Little touches like that go a long way toward brightening the gloom of a winter evening, and for that reason I have done what I could to keep Wade on production. Unfortunately, my knowledge of theology is not profound, while Wade, with his wits sharpened on every itinerant sky-pilot who has ever endeavoured to herd in the black sheep of the Yellowstone, has all his guns ready to bear at a moment's notice. Naturally, therefore, in a matter of straight argument, he has had me on the run from his opening salvo. But always at the last I have robbed his victories of all sweetness by ducking back into the citadel of dogma, and telling him that I can't consent to argue with him unless he sticks to premises—that the Church cannot eliminate the element of faith, which he persists in ignoring. Then, leaving him fuming, I turn in and muffle my exposed ear with a pillow.
That was about the way it went last night at Norris, except that both of us, very childishly, lost our tempers and indulged in personalities. Wade refused to accept the fact of my retirement and violated my rest by staying up and poking the stove. When I uncovered my head to protest, he took the occasion to ask me how I reconciled the theory of the "conservashun" of matter with the story of the loaves and the fishes. I snapped out pettishly that I could reconcile myself to the story of the loaves and fishes a darn site easier than I could to the stories of a fish and a loafer. It was a shameful and inexcusable lapse of breeding on my part, especially as Wade, being a hotel watchman without active duties, was abnormally sensitive about being referred to as a loafer. At first he seemed to be divided between rushing me with a poker and sitting down for a swear-fest. Finally, however, he did a much more dignified thing than either by serving flat notice that he would never again speak to me upon any subject whatever.
Wade made a brave effort to stand by his resolve. To my very contrite apology in the morning he turned a deaf ear. Getting himself a hasty breakfast, he kicked into his ski and pushed off down the Mammoth Springs road at four o'clock. When Carr and I started an hour later a drizzling rain had set in, making the going the hardest and most disagreeable of the whole trip. The snow, honey-combed by the rain, offered no support to our ski, and we wallowed to our knees in soft slush. The drizzle increased to a steady downpour as the morning advanced, drenching our clothes till the water ran down and filled our rubber shoes. Buckskin gauntlets soaked through faster then they could be wrung out. It was not long before chilled hands became almost powerless to grasp the slippery steering poles and numbing fingers fumbled helplessly in their efforts to tighten the stretching thongs of rawhide that bound on our ski.
Wade was spitting a steady stream of curses where we pulled up on his heels at the mud flats by Beaver Lake, but sullenly refused to make way for me to take the lead and break trail. Past Obsidian Cliff, on the still half-frozen pavement of broken glass, the going was better, and I managed to pass and cut in ahead of the wallowing watchman just before we came to the long avenue of pines running past Crystal Springs. He seemed barely able to drag one sagging knee up past the other, and his half-averted face was seamed deep with lines of weariness. Only the spasmodic movement of his lips told of the unborn curses that his overworked lungs lacked the power to force forth upon the air.
Realizing from the fact that he lacked the breath to curse how desperately near a collapse the fellow must be, I whipped up my own flagging energies with the idea of pushing on ahead to the cabin and getting a fire started and a pot of coffee boiling. Shouting to Carr to stand by to bring in the remains, I spurted on as fast as I could over the crust which was still far from rotted by the rain. I was a good three hundred yards ahead of my companions when I turned from the road to cross Obsidian Creek to the cabin. A glance back before I entered the trees revealed Wade reeling drunkenly from side to side, with Carr hovering near to catch him when he fell.
A large fir log spanned the deep half-frozen pool beyond which stood the half-snow-buried cabin. The near bank was several feet higher than the far, so that the log sloped downward at a sharp angle. Since, on our outward trip, we had crossed successfully by coasting down the snow-covered top of the log, I assumed that the feat might be performed again, especially as I was far more adept of the ski now than then. But I failed to reckon on the softening the snow had undergone in the elapsed fortnight. Half-way over the whole right side of the slushy cap sliced off and let me flounder down into the waist-deep pool.
Wade, so Carr says, seemed to sense instantly the meaning of the wild yell that surged up from the creek, and the realization of the glad fact that his tormentor had come a cropper at the log acted like a galvanic shock to revive his all-but-spent energies. I had just got my head above the slushy ice and started cutting loose my ski thongs when he appeared on the bank above. There was triumph in his fatigue-drawn visage, but no mirth. Such was the intensity of his eagerness to speak that for a few moments the gush of words jammed in his throat and throttled coherence. Then out it came, short, sharp and to the point.
"Now, gol dern ye—what d'ye think o' God now?" was all he said. Then he kicked out of one of his ski and reached it down for me to climb out by. We did not, nor shall, resume the argument. The man is too terribly in earnest. He has the same spirit—with the reverse English on it, of course—that I had taken for granted had died with the early martyrs.
Mammoth Hot Springs, April 25.