When Sprudell stretched his stiff muscles and turned his head upon the bear-grass pillow at daybreak, Bruce was writing a letter on the corner of the table and Uncle Bill was stowing away provisions in a small canvas sack. He gathered, from the signs of preparation, that the miner was going to try and find the Chinaman. Outside, the wind was still sweeping the stinging snow before it like powder-driven shot. What a fool he was to attempt it—to risk his life—and for what?
It was with immeasurable satisfaction that Sprudell told himself that but for his initiative they would have been there yet. These fellows needed a leader, a strong man—the ignorant always did. His eyes caught the suggestive outlines of the blanket on the floor, and, with a start, he remembered what was under it. They had no sensibilities, these Westerners—they lacked fineness; certainly no one would suspect from the matter-of-factness of their manner that they were rooming with a corpse. For himself, he doubted if he could even eat.
“Oh, you awake?” Uncle Bill glanced at him casually.
“My feet hurt.”
Uncle Bill ignored his plaintive tone.
“They’re good and froze. They’ll itch like forty thousand fleabites atter while—like as not you’ll haf to have them took off. Lay still and don’t clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I’ll cook you somethin’ bimeby.”
Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. He wished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the pay roll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He’d——Sprudell’s resentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conducive to the disciplining of Uncle Bill.
Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here and there. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as though he were weighing something pro and con.
Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist though he was, he was equally aware that Bruce’s observations still left him in some doubt.
Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to make up his mind.