The next day Bud had been ashamed of the performance, but his shame
could not override his stubbornness. The black line stared up at him
accusingly. Cash, keeping scrupulously upon his own side of it, went
coldly about his own affairs and never yielded so much as a glance at
Bud. And Bud grew more moody and dissatisfied with himself, but he would
not yield, either. Perversely he waited for Cash to apologize for what
he had said about gamblers and drunkards, and tried to believe that upon
Cash rested all of the blame.
Now he washed his own breakfast dishes, including the frying pan, spread
the blankets smooth on his bunk, swept as much of the floor as lay upon
his side of the dead line. Because the wind was in the storm quarter and
the lowering clouds promised more snow, he carried in three big armfuls
of wood and placed them upon his corner of the fireplace, to provide
warmth when he returned. Cash would not touch that wood while Bud was
gone, and Bud knew it. Cash would freeze first. But there was small
chance of that, because a small, silent rivalry had grown from the
quarrel; a rivalry to see which kept the best supply of wood, which
swept cleanest under his bunk and up to the black line, which washed his
dishes cleanest, and kept his shelf in the cupboard the tidiest. Before
the fireplace in an evening Cash would put on wood, and when next it
was needed, Bud would get up and put on wood. Neither would stoop to
stinting or to shirking, neither would give the other an inch of ground
for complaint. It was not enlivening to live together that way, but it
worked well toward keeping the cabin ship shape.
So Bud, knowing that it was going to storm, and perhaps dreading a
little the long monotony of being housed with a man as stubborn as
himself, buttoned a coat over his gray, roughneck sweater, pulled a pair
of mail-order mittens over his mail-order gloves, stamped his feet
into heavy, three-buckled overshoes, and set out to tramp fifteen miles
through the snow, seeking the kind of pleasure which turns to pain with
the finding.
He knew that Cash, out by the woodpile, let the axe blade linger in
the cut while he stared after him. He knew that Cash would be lonesome
without him, whether Cash ever admitted it or not. He knew that Cash
would be passively anxious until he returned--for the months they had
spent together had linked them closer than either would confess. Like
a married couple who bicker and nag continually when together, but are
miserable when apart, close association had become a deeply grooved
habit not easily thrust aside. Cabin fever might grip them and impel
them to absurdities such as the dead line down the middle of their
floor and the silence that neither desired but both were too stubborn
to break; but it could not break the habit of being together. So Bud
was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be missed, and he was
ill-humored enough to be glad of it. Frank, if he met Bud that day, was
likely to have his amiability tested to its limit.