“Who said anything about not likin’ it? I didn’t. You know you foozled it when you located here, or you wouldn’t holler like that before you’re hurt.”
“Shut up!” blustered the old man.
“You make me plum tired. If you had any backbone at all, you’d have kept your mouth shut in the first place, an’ not started whinin’ like a kid.”
Nick suppressed a surge of wrath and turned away, lest he rouse his partner’s temper any further. He did not know that this was Henderson’s method of weathering a long snowstorm—a hot argument every now and then to act as a sort of safety valve, relieving the pressure of the bile of boredom before it had accumulated to a dangerous degree.
Henderson made a few more attempts to rouse the younger man, but when he discovered that he could not do it, he too grew silent and increasingly angry. He resented Nick’s attitude, and Nick was quick to note the fact, and to feel a like resentment not unmixed with apprehension as Henderson, his pride forbidding him any longer to rage openly, took more and more to muttering and cursing under his breath.
Nick worried gloomily over the change in his partner, not realizing that a day or so of work on the trap-lines, and a few more pelts added to the pile in the corner, would serve to bring both men back to normal cheerfulness. He sulked and moped, and watched Henderson with hostile eyes.
Such a state of affairs could not continue for long. A belated thaw had at last set in. The snow was ceasing, and a few more days would see a resumption of outdoor work, when a final flare-up occurred. It was late afternoon. Henderson rolled out of his bunk to go to the creek for water and found Hartley gazing at the snow-bound north window. The old man laughed, a sneering, mirthless cackle.
“Enjoyin’ the view?” he asked.
Nick had been thinking of digging away enough to let some light into the cabin, now that the snow had stopped drifting, but after that remark he would willingly have died first. He grew red and tried not to notice the question.
“Well, now,” went on Henderson, enjoying the situation, “I always liked that view myself. It’s so much better ’n gazin’ at your sour-bellied features.”