CHAPTER XII
THE TEST
With only one-half of his journey behind him and the chill night-wind whipping through the unchinked crevices of the deserted shack; with the prospect of an unsavory supper of soggy sock-eye and a lump of frozen bread, Bill Carmody fervently wished himself elsewhere.
His mind lingered upon the long row of squat, fat-footed shoe-packs which the old man had indicated with his gnarled crutch. How good they would feel after the grinding newness of his boots! And coffee—he could see the row of tin pots hanging from their wires, and the long, flat slabs of bacon suspended from the roof-logs of the store.
He found himself, for the first time in his life, absolutely dependent upon his own resources. He cut the top from a can of salmon and thawed out his bread on the top of the dirty stove. He had no cup, so he used the salmon-can, limping in stockinged feet to the spring near the door, whose black waters splashed coldly in a tiny rivulet that found its way under the frozen surface of a small creek. The water was clear and cold, but tasted disgustingly fishy from its contact with the can.
As he entered the shack and closed the sagging door, his glance was arrested by an object half concealed in the cobwebbed niche between the lintel and the sloping roof-logs—an object that gleamed shiny and black in the dull play of the firelight. He reached up and withdrew from its hiding-place a round quart bottle, across whose top was pasted a familiar green stamp which proclaimed that the contents had been bottled in bond.
He carried it to the fire and with the sleeve of his mackinaw removed the accumulated dust from the label. "Old Morden Rye," he read aloud, holding it close to the firelight. And as he read his thoughts flew backward to past delights. Here was an old friend come to cheer him in the wilderness.
He was no longer cold nor hungry, and before his eyes danced the bright, white lights of the man-made night of Broadway. His shoulders straightened and the sparkle came into his eyes. Forgotten was his determination to make good, and the future was a remote thing of no present moment nor concern. Once again he was Broadway Bill, the sport!
Carefully and deliberately he broke the seal and removed the cork-rimmed glass stopper, which he flung to a far corner of the room—for that was Bill's way—to throw away the cork. There was nothing small in his make-up; and for why is whisky, but to drink while it lasts? And one cannot drink through a cork-rimmed stopper. So he threw it away.
Only that day as he had laboriously stepped off the long miles he had thought with virtuous complacence of the completeness of his reformation.