Cabin Fever - Page 34/118

That night Bud shared Cash Markham's blankets, and in the morning

he cooked the breakfast while Cash Markham rounded up the burros and

horses. In that freemasonry of the wilderness they dispensed with

credentials, save those each man carried in his face and in his manner.

And if you stop to think of it, such credentials are not easily forged,

for nature writes them down, and nature is a truth-loving old dame who

will never lead you far astray if only she is left alone to do her work

in peace.

It transpired, in the course of the forenoon's travel, that Cash Markham

would like to have a partner, if he could find a man that suited. One

guessed that he was fastidious in the matter of choosing his companions,

in spite of the easy way in which he had accepted Bud. By noon they had

agreed that Bud should go along and help relocate the widow's claim.

Cash Markham hinted that they might do a little prospecting on their own

account. It was a country he had long wanted to get into, he said, and

while he intended to do what Mrs. Thompson had hired him to do, still

there was no law against their prospecting on their own account. And

that, he explained, was one reason why he wanted a good man along.

If the Thompson claim was there, Bud could do the work under the

supervision of Cash, and Cash could prospect.

"And anyway, it's bad policy for a man to go off alone in this part of

the country," he added with a speculative look across the sandy waste

they were skirting at a pace to suit the heavily packed burros. "Case

of sickness or accident--or suppose the stock strays off--it's bad to be

alone."

"Suits me fine to go with you," Bud declared. "I'm next thing to broke,

but I've got a lot of muscle I can cash in on the deal. And I know the

open. And I can rock a gold-pan and not spill out all the colors, if

there is any--and whatever else I know is liable to come in handy, and

what I don't know I can learn."

"That's fair enough. Fair enough," Markham agreed. "I'll allow you wages

on the Thompson job' till you've earned enough to balance up with the

outfit. After that it'll be fifty-fifty. How'll that be, Bud?"

"Fair enough--fair enough," Bud retorted with faint mimicry. "If I was

all up in the air a few days ago, I seem to have lit on my feet, and

that's good enough for me right now. We'll let 'er ride that way."

And the twinkle, as he talked, was back in his eyes, and the smiley

quirk was at the corner of his lips.