The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 5

Bruce saw one desperate chance and took it. He could not bring himself to stop Slim with a gun. He flung it from him. Swift and sure he swooped and caught Slim by the ankles in the instant that he paused. Exerting his great strength, he hurled him over his shoulder, ax and all, where he fell hard, in a heap, in the corner, between the bunk and wall. The sharp blade of the ax cut the carotid artery.

Bruce turned to see a spurt of blood. Slim rolled over on his back, and it gushed like a crimson fountain. Bruce knelt beside him, trying frantically to bring together the severed ends, to stop somehow the ghastly flow that was draining the madman's veins.

But he did not know how, his fingers were clumsy, and Slim would not lie still. He threshed about like a dying animal, trying to rise and stagger around the room. Finally his chest heaved, and his contracted leg dropped with a thud. Bruce stared at the awful pallor of Slim's face, then he got up and washed his hands.

He looked at the watch ticking steadily through it all; it was barely a quarter to five. He spread his slicker on the bunk and laid Slim on it and tried to wash the blood from the floor and the logs of the cabin wall, but it left a stain. He changed his shirt--murderers always changed their shirts and burned them.

Slim was dead; he wouldn't have to get supper for Slim--ever again. And he had killed him! Mechanically he poked his finger into the dough. It was rising. He could work it out pretty soon. Slim was dead; he need not get supper for Slim; he kept looking at him to see if he had moved. How sinister, how "onery" Slim looked even in death. He closed his mouth and drew the corner of a blanket over the cruel, narrow face. How still it seemed after the commotion and Slim's maniacal screams!

He had joined the army of men who have killed their partners. What trifles bring on quarrels in the hills; what mountains molehills become when men are alone in the wilderness! That cook in the Buffalo Hump who tried to knife him because he stubbed his toe against the coffee-pot, and "Packsaddle Pete," who meant to brain him when they differed over throwing the diamond hitch; and now Slim was dead because he had given a handful of salt to the mountain sheep.

It did not seem to matter that Slim had said he meant to kill him, anyhow, or that the way in which his malignant eyes had followed his every movement took on new significance in the light of what had happened. He blamed himself. He should have quit long ago. He should have seen that Slim's ill-balanced mind needed only a trifle to shove it over the edge. It had never seemed so still in the cabin even when Slim was gone as it did now. Mechanically he set about getting supper, making as much noise as he could.

But he was unable to eat after it was on the table before him. He drank his coffee and stared at the bacon and cold biscuit a while, then washed the dishes again. Slim seemed to be getting farther and farther away.

The storm outside had become a blizzard. Old Mother Westwind took to her heels and the Boss of the Arctic raged. It occurred to Bruce that it would be hard to bury Slim if the ground froze, and that reminded him that perhaps Slim had "folks" who ought to know.

Bruce filled the stove, and shoved his bread in the oven; then he pulled Slim's war bag from under the bunk and dumped the contents on the table, hoping with all his heart that he would not find an address. He could not imagine how his should find the words in which to tell them that he had killed Slim.

There were neckties, samples of ore, a pair of silk suspenders, and a miner's candlestick, one silk sock, a weasel skin, a copy of "The Gadfly," and a box of quinine pills. No papers, no letters, not a single clew to his ident.i.ty. Bruce felt relief. Wait--what was this? He took the bag by the corners, and a photographer's mailing case fell out. It was addressed to Slim in Silver City, New Mexico, in a childish, unformed hand.

He took out the picture and found himself smiling into the eyes that smiled up into his. He knew intuitively that it was Slim's sister, yet the resemblance was the faintest, and there was not a trace of his meanness in her look.

He had been right in his conjecture, Slim _was_ "the runt of something good." There was no mistaking the refinement and good breeding in the girl's sweet face.

Slim had known better, yet nearly always he had talked in the language of the uneducated Westerner, in the jargon of yeggmen, and the vernacular of the professional tramps with whom he had hoboed over the West--a "gay cat," as he was pleased to call himself, when boasting of the "toughness" of his life. He had affected uncleanliness, uncouthness; but in spite of his efforts the glimmer of the "something good" of which he was the runt had shown through.

Slim had had specific knowledge of a world which Bruce knew only by hearsay; and when it had suited his purpose, as when Bruce had first met him in Meadows, he had talked correctly, even brilliantly, and he had had an undeniable charm of manner for men and women alike. But, once well started down the river, he had thrown off all restraint, ignoring completely the silent code which exists between partners in the hills.

Such fellows were well named "black sheep," Bruce thought, as he looked at the picture.

A letter had been wrapped around the photograph, with an address and a date line twelve years old. The letter read:

DEAR BROTHER: We have just heard that you were working in a mine down there and so I thought I would write and tell you that I hope you are well and make a lot of money. I hope you do and come home because we are awful poor and mother says if I don't marry well she don't know what we will do because there are mortgages on everything and we don't keep horses any more and only one servant which is pretty hard for mother. The girl is sa.s.sy sometimes but mother can't let her go because she can't pay her yet. Please, Freddie, come home and help us. Everything dreadful has happened to us since father died. Mother will forgive you for being bad and so do I although it was not nice to see our names and pictures in the papers all the time. Write to me, Freddie, as soon as you get this. Your loving sister,

HELEN.

P. S.--I am thirteen to-day and this is my picture. I wish I could go West too, but don't mention this when you write.

Bruce wondered if Slim had answered. He would wager his buckskin bag of dust that he had not. The marvel was that he had even kept the letter.

He looked again at the date line--twelve years--the mortgages had long since been foreclosed, if it had depended upon Slim to pay them--and she was twenty-five. He wondered if she'd "married well."

Slim was a failure; he stood for nothing in the world of achievement; for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much more difference would his own death make in anybody's life? His mother's labored words came back with painful distinctness: "I've had such hopes for you, my little boy. I've dreamed such dreams for you--I wanted to see them all come true." An inarticulate sound came from him that was both pain and self-disgust. He was close to twenty-eight--almost thirty--and he'd spent the precious years "just b.u.mming round." Nothing to show for them but a little gold dust and the clothes he wore. He wondered if his mother knew.

Her wedding ring was still in a faded velvet case that he kept among his treasures. He never had seen a woman who had suggested ever so faintly the thought that he should like to place it on her finger. There had been women, of a kind--"Peroxide Louise," in Meadows, with her bovine coquetry and loud-mouthed vivacity, yapping scandal up and down the town, the transplanted product of a city's slums, not even loyal to the man who had tried to raise her to his level.

Bruce never had considered marrying; the thought of it for himself always made him smile. But why couldn't he--the thought now came gradually, and grew--why _shouldn't_ he a.s.sume the responsibilities Slim shirked if conditions were the same and help was still needed? In expiation, perhaps, he could halfway make amends.

He'd write and mail the letter in Ore City as soon as he could snowshoe out. He'd express them half the dust and tell them that 'twas Slim's.

He'd----"OO--oo--ough!" he shivered--he'd forgotten to stoke the fire.

Oh, well, a soogan would do him well enough.

He pulled a quilt from under Slim and wrapped it about his own shoulders. Then he sat down again by the fireless stove and laid his head on his folded arms upon the rough pine table. The still body on the bunk grew stark while he slept, the swift-running river froze from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, the snow piled in drifts, obliterating trails and blocking pa.s.ses, weighting the pines to the breaking point, while the intense cold struck the chill of death into the b.a.l.l.s of feathers huddled for shelter under the flat branches of the spruces.

V

"THE JACK-POT"

As Uncle Bill Griswold came breathless from the raging whiteness outside with an armful of bark and wood, the two long icicles hanging from the ends of his mustache made him look like an industrious walrus. He drew the fuel beside the tiny, sheet-iron camp stove, and tied fast the flap of the canvas tent.

"We're in a jack-pot, all right."

He delivered the commonplace p.r.o.nunciamento in a tone which would have conveyed much to a mountain man. To Mr. Sprudell it meant only that he might expect further annoyance. He demanded querulously:

"Did you find my shirt?"

Uncle Bill rolled his eyes with a droll grimace of despair toward the mound of blankets in the corner whence came the m.u.f.fled voice. The innocence of a dude was almost pitiful. He answered dryly:

"I wouldn't swear to it--I wouldn't go so far as to make my affadavvy to it, but I think I seen your shirt wavin' from a p'int a rock about seventy mile to the south'ard--over t'ward the Thunder Mountain country."

"Gone?"

"Gone"--mournfully--"where the woodbine twineth."

"And my trousers?"

"Where the w.a.n.gdoodle mourneth fer his lost love. Blowed off. I got your union suit out'n the top of a pine tree. You've no more pants than a rabbit, feller. Everything went when the guy-ropes busted--I warned you to sleep in your clothes."

"But what'll I do?" Sprudell quavered.

"Nothin'." His tone was as dry as punk. "You kin jest as well die in them pink pajammers as anything else."

"Huh?" excitedly. The mound began to heave.

"I say we're in for it. There's a feel in the air like what the Injuns call 'The White Death.' It hurt my lungs like I was breathin' darnin'

needles when I cut this wood. The drifts is ten feet high and gittin'

higher." Laconically: "The horses have quit us; we're afoot."

"Is that so? Well, we've got to get out of here--I refuse to put in another such night. Lie still!" he commanded ferociously. "You're letting in a lot of cold air. Quit rampin' round!" From which it may be gathered that Mr. Sprudell, for purposes of warmth and protection, was sleeping with the Chinese cook.

"Three in a bed _is_ crowded," Uncle Bill admitted, with a grin.

"To-night you might try settin' up."

A head of tousled white hair appeared above the edge of the blankets, then a pair of gleaming eyes. "I propose to get out of here to-day," Mr.

Sprudell announced, with hauteur.