“When she cuts loose she’s going to be a twister,” and he added grimly, as instinctively his eyes sought the saddleback or pass over which the ancient trail of the Sheep-eater Indians ran: “Those game hogs better pull their freight if they count on going out as they came in.”
His fingers were numb when he stood up and shook the cold river water from them, turning now to look across for a sight of Slim.
“I’ve cut his share of wood all summer, so I guess there’s no use quitting now. Turning pancakes is about the hardest work he’s done since we landed on the bar. Oh, well”—he raised one big shoulder in a shrug of resignation—“we’ll split this partnership when we get out of here. By rights I ought to dig out now.”
The chips flew as he swung the ax with blows that tested the tough oak handle. Bruce Burt was a giant in his strength, and as unconscious of the greatness of it as a bear. He could not remember that he had ever fully tried it. He never had lifted a weight when he had not known that, if necessary, he could lift a little more. His physique had fulfilled the promise of his sturdy youth, and he was as little aware that it, too, was remarkable as he was of the fact that men and women turned in admiration to look again at his dark, unsmiling face upon the rare occasions when he had walked the streets of the towns.
He was as splendid a specimen of his kind as Old Felix, as primitive nearly, and as shy. His tastes had led him into the wilderness, and he had followed the gold strikes and the rumors of gold strikes from Sonora, in Old Mexico, to the Siberian coast, on Behring Sea, in search of a new Klondike. He had lived hard, endured much in the adventurous life of which he seldom talked. His few intimates had been men like himself—the miners and prospectors who built their cabins in the fastnesses with Hope their one companion, to eat and sleep and work with. He was self-educated and well informed along such lines as his tastes led him. He read voraciously all that pertained to Nature, to her rocks and minerals, and he knew the habits of wild animals as he knew his own. Of the people and that vague place they called “the outside,” he knew little or nothing.
He had acquaintances and he had enemies in the mining camps which necessity compelled him to visit at long intervals for the purchase of supplies. Agreeable and ingratiating storekeepers who sold him groceries, picks, shovels, powder, drills, at fifty per cent. profit, neat, smooth-shaven gamblers, bartenders, who welcomed him with boisterous camaraderie, tired and respectable women who “run” boarding houses, painted, highly-perfumed ladies of the dance hall, enigmatic Chinamen, all were types with which he was familiar. But he called none of them “friend.” Their tastes, their interests, their standards of conduct were different from his own. They had nothing in common, yet he could not have explained exactly why. He told himself vaguely that he did not “cotton” to them, and thought the fault was with himself.
Bruce was twenty-seven, and his mother was still his ideal of womanhood. He doubted if there were another like her in all the world. Certainly he never had seen one who in the least approached her. He remembered her vividly, the grave, gray, comprehending eyes, the long braids of hair which lay like thick new hempen rope upon the white counterpane.
His lack of a substantial education—a college education—was a sore spot with him which did not become less sore with time. If she had lived he was sure it would have been different. With his mother to intercede for him he knew that he would have had it. After her death his father grew more taciturn, more impatient, more bent on preparing him to follow in his footsteps, regardless of his inclinations. The “lickings” became more frequent, for he seemed only to see his mistakes and childish faults.
The culmination had come when he had asked to be allowed to leave the country school where he rode daily, and attend the better one in the nearest village, which necessitated boarding. After nerving himself for days to ask permission, he had been refused flatly.
“What do you think I’m made of—money?” his father had demanded. “You’ll stay where you are until you’ve learned to read, and write, and figure: then you’ll help me with the cattle. Next thing you’ll be wantin’ to play a flute or the piano.”