It was with immeasurable satisfaction that Sprudell told himself that but for his initiative they would have been there yet. These fellows needed a leader, a strong man--the ignorant always did. His eyes caught the suggestive outlines of the blanket on the floor, and, with a start, he remembered what was under it. They had no sensibilities, these Westerners--they lacked fineness; certainly no one would suspect from the matter-of-factness of their manner that they were rooming with a corpse. For himself, he doubted if he could even eat.
"Oh, you awake?" Uncle Bill glanced at him casually.
"My feet hurt."
Uncle Bill ignored his plaintive tone.
"They're good and froze. They'll itch like forty thousand fleabites atter while--like as not you'll haf to have them took off. Lay still and don't clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I'll cook you somethin' bimeby."
Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. He wished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the pay roll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He'd----Sprudell's resentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conducive to the disciplining of Uncle Bill.
Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here and there. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as though he were weighing something pro and con.
Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist though he was, he was equally aware that Bruce's observations still left him in some doubt.
Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to make up his mind.
"I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case I don't come back. I intend to, but"--he glanced instinctively out of the window--"it's no sure thing I will.
"My partner has a mother and a sister--here's the address, though it's twelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that you'll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and this letter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust--our season's work." He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell's hand. "Say that Slim sent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write, that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.
"I've told them in my letter about the placer here--it's theirs, the whole of it, if I don't come back. See that it's recorded; women don't understand about such things. And be sure the assessment work's kept up. In the letter, there, I've given them my figures as to how the samples run. Some day there'll be found a way to work it on a big scale, and it'll pay them to hold on. That's all, I guess." He looked deep into Sprudell's eyes. "You'll do it?"