n next it
was needed, Bud would get up and put on wood. Neither would stoop to
stinting or to shirking, neither would give the other an inch of ground
for complaint. It was not enlivening to live together that way, but it
worked well toward keeping the cabin ship shape.

So Bud, knowing that it was going to storm, and perhaps dreading a
little the long monotony of being housed with a man as stubborn as
himself, buttoned a coat over his gray, roughneck sweater, pulled a pair
of mail-order mittens over his mail-order gloves, stamped his feet
into heavy, three-buckled overshoes, and set out to tramp fifteen miles
through the snow, seeking the kind of pleasure which turns to pain with
the finding.

He knew that Cash, out by the woodpile, let the axe blade linger in
the cut while he stared after him. He knew that Cash would be lonesome
without him, whether Cash ever admitted it or not. He knew that Cash
would be passively anxious until he returned--for the months they had
spent together had linked them closer than either would confess. Like
a married couple who bicker and nag continually when together, but are
miserable when apart, close association had become a deeply grooved
habit not easily thrust aside. Cabin fever might grip them and impel
them to absurdities such as the dead line down the middle of their
floor and the silence that neither desired but both were too stubborn
to break; but it could not break the habit of being together. So Bud
was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be missed, and he was
ill-humored enough to be glad of it. Frank, if he met Bud that day, was
likely to have his amiability tested to its limit.

Bud tramped along through the snow, wishing it was not so deep, or else
deep enough to make snow-shoeing practicable in the timber; thinking
too of Cash and how he hoped Cash would get his fill of silence, and of
Frank, and wondering where he would find him. He had covered perhaps two
miles of the fifteen, and had walked off a little of his grouch, and had
stopped to unbutton his coat, when he heard the crunching of feet in the
snow, just beyond a thick clump of young spruce.

Bud was not particularly cautious, nor was he averse to meeting people
in the trail. He stood still though, and waited to see who was
coming that way--since travelers on that trail were few enough to be
noticeable.

In a minute more a fat old squaw rounded the spruce grove and shied
off startled when she glimpsed Bu