Cabin Fever Read online

  CHAPTER NINE. THE BITE OF MEMORY

  The heavy boom of a dynamite blast rolled across the fiat to the hillsthat flung it back in a tardy echo like a spent ball of sound. A blob ofblue smoke curled out of a hole the size of a hogshead in a steep bankoverhung with alders. Outside, the wind caught the smoke and carriedstreamers of it away to play with. A startled bluejay, on a limb high upon the bank, lifted his slaty crest and teetered forward, clinging withhis toe nails to the branch while he scolded down at the men who hadscared him so. A rattle of clods and small rocks fell from their highflight into the sweet air of a mountain sunset.

  "Good execution, that was," Cash remarked, craning his neck toward thehole. "If you're a mind to go on ahead and cook supper, I'll stay andsee if we opened up anything. Or you can stay, just as you please."

  Dynamite smoke invariably made Bud's head ache splittingly. Cash was notso susceptible. Bud chose the cooking, and went away down the flat, thebluejay screaming insults after him. He was frying bacon when Cash camein, a hatful of broken rock riding in the hollow of his arm.

  "Got something pretty good here, Bud--if she don't turn out like thatdang Burro Lode ledge. Look here. Best looking quartz we've struck yet.What do you think of it?"

  He dumped the rock out on the oilcloth behind the sugar can and directlyunder the little square window through which the sun was pouring alavish yellow flood of light before it dropped behind the peak. Bud setthe bacon back where it would not burn, and bent over the table to look.

  "Gee, but it's heavy!" he cried, picking up a fragment the size ofan egg, and balancing it in his hands. "I don't know a lot aboutgold-bearing quartz, but she looks good to me, all right."

  "Yeah. It is good, unless I'm badly mistaken. I'll test some aftersupper. Old Nelson couldn't have used powder at all, or he'd haveuncovered enough of this, I should think, to show the rest what he had.Or maybe he died just when he had started that hole. Seems queer henever struck pay dirt in this flat. Well, let's eat if it's ready, Bud.Then we'll see."

  "Seems kinda queer, don't it, Cash, that nobody stepped in and filed onany claims here?" Bud dumped half a kettle of boiled beans into a basinand set it on the table. "Want any prunes to-night, Cash?"

  Cash did not want prunes, which was just as well, seeing there were nonecooked. He sat down and ate, with his mind and his eyes clinging to thegrayish, veined fragments of rock lying on the table beside his plate.

  "We'll send some of that down to Sacramento right away," he observed,"and have it assayed. And we won't let out anything about it, Bud--goodor bad. I like this flat. I don't want it mucked over with a lot ofgold-crazy lunatics."

  Bud laughed and reached for the bacon. "We ain't been followed up withstampedes so far," he pointed out. "Burro Lode never caused a ripple inthe Bend, you recollect. And I'll tell a sinful world it looked awfulgood, too."

  "Yeah. Well, Arizona's hard to excite. They've had so dang muchstrenuosity all their lives, and then the climate's against violenteffort, either mental or physical. I was calm, perfectly calm when Idiscovered that big ledge. It is just as well--seeing how it peteredout."

  "What'll you bet this pans out the same?"

  "I never bet. No one but a fool will gamble." Cash pressed his lipstogether in a way that drove the color from there.

  "Oh, yuh don't! Say, you're the king bee of all gamblers. Beenprospecting for fifteen years, according to you--and then you've got thenerve to say you don't gamble!"

  Cash ignored the charge. He picked up a piece of rock and held it to thefading light. "It looks good," he said again. "Better than that placerground down by the creek. That's all right, too. We can wash enough goldthere to keep us going while we develop this. That is, if this proves asgood as it looks."

  Bud looked across at him enigmatically. "Well, here's hoping she's wortha million. You go ahead with your tests, Cash. I'll wash the dishes."

  "Of course," Cash began to conserve his enthusiasm, "there's nothing sosure as an assay. And it was too dark in the hole to see how much wasuncovered. This may be just a freak deposit. There may not be any realvein of it. You can't tell until it's developed further. But it looksgood. Awful good."

  His makeshift tests confirmed his opinion. Bud started out next day withthree different samples for the assayer, and an air castle or two tokeep him company. He would like to find himself half owner of a mineworth about a million, he mused. Maybe Marie would wish then that shehad thought twice about quitting him just on her mother's say-so. He'dlike to go buzzing into San Jose behind the wheel of a car like the oneFoster had fooled him into stealing. And meet Marie, and her mothertoo, and let them get an eyeful. He guessed the old lady would have toswallow what she had said about him being lazy--just because he couldn'trun an auto-stage in the winter to Big Basin! What was the matter withthe old woman, anyway? Didn't he keep Maria in comfort. Well, he'd liketo see her face when he drove along the street in a big new Sussex.She'd wish she had let him and Marie alone. They would have made out allright if they had been let alone. He ought to have taken Marie to someother town, where her mother couldn't nag at her every day about him.Marie wasn't such a bad kid, if she were left alone. They might havebeen happy--

  He tried then to shake himself free of thoughts of her. That was thetrouble with him, he brooded morosely. He couldn't let his thoughts ridefree, any more. They kept heading straight for Marie. He could not seewhy she should cling so to his memory; he had not wronged her--unlessit was by letting her go without making a bigger fight for their home.Still, she had gone of her own free will. He was the one that had beenwronged--why, hadn't they lied about him in court and to the gossipyneighbors? Hadn't they broke him? No. If the mine panned out big as Cashseemed to think was likely, the best thing he could do was steer clearof San Jose. And whether it panned out or not, the best thing he coulddo was forget that such girl as Marie had ever existed..

  Which was all very well, as far as it went. The trouble was thatresolving not to think of Marie, calling up all the bitterness he couldmuster against her memory, did no more toward blotting her image fromhis mind than did the miles and the months he had put between them.

  He reached the town in a dour mood of unrest, spite of the promise ofwealth he carried in his pocket. He mailed the package and the letter,and went to a saloon and had a highball. He was not a drinking man--atleast, he never had been one, beyond a convivial glass or two with hisfellows--but he felt that day the need of a little push toward optimism.In the back part of the room three men were playing freeze-out. Bud wentover and stood with his hands in his pockets and watched them, becausethere was nothing else to do, and because he was still having sometrouble with his thoughts. He was lonely, without quite knowing whatailed him. He hungered for friends to hail him with that cordial,"Hello, Bud!" when they saw him coming.

  No one in Alpine had said hello, Bud, when he came walking in that day.The postmaster had given him one measuring glance when he had weighedthe package of ore, but he had not spoken except to name the amount ofpostage required. The bartender had made some remark about the weather,and had smiled with a surface friendliness that did not deceive Bud fora moment. He knew too well that the smile was not for him, but for hispatronage.

  He watched the game. And when the man opposite him pushed back his chairand, looking up at Bud, asked if he wanted to sit in, Bud went and satdown, buying a dollar's worth of chips as an evidence of his intentionto play. His interest in the game was not keen. He played for thefeeling it gave him of being one of the bunch, a man among his friends;or if not friends, at least acquaintances. And, such was his varyingluck with the cards, he played for an hour or so without having wonenough to irritate his companions. Wherefore he rose from the table atsupper time calling one young fellow Frank quite naturally. They went tothe Alpine House and had supper together, and after that they sat inthe office and talked about automobiles for an hour, which gave Bud acomforting sense of having fallen among friends.

  Later they strolled over to a picture show which
ran films two yearsbehind their first release, and charged fifteen cents for the privilegeof watching them. It was the first theater Bud had entered since he leftSan Jose, and at the last minute he hesitated, tempted to turn back.He hated moving pictures. They always had love scenes somewhere in thestory, and love scenes hurt. But Frank had already bought two tickets,and it seemed unfriendly to turn back now. He went inside to thejangling of a player-piano in dire need of a tuner's service, and satdown near the back of the hall with his hat upon his lifted knees whichcould have used more space between the seats.

  While they waited for the program they talked in low tones, a mumble ofcommonplaces. Bud forgot for the moment his distaste for such places,and let himself slip easily back into the old thought channels, theold habits of relaxation after a day's work was done. He laughed atthe one-reel comedy that had for its climax a chase of housemaids,policemen, and outraged fruit vendors after a well-meaning butunfortunate lover. He saw the lover pulled ignominiously out of a duckpond and soused relentlessly into a watering trough, and laughed withFrank and called it some picture.

  He eyed a succession of "current events" long since gone stale outwhere the world moved swifter than here in the mountains, and he feltas though he had come once more into close touch with life. All the dullmonths he had spent with Cash and the burros dwarfed into a pointless,irrelevant incident of his life. He felt that he ought to be out in theworld, doing bigger things than hunting gold that somehow alwaysrefused at the last minute to be found. He stirred restlessly. He wasfree--there was nothing to hold him if he wanted to go. The war--hebelieved he would go over and take a hand. He could drive an ambulanceor a truck--

  Current Events, however, came abruptly to an end; and presentlyBud's vagrant, half-formed desire for achievement merged into bitingrecollections. Here was a love drama, three reels of it. At first Budwatched it with only a vague, disquieting sense of familiarity. Thenabruptly he recalled too vividly the time and circumstance of his firstsight of the picture. It was in San Jose, at the Liberty. He and Mariehad been married two days, and were living in that glamorous world ofthe honeymoon, so poignantly sweet, so marvelous--and so fleeting. Hehad whispered that the girl looked like her, and she had leaned heavilyagainst his shoulder. In the dusk of lowered lights their hands hadgroped and found each other, and clung.

  The girl did look like Marie. When she turned her head with that littletilt of the chin, when she smiled, she was like Marie. Bud leanedforward, staring, his brows drawn together, breathing the short, quickbreaths of emotion focussed upon one object, excluding all else. Once,when Frank moved his body a little in the next seat, Bud's hand went outthat way involuntarily. The touch of Frank's rough coat sleeve recalledhim brutally, so that he drew away with a wincing movement as though hehad been hurt.

  All those months in the desert; all those months of the slow journeyingnorthward; all the fought battles with memory, when he thought that hehad won--all gone for nothing, their slow anodyne serving but to sharpennow the bite of merciless remembering. His hand shook upon his knee.Small beads of moisture oozed out upon his forehead. He sat stunnedbefore the amazing revelation of how little time and distance had doneto heal his hurt.

  He wanted Marie. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted her inthe old days, with a tenderness, an impulse to shield her from her ownweaknesses, her own mistakes. Then--in those old days--there had beenthe glamor of mystery that is called romance. That was gone, worn awayby the close intimacies of matrimony. He knew her faults, he knew howshe looked when she was angry and petulant. He knew how little the realMarie resembled the speciously amiable, altogether attractive Marie whofaced a smiling world when she went pleasuring. He knew, but--he wantedher just the same. He wanted to tell her so many things about theburros, and about the desert--things that would make her laugh, andthings that would make her blink back the tears. He was homesick for heras he had never been homesick in his life before. The picture flickeredon through scene after scene that Bud did not see at all, though he wasstaring unwinkingly at the screen all the while. The love scenes at thelast were poignantly real, but they passed before his eyes unnoticed.Bud's mind was dwelling upon certain love scenes of his own. He wasfeeling Marie's presence beside him there in the dusk.

  "Poor kid--she wasn't so much to blame," he muttered just above hisbreath, when the screen was swept clean and blank at the end of the lastreel.

  "Huh? Oh, he was the big mutt, right from the start," Frank repliedwith the assured air of a connoisseur. "He didn't have the brains of abluejay, or he'd have known all the time she was strong for him."

  "I guess that's right," Bud mumbled, but he did not mean what Frankthought he meant. "Let's go. I want a drink."

  Frank was willing enough; too willing, if the truth were known. Theywent out into the cool starlight, and hurried across the side streetthat was no more than a dusty roadway, to the saloon where they hadspent the afternoon. Bud called for whisky, and helped himself twicefrom the bottle which the bartender placed between them. He did notspeak until the second glass was emptied, and then he turned to Frankwith a purple glare in his eyes.

  "Let's have a game of pool or something," he suggested.

  "There's a good poker game going, back there," vouchsafed the bartender,turning his thumb toward the rear, where half a dozen men were gatheredin a close group around a table. "There's some real money in sight,to-night."

  "All right, let's go see." Bud turned that way, Frank following like apet dog at his heels.

  At dawn the next morning, Bud got up stiffly from the chair where hehad spent the night. His eyeballs showed a network of tiny red veins,swollen with the surge of alcohol in his blood and with the strain ofstaring all night at the cards. Beneath his eyes were puffy ridges. Hischeekbones flamed with the whisky flush. He cashed in a double-handfulof chips, stuffed the money he had won into his coat pocket, walked,with that stiff precision of gait by which a drunken man strives tohide his drunkenness, to the bar and had another drink. Frank was at hiselbow. Frank was staggering, garrulous, laughing a great deal over verysmall jokes.

  "I'm going to bed," said Bud, his tongue forming the words with a slowcarefulness.

  "Come over to my shack, Bud--rotten hotel. My bed's clean, anyway."Frank laughed and plucked him by the sleeve.

  "All right," Bud consented gravely. "We'll take a bottle along."