Part 8 (1/2)

When Sprudell stretched his stiff muscles and turned his head upon the bear-gra.s.s pillow at daybreak, Bruce was writing a letter on the corner of the table and Uncle Bill was stowing away provisions in a small canvas sack. He gathered, from the signs of preparation, that the miner was going to try and find the Chinaman. Outside, the wind was still sweeping the stinging snow before it like powder-driven shot. What a fool he was to attempt it--to risk his life--and for what?

It was with immeasurable satisfaction that Sprudell told himself that but for his initiative they would have been there yet. These fellows needed a leader, a strong man--the ignorant always did. His eyes caught the suggestive outlines of the blanket on the floor, and, with a start, he remembered what was under it. They had no sensibilities, these Westerners--they lacked fineness; certainly no one would suspect from the matter-of-factness of their manner that they were rooming with a corpse. For himself, he doubted if he could even eat.

”Oh, you awake?” Uncle Bill glanced at him casually.

”My feet hurt.”

Uncle Bill ignored his plaintive tone.

”They're good and froze. They'll itch like forty thousand fleabites atter while--like as not you'll haf to have them took off. Lay still and don't clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I'll cook you somethin'

bimeby.”

Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. He wished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the pay roll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He'd----Sprudell's resentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conducive to the disciplining of Uncle Bill.

Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here and there. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as though he were weighing something pro and con.

Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist though he was, he was equally aware that Bruce's observations still left him in some doubt.

Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to make up his mind.

”I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case I don't come back. I intend to, but”--he glanced instinctively out of the window--”it's no sure thing I will.

”My partner has a mother and a sister--here's the address, though it's twelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that you'll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and this letter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust--our season's work.”

He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell's hand. ”Say that Slim sent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write, that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.

”I've told them in my letter about the placer here--it's theirs, the whole of it, if I don't come back. See that it's recorded; women don't understand about such things. And be sure the a.s.sessment work's kept up.

In the letter, there, I've given them my figures as to how the samples run. Some day there'll be found a way to work it on a big scale, and it'll pay them to hold on. That's all, I guess.” He looked deep into Sprudell's eyes. ”You'll do it?”

”As soon as I get out.”

”I'd just about come back and haunt you if you lied.”

There were no heroics when he left them; he simply fastened on his pack and went.

”Don't try to hunt me if I stay too long,” was all he said to Uncle Bill at parting. ”If there's any way of getting there, I can make it just as well alone.”

It was disappointing to Sprudell--nothing like the Western plays at tragic moments; no long handshakes and heart-breaking speeches of farewell from the ”rough diamonds.”

”S' long,” said Uncle Bill.

He polished a place on the window-pane with his elbow and watched Burt's struggle with the cold and wind and snow begin.

”Pure grit, that feller,” when, working like a snowplow, Bruce had disappeared. ”He's man all through.” The old voice trembled. ”Say!” He turned ferociously. ”Git up and eat!”

Uncle Bill grew older, grayer, grimmer in the days of waiting, days which he spent princ.i.p.ally moving between window and door, watching, listening, saying to himself monotonously: It _can't_ storm forever; some time it's _got_ to stop.

But in this he seemed mistaken, for the snow fell with only brief cessation, and in such intervals the curious fog hung over the silent mountains with the malignant persistency of an evil spirit.