practice. Bud sopped his last
hotcake in a pool of syrup and watched him from the corner of his eyes,
without turning his head an inch toward Cash. His keenest desire, just
then, was to see Cash when he tackled the frying pan.

But Cash disappointed him there. He took a pie tin off the shelf and
laid his strips of bacon on it, and set it in the oven; which is a very
good way of cooking breakfast bacon, as Bud well knew. Cash then took
down the little square baking pan, greased from the last baking
of bread, and in that he fried his hot cakes. As if that were not
sufficiently exasperating, he gave absolutely no sign of being conscious
of the frying pan any more than he was conscious of Bud. He did not
overdo it by whistling, or even humming a tune--which would have
given Bud an excuse to say something almost as mean as his mood.
Abstractedness rode upon Cash's lined brow. Placid meditation shone
forth from his keen old blue-gray eyes.

The bacon came from the oven juicy-crisp and curled at the edges and
delicately browned. The cakes came out of the baking pan brown and thick
and light. Cash sat down at his end of the table, pulled his own can of
sugar and his own cup of syrup and his own square of butter toward him;
poured his coffee, that he had made in a small lard pail, and began to
eat his breakfast exactly as though he was alone in that cabin.

A great resentment filled Bud's soul to bursting, The old hound! Bud
believed now that Cash was capable of leaving that frying pan dirty for
the rest of the day! A man like that would do anything! If it wasn't for
that claim, he'd walk off and forget to come back.

Thinking of that seemed to crystallize into definite purpose what
had been muddling his mind with vague impulses to let his mood find
expression. He would go to Alpine that day. He would hunt up Frank and
see if he couldn't jar him into showing that he had a mind of his own.
Twice since that first unexpected spree, he had spent a good deal of
time and gold dust and consumed a good deal of bad whisky and beer, in
testing the inherent obligingness of Frank. The last attempt had been
the cause of the final break between him and Cash. Cash had reminded Bud
harshly that they would need that gold to develop their quartz claim,
and he had further stated that he wanted no "truck" with a gambler and
a drunkard, and that Bud had better straighten up if he wanted to keep
friends with Cash.

Bud had retorted that Cash mi