The next day Bud had been ashamed of the performance, but his shame

could not override his stubbornness. The black line stared up at him

accusingly. Cash, keeping scrupulously upon his own side of it, went

coldly about his own affairs and never yielded so much as a glance at

Bud. And Bud grew more moody and dissatisfied with himself, but he would

not yield, either. Perversely he waited for Cash to apologize for what

he had said about gamblers and drunkards, and tried to believe that upon

Cash rested all of the blame.

Now he washed his own breakfast dishes, including the frying pan, spread

the blankets smooth on his bunk, swept as much of the floor as lay upon

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his side of the dead line. Because the wind was in the storm quarter and

the lowering clouds promised more snow, he carried in three big armfuls

of wood and placed them upon his corner of the fireplace, to provide

warmth when he returned. Cash would not touch that wood while Bud was

gone, and Bud knew it. Cash would freeze first. But there was small

chance of that, because a small, silent rivalry had grown from the

quarrel; a rivalry to see which kept the best supply of wood, which

swept cleanest under his bunk and up to the black line, which washed his

dishes cleanest, and kept his shelf in the cupboard the tidiest. Before

the fireplace in an evening Cash would put on wood, and when next it

was needed, Bud would get up and put on wood. Neither would stoop to

stinting or to shirking, neither would give the other an inch of ground

for complaint. It was not enlivening to live together that way, but it

worked well toward keeping the cabin ship shape.

So Bud, knowing that it was going to storm, and perhaps dreading a

little the long monotony of being housed with a man as stubborn as

himself, buttoned a coat over his gray, roughneck sweater, pulled a pair

of mail-order mittens over his mail-order gloves, stamped his feet

into heavy, three-buckled overshoes, and set out to tramp fifteen miles

through the snow, seeking the kind of pleasure which turns to pain with

the finding.

He knew that Cash, out by the woodpile, let the axe blade linger in

the cut while he stared after him. He knew that Cash would be lonesome

without him, whether Cash ever admitted it or not. He knew that Cash

would be passively anxious until he returned--for the months they had

spent together had linked them closer than either would confess. Like

a married couple who bicker and nag continually when together, but are

miserable when apart, close association had become a deeply grooved

habit not easily thrust aside. Cabin fever might grip them and impel

them to absurdities such as the dead line down the middle of their

floor and the silence that neither desired but both were too stubborn

to break; but it could not break the habit of being together. So Bud

was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be missed, and he was

ill-humored enough to be glad of it. Frank, if he met Bud that day, was

likely to have his amiability tested to its limit.




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