Cabin Fever - Page 99/118

"I'll tell the world he does! He got hold of your old pipe to-day and

was suckin' away on it, I don't know how long. Never feazed him, either.

If he can stand that, I guess he ain't very delicate."

"Yeah. I laid that pipe aside myself because it was getting so dang

strong. Ain't you getting them pants too long in the seat, Bud? They

look to me big enough for a ten-year-old."

"I guess you don't realize how that kid's growing!" Bud defended his

handiwork "And time I get the seams sewed, and the side lapped over for

buttons--"

"Yeah. Where you going to get the buttons? You never sent for any."

"Oh, I'll find buttons. You can donate a couple off some of your

clothes, if you want to right bad."

"Who? Me? I ain't got enough now to keep the wind out," Cash protested.

"Lemme tell yuh something, Bud. If you cut more saving, you'd have

enough cloth there for two pair of pants. You don't need to cut the legs

so long as all that. They'll drag on the ground so the poor kid can't

walk in 'em without falling all over himself."

"Well, good glory! Who's making these pants? Me, or you?" Bud exploded.

"If you think you can do any better job than what I'm doing, go get

yourself some cloth and fly at it! Don't think you can come hornin' in

on my job, 'cause I'll tell the world right out loud, you can't."

"Yeah--that's right! Go to bellerin' around like a bull buffalo, and

wake the kid up! I don't give a cuss how you make'm. Go ahead and have

the seat of his pants hangin' down below his knees if you want to!" Cash

got up and moved huffily over to the fireplace and sat with his back to

Bud.

"Maybe I will, at that," Bud retorted. "You can't come around and grab

the job I'm doing." Bud was jabbing a needle eye toward the end of a

thread too coarse for it, and it did not improve his temper to have the

thread refuse to pass through the eye.

Neither did it please him to find, when all the seams were sewn, that

the little overalls failed to look like any garment he had ever seen on

a child. When he tried them on Lovin Child, next day, Cash took one look

and bolted from the cabin with his hand over his mouth.

When he came back an hour or so later, Lovin Child was wearing his

ragged rompers, and Bud was bent over a Weinstock-Lubin mail-order

catalogue. He had a sheet of paper half filled with items, and was

licking his pencil and looking for more. He looked up and grinned a

little, and asked Cash when he was going to town again; and added that

he wanted to mail a letter.