The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 6

"Indeed?" inquired Uncle Bill calmly. "Where do you aim to go?"

"I'm going back to Ore City--on foot, if need be--I'll walk!"

Uncle Bill explained patiently:

"The trail's wiped out, the pa.s.s is drifted full of snow, and the cold's a fright. You'd be lost inside of fifteen yards. That's loco talk."

"I'm going to get up." There was offended dignity in Mr. Sprudell's tone.

"You can't," said the old man shortly. "You ain't got no pants, and your shoes is full of snow. I doubts if you has socks till I takes a stick and digs around where your tepee was."

"Tsch! Tsch!" Mr. Sprudell's tongue clicked against his teeth in the extreme of exasperation at Uncle Bill. By some process of reasoning he blamed him for their present plight.

"I'm hungry!" he snapped, in a voice which implied that the fact was a matter of moment.

"So am I," said Uncle Bill; "I'm holler to my toes."

"I presume"--in cold sarcasm--"there's no reason why we shouldn't breakfast, since it's after ten."

"None at all," Uncle Bill answered easily, "except we're out of grub."

"What!"

"I explained that to you four days ago, but you said you'd got to get a sheep. I thought I could eat s...o...b..a.l.l.s as long as you could. But I didn't look for such a storm as this."

"There's nothing?" demanded Sprudell, aghast.

"Oh, yes, there's _somethin'_," grimly. "I kin take the ax and break up a couple of them doughnuts and bile the coffee grounds again. To-night we'll gorge ourselves on a can of froze tomatoes, though I hates to eat so hearty and go right to bed. There's a pint of beans, too, that by cookin' steady in this alt.i.tude ought to be done by spring. We'd 'a' had that sheep meat, only it blowed out of the tree last night and somethin' drug it off. Here's your doughnut."

Mr. Sprudell s.n.a.t.c.hed eagerly at it and retired under the covers, where a loud scrunching told of his efforts to masticate the frozen tidbit.

"Can you eat a little somethin', Toy? Is your rheumatiz a-hurtin' pretty bad?"

"Hiyu lumatiz," a faint voice answered, "plitty bad."

The look of gravity on the man's face deepened as he stood rubbing his hands over the red-hot stove, which gave out little or no heat in the intense cold.

The long hours of that day dragged somehow, and the next. When the third day dawned, the tent was buried nearly to the ridgepole under snow.

Outside, the storm was roaring with unabated fury, and Uncle Bill's emergency supply of wood was almost gone. He crept from under the blankets and boiled some water, making a few tasteless pancakes with a teacupful of flour.

Sprudell sat up suddenly and said, with savage energy:

"Look here--I'll give you a thousand dollars to get me out of this!"

Uncle Bill looked at him curiously. A thousand dollars! Wasn't that like a dude? Dudes thought money could do anything, buy anything.

Uncle Bill would rather have had a sack of flour just then than all the money Sprudell owned.

"Your check's no more good than a bunch of dried leaves. It's endurance that's countin' from now on. We're up against it right, I tell you, with Toy down sick and all."

Sprudell stared.

"Toy?" Was that why Griswold would not leave? "What's Toy got to do with it?" he demanded.

It was the old man's turn to stare.

"What's Toy got to do with it?" He looked intently at Sprudell's small round eyes--hard as agate--at his selfish, Cupid's mouth. "You don't think I'd quit him, do you, when he's sick--leave him here to die alone?" Griswold flopped a pancake in the skillet and added, in a somewhat milder voice: "I've no special love for c.h.i.n.ks, but I've known Toy since '79. He wouldn't pull out and leave me if I was down."

"But what about me?" Sprudell demanded furiously.

"You'll have to take your chances along with us. It may let up in a day or two, and then again it mayn't. Anyway, the game goes; we stop eatin'

altogether before to-morry night."

"You got me into this fix! And what am I paying you five dollars a day for, except to get me out and do as you are told?"

"_I_ got you into this fix? _I_ did?" The stove lids danced with the vigor with which Uncle Bill banged down the frying pan. The mild old man was stirred at last. "I sure like your nerve! And, say, when you talk to me, jest try and remember that I don't wear bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and a uniform." His blue eyes blazed. "It's your infernal meanness that's to blame, and nothin' else. I warned you--I told you half a dozen times that you wasn't gittin' grub enough to come into the hills this time of year. But you was so afraid of havin' six bits' worth left over that you wouldn't listen to what I said. I don't like you anyhow. You're the kind of galoot that ought never to git out of sight of a railroad. Now, blast you--you starve!"

Incredible as the sensation was, Sprudell felt small. He had to remind himself repeatedly who he was before he quite got back his poise, and no suitable retort came to him, for his guide had told the truth. But the thought that blanched his pink face until it was only a shade less white than his thick, white hair was that he, T. Victor Sprudell, president of the Bartlesville Tool Works, of Bartlesville, Indiana, was going to starve! To freeze! To die in the pitiless hills like any penniless prospector! His check-book was as useless as a bent weapon in his hand, and his importance in the world counted for no more than that of the Chinaman, by his side. Mr. Sprudell lay down again, weak from an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

Sprudell had not realized it before; but now he knew that always in the back of his head there had been a picture of an imposing cortege, blocks long, following a wreath-covered coffin in which he reposed. And later, an afternoon extra in which his demise was featured and his delicate, unostentatious charities described--not that he could think of any, but he presumed that that was the usual thing.

But this--this miserable finality! Unconsciously Sprudell groaned. To die bravely in the sight of a crowd was sublime; but to perish alone, unnoted, side by side with the Chinese cook and chiefly for want of trousers in which to escape, was ignominious. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his cold feet from the middle of the cook's back.

Another wretched day pa.s.sed, the event of which was the uncovering of Sprudell's fine field boots in a drift outside. That night he did not close his eyes. His nervousness became panic, and his panic like unto hysteria. He ached with cold and his cramped position, and he was now getting in earnest the gnawing pangs of hunger. What was a Chinaman's life compared to his? There were millions like him left--and there was only one Sprudell! In the faint, gray light of the fourth day, Griswold felt him crawling out.

Griswold watched him while he kneaded the hard leather of his boots to soften it, and listened to the chattering of his teeth while he went through the Chinaman's war bag for an extra pair of socks.

"The sizes in them Levi Strauss' allus run too small," Uncle Bill observed suddenly, after Sprudell had squeezed into Toy's one pair of overalls.

"There's no sense in us all staying here to starve," said Sprudell defiantly, as though he had been accused. "I'm going to Ore City before I get too weak to start."

"I won't stop you if you're set on goin'; but, as I told you once, you'll be lost in fifteen yards. There's just one chance I see, Sprudell, and I'll take it if you'll say you'll stay with Toy. I'll try to get down to that cabin on the river. The feller may be there, and again he may have gone for grub. I won't say that I can make it, but I'll do my best."

Sprudell said stubbornly:

"I won't be left behind! It's every man for himself now."

The old man replied, with equal obstinacy:

"Then you'll start alone." He added grimly: "I reckon you've never wallered snow neck deep."

For the first time the Chinaman stirred, and raising himself painfully to his elbow, turned to Uncle Bill.

"You go, I think."

Griswold shook his head.

"That 'every-man-for-himself' talk aint the law we know, Toy."