The Man from the Bitter Roots. Caroline Lockhart
were no heroics when he left them; he simply fastened on his pack and went.
“Don’t try to hunt me if I stay too long,” was all he said to Uncle Bill at parting. “If there’s any way of getting there, I can make it just as well alone.”
It was disappointing to Sprudell—nothing like the Western plays at tragic moments; no long handshakes and heart-breaking speeches of farewell from the “rough diamonds.”
“S’ long,” said Uncle Bill.
He polished a place on the window-pane with his elbow and watched Burt’s struggle with the cold and wind and snow begin.
“Pure grit, that feller,” when, working like a snowplow, Bruce had disappeared. “He’s man all through.” The old voice trembled. “Say!” He turned ferociously. “Git up and eat!”
Uncle Bill grew older, grayer, grimmer in the days of waiting, days which he spent principally moving between window and door, watching, listening, saying to himself monotonously: It can’t storm forever; some time it’s got to stop.
But in this he seemed mistaken, for the snow fell with only brief cessation, and in such intervals the curious fog hung over the silent mountains with the malignant persistency of an evil spirit.
He scraped the snow away from beside the cabin, and Sprudell helped him bury Slim. Then, against the day of their going, he fashioned crude snow-shoes of material he found about the cabin and built a rough hand sled.
“If only ’twould thaw a little, and come a crust, he’d stand a whole lot better show of gittin’ down.” Uncle Bill scanned the sky regularly for a break somewhere each noon.
“Lord, yes, if it only would!” Sprudell always answered fretfully. “There are business reasons why I ought to be at home.”
The day came when the old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the cañon into which Bruce had disappeared.
“He might kill somethin’, if ’twould lift a little, but there’s nothin’ stirrin’ in such a storm as this. I feel like a murderer settin’ here.”
Sprudell watched him fearfully lest the irresolution he read in his face change to resolve, and urged:
“There’s nothing we can do but wait.”
Days after the most sanguine would have abandoned hope, Uncle Bill hung on. Sprudell paced the cabin like a captive panther, and his broad hints became demands.
“A month of this, and there would be another killin’; I aches to choke the windpipe off that dude,” the old man told himself, and ignored the peremptory commands.
The crust that he prayed for came at last, but no sign of Bruce; then a gale blowing down the river swept it fairly clear of snow.
“Git ready!” Griswold said one morning. “We’ll start.” And Sprudell jumped on his frosted feet for joy. “We’ll take it on the ice to Long’s Crossin’,” he vouchsafed shortly. “Ore City’s closest, but I’ve no heart to pack you up that hill.”
He left a note on the kitchen table, though he had the sensation of writing to the dead; and when he closed the door he did so reverently, as he would have left a mausoleum. Then, dragging blankets and provision behind them on the sled, they started for the river, past the broken snow and the shallow grave where the dead madman lay, past the clump of snow-laden willows where the starving horses that had worked their way down huddled for shelter, too weak to move. Leaden-hearted, Uncle Bill went with reluctant feet. Before a bend of the river shut from sight the white-roofed cabin from which a tiny thread of smoke still rose, he looked over his shoulder, wagging his head.
“I don’t feel right about goin’. I shorely don’t.”
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