you're goin' to stay right on
this bunk till I get through, because I'm goin' to tie yuh on. You may
holler--but you little son of a gun, you'll stay safe!"

So Bud tied him, with a necktie around his body for a belt, and a strap
fastened to that and to a stout nail in the wall over the bunk. And
Lovin Child, when he discovered that it was not a new game but instead a
check upon his activities, threw himself on his back and held his breath
until he was purple, and then screeched with rage.

I don't suppose Bud ever carried in wood so fast in his life. He might
as well have taken his time, for Lovin Child was in one of his fits of
temper, the kind that his grandmother invariably called his father's
cussedness coming out in him. He howled for an hour and had both men
nearly frantic before he suddenly stopped and began to play with the
things he had scorned before to touch; the things that had made him bow
his back and scream when they were offered to him hopefully.

Bud, his sleeves rolled up, his hair rumpled and the perspiration
standing thick on his forehead, stood over him with his hands on his
hips, the picture of perturbed helplessness.

"You doggone little devil!" he breathed, his mind torn between amusement
and exasperation. "If you was my own kid, I'd spank yuh! But," he added
with a little chuckle, "if you was my own kid, I'd tell the world you
come by that temper honestly. Darned if I wouldn't."

Cash, sitting dejected on the side of his own bunk, lifted his head, and
after that his hawklike brows, and stared from the face of Bud to
the face of Lovin Child. For the first time he was struck with the
resemblance between the two. The twinkle in the eyes, the quirk of
the lips, the shape of the forehead and, emphasizing them all, the
expression of having a secret joke, struck him with a kind of shock. If
it were possible... But, even in the delirium of fever, Bud had never
hinted that he had a child, or a wife even. He had firmly planted in
Cash's mind the impression that his life had never held any close
ties whatsoever. So, lacking the clue, Cash only wondered and did not
suspect.

What most troubled Cash was the fact that he had unwittingly caused all
the trouble for Lovin Child. He should not have tried to scrub the floor
with the kid running loose all over the place. As a slight token of his
responsibility in the matter, he watched his chance when Bud was busy at
the old cookstove, and tossed a rabbit f