hesitated, derision hiding in the back of his eyes. Then he pushed
the dented coffeepot forward on the stove.

"Try a cup of coffee straight," he said unemotionally, "and then lay
down. You'll sleep it off in a few hours."

Bud did not look up, or make any move to show that he heard. But
presently he rose and went heavily over to his bunk. "I don't want any
darn coffee," he growled, and sprawled himself stomach down on the bed,
with his face turned from the light.

Cash eyed him coldly, with the corner of his upper lip lifted a little.
Whatever weaknesses he possessed, drinking and gambling had no place in
the list. Nor had he any patience with those faults in others. Had Bud
walked down drunk to Cash's camp, that evening when they first met, he
might have received a little food doled out to him grudgingly, but
he assuredly would not have slept in Cash's bed that night. That he
tolerated drunkenness in Bud now would have been rather surprising to
any one who knew Cash well. Perhaps he had a vague understanding of the
deeps through which Bud was struggling, and so was constrained to hide
his disapproval, hoping that the moral let-down was merely a temporary
one.

He finished his strictly utilitarian household labor and went off up the
flat to the sluice boxes. Bud had not moved from his first position on
the bed, but he did not breathe like a sleeping man. Not at first; after
an hour or so he did sleep, heavily and with queer, muddled dreams that
had no sequence and left only a disturbed sense of discomfort behind
then.

At noon or a little after Cash returned to the cabin, cast a sour look
of contempt at the recumbent Bud, and built a fire in the old cookstove.
He got his dinner, ate it, and washed his dishes with never a word
to Bud, who had wakened and lay with his eyes half open, sluggishly
miserable and staring dully at the rough spruce logs of the wall.

Cash put on his cap, looked at Bud and gave a snort, and went off again
to his work. Bud lay still for awhile longer, staring dully at the wall.
Finally he raised up, swung his feet to the floor, and sat there staring
around the little cabin as though he had never before seen it.

"Huh! You'd think, the way he highbrows me, that Cash never done wrong
in his life! Tin angel, him--I don't think. Next time, I'll tell a
pinheaded world I'll have to bring home a quart or two, and put on a
show right!"

Just what he meant by that remained rather obscure, even t