Cabin Fever - Page 86/118

"Oh, I see, all right! I'll tell the world I see you're a doggone

nuisance! Now see if you can keep outa mischief till I get the wood

carried in." Bud set him down on the bunk, gave him a mail-order

catalogue to look at, and went out again into the storm. When he came

back, Lovin Child was sitting on the hearth with the socks off, and was

picking bits of charcoal from the ashes and crunching them like candy in

his small, white teeth. Cash was hurrying to finish his scrubbing before

the charcoal gave out, and was keeping an eye on the crunching to see

that Lovin Child did not get a hot ember.

"H'yah! You young imp!" Bud shouted, stubbing his toe as he hurried

forward. "Watcha think you are--a fire-eater, for gosh sake?"

Cash bent his head low--it may have been to hide a chuckle. Bud was

having his hands full with the kid, and he was trying to be stern

against the handicap of a growing worship of Lovin Child and all

his little ways. Now Lovin Child was all over ashes, and the clean

undershirt was clean no longer, after having much charcoal rubbed into

its texture. Bud was not overstocked with clothes; much traveling had

formed the habit of buying as he needed for immediate use. With Lovin

Child held firmly under one arm, where he would be sure of him, he

emptied his "war-bag" on the bunk and hunted out another shirt Lovin Child got a bath, that time, because of the ashes he had managed

to gather on his feet and his hands and his head. Bud was patient, and

Lovin Child was delightedly unrepentant--until he was buttoned into

another shirt of Bud's, and the socks were tied on him.

"Now, doggone yuh, I'm goin' to stake you out, or hobble yuh, or some

darn thing, till I get that wood in!" he thundered, with his eyes

laughing. "You want to freeze? Hey? Now you're goin' to stay right on

this bunk till I get through, because I'm goin' to tie yuh on. You may

holler--but you little son of a gun, you'll stay safe!"

So Bud tied him, with a necktie around his body for a belt, and a strap

fastened to that and to a stout nail in the wall over the bunk. And

Lovin Child, when he discovered that it was not a new game but instead a

check upon his activities, threw himself on his back and held his breath

until he was purple, and then screeched with rage.

I don't suppose Bud ever carried in wood so fast in his life. He might

as well have taken his time, for Lovin Child was in one of his fits of

temper, the kind that his grandmother invariably called his father's

cussedness coming out in him. He howled for an hour and had both men

nearly frantic before he suddenly stopped and began to play with the

things he had scorned before to touch; the things that had made him bow

his back and scream when they were offered to him hopefully.