The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 4

He had acquaintances and he had enemies in the mining camps which necessity compelled him to visit at long intervals for the purchase of supplies. Agreeable and ingratiating storekeepers who sold him groceries, picks, shovels, powder, drills, at fifty per cent. profit, neat, smooth-shaven gamblers, bartenders, who welcomed him with boisterous camaraderie, tired and respectable women who "run" boarding houses, painted, highly-perfumed ladies of the dance hall, enigmatic Chinamen, all were types with which he was familiar. But he called none of them "friend." Their tastes, their interests, their standards of conduct were different from his own. They had nothing in common, yet he could not have explained exactly why. He told himself vaguely that he did not "cotton" to them, and thought the fault was with himself.

Bruce was twenty-seven, and his mother was still his ideal of womanhood.

He doubted if there were another like her in all the world. Certainly he never had seen one who in the least approached her. He remembered her vividly, the grave, gray, comprehending eyes, the long braids of hair which lay like thick new hempen rope upon the white counterpane.

His lack of a substantial education--a college education--was a sore spot with him which did not become less sore with time. If she had lived he was sure it would have been different. With his mother to intercede for him he knew that he would have had it. After her death his father grew more taciturn, more impatient, more bent on preparing him to follow in his footsteps, regardless of his inclinations. The "lickings" became more frequent, for he seemed only to see his mistakes and childish faults.

The culmination had come when he had asked to be allowed to leave the country school where he rode daily, and attend the better one in the nearest village, which necessitated boarding. After nerving himself for days to ask permission, he had been refused flatly.

"What do you think I'm made of--money?" his father had demanded. "You'll stay where you are until you've learned to read, and write, and figure: then you'll help me with the cattle. Next thing you'll be wantin' to play a flute or the piano."

He thought of his father always with hardness and unforgiveness, for he realized now, as he had not at the time he ran away from home, what the thousands of acres, the great herd of sleek cattle, meant--the fortune that they represented.

"He could have so well afforded it," Bruce often mused bitterly. "And it's all I would have asked of him. I didn't come into the world because I wanted to come, and he owed it to me--my chance!"

The flakes of snow which fell at first and clung tenaciously to Bruce's dark-blue flannel shirt were soft and wet, so much so that they were almost drops of rain, but soon they hardened and bounced and rattled as they began to fall faster.

As he threw an armful of wood behind the sheet-iron camp stove, Bruce gave a disparaging poke at a pan of yeast bread set to rise.

"Slim and I will have to take this dough to bed with us to keep it warm if it turns much colder. Everything's going to freeze up stiff as a snake. Never remember it as cold as this the first storm. Well, I'll get a pail of water, then let her come." He added uneasily: "I wish Slim would get in."

His simple preparations were soon complete, and when he closed the heavy door of whip-sawed lumber it was necessary to light the small kerosene lamp, although the dollar watch ticking on its nail said the hour was but four-thirty.

He eyed a pile of soiled dishes in disgust, then set a lard bucket of water to heat.

"Two days' gatherings! After I've eaten four meals off the same plate it begins to go against me. Slim would sc.r.a.pe the grub off with a stick and eat for a year without washing a dish. Seems like the better raised some fellers are the dirtier they are when they're out like this. Guess I'll wash me a shirt or two while I'm holed up. Now where did I put my dishrag?"

His work and his huge masculinity looked ludicrously incongruous as he bent over the low table and sc.r.a.ped at the tin plates with his thumb nail or squinted into the lard buckets, of which there seemed an endless array.

The lard bucket is to the prospector what baling wire is to the freighter on the plains, and Bruce, from long experience, knew its every use. A lard bucket was his coffee-pot, his stewing kettle, his sour-dough can. He made mulligan in one lard bucket and boiled beans in another. The outside cover made a good soap dish, and the inside cover answered well enough for a mirror when he shaved.

He wrung out his dishcloth now and hung it on a nail, then eyed the bed in the end of the cabin disapprovingly.

"That's a tough-looking bunk for white men to sleep in! Wonder how 'twould seem if 'twas made?"

While he shook and straightened the blankets, and smote the bear-gra.s.s pillows with his fists, he told himself that he would cut some fresh pine boughs to soften it a little as soon as the weather cleared.

"I'm a tidy little housewife," he said sardonically as he tucked away the blankets at the edge. "I've had enough inside work to do since I took in a star boarder to be first-cla.s.s help around some lady's home."

A dead tree crashed outside. "Wow! Listen to that wind! Sounds like a bunch of squaws wailing; maybe it's a war party lost in the Nez Perce Spirit Land. Wish Slim would come." He walked to the door and listened, but he could hear nothing save the howling of the wind.

He was poking aimlessly at the bread dough with his finger, wondering if it ever meant to rise, wondering if his partner would come home in a better humor, wondering if he should tell him about the salt, when Slim burst in with a swirl of snow and wind which extinguished the tiny lamp.

In the glimpse Bruce had of his face he saw that it was scowling and ugly.

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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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.