The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 7

The Chinaman reiterated, in monotone:

"You go, I think."

"You heard what I said."

"You take my watch, give him Chiny Charley. He savvy my grandson, the little Sun Loon. Tell Chiny Charley he write the bank in Spokane for send money to Chiny to pay on lice lanch. Tell Chiny Charley--he savvy all. I stay here. You come back--all light. You no come back--all light.

I no care. You go now." He lay down. The matter was quite settled in Toy's mind.

While Sprudell stamped around trying to get feeling into his numb feet and making his preparations to leave, Uncle Bill lay still. He knew that Toy was sincere in urging him to go, and finally he said:

"I'll take you at your word, Toy; I'll make the break. If there's n.o.body in the cabin, I don't believe I'll have the strength to waller back alone; but if there is, we'll get some grub together and come as soon as we can start. I'll do my best."

The glimmer of a smile lighted old Toy's broad, Mongolian face when Griswold was ready to go, and he laid his chiefest treasure in Griswold's hand.

"For the little Sun Loon." His oblique, black eyes softened with affectionate pride. "Plitty fine kid, Bill, hiyu wawa."

"For the little Sun Loon," repeated Uncle Bill gravely. "And hang on as long as you can." Then he shook hands with Toy and divided the matches.

The old Chinaman turned his face to the wall of the tent and lay quite still as the two went out and tied the flap securely behind them.

It did not take Sprudell long to realize that Uncle Bill was correct in his a.s.sertion that he would have been lost alone in fifteen yards. He would have been lost in less than that, or as soon as the full force of the howling storm had struck him and the wind-driven snow shut out the tent. He had not gone far before he wished that he had done as Uncle Bill had told him and wrapped his feet in "Californy socks." The strips of gunny sacking which he had refused because they looked bunglesome he could see now were an immense protection against cold and wet. Sprudell almost admitted, as he felt the dampness beginning to penetrate his waterproof field boots, that there might still be some things he could learn.

He gasped like a person taking a long, hard dive into icy water when they plunged into the swirling world which shut out the tent they had called home. And the wind that took his breath had a curious, piercing quality that hurt, as Uncle Bill had said, like breathing darning needles. "The White Death!" Literally it was that. Panting and quickly exhausted, as he "wallered snow to his neck," T. Victor Sprudell began seriously to doubt if he could make it.

"Aire you comin'?" There was no sympathy, only impatience, in the call which kept coming back with increasing frequency, and Sprudell was longing mightily for sympathy. He had a quaint conceit concerning his toes, not being able to rid himself of the notion that when he removed his socks they would rattle in the ends like bits of broken gla.s.s; and soon he was so cold that he felt a mild wonder as to how his heart could go on pumping congealed blood through the auricles and ventricles.

It had annoyed him at first when chunks of snow dropped from overhanging branches and lodged between his neck and collar, to trickle down his spine; but shortly he ceased to notice so small a matter. In the start, when he had inadvertently slipped off a buried log and found himself entangled in a network of down timber, he had struggled frantically to get out, but now he experienced not even a glimmer of surprise when he stepped off the edge of something into nothing. He merely floundered like a fallen stage horse to get back, without excitement or any sense of irritation. After three exhausting hours or so of fighting snow, his frenzy lest he lose sight of Uncle Bill gave place to apathy. When he fell, he even lay there--resting.

Generally he responded to Griswold's call; if the effort was too great, he did not answer, knowing the old man would come back. That he came back swearing made no difference, so long as he came back. He had learned that Griswold would not leave him.

When he stumbled into a drift and settled back in the snow, it felt exactly like his favorite leather chair by the fire-place in the Bartlesville Commercial Club. He had the same cozy sensation of contentment. He could almost feel the crackling fire warming his knees and s.h.i.+ns, and it required no great stretch of the imagination to believe that by simply extending his hand he could grasp a gla.s.s of whisky and seltzer on the wide arm-rest.

"What's the matter? Aire you down ag'in?"

How different the suave deference of his friends Abe Cone and Y. Fred Smart to the rude tone and manner of this irascible guide! Mr. Sprudell fancied that by way of reply he smiled a tolerant smile, but as a matter of fact the expression of his white, set face did not change.

"Great cats! Have I got to go back and git that dude?" The intervening feet looked like miles to the tired old man.

Wiry and seasoned as he was, he was nearly exhausted by the extra steps he had taken and the effort he had put forth to coax and bully, somehow to drag Sprudell along. The situation was desperate. The bitter cold grew worse as night came on. He knew that they had worked their way down toward the river, but how far down? Was the deep canon he had tried to follow the right one? Somewhere he had lost the "squaw ax," and dry wood was inaccessible under snow. If it were not for Sprudell, he knew that he could still plod on.

His deep breath of exhaustion was a groan as he floundered back and shook the inert figure with all his might.

"Git up!" he shouted. "You must keep movin'! Do you want to lay right down and die?"

"Lemme be!" The words came thickly, and Sprudell did not lift his eyes.

"He's goin' to freeze on me sure!" Uncle Bill tried to lift him, to carry him, to drag him somehow--a dead weight--farther down the canon.

It was hopeless. He let him fall and yelled. Again and again he yelled into the empty world about him. Not so much that he expected an answer as to give vent to his despair. There was not a chance in a million that the miner in the cabin would hear him, even if he were there. But he kept on yelling, whooping, yodling with all his might.

His heart leaped, and he stopped in the midst of a breath. He listened, with his mouth wide open. Surely he heard an answering cry! Faint it was--far off--as though it came through thicknesses of blankets--but it _was_ a cry! A human voice!

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!"

He was not mistaken. From somewhere in the white world of desolation, the answer came again:

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!"

Uncle Bill was not much given to religious allusions except as a matter of emphasis, but he told himself that that far-off cry of rea.s.surance sounded like the voice of G.o.d.

"Help!" he called desperately, sunk to his armpits in the snow. "Help!

Come quick!"

Night was so near that it had just about closed down when Bruce came fighting his way up the canon through the drifts to Griswold's side.

They wasted no time in words, but between them dragged and carried the unresisting sportsman to the cabin.

The lethargy which had been so nearly fatal was without sensation, but after an hour or so of work his saviors had the satisfaction of hearing him begin to groan with the pain of returning circulation.

"Git up and stomp around!" Uncle Bill advised, when Sprudell could stand. "But," sharply, as he stumbled, "look where you're goin'--that's a corp' over there."

The admonition revived Sprudell as applications of snow and ice water had not done. He looked in wide-mouthed inquiry at Bruce.

Bruce's somber eyes darkened as he explained briefly:

"We had a fuss, and he went crazy. He tried to get me with the ax."

There was no need to warn Sprudell again to "look where he was goin',"

as he existed from that moment with his gaze alternating between the gruesome bundle and the gloomy face of his black-browed host.

Incredulity and suspicion shone plainly in his eyes. Sprudell's imagination was a winged thing, and now it spread its startled pinions.

Penned up with a murderer--what a tale to tell in Bartlesville, if by chance he returned alive! The fellow had him at his mercy, and what, after all, did he know of Uncle Bill? Even fairly honest men sometimes took desperate chances for so fat a purse as his.

Sprudell saw to it that neither of them got behind him as they moved about the room.

Casting surrept.i.tious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat rea.s.sured to discover a t.i.tle like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily read, for instance, "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," would split his skull when his back was turned. Yet they smacked of affectation to Sprudell, who a.s.sociated good reading with good clothes.

"These are your books--you _read_ them?" There was skepticism, a covert sneer in Sprudell's tone.

"I'd hardly pack them into a place like this if I didn't," Bruce answered curtly.

"I suppose not," he hastened to admit, and added, patronizingly; "Who _is_ this fellow Aga.s.siz?"

Bruce turned as sharply as if he had attacked a personal friend. The famous, many-sided scientist was his hero, occupying a pedestal that no other celebrity approached. Sprudell had touched him on a tender spot.

"That 'fellow Aga.s.siz,'" he answered in cold mimicry, "was one of the greatest men who ever lived. Where do you stop when you're home that you never heard of Alexander Aga.s.siz? I'd rather have been Alexander Aga.s.siz than the richest man in America--than any king. He was a great scientist, a great mining engineer, a successful business man. He developed and put the Calumet and Hecla on a paying basis. He made the University Museum in Cambridge what it is. He knew more about sea urchins and coral reefs than men who specialize, and they were only side issues with him. I met him once when I was a kid, in Old Mexico; he talked to me a little, and it was the honor of my life. I'd rather walk behind and pack his suitcase like a porter than ride with the president of the road!"

"Is that so?" Sprudell murmured, temporarily abashed.

"Great cats!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Uncle Bill, with bulging eyes. "My head would git a hot-box if I knowed jest half of that."