Cabin Fever

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER TEN. EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS

  A man's mind is a tricky thing--or, speaking more exactly, a man'semotions are tricky things. Love has come rushing to the back of atip-tilted chin, or the tone of a voice, or the droop of an eyelid. Ithas fled for cause as slight. Sometimes it runs before resentment fora real or fancied wrong, but then, if you have observed it closely, youwill see that quite frequently, when anger grows slow of foot, or diesof slow starvation, love steals back, all unsuspected and unbidden--andmayhap causes much distress by his return. It is like a suddenresurrection of all the loved, long-mourned dead that sleep so serenelyin their tended plots. Loved though they were and long mourned, thinkof the consternation if they all came trooping back to take their oldplaces in life! The old places that have been filled, most of them, byothers who are loved as dearly, who would be mourned if they were takenaway.

  Psychologists will tell us all about the subconscious mind, thehidden loves and hates and longings which we believe are dead and longforgotten. When one of those emotions suddenly comes alive and stands,terribly real and intrusive, between our souls and our everyday lives,the strongest and the best of us may stumble and grope blindly aftercontent, or reparation, or forgetfulness, or whatever seems most likelyto give relief.

  I am apologizing now for Bud, who had spent a good many months inpushing all thoughts of Marie out of his mind, all hunger for her out ofhis heart. He had kept away from towns, from women, lest he be remindedtoo keenly of his matrimonial wreck. He had stayed with Cash and hadhunted gold, partly because Cash never seemed conscious of any need ofa home or love or wife or children, and therefore never reminded Bud ofthe home and the wife and the love and the child he had lost out of hisown life. Cash seldom mentioned women at all, and when he did it wasin a purely general way, as women touched some other subject he wasdiscussing. He never paid any attention to the children they metcasually in their travels. He seemed absolutely self-sufficient,interested only in the prospect of finding a paying claim. What he woulddo with wealth, if so be he attained it, he never seemed to know orcare. He never asked Bud any questions about his private affairs, neverseemed to care how Bud had lived, or where. And Bud thankfully left hispast behind the wall of silence. So he had come to believe that he wasalmost as emotion-proof as Cash appeared to be, and had let it go atthat.

  Now here he was, with his heart and his mind full of Marie--after morethan a year and a half of forgetting her! Getting drunk and playingpoker all night did not help him at all, for when he woke it was from asweet, intimate dream of her, and it was to a tormenting desire for her,that gnawed at his mind as hunger gnaws at the stomach. Bud could notunderstand it. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. By allhis simple rules of reckoning he ought to be "over it" by now. He hadbeen, until he saw that picture.

  He was so very far from being over his trouble that he was under it; abeaten dog wincing under the blows of memory, stung by the lash of hislonging. He groaned, and Frank thought it was the usual "morning after"headache, and laughed ruefully.

  "Same here," he said. "I've got one like a barrel, and I didn't punishhalf the booze you did."

  Bud did not say anything, but he reached for the bottle, tilted it andswallowed three times before he stopped.

  "Gee!" whispered Frank, a little enviously.

  Bud glanced somberly across at Frank, who was sitting by the stove withhis jaws between his palms and his hair toweled, regarding his guestspeculatively.

  "I'm going to get drunk again," Bud announced bluntly. "If you don'twant to, you'd better duck. You're too easy led--I saw that last night.You follow anybody's lead that you happen to be with. If you follow mylead to-day, you'll be petrified by night. You better git, and let me goit alone."

  Frank laughed uneasily. "Aw, I guess you ain't all that fatal, Bud.Let's go over and have some breakfast--only it'll be dinner."

  "You go, if you want to." Bud tilted the bottle again, his eyes halfclosed while he swallowed. When he had finished, he shuddered violentlyat the taste of the whisky. He got up, went to the water bucket anddrank half a dipper of water. "Good glory! I hate whisky," he grumbled."Takes a barrel to have any effect on me too." He turned and looked downat Frank with a morose kind of pity. "You go on and get your breakfast,kid. I don't want any. I'll stay here for awhile."

  He sat down on the side of the cheap, iron bedstead, and emptied hispockets on the top quilt. He straightened the crumpled bills and countedthem, and sorted the silver pieces. All told, he had sixty-three dollarsand twenty cents. He sat fingering the money absently, his mind uponother things. Upon Marie and the baby, to be exact. He was fighting theimpulse to send Marie the money. She might need it for the kid. If hewas sure her mother wouldn't get any of it... A year and a half wasquite a while, and fifteen hundred dollars wasn't much to live on thesedays. She couldn't work, with the baby on her hands...

  Frank watched him curiously, his jaws still resting between his twopalms, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen, his lips loose and trembling.A dollar alarm clock ticked resonantly, punctuated now and then by thedull clink of silver as Bud lifted a coin and let it drop on the littlepile.

  "Pretty good luck you had last night," Frank ventured wishfully. "Theycleaned me."

  Bud straightened his drooping shoulders and scooped the money into hishand. He laughed recklessly, and got up. "We'll try her another whirl,and see if luck'll bring luck. Come on--let's go hunt up some of themmarks that got all the dough last night. We'll split, fifty-fifty, andthe same with what we win. Huh?"

  "You're on, ho--let's go." Bud had gauged him correctly--Frank wouldfollow any one who would lead. He got up and came to the table where Budwas dividing the money into two equal sums, as nearly as he could makechange. What was left over--and that was the three dollars and twentycents--he tossed into the can of tobacco on a shelf.

  "We'll let that ride--to sober up on, if we go broke," he grunted. "Comeon--let's get action."

  Action, of a sort, they proceeded to get. Luck brought luck of the samecomplexion. They won in fluctuating spells of good cards and judiciousteamwork. They did not cheat, though Frank was ready if Bud had led himthat way. Frank was ready for anything that Bud suggested. He drank whenBud drank, went from the first saloon to the one farther down andacross the street, returned to the first with cheerful alacrity and muchmeaningless laughter when Bud signified a desire to change. It soothedBud and irritated him by turns, this ready acquiescence of Frank's. Hebegan to take a malicious delight in testing that acquiescence. He beganto try whether he could not find the end of Frank's endurance in stayingawake, his capacity for drink, his good nature, his credulity--he ranthe scale of Frank's various qualifications, seeking always to establisha well-defined limitation somewhere.

  But Frank was utterly, absolutely plastic. He laughed and drank when Budsuggested that they drink. He laughed and played whatever game Bud urgedhim into. He laughed and agreed with Bud when Bud made statements totest the credulity of anyman. He laughed and said, "Sure. Let's go!" whenBud pined for a change of scene.

  On the third day Bud suddenly stopped in the midst of a game of poolwhich neither was steady enough to play, and gravely inspected thechalked end of his cue.

  "That's about enough of this," he said. "We're drunk. We're so drunk wedon't know a pocket from a prospect hole. I'm tired of being a hog. I'mgoing to go get another drink and sober up. And if you're the dog Fidoyou've been so far, you'll do the same." He leaned heavily upon thetable, and regarded Frank with stern, bloodshot blue eyes.

  Frank laughed and slid his cue the length of the table. He also leaned abit heavily. "Sure," he said. "I'm ready, any time you are."

  "Some of these days," Bud stated with drunken deliberation, "they'lltake and hang you, Frank, for being such an agreeable cuss." He tookFrank gravely by the arm and walked him to the bar, paid for two beerswith almost his last dollar, and, still holding Frank firmly, walked himout of doors and down the street to Frank's cabin. He pushed him insideand stood looking in
upon him with a sour appraisement.

  "You are the derndest fool I ever run across--but at that you're a goodscout too," he informed Frank. "You sober up now, like I said. You oughtto know better 'n to act the way you've been acting. I'm sure ashamedof you, Frank. Adios--I'm going to hit the trail for camp." With thathe pulled the door shut and walked away, with that same circumspectexactness in his stride which marks the drunken man as surely as does astagger.

  He remembered what it was that had brought him to town--which is morethan most men in his condition would have done. He went to the postoffice and inquired for mail, got what proved to be the assayer'sreport, and went on. He bought half a dozen bananas which did notremind him of that night when he had waited on the Oakland pier for themysterious Foster, though they might have recalled the incident vividlyto mind had he been sober. He had been wooing forgetfulness, and for thetime being he had won.

  Walking up the steep, winding trail that led to Nelson Flat cleared alittle his fogged brain. He began to remember what it was that he hadbeen fighting to forget. Marie's face floated sometimes before him, butthe vision was misty and remote, like distant woodland seen throughthe gray film of a storm. The thought of her filled him with a vaguediscomfort now when his emotions were dulled by the terrific strainhe had wilfully put upon brain and body. Resentment crept into theforeground again. Marie had made him suffer. Marie was to blame for thisbeastly fit of intoxication. He did not love Marie--he hated her. Hedid not want to see her, he did not want to think of her. She had donenothing for him but bring him trouble. Marie, forsooth! (Only, Bud putit in a slightly different way.)

  Halfway to the flat, he met Cash walking down the slope where the trailseemed tunneled through deep green, so thick stood the young spruce.Cash was swinging his arms in that free stride of the man who haslearned how to walk with the least effort. He did not halt when hesaw Bud plodding slowly up the trail, but came on steadily, his keen,blue-gray eyes peering sharply from beneath his forward tilted hat brim.He came up to within ten feet of Bud, and stopped.

  "Well!" He stood eyeing Bud appraisingly, much as Bud had eyed Frank acouple of hours before. "I was just starting out to see what had becomeof you," he added, his voice carrying the full weight of reproach thatthe words only hinted at.

  "Well, get an eyeful, if that's what you come for. I'm here--andlookin's cheap." Bud's anger flared at the disapproval he read in Cash'seyes, his voice, the set of his lips.

  But Cash did not take the challenge. "Did the report come?" he asked, asthough that was the only matter worth discussing.

  Bud pulled the letter sullenly from his pocket and gave it to Cash. Hestood moodily waiting while Cash opened and read and returned it.

  "Yeah. About what I thought--only it runs lighter in gold, with a higherpercentage of copper. It'll pay to go on and see what's at bed rock. Ifthe copper holds up to this all along, we'll be figuring on the gold topay for getting the copper. This is copper country, Bud. Looks like we'dfound us a copper mine." He turned and walked on beside Bud. "I dug into quite a rich streak of sand while you was gone," he volunteered aftera silence. "Coarse gold, as high as fifteen cents a pan. I figure webetter work that while the weather's good, and run our tunnel in on thisother when snow comes."

  Bud turned his head and looked at Cash intently for a minute. "I've beendrunker'n a fool for three days," he announced solemnly.

  "Yeah. You look it," was Cash's dry retort, while he stared straightahead, up the steep, shadowed trail.