“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 wangdoodle 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.
“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 pass 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 snowballs 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 altitude 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 snatched 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 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