see our names and pictures in the papers all the time. Write to me, Freddie, as soon as you get this. Your loving sister,

  Helen.

  P. S.—I am thirteen to-day and this is my picture. I wish I could go West too, but don’t mention this when you write.

  Bruce wondered if Slim had answered. He would wager his buckskin bag of dust that he had not. The marvel was that he had even kept the letter. He looked again at the date line—twelve years—the mortgages had long since been foreclosed, if it had depended upon Slim to pay them—and she was twenty-five. He wondered if she’d “married well.”

  Slim was a failure; he stood for nothing in the world of achievement; for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much more difference would his own death make in anybody’s life? His mother’s labored words came back with painful distinctness: “I’ve had such hopes for you, my little boy. I’ve dreamed such dreams for you—I wanted to see them all come true.” An inarticulate sound came from him that was both pain and self-disgust. He was close to twenty-eight—almost thirty—and he’d spent the precious years “just bumming round.” Nothing to show for them but a little gold dust and the clothes he wore. He wondered if his mother knew.

  Her wedding ring was still in a faded velvet case that he kept among his treasures. He never had seen a woman who had suggested ever so faintly the thought that he should like to place it on her finger. There had been women, of a kind—“Peroxide Louise,” in Meadows, with her bovine coquetry and loud-mouthed vivacity, yapping scandal up and down the town, the transplanted product of a city’s slums, not even loyal to the man who had tried to raise her to his level.

  Bruce never had considered marrying; the thought of it for himself always made him smile. But why couldn’t he—the thought now came gradually, and grew—why shouldn’t he assume the responsibilities Slim shirked if conditions were the same and help was still needed? In expiation, perhaps, he could halfway make amends.

  He’d write and mail the letter in Ore City as soon as he could snowshoe out. He’d express them half the dust and tell them that ’twas Slim’s. He’d——“OO—oo—ough!” he shivered—he’d forgotten to stoke the fire. Oh, well, a soogan would do him well enough.

  He pulled a quilt from under Slim and wrapped it about his own shoulders. Then he sat down again by the fireless stove and laid his head on his folded arms upon the rough pine table. The still body on the bunk grew stark while he slept, the swift-running river froze from shore to shore, the snow piled in drifts, obliterating trails and blocking passes, weighting the pines to the breaking point, while the intense cold struck the chill of death into the balls of feathers huddled for shelter under the flat branches of the spruces.

  * * *

  V

  “The Jack-Pot”

  As Uncle Bill Griswold came breathless from the raging whiteness outside with an armful of bark and wood, the two long icicles hanging from the ends of his mustache made him look like an industrious walrus. He drew the fuel beside the tiny, sheet-iron camp stove, and tied fast the flap of the canvas tent.

  “We’re in a jack-pot, all right.”

  He delivered the commonplace pronunciamento in a tone which would have conveyed much to a mountain man. To Mr. Sprudell it meant only that he might expect further annoyance. He demanded querulously:

  “Did you find my shirt?”

  Uncle Bill rolled his eyes with a droll grimace of despair toward the mound of blankets in the corner whence came the muffled voice. The innocence of a dude was almost pitiful. He answered dryly:

  “I wouldn’t swear to it—I wouldn’t go so far as to make my affadavvy to it, but I think I seen your shirt wavin’ from a p’int a rock about seventy mile to the south’ard—over t’ward the Thunder Mountain country.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone”—mournfully—“where the woodbine twineth.”

  “And my trousers?”

  “Where the wangdoodle mourneth fer his lost love. Blowed off. I got your union suit out’n the top of a pine tree. You’ve no more pants than a rabbit, feller. Everything went when the guy-ropes busted—I warned you to sleep in your clothes.”

  “But what’ll I do?” Sprudell quavered.

  “Nothin’.” His tone was as dry as punk. “You kin jest as well die in them pink pajammers as anything else.”

  “Huh?” excitedly. The mound began to heave.

  “I say we’re in for it. There’s a feel in the air like what the Injuns call ‘The White Death.’ It hurt my lungs like I was breathin’ darnin’ needles when I cut this wood. The drifts is ten feet high and gittin’ higher.” Laconically: “The horses have quit us; we’re afoot.”

  “Is that so? Well, we’ve got to get out of here—I refuse to put in another such night. Lie still!” he commanded ferociously. “You’re letting in a lot of cold air. Quit rampin’ round!” From which it may be gathered that Mr. Sprudell, for purposes of warmth and protection, was sleeping with the Chinese cook.

  “Three in a bed is crowded,” Uncle Bill admitted, with a grin. “To-night you might try settin’ up.”

  A head of tousled white hair appeared above the edge of the blankets, then a pair of gleaming eyes. “I propose to get out of here to-day,” Mr. Sprudell announced, with hauteur.

  “Indeed?” inquired Uncle Bill calmly. “Where do you aim to go?”

  “I’m going back to Ore City—on foot, if need be—I’ll walk!”

  Uncle Bill explained patiently:

  “The trail’s wiped out, the pass is drifted full of snow, and the cold’s a fright. You’d be lost inside of fifteen yards. That’s loco talk.”

  “I’m going to get up.” There was offended dignity in Mr. Sprudell’s tone.

  “You can’t,” said the old man shortly. “You ain’t got no pants, and your shoes is full of snow. I doubts if you has socks till I takes a stick and digs around where your tepee was.”

  “Tsch! Tsch!” Mr. Sprudell’s tongue clicked against his teeth in the extreme of exasperation at Uncle Bill. By some process of reasoning he blamed him for their present plight.

  “I’m hung
ry!” he snapped, in a voice which implied that the fact was a matter of moment.

  “So am I,” said Uncle Bill; “I’m holler to my toes.”

  “I presume”—in cold sarcasm—“there’s no reason why we shouldn’t breakfast, since it’s after ten.”

  “None at all,” Uncle Bill answered easily, “except we’re out of grub.”

  “What!”

  “I explained that to you four days ago, but you said you’d got to get a sheep. I thought I could eat snowballs as long as you could. But I didn’t look for such a storm as this.”

  “There’s nothing?” demanded Sprudell, aghast.

  “Oh, yes, there’s somethin’,” grimly. “I kin take the ax and break up a couple of them doughnuts and bile the coffee grounds again. To-night we’ll gorge ourselves on a can of froze tomatoes, though I hates to eat so hearty and go right to bed. There’s a pint of beans, too, that by cookin’ steady in this altitude ought to be done by spring. We’d ’a’ had that sheep meat, only it blowed out of the tree last night and somethin’ drug it off. Here’s your doughnut.”

  Mr. Sprudell snatched eagerly at it and retired under the covers, where a loud scrunching told of his efforts to masticate the frozen tidbit.

  “Can you eat a little somethin’, Toy? Is your rheumatiz a-hurtin’ pretty bad?”

  “Hiyu lumatiz,” a faint voice answered, “plitty bad.”

  The look of gravity on the man’s face deepened as he stood rubbing his hands over the red-hot stove, which gave out little or no heat in the intense cold.

  The long hours of that day dragged somehow, and the next. When the third day dawned, the tent was buried nearly to the ridgepole under snow. Outside, the storm was roaring with unabated fury, and Uncle Bill’s emergency supply of wood was almost gone. He crept from under the blankets and boiled some water, making a few tasteless pancakes with a teacupful of flour.