20 Western Novels You Should Read

Chapter 26

Chapter 1

THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELFThere is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one

thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to

that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon

monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West

calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names,

according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a

palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit

peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You may be attacked

in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various names, and

it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and alimony. You may

have it wherever you are shunted into a backwater of life, and lose

the sense of being borne along in the full current of progress. Be

sure that it will make you abnormally sensitive to little things;

irritable where once you were amiable; glum where once you went

whistling about your work and your play. It is the crystallizer of

character, the acid test of friendship, the final seal set upon

enmity. It will betray your little, hidden weaknesses, cut and

polish your undiscovered virtues, reveal you in all your glory or

your vileness to your companions in exile—if so be you have

any.

If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the

wilderness and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three

things will surely happen: You will hate each other afterward with

that enlightened hatred which is seasoned with contempt; you will

emerge with the contempt tinged with a pitying toleration, or you

will be close, unquestioning friends to the last six feet of

earth—and beyond. All these things will cabin fever do, and more.

It has committed murder, many's the time. It has driven men crazy.

It has warped and distorted character out of all semblance to its

former self. It has sweetened love and killed love. There is an

antidote—but I am going to let you find the antidote somewhere in

the story.

Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that

did not run in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did not

know what ailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up through

Los Gatos and over the Bear Creek road across the summit of the

Santa Cruz Mountains and down to the State Park, which is locally

called Big Basin. For something over fifty miles of wonderful

scenic travel he charged six dollars, and usually his big car was

loaded to the running boards. Bud was a good driver, and he had a

friendly pair of eyes—dark blue and with a humorous little twinkle

deep down in them somewhere—and a human little smiley quirk at the

corners of his lips. He did not know it, but these things helped to

fill his car.

Until gasoline married into the skylark family, Bud did well

enough to keep him contented out of a stock saddle. (You may not

know it, but it is harder for an old cow-puncher to find content,

now that the free range is gone into history, than it is for a

labor agitator to be happy in a municipal boarding house.)

Bud did well enough, which was very well indeed. Before the

second season closed with the first fall rains, he had paid for his

big car and got the insurance policy transferred to his name. He

walked up First Street with his hat pushed back and a cigarette

dangling from the quirkiest corner of his mouth, and his hands in

his pockets. The glow of prosperity warmed his manner toward the

world. He had a little money in the bank, he had his big car, he

had the good will of a smiling world. He could not walk half a

block in any one of three or four towns but he was hailed with a

"Hello, Bud!" in a welcoming tone. More people knew him than Bud

remembered well enough to call by name—which is the final proof of

popularity the world over.

In that glowing mood he had met and married a girl who went into

Big Basin with her mother and camped for three weeks. The girl had

taken frequent trips to Boulder Creek, and twice had gone on to San

Jose, and she had made it a point to ride with the driver because

she was crazy about cars. So she said. Marie had all the effect of

being a pretty girl. She habitually wore white middies with blue

collar and tie, which went well with her clear, pink skin and her

hair that just escaped being red. She knew how to tilt her "beach"

hat at the most provocative angle, and she knew just when to let

Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to

set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too

often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at

her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate in her use of it.

Bud did not notice Marie much on the first trip. She was demure,

and Bud had a girl in San Jose who had brought him to that

interesting stage of dalliance where he wondered if he dared kiss

her good night the next time he called. He was preoccupiedly

reviewing the she-said-and-then-I-said, and trying to make up his

mind whether he should kiss her and take a chance on her

displeasure, or whether he had better wait. To him Marie appeared

hazily as another camper who helped fill the car—and his pocket—and

was not at all hard to look at. It was not until the third trip

that Bud thought her beautiful, and was secretly glad that he had

not kissed that San Jose girl.

You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated

with them the world over. But Bud happened to be a simple-souled

fellow, and there was something about Marie—He didn't know what it

was. Men never do know, until it is all over. He only knew that the

drive through the shady stretches of woodland grew suddenly to seem

like little journeys into paradise. Sentiment lurked behind every

great, mossy tree bole. New beauties unfolded in the winding drive

up over the mountain crests. Bud was terribly in love with the

world in those days.

There were the evenings he spent in the Basin, sitting beside

Marie in the huge campfire circle, made wonderful by the shadowy

giants, the redwoods; talking foolishness in undertones while the

crowd sang snatches of songs which no one knew from beginning to

end, and that went very lumpy in the verses and very much out of

harmony in the choruses. Sometimes they would stroll down toward

that sweeter music the creek made, and stand beside one of the

enormous trees and watch the glow of the fire, and the silhouettes

of the people gathered around it.

In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands. In two weeks

they could scarcely endure the partings when Bud must start back to

San Jose, and were taxing their ingenuity to invent new reasons why

Marie must go along. In three weeks they were married, and Marie's

mother—a shrewd, shrewish widow—was trying to decide whether she

should wash her hands of Marie, or whether it might be well to

accept the situation and hope that Bud would prove himself a rising

young man.

But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin fever now and did

not know what ailed him, though cause might have been summed up in

two meaty phrases: too much idleness, and too much mother- in-law.

Also, not enough comfort and not enough love.

In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth Street

where Bud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission

furniture and a piano, Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his ten

o'clock breakfast, and was scowling over the task. He did not mind

the hour so much, but he did mortally hate to cook his own

breakfast—or any other meal, for that matter. In the next room a

rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmic squeak, and a baby was

squalling with that sustained volume of sound which never fails to

fill the adult listener with amazement. It affected Bud

unpleasantly, just as the incessant bawling of a band of weaning

calves used to do. He could not bear the thought of young things

going hungry.

"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or do

something to shut him up?" he exploded suddenly, dribbling pancake

batter over the untidy range.

The squeak, squawk of the rocker ceased abruptly. "'Cause it

isn't time yet to feed him—that's why. What's burning out there?

I'll bet you've got the stove all over dough again—" The chair

resumed its squeaking, the baby continued uninterrupted its

wah-h-hah! wah-h-hah, as though it was a phonograph that had been

wound up with that record on, and no one around to stop it

Bud turned his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more

batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but

that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he had

never known before. He knew, for instance, that the baby wanted its

bottle, and that Marie was going to make him wait till feeding time

by the clock.

"By heck, I wonder what would happen if that darn clock was to

stop!" he exclaimed savagely, when his nerves would bear no more.

"You'd let the kid starve to death before you'd let your own brains

tell you what to do! Husky youngster like that—feeding 'im four

ounces every four days—or some simp rule like that—" He lifted the

cakes on to a plate that held two messy-looking fried eggs whose

yolks had broken, set the plate on the cluttered table and slid

petulantly into a chair and began to eat. The squeaking chair and

the crying baby continued to torment him. Furthermore, the cakes

were doughy in the middle.

"For gosh sake, Marie, give that kid his bottle!" Bud exploded

again. "Use the brains God gave yuh—such as they are! By heck, I'll

stick that darn book in the stove. Ain't yuh got any feelings at

all? Why, I wouldn't let a dog go hungry like that! Don't yuh

reckon the kid knows when he's hungry? Why, good Lord! I'll take

and feed him myself, if you don't. I'll burn that book—so help

me!"

"Yes, you will—not!" Marie's voice rose shrewishly, riding the

high waves of the baby's incessant outcry against the restrictions

upon appetite imposed by enlightened motherhood. "You do, and see

what'll happen! You'd have him howling with colic, that's what

you'd do."

"Well, I'll tell the world he wouldn't holler for grub! You'd go

by the book if it told yuh to stand 'im on his head in the ice

chest! By heck, between a woman and a hen turkey, give me the

turkey when it comes to sense. They do take care of their young

ones—"

"Aw, forget that! When it comes to sense—"

Oh, well, why go into details? You all know how these domestic

storms arise, and how love washes overboard when the matrimonial

ship begins to wallow in the seas of recrimination.

Bud lost his temper and said a good many things should not have

said. Marie flung back angry retorts and reminded Bud of all his

sins and slights and shortcomings, and told him many of mamma's

pessimistic prophecies concerning him, most of which seemed likely

to be fulfilled. Bud fought back, telling Marie how much of a snap

she had had since she married him, and how he must have looked like

ready money to her, and added that now, by heck, he even had to do

his own cooking, as well as listen to her whining and nagging, and

that there wasn't clean corner in the house, and she'd rather let

her own baby go hungry than break a simp rule in a darn book got up

by a bunch of boobs that didn't know anything about kids. Surely to

goodness, he finished his heated paragraph, it wouldn't break any

woman's back to pour a little warm water on a little malted milk,

and shake it up.

He told Marie other things, and in return, Marie informed him

that he was just a big-mouthed, lazy brute, and she could curse the

day she ever met him. That was going pretty far. Bud reminded her

that she had not done any cursing at the time, being in his opinion

too busy roping him in to support her.

By that time he had gulped down his coffee, and was into his

coat, and looking for his hat. Marie, crying and scolding and

rocking the vociferous infant, interrupted herself to tell him that

she wanted a ten-cent roll of cotton from the d**g store, and added

that she hoped she would not have to wait until next Christmas for

it, either. Which bit of sarcasm so inflamed Bud's rage that he

swore every step of the way to Santa Clara Avenue, and only stopped

then because he happened to meet a friend who was going down town,

and they walked together.

At the d**g store on the corner of Second Street Bud stopped and

bought the cotton, feeling remorseful for some of the things he had

said to Marie, but not enough so to send him back home to tell her

he was sorry. He went on, and met another friend before he had

taken twenty steps. This friend was thinking of buying a certain

second-hand automobile that was offered at a very low price, and he

wanted Bud to go with him and look her over. Bud went, glad of the

excuse to kill the rest of the forenoon.

They took the car out and drove to Schutzen Park and back. Bud

opined that she didn't bark to suit him, and she had a knock in her

cylinders that shouted of carbon. They ran her into the garage shop

and went deep into her vitals, and because she jerked when Bud

threw her into second, Bud suspected that her bevel gears had lost

a tooth or two, and was eager to find out for sure.

Bill looked at his watch and suggested that they eat first

before they got all over grease by monkeying with the rear end. So

they went to the nearest restaurant and had smothered beefsteak and

mashed potato and coffee and pie, and while they ate they talked of

gears and carburetors and transmission and ignition troubles, all

of which alleviated temporarily Bud's case of cabin fever and

caused him to forget that he was married and had quarreled with his

wife and had heard a good many unkind things which his

mother-in-law had said about him.

By the time they were back in the garage and had the grease

cleaned out of the rear gears so that they could see whether they

were really burred or broken, as Bud had suspected, the twinkle was

back in his eyes, and the smiley quirk stayed at the corners of his

mouth, and when he was not talking mechanics with Bill he was

whistling. He found much lost motion and four broken teeth, and he

was grease to his eyebrows—in other words, he was happy.

When he and Bill finally shed their borrowed overalls and caps,

the garage lights were on, and the lot behind the shop was dusky.

Bud sat down on the running board and began to figure what the

actual cost of the bargain would be when Bill had put it into good

mechanical condition. New bearings, new bevel gear, new brake,

lining, rebored cylinders—they totalled a sum that made Bill

gasp.

By the time Bud had proved each item an absolute necessity, and

had reached the final ejaculation: "Aw, forget it, Bill, and buy

yuh a Ford!" it was so late that he knew Marie must have given up

looking for him home to supper. She would have taken it for granted

that he had eaten down town. So, not to disappoint her, Bud did eat

down town. Then Bill wanted him to go to a movie, and after a

praiseworthy hesitation Bud yielded to temptation and went. No use

going home now, just when Marie would be rocking the kid to sleep

and wouldn't let him speak above a whisper, he told his conscience.

Might as well wait till they settled down for the night.