Part 8 (2/2)

He sc.r.a.ped the snow away from beside the cabin, and Sprudell helped him bury Slim. Then, against the day of their going, he fas.h.i.+oned crude snow-shoes of material he found about the cabin and built a rough hand sled.

”If only 'twould thaw a little, and come a crust, he'd stand a whole lot better show of gittin' down.” Uncle Bill scanned the sky regularly for a break somewhere each noon.

”Lord, yes, if it only would!” Sprudell always answered fretfully.

”There are business reasons why I ought to be at home.”

The day came when the old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canon into which Bruce had disappeared.

”He might kill somethin', if 'twould lift a little, but there's nothin'

stirrin' in such a storm as this. I feel like a murderer settin' here.”

Sprudell watched him fearfully lest the irresolution he read in his face change to resolve, and urged:

”There's nothing we can do but wait.”

Days after the most sanguine would have abandoned hope, Uncle Bill hung on. Sprudell paced the cabin like a captive panther, and his broad hints became demands.

”A month of this, and there would be another killin'; I aches to choke the windpipe off that dude,” the old man told himself, and ignored the peremptory commands.

The crust that he prayed for came at last, but no sign of Bruce; then a gale blowing down the river swept it fairly clear of snow.

”Git ready!” Griswold said one morning. ”We'll start.” And Sprudell jumped on his frosted feet for joy. ”We'll take it on the ice to Long's Crossin',” he vouchsafed shortly. ”Ore City's closest, but I've no heart to pack you up that hill.”

He left a note on the kitchen table, though he had the sensation of writing to the dead; and when he closed the door he did so reverently, as he would have left a mausoleum. Then, dragging blankets and provision behind them on the sled, they started for the river, past the broken snow and the shallow grave where the dead madman lay, past the clump of snow-laden willows where the starving horses that had worked their way down huddled for shelter, too weak to move. Leaden-hearted, Uncle Bill went with reluctant feet. Before a bend of the river shut from sight the white-roofed cabin from which a tiny thread of smoke still rose, he looked over his shoulder, wagging his head.

”I don't feel right about goin'. I sh.o.r.ely don't.”

VI

THE RETURNED HERO

It is said that no two persons see another in exactly the same light. Be that as it may, it is extremely doubtful if Uncle Bill Griswold would have immediately recognized in the debonair raconteur who held a circle breathless in the Bartlesville Commercial Club the saffron-colored, wild-eyed dude whom he had fished off the slide rock with a pair of ”galluses” attached to a stout pole.

The account of Sprudell's adventure had leaked out and even gotten into print, but it was not until some time after that his special cronies succeeded in getting the story from his own lips.

There was not a dry eye when he was done. That touch about thinking of them and the Yawning Jaws, and grappling hand to hand with The White Death--why, the man was a poet, no matter what his enemies said; and, as though to prove it, Abe Cone sniffled so everybody looked at him.

”We're proud of you! But you musn't take such a chance again, old man.”

A chorus echoed Y. Fred Smart's friendly protest. ”'Tain't right to tempt Providence.”

But Sprudell laughed lightly, and they regarded him in admiration--danger was the breath of life to some.

But this reckless, peril-courting side was only one side of the many-sided T. Victor Sprudell. From nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, he was the man of business, occupied with facts and figures and the ever-interesting problem of how to extract the maximum of labor for the minimum of wage. That ”there is no sentiment in business” is a doctrine he practised to the letter. He was hard, uncompromising, exact.

Rather than the gratifying cortege which he pictured in his dreams, a hansom cab or a motorcycle could quite easily have conveyed all the sorrowing employees of the Bartlesville Tool Works who voluntarily would have followed its president to his grave.

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