Cabin Fever

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE FIRST STAGES

  For a month Bud worked and forced himself to cheerfulness, and tried toforget. Sometimes it was easy enough, but there were other times whenhe must get away by himself and walk and walk, with his rifle over hisshoulder as a mild pretense that he was hunting game. But if he broughtany back camp it was because the game walked up and waited to be shot;half the time Bud did not know where he was going, much less whetherthere were deer within ten rods or ten miles.

  During those spells of heartsickness he would sit all the evening andsmoke and stare at some object which his mind failed to register. Cashwould sit and watch him furtively; but Bud was too engrossed with hisown misery to notice it. Then, quite unexpectedly, reaction would comeand leave Bud in a peace that was more than half a torpid refusal of hismind to worry much over anything.

  He worked then, and talked much with Cash, and made plans for thedevelopment of their mine. In that month they had come to call it amine, and they had filed and recorded their claim, and had drawn up anagreement of partnership in it. They would "sit tight" and work on itthrough the winter, and when spring came they hoped to have somethingtangible upon which to raise sufficient capital to develop it properly.Or, times when they had done unusually well with their sandbank, theywould talk optimistically about washing enough gold out of that claim todevelop the other, and keep the title all in their own hands.

  Then, one night Bud dreamed again of Marie, and awoke with an insistentcraving for the oblivion of drunkenness. He got up and cooked thebreakfast, washed the dishes and swept the cabin, and measured out twoounces of gold from what they had saved.

  "You're keeping tabs on everything, Cash," he said shortly. "Just chargethis up to me. I'm going to town."

  Cash looked up at him from under a slanted eye-brow. His lips had atwist of pained disapproval.

  "Yeah. I figured you was about due in town," he said resignedly.

  "Aw, lay off that told-you-so stuff," Bud growled. "You never figuredanything of the kind, and you know it." He pulled his heavy sweater downoff a nail and put it on, scowling because the sleeves had to be pulledin place on his arms.

  "Too bad you can't wait a day. I figured we'd have a clean-up to-morrow,maybe. She's been running pretty heavy---"

  "Well, go ahead and clean up, then. You can do it alone. Or wait till Iget back."

  Cash laughed, as a retort cutting, and not because he was amused. Budswore and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  It was exactly five days alter that when he opened it again. Cash wasmixing a batch of sour-dough bread into loaves, and he did not sayanything at all when Bud came in and stood beside the stove, warming hishands and glowering around the room. He merely looked up, and then wenton with his bread making.

  Bud was not a pretty sight. Four days and nights of trying to see howmuch whisky he could drink, and how long he could play poker withoutgoing to sleep or going broke, had left their mark on his face andhis trembling hands. His eyes were puffy and red, and his cheeks weremottled, and his lips were fevered and had lost any sign of a humorousquirk at the corners. He looked ugly; as if he would like nothing betterthan an excuse to quarrel with Cash--since Cash was the only person athand to quarrel with.

  But Cash had not knocked around the world for nothing. He had seen menin that mood before, and he had no hankering for trouble which is vastlyeasier to start than it is to stop. He paid no attention to Bud. Hemade his loaves, tucked them into the pan and greased the top with bacongrease saved in a tomato can for such use. He set the pan on a shelfbehind the stove, covered it with a clean flour sack, opened the stovedoor, and slid in two sticks.

  "She's getting cold," he observed casually. "It'll be winter now beforewe know it."

  Bud grunted, pulled an empty box toward him by the simple expedient ofhooking his toes behind the corner, and sat down. He set his elbows onhis thighs and buried his face in his hands. His hat dropped offhis head and lay crown down beside him. He made a pathetic figure ofmiserable manhood, of strength mistreated. His fine, brown hair fellin heavy locks down over his fingers that rested on his forehead. Fiveminutes so, and he lifted his head and glanced around him apathetically."Gee-man-ee, I've got a headache!" he muttered, dropping his foreheadinto his spread palms again.

  Cash hesitated, derision hiding in the back of his eyes. Then he pushedthe dented coffeepot forward on the stove.

  "Try a cup of coffee straight," he said unemotionally, "and then laydown. You'll sleep it off in a few hours."

  Bud did not look up, or make any move to show that he heard. Butpresently he rose and went heavily over to his bunk. "I don't want anydarn coffee," he growled, and sprawled himself stomach down on the bed,with his face turned from the light.

  Cash eyed him coldly, with the corner of his upper lip lifted a little.Whatever weaknesses he possessed, drinking and gambling had no place inthe list. Nor had he any patience with those faults in others. Had Budwalked down drunk to Cash's camp, that evening when they first met, hemight have received a little food doled out to him grudgingly, buthe assuredly would not have slept in Cash's bed that night. That hetolerated drunkenness in Bud now would have been rather surprising toany one who knew Cash well. Perhaps he had a vague understanding of thedeeps through which Bud was struggling, and so was constrained to hidehis disapproval, hoping that the moral let-down was merely a temporaryone.

  He finished his strictly utilitarian household labor and went off up theflat to the sluice boxes. Bud had not moved from his first position onthe bed, but he did not breathe like a sleeping man. Not at first; afteran hour or so he did sleep, heavily and with queer, muddled dreams thathad no sequence and left only a disturbed sense of discomfort behindthen.

  At noon or a little after Cash returned to the cabin, cast a sour lookof contempt at the recumbent Bud, and built a fire in the old cookstove.He got his dinner, ate it, and washed his dishes with never a wordto Bud, who had wakened and lay with his eyes half open, sluggishlymiserable and staring dully at the rough spruce logs of the wall.

  Cash put on his cap, looked at Bud and gave a snort, and went off againto his work. Bud lay still for awhile longer, staring dully at the wall.Finally he raised up, swung his feet to the floor, and sat there staringaround the little cabin as though he had never before seen it.

  "Huh! You'd think, the way he highbrows me, that Cash never done wrongin his life! Tin angel, him--I don't think. Next time, I'll tell apinheaded world I'll have to bring home a quart or two, and put on ashow right!"

  Just what he meant by that remained rather obscure, even to Bud. Hegot up, shut his eyes very tight and then opened them wide to clear hisvision, shook himself into his clothes and went over to the stove.Cash had not left the coffeepot on the stove but had, with maliciousintent--or so Bud believed--put it away on the shelf so that what coffeeremained was stone cold. Bud muttered and threw out the coffee, groundsand all--a bit of bachelor extravagance which only anger could drive himto--and made fresh coffee, and made it strong. He did not want it. Hedrank it for the work of physical regeneration it would do for him.

  He lay down afterwards, and this time he dropped into a more nearlynormal sleep, which lasted until Cash returned at dusk After that he laywith his face hidden, awake and thinking. Thinking, for the most part,of how dull and purposeless life was, and wondering why the worldwas made, or the people in it--since nobody was happy, and few evenpretended to be. Did God really make the world, and man, just to playwith--for a pastime? Then why bother about feeling ashamed for anythingone did that was contrary to God's laws?

  Why be puffed up with pride for keeping one or two of themunbroken--like Cash, for instance. Just because Cash never drank orplayed cards, what right had he to charge the whole atmosphere of thecabin with his contempt and his disapproval of Bud, who chose to doboth?

  On the other hand, why did he choose a spree as a relief from hisparticular bunch of ghosts? Trading one misery for another was allyou could call it. Doing exactly the things that Marie's m
other hadpredicted he would do, committing the very sins that Marie was alwaysa little afraid he would commit--there must be some sort of twistedrevenge in that, he thought, but for the life of him he could not quitesee any real, permanent satisfaction in it--especially since Marie andher mother would never get to hear of it.

  For that matter, he was not so sure that they would not get to hear.He remembered meeting, just on the first edge of his spree, one Joe DeBarr, a cigar salesman whom he had known in San Jose. Joe knew Marie--infact, Joe had paid her a little attention before Bud came into her life.Joe had been in Alpine between trains, taking orders for goods from thetwo saloons and the hotel. He had seen Bud drinking. Bud knew perfectlywell how much Joe had seen him drinking, and he knew perfectly wellthat Joe was surprised to the point of amazement--and, Bud suspected,secretly gratified as well. Wherefore Bud had deliberately done whathe could do to stimulate and emphasize both the surprise and thegratification. Why is it that most human beings feel a sneakingsatisfaction in the downfall of another? Especially another who is, orhas been at sometime, a rival in love or in business?

  Bud had no delusions concerning Joe De Barr. If Joe should happen tomeet Marie, he would manage somehow to let her know that Bud was goingto the dogs--on the toboggan--down and out--whatever it suited Joe todeclare him. It made Bud sore now to think of Joe standing so smug andso well dressed and so immaculate beside the bar, smiling and twistingthe ends of his little brown mustache while he watched Bud make sucha consummate fool of himself. At the time, though, Bud had taken aperverse delight in making himself appear more soddenly drunken, moreboisterous and reckless than he really was.

  Oh, well, what was the odds? Marie couldn't think any worse of him thanshe already thought. And whatever she thought, their trails had parted,and they would never cross again--not if Bud could help it. ProbablyMarie would say amen to that. He would like to know how she was gettingalong--and the baby, too. Though the baby had never seemed quite realto Bud, or as if it were a permanent member of the household. It was aleather-lunged, red-faced, squirming little mite, and in his heart ofhearts Bud had not felt as though it belonged to him at all. He hadnever rocked it, for instance, or carried it in his arms. He had beenafraid he might drop it, or squeeze it too hard, or break it somehowwith his man's strength. When he thought of Marie he did not necessarilythink of the baby, though sometimes he did, wondering vaguely how muchit had grown, and if it still hollered for its bottle, all hours of theday and night.

  Coming back to Marie and Joe--it was not at all certain that they wouldmeet; or that Joe would mention him, even if they did. A wrecked home isalways a touchy subject, so touchy that Joe had never intimated in hisfew remarks to Bud that there had ever been a Marie, and Bud, drunkas he had been, was still not too drunk to hold back the question thatclamored to be spoken.

  Whether he admitted it to himself or not, the sober Bud Moore who lay onhis bunk nursing a headache and a grouch against the world was ashamedof the drunken Bud Moore who had paraded his drunkenness before the manwho knew Marie. He did not want Marie to hear what Joe might tell Therewas no use, he told himself miserably, in making Marie despise him aswell as hate him. There was a difference. She might think him a brute,and she might accuse him of failing to be a kind and loving husband; butshe could not, unless Joe told of his spree, say that she had ever heardof his carousing around. That it would be his own fault if she did hear,served only to embitter his mood.

  He rolled over and glared at Cash, who had cooked his supper and wassitting down to eat it alone. Cash was looking particularly misanthropicas he bent his head to meet the upward journey of his coffee cup, andhis eyes, when they lifted involuntarily with Bud's sudden movement, hadstill that hard look of bottled-up rancor that had impressed itself uponBud earlier in the day.

  Neither man spoke, or made any sign of friendly recognition. Bud wouldnot have talked to any one in his present state of self-disgust, but forall that Cash's silence rankled. A moment their eyes met and held; thenwith shifted glances the souls of them drew apart--farther apart thanthey had ever been, even when they quarreled over Pete, down in Arizona.

  When Cash had finished and was filing his pipe, Bud got up and reheatedthe coffee, and fried more bacon and potatoes, Cash having cooked justenough for himself. Cash smoked and gave no heed, and Bud retorted byeating in silence and in straightway washing his own cup, plate, knife,and fork and wiping clean the side of the table where he always sat. Hedid not look at Cash, but he felt morbidly that Cash was regarding himwith that hateful sneer hidden under his beard. He knew that it wassilly to keep that stony silence, but he kept telling himself that ifCash wanted to talk, he had a tongue, and it was not tied. Besides,Cash had registered pretty plainly his intentions and his wishes when heexcluded Bud from his supper.

  It was a foolish quarrel, but it was that kind of foolish quarrel whichis very apt to harden into a lasting one.