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 Chinks, 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 brass buttons 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.